When a young boy named Landon Whitley died in a car crash, he says he went to heaven. After being resuscitated, he came back with a message he says Jesus gave him to share with the world—and he wants everyone to hear it before it’s too late.
On October 19, 1997, Landon was in the backseat, riding home from church with his mom and dad when tragedy struck. “I didn’t see what he was yelling at. I didn’t see the ambulance coming, but I remember him yelling. That was the last thing I heard from him,” Julie Kemp, Landon’s mom, recalled, according to Fox News. The “he” she is referring to was her husband, Andy, and the ambulance she speaks of broadsided their car at an intersection.
Landon was just 8 years old when the ambulance, returning to its station, T-boned his family’s car. His dad died instantly. Rescuers stabilized Julie but didn’t realize Landon was also in the car. “They couldn’t see his body because of the damage done to the driver’s side of the car, and Landon was sitting behind his dad,” Julie explained.
When they saw Landon’s shoe, however, they began to search for a child’s body, CBN reported.
They eventually found Landon, but he wasn’t breathing. Resuscitation efforts began immediately, and he was life-flighted from the scene. He died two more times that day. Each time, he was brought back to life, but he wasn’t out of the woods.
They told me that if he lived, which did not look good, but if he lived, he would be like an 8-year-old baby,” Julie recalled. “He would not know how to walk or talk or eat because of all the brain damage. I was so desperate that that was okay. I would take that just to have him. He was all that I had.”
As her son fought for his life, Julie had to lay her husband to rest. At his funeral, she admitted that she felt abandoned by God. “I was very disappointed, heartbroken. And when I’m sitting at the funeral, I’m fussing at God. I don’t understand why this happened,” she said. “I don’t understand why He didn’t send angels to protect us. But in the very next breath, I’m praying as hard to Him as I’ve ever prayed in my life for Landon to live.”
Although Landon suffered massive head trauma during the accident and was left in a coma, hooked up to all kinds of machines to keep him alive, after two weeks, the boy opened his eyes—an answer to Julie’s prayers.