Excerpt from: Saved by the Light 1994 by Dannion Brinkley Villard Books, New York ISBN 0-679-43176-4
Introduction
On September 17, 1975, Dannion Brinkley was talking on the telephone during a thunderstorm.
A bolt of lightning hit the phone line, sending thousands of volts of electricity into his head and down his body, throwing him several feet into the air.
When Brinkley revived in the morgue after twenty-eight minutes, he had an incredible story to tell.
Saved By the Light, is the profoundly moving personal account of his near-death experiences -- the second NDE occurring fourteen years later -- and the resulting spiritual transformation that has completely altered his life.
After the lightning strike, Brinkley watched from above as loved ones and medics tried to to start his heart.
When doctors pronounced him dead, he was already traveling through a dark tunnel toward a spirit being, who led him into a crystal city awash in light and tranquility.
Brought before thirteen angelic instructors in what he describes as "a cathedral of knowledge," Brinkley was told of events that would shake the world before the year 2000 -- including
the Chernobyl nuclear disaster
the Persian Gulf War
America's current economic crisis
Of the 117 revelations that he recalls, 95 have already come to pass.
The Boxes of Knowledge
I was able to count the Beings as they stood behind the podium.
There were thirteen of them, standing shoulder to shoulder and stretched across the stage.
I was aware of other things about them, too, probably through some form of telepathy.
Each one of them represented a different emotional and psychological characteristic that all humans have.
For example, one of these Beings was intense and passionate, while another was artistic and emotional.
One was bold and energetic, yet another possessive and loyal.
In human terms, it was as though each one represented a different sign of the zodiac.
In spiritual terms, these Beings went far beyond the signs of the zodiac.
They emanated these emotions in such a way that I could feel them.
Now more than ever I knew that this was a place of learning.
I would be steeped in knowledge, taught in a way that I had never been taught before.
There would be no books and no memorization.
In the presence of these Beings of Light, I would become knowledge and know everything that was important to know.
I could ask any question and know the answer.
It was like being a drop of water bathed in the knowledge of the ocean, or a beam of light knowing what all light knows.
I had only to think a question to explore the essence of the answer.
In a split second I understood how light works, the ways in which spirit is incorporated into the physical life, why it is possible for people to think and act in so many different ways.
Ask and you shall perceive, is the way I sum it up.
These Beings of Light were different from the one that met me when I first died.
They had the same silver-blue glow of that first Being, but with light that glowed deep blue from within them.
This color carried with it a great sense of might and seemed to draw from the same source that traits like heroism come from.
I have never seen the color since then, but it seemed to signify that these Beings were among the greatest of their kind.
I felt as awestruck and proud to be in their presence as I would to be standing with Joan of Arc or George Washington.
As each one approached, a box the size of a videotape came from its chest and zoomed right at my face.
The first time this happened I flinched, thinking I was going to be hit.
But a moment before impact, the box opened to reveal what appeared to be a tiny television picture of a world event that was yet to happen.
As I watched, I felt myself drawn right into the picture, where I was able to live the event.
This happened twelve times, and twelve times I stood in the midst of many events that would shake the world in the future.
At the time I didn't know these were future events.
All I knew was that I was seeing things of great significance and that they were coming to me as clearly as the nightly news, with one great difference: I was being pulled into the screen.
Much later, when I returned to life, I wrote down 117 events that I witnessed in the boxes.
For three years nothing happened. Then in 1978, events that I had seen in the boxes began to come true.
In the eighteen years since I died and went to this place, ninety-five of these events have taken place.
On this day, September 17, 1975, the future came to me a box at a time.
Boxes One Through Three: Visions of a Demoralized Country
Boxes one, two, and three showed the mood of America in the aftermath of the war in Southeast Asia.
They revealed scenes of spiritual loss in our country that were byproducts of that war, which weakened the structure of America and eventually the world.
The scenes were of prisoners of war, weak and wasted from hunger, as they waited in the rugged prisons of North Vietnam for American ambassadors to come and free them.
I could feel their fear and then despair when they realized one by one that no help would be forthcoming and that they would live out their remaining years as slaves in jungle prisons.
These were the MIAs, those military men considered "missing in action."
The MIAs were already an issue in 1975, but they were used as a starting point in the visions to show an America that was slipping into spiritual decline.
This came to me as scenes of money going out of a room much faster than it was coming in.
Through some kind of telepathy, I was aware that this money represented the increase in the national debt and that it spelled danger down the road.
I also saw people waiting in long lines for the basics of life like clothing and food.
Many scenes of spiritual hunger came from the first two boxes as well.
I saw people who were transparent in such a way as to reveal that they were hollow.
This hollowness, it was explained to me telepathically, was caused by a loss of faith in America and what it stood for.
The war in Southeast Asia had combined with inflation and distrust in our government to create a spiritual void.
This void was added to by our loss of love for God.
This spiritual depravity resulted in a number of shocking visions: people noting and looting because they wanted more material goods than they had, kids shooting other kids with high-powered rifles, criminals stealing cars, young men firing on other young men from the windows of cars.
Scenes like these played out in front of me like scenes from a gangster movie.
Most of the criminals were children or adolescents that no one cared about.
As I watched image after image, it became painfully clear to me that these kids had no family units, and as a result, they were acting like wolves.
I was confused because I couldn't figure out how American children could be left to roam and murder.
Didn't they have parental guidance?
I wondered.
How could such a thing happen in our country?
In the third box I found myself facing the seal of the president of the United States.
I don't know where I was, but I saw the initials "RR" emblazoned beneath this seal.
Then I was standing in the midst of newspapers, looking at their editorial cartoons.
One after the other I saw cartoons of a cowboy.
He was riding the range or shooting down bad guys in saloons.
This vision was festooned with satirical illustrations from around the country from such newspapers as
the Boston Globe
the Chicago Tribune
the Los Angeles Times
The dates on the newspapers ranged from 1983 to 1987, and it was clear from the nature of the drawings that they were about the president of the United States, who projected the image of being a cowboy to the rest of the world.
I could also tell that the man in these cartoons was an actor, because they all had a theatrical look to them.
One of the cartoons even referred to "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" and played off the famous scene in that movie in which the two outlaws jump off a cliff into a shallow pool of water.
Yet despite the vividness of the newspaper clippings, I was unable to see the face under the cowboy hat.
I now know that "RR" stood for Ronald Reagan, but at the time I had no idea who the "cowboy" was.
A few months later, when I was recalling these visions for Dr. Raymond Moody, the noted psychiatrist and researcher of near-death experiences, he asked me who I thought "RR" was.
Without hesitation I said, "Robert Redford."
He has never let me forget that mistake and ribs me about it every time we get together.
Boxes Four and Five: Strife and Hatred in the Holy Lands
Boxes four and five were scenes from the Middle East, showing how this area of eternal strife would reach a boiling point.
Religion would play a large role in these problems, as would the economy.
A constant need for outside money fueled much of the anger and hatred that I saw in these boxes.
In the first of these boxes I saw two agreements taking place:
In the first, Israelis and Arabs were agreeing to something, but what was unclear to me.
The second accord was one that I could see in some detail.
Men were shaking hands and there was much talk about a new country.
Then I saw a collage of images: the River Jordan, a settlement from Israel that was spreading into Jordan, and a map on which the country of Jordan was changing color.
As I watched this puzzling collage unfold, I heard a Being speak telepathically to me and say that the country of Jordan would exist no more.
I did not hear the name of the new country.
This agreement was nothing more than a front by the Israelis to create a police force composed of Israelis and Arabs.
This was a very harsh police force, cruel and unyielding.
I saw them wearing blue-and-silver uniforms and having a tight grip on the people of this region.
So tight was their grip, in fact, that world leaders became highly critical of Israel.
Many corroborators on both sides kept an eye on their own people and reported their activities to this police force.
They served to make everyone suspicious, causing trust in these societies to disappear.
I could see Israel becoming isolated from the rest of the world.
As things worsened, there were images of Israel preparing for war against other countries, including Russia and a Chinese-and-Arab consortium.
Jerusalem was somehow at the eye of this conflict, but I am not sure exactly how.
From newspaper headlines that appeared in the vision, I could see that some incident in that holy city had served to trigger this war.
These visions revealed Israel as being spiritually hollow.
I had the sense of it being a country of strong government but weak morals.
Image after image came of Israelis reacting with hatred toward Palestinians and other Arabs, and I was steeped in the sense that these people as a nation had forgotten God and were now driven by racial hatred.
The fifth box showed oil being used as a weapon to control the international economy.
I saw images of Mecca and then of the Saudi people.
While these images streamed before me, a telepathic voice said that oil production was being cut off to destroy America's economy and to milk money from the world economy.
The price of oil was going up and up, said the voice, and Saudi Arabia was making an alliance with Syria and China.
I could see Arab and Oriental people shaking hands and making deals.
As these images came to me, I could sense money being given by the Saudis to Asian countries like North Korea, all in the hopes of destabilizing the economy of the Asian region.
I wondered where this alliance began, and I was able to see a close-up of Syrians and Chinese signing papers and shaking hands in a building that I knew was in Syria.
The date that came to me was 1992.
Another date came to me 1993-and with it came images of Syrian and Chinese scientists working in laboratories to develop a missile that could deliver chemical and biological weapons.
Nuclear weapons were becoming things of the past, and these countries wanted to develop new weapons of destruction.
The boxes kept coming.
Box Six: Visions of Nuclear Destruction
Number six was terrifying.
I was drawn into the box and found myself in a cool, forested area beside a river.
Next to the river was a massive cement structure, square and foreboding.
I was fearful and didn't know why.
Suddenly the earth shook, and the top of this cement structure exploded.
I knew it was a nuclear explosion and could sense hundreds of people dying around me as it took place.
The year 1986 was given to me through telepathy, as was the word wormwood.
It wasn't until a decade later, when the Chernobyl nuclear plant exploded near Kiev in the Soviet Union, that I was able to associate these pictures with an event.
It was then that I made another connection between the vision in this box and the nuclear disaster in the USSR.
The word Chernobyl means "wormwood" in Russian.
A second nuclear accident appeared in the box, this in a northern sea so badly polluted that no ships would travel there.
The water was a pale red and was covered with dead or dying fish.
Around the water were peaks and valleys that made me think I was seeing a fiord like those in Norway.
I couldn't tell where this was, but I knew that the world was frightened at what had happened, because radiation from this accident could spread everywhere and affect all of humankind.
The date on the picture was 1995.
The vision didn't stop there.
People were dying and deformed as a result of these nuclear catastrophes.
In a series of what seemed like television pictures, I saw cancer victims and mutated babies in:
Russia
Norway
Sweden
and Finland, not hundreds or thousands of people, but tens of thousands, in a vast array of deformity, going on through generations.
The poisons released by these accidents were carried to the rest of the world through water, which was tainted forever by this nuclear waste.
The Being made it clear that humans had created a horrible power that had not been contained.
By letting this power out of their control, the Soviets had destroyed their own country and possibly the world.
The box showed me the fear in people's hearts that resulted from these nuclear accidents.
As the images of this fear unfolded, I somehow understood that environmentalism would emerge as the world's new religion.
People would consider a clean environment a key to salvation more than they ever had before.
Political parties would spring up around the issue of a cleaner planet, and political fortunes would be made or broken based upon feelings about the environment.
From Chernobyl and this second accident, I could see that the Soviet Union would wither and die, with the Soviet people losing faith in their government and the government losing its grip on the people.
The economy played a strong role in these visions.
I saw people carrying bags of money into stores and coming out with small bags of goods.
People with military uniforms wandered the streets in Soviet cities begging for food, some obviously starving to death.
People ate rotted potatoes and apples, and crowds rioted to get at trucks filled with food.
The word Georgia appeared in a Cyrillic script, and I could see a mafia developing in Moscow that I assume came from the state of Georgia in the Soviet Union.
This mafia was a growing power that was in competition with the Soviet government.
In scene after scene, I saw mafia members operating freely in a city that I think was Moscow.
I felt no joy as I watched the Soviet Union collapse.
Although Soviet-style communism was dying right before my eyes, the Being of Light was saying that this was a cautious moment instead of a glorious one.
"Watch the Soviet Union," he said.
"How the Russian people go, so goes the world.
What happens to Russia is the basis for everything that will happen to the economy of the free world."
Box Seven: The Environmental Religion
The seventh box held powerful images of environmental destruction.
I could see areas of the world radiating energy, glowing like a radium watch face in the dark.
Telepathically I could hear voices speaking of the need to clean up the environment.
These voices came out of Russia at first, but then the accents changed, and I could tell that they were emanating from South America, probably from Uruguay or Paraguay.
I saw the speaker from Russia as he talked with zeal about our need to heal the environment.
People rallied around him quickly, and he soon became so powerful that he was elected one of the leaders of the United Nations.
I saw this Russian riding on a white horse, and I knew that his rise would come before the year 2000.
Boxes Eight and Nine: China Battles Russia
In boxes eight and nine were visions of China's growing anger toward the Soviet Union.
When these visions took place in 1975, 1 didn't know that the Soviet Union would break up.
Now I think the tension I saw in that vision was a result of the death of Soviet communism, which left the Chinese the leaders of the Communist world.
At the time, the visions were a puzzle to me.
I saw border disputes and heavy fighting between Soviet and Chinese armies.
Finally, the Chinese amassed their armies at the border and pushed into the region.
The main battle was over a railroad, which the Chinese took in heavy fighting.
They then pushed deep into the Soviet Union, cutting the country in half and taking over the oil fields of Siberia.
I saw snow, blood, and oil and knew that the loss of life had been heavy.
Boxes Ten and Eleven: Economic Earthquakes, Desert Storm
Boxes ten and eleven came in rapid succession.
They revealed scenes of the economic collapse of the world.
In general terms, these visions showed a world in horrible turmoil by the turn of the century, one that resulted in a new world order that was truly one of feudalism and strife.
In one of the visions, people lined up to take money out of banks.
In another the banks were being closed by the government.
The voice that accompanied the visions told me that this would take place in the nineties and would be the beginning of an economic strife that would lead to the bankruptcy of America by the year 2000.
The box showed images of dollar signs flying by as people pumped gas and looked distressed.
I knew this meant that oil prices were accelerating out of control.
I saw thirteen new nations entering the world market in the late nineties.
These were nations with manufacturing capabilities that put them on a competitive footing with the United States.
One by one our European markets began to give their business to these countries, which slowed our economy even more.
All of this led to a greatly weakened economy.
But the end of America as a world power came as visions of two horrendous earthquakes in which buildings were swaying and toppling over like a child's wooden blocks.
I knew that these quakes happened sometime before the end of the century, but I couldn't tell where they took place.
I do remember seeing a large body of water that was probably a river.
The cost of rebuilding these destroyed cities would be the final straw for our government, now so financially broken that it would hardly be able to keep itself alive.
The voice in the vision told me that it would be this way while the images from the box showed Americans starving and lined up for food.
At the tail end of box ten came images of warfare in the desert, a massive show of military might.
I saw armies racing toward one another in the desert, with great clouds of dust billowing from the treads of tanks as they crossed the barren ground.
There was cannon fire and explosions that looked like lightning.
The earth shook and then there was silence.
Like a bird, I flew over acres of destroyed army equipment.
As I left the box, the date 1990 came into my head.
That was the year of Desert Storm, the military operation that squashed the army of Iraq for occupying Kuwait.
Box eleven began with Iran and Iraq in possession of nuclear and chemical weapons.
Included in this arsenal was a submarine loaded with nuclear missiles.
The year, said a voice in the vision, was 1993.
I saw this submarine powering through the waters of the Middle East, piloted by people I knew to be Iranians.
I could tell that their purpose was to stop the shipping of oil from the Middle East.
They were so praiseful of God in their speech that I had the sense that this was some kind of religious mission.
The missiles that occupied the desert of the Middle East were equipped with chemical warheads.
I don't know where they were aimed, but I do know that there was worldwide fear of the intentions of the Arab nations that had them.
Chemical warfare played a role in a horrible vision of terrorism that takes place in France before 2000.
It begins when the French publish a book that infuriates the Arab world.
I don't know the title of this book, but the result of its publication is a chemical attack by Arabs on a city in France.
A chemical is put into the water supply, and thousands drink it and die before it can be eliminated.
In one brief vision I saw Egyptians rioting in the streets while a voice told me that by 1997, Egypt would collapse as a democracy and be taken over by religious fanatics.
The final visions from box eleven were like many images we now see of Sarajevo: modem cities crumbling beneath the weight of warfare, their inhabitants fighting one another for reasons ranging from racism to religious conflict.
I saw many towns worldwide where desperate citizens were eating their own dead.
In one such scene, Europeans in a hilly region of the world were weeping as they cooked human meat.
In rapid succession I saw people of all five races eating their fellow humans.
Box Twelve: Technology and Virus
The eleventh box was gone, and I was into the twelfth box.
Its visions addressed an important event in the distant future, the decade of the nineties (remember, this was 1975), when many of the great changes would take place.
In this box I watched as a biological engineer from the Middle East found a way to alter DNA and create a biological virus that would be used in the manufacture of computer chips.
This discovery allowed for huge strides in science and technology.
Japan, China, and other countries of the Pacific Rim experienced boom times as a result of this discovery and became powers of incredible magnitude.
Computer chips produced from this process found their way into virtually every form of technology, from cars and airplanes to vacuum cleaners and blenders.
Before the turn of the century, this man was among the richest in the world, so rich that he had a stranglehold on the world economy.
Still the world welcomed him, since the computer chips he had designed somehow put the world on an even keel.
Gradually he succumbed to his own power.
He began to think of himself as a deity and insisted on greater control of the world.
With that extra control, he began to rule the world.
His method of rule was unique.
Everyone in the world was mandated by law to have one of his computer chips inserted underneath his or her skin.
This chip contained all of an individual's personal information.
If a government agency wanted to know something, all it had to do was scan your chip with a special device.
By doing so, it could discover everything about you, from where you worked and lived to your medical records and even what kind of illnesses you might get in the future.
There was an even more sinister side to this chip.
A person's lifetime could be limited by programming this chip to dissolve and kill him with the viral substance it was made from.
Lifetimes were controlled like this to avoid the cost that growing old places on the government.
It was also used as a means of eliminating people with chronic illnesses that put a drain on the medical system.
People who refused to have chips implanted in their bodies roamed as outcasts.
They could not be employed and were denied government services.
The Final Visions
At the very end came a thirteenth vision.
I don't know where it came from.
I didn't see a Being of Light bring it forward in a box, nor did I see one take it away.
This vision was in many ways the most important of all because it summed up everything, I had seen in the twelve boxes.
Through telepathy I could hear a Being say,
"If you follow what you have been taught and keep living the same way you have lived the last thirty years, all of this will surely be upon you.
If you change, you can avoid the coming war."
Scenes from a horrible world war accompanied this message.
As the visions appeared on the screen, the Being told me that the years 1994 through 1996 were critical ones in determining whether this war would break out. "If you follow this dogma, the world by the year 2004 will not be the same one you now know," said the Being.
"But it can still be changed and you can help change it."
Scenes from World War III came to life before me.
I was in a hundred places at once, from deserts to forests, and saw a world filled with fighting and chaos.
Somehow it was clear that this final war, an Armageddon if you will, was caused by fear.
In one of the most puzzling visions of all, I saw an army of women in black robes and veils marching through a European city.
"The fear these people are feeling is an unnecessary one," said the Being of Light. "But it is a fear so great that humans will give up all freedoms in the name of safety."
I also saw scenes that were not of war, including many visions of natural disasters.
In parts of the world that had once been fertile with wheat and corn, I saw parched desert and furrowed fields that farmers had given up on.
In other parts of the world, torrential rainstorms had gouged out the earth, eating away topsoil and creating rivers of thick, dark mud.
People were starving in this vision.
They were begging for food on the streets, holding out bowls and cups and even their hands in hopes that someone or something would offer them a scrap to eat. In some of the pictures, people had given up or were too weak to beg and were curled on the ground waiting for the gift of death.
I saw civil wars breaking out in Central and South America and the rise of socialist governments in all of these countries before the year 2000.
As these wars intensified, millions of refugees streamed across the U. S. border, looking for a new life in North America.
Nothing we did could stop these immigrants.
They were driven by fear of death and loss of confidence in God.
I saw millions of people streaming north out of El Salvador and Nicaragua, and more millions crossing the Rio Grande into Texas.
There were so many of them that we had to line the border with troops and force them back across the river.
The Mexican economy was broken by these refugees and collapsed under the strain.
As these visions ended, I had the amazing realization that these Beings were desperately trying to help us, not because we were such good guys, but because without us advancing spiritually here on earth, they could not become successful in their world.
"You humans are truly the heroes," a Being told me. "Those who go to earth are heroes and heroines, because you are doing something that no other spiritual beings have the courage to do.
