February 1, 2004 [View] article titled "Ex-atheist Howard Storm describes near-death experience."

[View] article titled "Belize teaches church members about faith. For one thing, says Storm, the people of Belize have a strong faith, and they're not embarrassed to show it."

August 18, 2003 - Reported in [Spirit Daily.com] online newspaper. Written by Michael H. Brown. Near-Death Prophecy: Man was shown Failure of Infrastructure, Power Grid - Those who have been following this site are familiar with what we have called the "1990 prophecy" -- an alleged anonymous revelation that forecast the occurrence of regional events and a breakdown of what has been created through technology.

There is little doubt that in the years since, we have seen precisely that: an intensification of regional disasters, events sent as "little" warnings before we begin to receive the truly large warnings and yet other events that, as the prophecy foresaw, "will differ according to regions, and will not always or usually be immediately noticeable for what they are."

Certainly this has been the case. We look around and see Hurricane Andrew, the Mississippi flooding, the wildfires in the Southwest, quakes in China, heat waves in Europe, volcanic rumblings, quakes in California, ice storms, blizzards, record nor'easters, floods in Canada, SARS, West Nile virus, September 11.

These and many other upsets have occurred since 1990 -- and yet as also predicted, we do not connect the dots.

More direct, still, were the prophecies of a former atheist and college professor named Howard Storm -- who underwent a brush with death after the rupture of his duodenum in 1985 and claims that during that episode, in which he was headed for what he describes as hell, he was rescued by Jesus and then placed in the company of three angels who showed him aspects of America's future.

"They made it very clear to me that God had given this country the greatest blessing of any people in the history of the world," said Dr. Storm, who is from the Cincinnati area. "We have more of God's blessing. Everything that we have comes from God. We didn't deserve it, we didn't earn it, but we happen to be the wealthiest, most powerful nation in the world. And God gave us all this so that we could be the instruments of God's light in this world, and we are not instruments of light. In other countries people see us as purveyors of exploitation, military might, and pornography. They see us as completely hedonistic and amoral -- we have no morality. People can do whatever they want wherever they want with whatever they want. Our amorality is a cancer on the rest of the world, and God created us to be just the opposite.

"People get mad at me for saying it, but God is very unhappy with what we're doing," adds Storm, now a Methodist minister. "When I came back from the experience I was almost out of my mind trying to convert people. God wanted a worldwide conversion thousands of years ago. God pulled out all the stops 2,000 years ago with Jesus. From God's view, that was the definitive moment in human history. And the impact of the prophets and teachers and the Messiah has been a big disappointment to God because people have by and large rejected it. I was told that God wants this conversion. And if we don't get with the program fairly soon, He is going to have to intervene in some ways that from a human point of view are going to seem cataclysmic. God is really tired of what we're doing to one another and the planet and to His Creation. We were put in this world to be stewards and live in harmony with His creation and one another and we don't realize the important spiritual consequences of what we do when we raise a child in a faithless society.

'I asked how [purification] would come about, and they said it would be simple, that our society is very dependent on a lot of very fragile things -- energy grid, transportation," Storm told Spirit Daily more than two years ago. "In each geographical area of the United States people used to be relatively self-sufficient as far as agricultural products. Now, how long would any state survive without the transport of food and energy?

"What would happen is these very complex and delicate grids of our economic system would begin to break down. We've created a society of such cruel and self-centered people that the very nature of civilization would begin to break down. The angels showed me that what would happen is that people would begin robbing the grocery stores, hording goods, and killing one another for gasoline and tires, and as a consequence everything would break down and would end up in chaos."

That's if we don't change. Prophecy is conditional. And more than anything, angels encourage us. They are not here to put us into a negative mindset. When there is eternity to look forward to, there is in the end happiness for all who follow Jesus.

But this is serious business. After last week, with the great blackout, we have a glimpse of what can happen on a much wider, longer scale. At this point no one knows what triggered the outage, but they are pointing to relatively minor mishaps that may have pulled down the energy supply for parts of eight states and Canada. We were granted a glimpse of just how reliant we are on a system that can vanish in a flash. Many are now pointing to the source of the blackout as Ohio, where Storm himself lives and where, that the very same week, a statue of the Virgin Mary was reported to be mysteriously glowing.

As the eyes and heart of the statue allegedly lit -- even in the night -- the rest of the state and much of the North were in darkness.

Howard wrote a book about his Near-death experience called My Descent into Death. He is now a minister in Ohio. [Learn] more about Howard Storm's story.