Ian’s mother hadn’t seen it coming. For all fourteen years of his life, he enjoyed Sunday School, youth group, singing in the choir, special church activities for all ages, and her son had just participated in the confirmation ceremony. How could he be telling her he didn’t believe in God? After twelve years of persistence in prayer through constant heartbreak, Mrs. McCormack had one amazing story for praying mothers everywhere.
History
Born and raised in the beautiful country of New Zealand, Ian McCormack enjoyed the outdoors, even the hard labor of farm work. He’d earned a degree in Agriculture. Surfing and diving filled his recreational time.
Ian stopped praying, doubting that any God existed. He’d never heard God speak. Even his mother admitted she’d not heard God’s voice but insisted the Lord answered her prayers.
Mrs. McCormack’s son chose to head down a worldly path, seeking love and pleasure with multiple relationships with women, alcohol, and drugs. She never gave up on God reaching her Ian.
Surfing and Diving
While on a two-year worldwide journey of surfing and diving, the twenty-five-year-old lived with Creole fisherman on the island of Mauritius. They taught the young New Zealander to dive near the coral reefs. Though the group fished in the daylight, they believed the catch to be better with a night dive.
In the final week of his travels, Ian’s fishing buddies invited him to another night dive. The skies looked a bit ominous, but the men reassured the newbie night diver that the electrical storm wouldn’t be near them. No one realized Ian’s deadly encounter lurked below the surface.
Transparent Killers
As the dive progressed, Ian thought he saw a squid. Reaching his gloved hand as he’d been taught, he grasped the creature. Surprisingly, the lightweight mass slipped through his fingers like a jellyfish. Confusion filled Ian’s mind as a square sea creature floated near him. A head like a squid but the body similar to a jellyfish with finger-like tentacles. The young diver had no idea what the thing might be.
With flippers, gloves, and a wet-suit covering all but his forearms, the diver’s body had only that one vulnerable spot. As Ian returned to his search for crayfish, something brushed across his exposed right forearm. The powerful electrical jolt nearly upended Ian. The diver had seen nothing.
His underwater flashlight illuminated his bare forearm. Ian felt painful throbbing but saw no blood or scrape. Unfortunately, his left hand reached over to rub the injured forearm, spreading the poison.
When the pain eased into numbness, Ian continued his search for the crayfish. He had one in hand when he saw two of the fairly transparent square creatures pulsating toward him.
As the two passed, a tentacle brushed his right arm, producing a second violent electrical jolt. The voltage slammed the diver back, but Ian regained his position.
As a lifeguard for the surfers, Ian had learned about varieties of jellyfish that had deadly poison. Had two such jellyfish stung him? He needed to find the rowboat.
The young man lifted his injured arm and held it behind his back as he swam for the boat. Holding his arm out of the water proved no protection. Ian felt something glide across his back. Another brush of the tentacle shot a third jolt into the diver.
Seeing the boat in the cloudy distance, the young man decided to check his position with the nearest reef. Ian dropped the beam of his flashlight into the water. To his horror, just twenty feet beneath him floated hundreds of these square, nearly transparent jellyfish. The mass looked like a thick soup.
As he brought his flashlight out of the water, he saw jellyfish all around his face. Forcing himself to keep calm, Ian headed for the boat with his flashlight illuminating his face. Hopefully, the beam would prevent a deadly swipe of the tentacles across his cheek.
Once Ian grabbed onto the side of the rowboat, he discovered that the young lad left to tend the boat didn’t know what dangerous creatures might be in the water that day. He pointed in Simon’s direction. Ian released the side of the boat, swimming to his Creole friend—a twenty-year veteran diver. Meanwhile, his arm continued swelling.
Once Simon understood that Ian wanted him to surface so he could talk to him, the fisherman headed for the nearest reef. Ian dropped below the surface to follow Simon, and stared right at another jellyfish, swiftly undulating right toward him. In a split second Ian had a choice: Let the tentacle strike his face or protect it with his injured arm. His forearm suffered a fourth sting.
Box Jellyfish Identified
Once the men stood on the reef, Ian showed Simon his seriously swollen arm. Stripes of blistered flesh identified exactly where the tentacles had dragged across his arm. A shaken Simon told Ian usually only one sting from the Box Jellyfish killed a man. He must get to the hospital immediately to have any chance of surviving.
Unfortunately, the young diver could no longer move his right arm. As the men lifted him into the boat, his injured limb dangled in the water. Unbelievably, Ian suffered a fifth sting to his right forearm before being laid in the boat.
What’ve I done to deserve this? Ian thought as the fifth blast shook him. Instantly, his many sins flashed across his mental screen. “Oh, yeah. I’ve done a lot to deserve this.”
He felt the poison moving inside his body as a lymph node under his right arm expanded, and his right lung struggled to take in air. Ian used his left hand to strip off the wet-suit and pull on his pants. Sweat poured off his body. Already his mouth felt extremely dry from the reaction to the chemical toxin. A sharp pain hit his right kidney, and he noticed his vision blurring.
Ian felt his entire right side losing strength. The young Creole boy drag the injured diver up to the road but ran back to help his brothers. How could Ian get to the hospital eighteen miles away? Not a lot of traffic passing along the road at midnight.
Transportation troubles
Ian flopped back on the road, looking up and wanting to close his eyes. A clear voice stopped him. “Ian, if you shut your eyes, you won’t wake up again. You need to keep your eyes open.”
Ian looked all around but saw no one close to him. About a hundred yards away, the young diver saw three Indian taxi drivers in front of a restaurant. Staggering and hobbling his pain-wracked body over to the men, he asked to be taken to the hospital. When he admitted to having no cash on him, all refused.
Once again, Ian heard the voice, “Are you willing to beg for your life?”
Without hesitation, Ian assumed the position he’d noticed the beggars took. Kneeling, Ian cupped both hands, holding them up while his face looked down. “Please, I’m begging you for my life. Please, help me get to the hospital.”
Reluctantly, one man agreed to take him to the hospital, but halfway there changed his mind. “Where’s my money?”
When Ian could only promise to pay him later, he drove to a large tourist hotel instead. Stopping in front of the gate, the driver unlatched Ian’s seat-belt and told him to get out.
By this time, Ian couldn’t move his legs. The man opened the car door and pushed Ian to the ground before driving away.
The paralyzed diver laid in the road, wondering if he even wanted to survive to live in such an ugly world with no compassion. Remembering words from his grandfather never to give up, Ian dragged his body along the ground with his left arm. Nothing else still moved. As he approached the entrance to the hotel, security guards making their rounds saw him groveling in the dirt.
Fortunately for Ian, the huge black man who shone his light at him happened to be Daniel, a loving man and drinking buddy. As soon as he saw the blisters on Ian’s forearm, Daniel said “Box jellyfish,” letting Ian know his friend understood. He picked Ian up like he was a rag doll and ran with him into the hotel.
Sitting the diver on a cane chair near four card-playing Chinese men who were drinking, Daniel left. Ian begged them to take him to the hospital in their BMW parked just outside.
Ian used his left arm to lift his swollen, blistered limb, expecting it would help plead his case. The men just laughed. “White boy, you no take heroine. That for old men. We use opium.” The men refused to help him.
Ian’s whole body began shaking so violently that three of the Chinese men tried to hold him on the chair. The massive strength of the muscle tremors chucked each man off.
Once the injured man stopped the convulsive spasms, an icy chill filled his bones, and he shivered with the intensely bitter cold. The men wrapped him in blankets but still refused to take him to the hospital. “Just wait for the ambulance, white boy.”
Ian’s anger grew as deep as his agony. With his one good arm, Ian wanted to grab the laughing man, pulling him near to spew out threats. A third time, the clear voice spoke to Ian, “Ian, don’t do that. The release of adrenalin will send the poison to your heart, and you’ll die.”
Knowing the now-familiar voice spoke the truth, the wounded diver relaxed. He’d take care of these guys if he ever got out of this alive.
Daniel left Ian in the chair, without saying a word because the culture didn’t allow a black man to speak to a Chinese man unless specifically asked to do so. Though it appeared otherwise, the Creole man hadn’t abandoned his friend.
Daniel sprinted directly to his girlfriend on duty at the hotel switchboard. She called for an ambulance.
Inside the Ambulance
When the ambulance arrived, Daniel and a second guard lifted Ian onto the camp stretcher placed in the improvised ambulance. The only ambulance allowed for the black people had no equipment or attendant.
The passenger seat had been removed from an old black Renault-4. The driver remained seated behind the wheel, leaning over to flip open the passenger door. The men dropped Ian onto the camp stretcher wedged in the small vehicle.
Halfway to the hospital, the driver began the steep climb up the hill. Unfortunately, Ian’s friends had positioned him with his head at the back instead of the front, increasing the flow of the poisoning to his head.
Suddenly, Ian saw a scene with a snowy-haired little boy. A second scene, with a slightly older snowy-haired boy followed. By the time Ian saw the same boy as an adolescent, he knew the video clips represented his own life flashing before him. Ian had not long to live.
Fear gripped the young man who didn’t want to die. His breathing barely noticeable, Ian could no longer feel a beating heart. Self-inflicted accusations about how dumb he’d been to dive at night, filled his dying thoughts. Clearly, Ian feared death.
What happens after I die? Does anything happen after I die? Where do I go if I die?
Abruptly, a crystal clear vision of his mother emerged. “Ian, no matter how far from God you are, no matter what you’ve done wrong, if you cry out to God from your heart, He’ll hear you and He will forgive you.”
Her words shook Ian. Having become a devout atheist, would he now pray? Did he believe in God? To which God should he pray?
At the very moment the young man’s facing these questions, back in New Zealand, his mother is awakened by a dream of her son dying in the back of an ambulance. Immediately, Mrs. McCormack started praying.
Ian knew he needed to pray, but had confusion over what to pray and to which god. He’d studied a lot of the religions. He’d traveled and seen how people worshiped all the various gods. But, none of them had come when he needed help. His mother had come. She worshiped Jesus, so he’d pray to the Christian God of his mother.
The only prayer Ian knew, his mother had taught him as a boy. He tried to pray the Lord’s Prayer but got stuck on the words. The poison had already started working on his brain. It felt like a blank slate.
Ian remembered that his mother had said to pray from his heart. He turned to God, letting Him know he really wanted to pray but had lost the words. Ian asked God to help him pray the Lord’s Prayer.
Praying from His Heart
Deep from within, Ian saw the words, forgive us our sins. He asked God to forgive him all of his sins though admitted to God he didn’t know how God could do that. He’d done so many things wrong. Please, God, forgive me.
Ian saw the second part, as we forgive those who’ve sinned against us. Taking that to mean anyone who’d hurt him, Ian told God he’d had plenty of people who’d ripped him off and said horrible stuff against him, but he didn’t hold grudges. He had no one to forgive.
God reminded Ian of the Indian taxi driver who’d shoved him out of the cab and the Chinese guys who refused to help him. Could Ian forgive them?
Ian remembered his anger and didn’t want to forgive them. He wanted revenge.
When Ian realized that, if God could forgive him of all that he’d done wrong, he could forgive these men, too. “I forgive them, God.”
The third part of the prayer highlighted for Ian involved his future choices: Thy will be done. The young man had lived such a worldly life with no care for what God had wanted. He decided he’d done things his own way so far, but if Ian survived, he promised God he’d search until he found what God wanted Ian to do with his life. Then, he’d do it with his whole heart.
The rest of the prayer came back to Ian, but these three points, making up the Prayer of Salvation, stood out so clearly:
- Forgive me my sins
- I forgive everybody who sinned against me
- I give you my life, Lord—Thy will be done.
An incredible peace came over Ian as he finished praying. He no longer felt any fear, though he knew death was closing in.
Ian felt a peace about everything now. Whatever happened after death, the young man had made peace with His Maker. If he lived, his life would be totally new; Ian planned to keep that promise.
If you’re among those tenacious moms, be encouraged by this one amazing story for praying mothers everywhere. Don’t give up! If your loved one has one breath left in him, there’s still time.
But this isn’t all there is to Ian’s story. By the end of this crisis-filled day, Ian had answers to critical questions often asked today. What happens after we die? Is hell a real place? What does it look like? Is Heaven a real place? What does Heaven look like? Is Jesus really standing as the door to Heaven? Plus, a bonus question revealed in the conclusion to Ian’s day.
Next week’s post will complete Ian’s remarkable story. You won’t want to miss, “Seven Eye-Witness Answers to After-Life Questions.
Such a WOW!
Indeed! Just wait until next week.