In 1975, during a thunderstorm, Dannion Brinkley was talking on the telephone when a bolt of lightning hit the phone line, sending thousands of volts into his head and down through his body. Brinkley was thrown across the room, and later reported seeing his lifeless body spread prone, as his then-girlfriend found him and paramedics arrived. Obviously disoriented, in his spirit-form above the scene, he wondered what the excitement was about, since (as he put it) “Everybody was okay….” He saw auras around everybody in the room except his own body below — a pretty big hint that he was, in fact, dead.
As doctors pronounced Brinkley dead at the local hospital, he reportedly found himself — or, more specifically, his spirit-self — traveling through a dark tunnel toward an angelic being who led him into a “crystal city.” There, he entered a “cathedral of knowledge” where he was shown 13 visions, contained in what he termed “boxes.” So-called “beings of light” also showed him 117 glimpses of possible future events, of which 95 have come to pass (by his count) in early 1998.
Brinkley revived in the morgue some 28 minutes after his death and later gave a personal account of his near-death experience (NDE) in the book, ”Saved by the Light,” first published in 1995.
As recounted in the book, the events of that day changed Brinkley’s life. He spent many months recovering from the physically debilitating effects of the electrical blast, while at the same time discovering mind-reading abilities that, while lessening over time, remain with him to this day.
A second near-death experience, a few years later, reunited Brinkley with his angelic teachers, who revealed he was to use his psychic gifts to help the dying. Another book, ”At Peace in the Light,” soon followed.
In September 1997, Brinkley was hospitalized with life threatening brain aneurysms. Despite medical opinions to the contrary, he miraculously survived. During that time, he had a third near-death experience.
Besides lectures and book signings, Dannion Brinkley currently does hospice work — using his experiences and gifts to help those who are nearing, and perhaps fear, death.
Visions of Dannion Brinkley
Thirteen prophetic visions as seen by Dannion Brinkley. He refers to them as “Boxes of Knowledge” in his book, “Saved By The Light” which was published in 1994 after he suffered a near death experience.
BOXES 1 thru 3: Visions of a Demoralized Country
Boxes 1, 2 & 3 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 & eventually the world. The scenes were prisoners of war, weak & wasted from hunger, as they waited in the rugged prisons of North Vietnam for American ambassadors to come & free them. I could feel their fear & then despair when they realized one by one that no help would be forthcoming & 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. I could see America falling into enormous debt. 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 & that it spelled danger down the road. I also saw people waiting in long lines for the basics of life like clothing & 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 & what it stood for. The war in Southeast Asia had combined with inflation & 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 rioting & 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, & 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 & 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 U.S. I don’t know where I was, but I saw the initials “R.R.” 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, & it was clear from the nature of the drawings that they were about the president of the U.S., 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 & the Sundance Kid” & 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 & 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 & ribs me about it every time we get together.
BOXES 4 & 5: Strife & Hatred in the Holy Lands
Boxes 4 & 5 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 & hatred that I saw in these boxes. In the first of these boxes I saw two agreements taking place. In the first, Israelis & 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 & 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, & 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 & 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 & Arabs. This was a very harsh police force, cruel & unyielding. I saw them wearing blue-&-silver uniforms & 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 collaborators on both sides kept an eye on their own people & 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, & a chinese-&-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 & other Arabs, & I was steeped in the sense that these people as a nation had forgotten God & 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 & 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 & to milk money from the world economy. The price of oil was going up & up, said the voice, & Saudi Arabia was making an alliance with Syria & China. I could see Arab & Oriental people shaking hands & 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, & I was able to see a close-up of Syrians & Chinese signing papers & 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 – & with it came images of Syrian & Chinese scientists working in laboratories to develop a missile that could deliver chemical & biological weapons. Nuclear weapons were becoming things of the past, & these countries wanted to develop new weapons of destruction. The boxes kept coming.
BOX 6: Visions of Nuclear Destruction
Number 6 was terrifying. I was drawn into the box & found myself in a cool, forested area beside a river. Next to the river was a massive cement structure, square & foreboding. I was fearful & didn’t know why. Suddenly the earth shook & the top of this cement structure exploded. I knew it was a nuclear explosion & 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 & 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 & was covered with dead or dying fish. Around the water were peaks & valleys that made me think I was seeing a fjord 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 & affect all of humankind. The date on the picture was 1995. The vision didn’t stop there. People were dying & deformed as a result of these nuclear catastrophes. In a series of what seemed like television pictures, I saw cancer victims & mutated babies in Russia, Norway, Sweden, & 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 & 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, & political fortunes would be made or broken based upon feelings about the environment. From Chernobyl & this second accident, I could see that the Soviet Union would wither & die, with the Soviet people losing faith in their government & 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 & 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 & apples, & crowds rioted to get at trucks filled with food.
The word “Georgia” appeared in a Cyrillic script, & 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 7: The Environmental Religion
The 7th 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 & 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, & 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, & I knew that his rise would come before the year 2000.
BOXES 8 & 9: China Battles Russia
In boxes 8 & 9 were visions of China’s growing anger toward the Soviet Union. When these visions took place in 1975, I 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 & heavy fighting between Soviet & Chinese armies. Finally, the Chinese amassed their armies at the border & 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 & taking over the oil fields of Siberia. I saw snow, blood, & oil & knew that the loss of life had been heavy.
BOXES 10 & 11: Economic Earthquakes, Desert Storm
Boxes 10 & 11 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 & 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 90’s & 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 & looked distressed. I knew this meant that oil prices were accelerating out of control. I saw 13 new nations entering the world mark in the late 90’s. These were nations with manufacturing capabilities that put them on a competitive footing with the U.S. 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 & 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 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 & lined up for food.
At the tail end of box 10 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 & explosions that looked like lightning. The earth shook & 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 11 began with Iran & Iraq in possession of nuclear & 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, & thousands drink it & 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 & be taken over by religious fanatics.
The final visions from box 11 were like many images we now see of Sarajavo: modern 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 12: Technology & Virus
The 11th box was gone & I was into the 12th box. Its visions addressed an important event in the distant future, the decade of the 90’s (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 & create a biological virus that would be used in the manufacture of computer chips. This discovery allowed for huge strides in science & technology. Japan, China, & other countries of the Pacific Rim experienced boom times as a result of this discovery & became powers of incredible magnitude. Computer chips produced from this process found their way into virtually every form of technology, from cars & airplanes to vacuum cleaners & 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 & 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 & lived to your medical records & 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 & 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 & were denied government services.
THE FINAL VISIONS
At the very end came a 13th 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 12 boxes. Through telepathy, I could hear a Being say, “If you follow what you have been taught & keep living the same way you have lived the last 30 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 & 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, & saw a world filled with fighting & 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 & 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 & corn, I saw parched desert & furrowed fields that farmers had given up on. In other parts of the world, torrential rainstorms had gouged out the earth eating away topsoil & creating rivers of thick, dark mud.
People were starving in this vision. They were begging for food on the streets, holding out bowls & cups & 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 & were curled on the ground waiting for the gift of death. I saw civil wars breaking out in Central & South America & 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 & loss of confidence in God.
I saw millions of people streaming north out of El Salvador & Nicaragua, & more millions crossing the Rio Grande into Texas. There were so many of them that we had to line the border with troops & force them back across the river. The Mexican economy was broken by these refugees & collapsed under the strain.
The quickest way to change the world is to be of service to others. Show that your love can make a difference in the lives of people and thereby someone else’s love can make a difference in your life.By each of us doing that and working together we change the world one inner person at a time.
— Dannion Brinkley