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Dying on Mt. Mckinley and meeting Jesus

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When I went to South Africa in 2004, I met Dini Esterhuizen, director of a ministry called Alabanza. One evening at her camp, she told me the most amazing story. 26 years earlier, she had climbed Mt. McKinley – part of the first group of South Africans to climb it.   Mt. McKinley is huge …
By Seth Barnes
By Seth Barnes
mt mckinleyWhen I went to South Africa in 2004, I met Dini Esterhuizen, director of a ministry called Alabanza. One evening at her camp, she told me the most amazing story. 26 years earlier, she had climbed Mt. McKinley – part of the first group of South Africans to climb it.
 
Mt. McKinley is huge (a total rise of 18,000 from bottom to top – 50% higher than Everest) and extremely cold. Climbing it can take a month or more. Many have died trying. As Dini’s team approached the summit, she grew sick and couldn’t go any further. While the rest of the team kept going, she spent four days in the freezing cold, experienced herself dying and then meeting Jesus. Here is her story.*
I felt very close to death and experienced the urgency to make contact with God. I called out to the Lord and I was desperate.

All of a sudden, I experienced that I was dying. One moment I was still in my tent and the next moment, I wasn’t there. This was not like a dream or a vision, nor merely a spiritual experience. This was a complete reality. I was walking, but not in gravity, as we are used to.

As I turned right, I saw a huge entrance. As I approached, I saw a person inside. It was overwhelming.

All that was within me exclaimed, “It is true, it is true, it is true!” Nothing had prepared me that Jesus would reveal himself in this way. Everything else disappeared and all other considerations had become totally irrelevant.

I wanted to fall flat on my face and my deepest experience was, “I am not worthy!”

Then he said, “It doesn’t matter.” The words formed the pardon.

DiniBeing the focus of someone who is perfect and who is love means that you experience perfect love. You are the object of his capacity to love. His glory was such that I did not want to turn my face away, even for a moment.

I would not have wanted to come back to this life and this world for even 20 minutes. But then he spoke again and said, “I would like for you to go back and tell them who I really am.”

I found myself thinking of the various persons that I knew that did not know him. When I said, “Yes” to him with all my heart, I found myself sitting at the tent again. 
 
* This is as she related it to me and as she shared it in her book, “On a Mountain.” Dini has been a great ministry partner, a woman of integrity. I have no question that what she describes happened just as she describes it. I believe we will all have an encounter with Jesus as she described. Her story inspires me to get ready for it.

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