Glimpses of the Eternal

by

Practicing Faith

Aug. 25, 2025

I received a phone call from Paul Tulppo a few weeks after doing a vision program at his church in a neighboring Milwaukee suburb. He told of seeing Jesus while in the company of two friends when he was a child in Detroit:

 “Back in 1946, when I was 8 years old, I was returning from a day in the woods on the far west side of Detroit with my friend Jim, who was my age, and his brother Anthony, who was two years older. As we headed toward home, the brothers suggested that we stop at their church so they could show me, a non-Catholic, how they blessed themselves with holy water when they entered the church.

“I followed them into their church, we all put our fingers into the holy water, and they crossed themselves. Then we knelt in the very last pew. When we looked up, we saw the Lord Jesus Christ standing on the altar, about 25 feet away. His arms were outstretched and there was a beautiful glow completely surrounding him. The three of us were in complete awe. We jumped to our feet and ran out of the church, and we didn't stop running until we reached home and told our mothers what we had seen.”

Paul told me his vision of Jesus was still a source of comfort and hope 67 years later. He said, “I remember that vision as though it happened five minutes ago.” An encounter with Jesus is life changing and can also be deeply disturbing.

The Glasgow Sunday Herald, a small Scottish newsweekly, ran a story in January of 2006 about a woman named Naomi Wolf who was overwhelmed one day by the presence of a divine being she concluded was Jesus:

"It wasn't this crazy theological thing," she says. "It was just this figure who was just the most perfected human being – full of light and love. It was complete joy and happiness and there were tears running down my face... But the visitation wasn't entirely euphoric. When I came out of it, I was absolutely horrified because I'm Jewish."

Naomi Wolf is a well-known American feminist author. It occurred to her that other liberal feminists would think she had lost her mind. Nonetheless, Ms. Wolf now has full faith in a higher power:

“I don’t want to be co-opted as the poster child for any religion or any agenda… There are a lot of people out there just waiting for some little Jewish feminist to cross over. I don’t claim to get where this being fits into the scheme of things but I absolutely believe in divine providence now, absolutely believe God totally cares about every single one of us intimately.”

Belief in life after death is outside the officially sanctioned concept of reality. Those who dare to speak of their encounters with the holy do so because, like the disciples, they can’t help themselves. The news is too good not to tell. Once you have caught a glimpse of the eternal you are never the same.

Phyllis Tickle, known for her devotional books, tells about a transforming near-death experience after a miscarriage, in her autobiography, “The Shaping of a Life”:

I was up in the corner of the room just above my bed… something or someone had caused me to move to my right; and there in the spot where there should have been only more ceiling, there was only light… it radiated out in sweetness from a marvelous tunnel that was green like summer grass… and the light at the other end was sending out the blessing of that place, and it said, ‘Come.’”

Tickle tells how she was “irrevocable changed by this event, living for decades after with no fear of death, viewing it as a “state to be anticipated, hoped for…”

Joan Borysenko, author of “Minding the Body, Mending the Mind,” wrote of a similar dream/vision experience she and her son shared at the time of her mother's death. It happened about three in the morning as they were praying:

“I was a pregnant mother giving birth to a baby, but I was also simultaneously the baby… I was coming out through a dark tunnel, and I came out into an experience of ineffable light….my entire life with my mother made sense, and it seemed perfect that she had birthed me into this world, and it seemed that I had just birthed her soul back out of the world…. When I opened my eyes, the room was literally filled with light….my son weeping, tears just pouring from his eyes...looked at me and he said, "Can you see the light in the room?…It's Grandma; she's holding open the door to eternity for us so that we can have a glimpse.”

John Sumwalt is a retired United Methodist pastor and the author “Vision Stories: True Accounts of Visions, Angels & Healing Miracles,”