DEAD FOR FIVE MINUTES

Hawera Star, Volume LIV, 20 February 1935, Page 7

DEAD FOR FIVE MINUTES

THE “MAN WHO CAME BACK” “WISH THEY HAD LEFT ME” WIDE INTEREST CREATED. From Our Own Correspondent. (By Air Mail.) LONDON, Feb. 2. Gan a. man return from tiie beyond and tear aside the veil which has divid-' od the two worlds since time began? The authentic case this week of Mr John Puckering, the 58-year-old gardner of Arley (Worcestershire) whose heart and breathing, stopped for five minutes, while he was being operated on, and was then restored to life by heart massage, has aroused wide interest. This is what the man brought back to life says : “I was worried and disturbed, when suddenly everything cleared, and I was filled with a great content. | “I knew. I was dead, because I saw many of the villagers of Arley I had known before they died. They were all happy, and I was happy too. There were hundreds of smiling faces in a bank of hazy, .shining clouds. “Walter What more, who used to be our village postmaster before he died of a stroke five years ago, was there. He smiled and nodded t-o me. : “They seemed to be in a big ball with pillars and clouds around and all mixed up in a kind of hazy light. 1 was drifting towards them when suddenly everything went black.” Mr. Puckering shook 'his head sadly at the recollection. “T.hat must have been when they brought me back again. I wish they had left me there.” Many clergymen made reference to this “miracle” of modern ruigery during sermons. The Rev. A. Wellesley Orr, preaching at St. Paul’s, Kingston Hill, said: “The story is eagerly, grasped by' every mind hopeful that here is another link in the chain of evidence to prove that life does go on. “Yet true though we may desire it to bo. the witness of the man thus brought back to life would only be corroboration of the evidence supplied by! the One Who certainly did come back,! showing that the road of life does not; break over a precipice when death arrives, but only goes round a bend out of our sight.” The Rev. Joseph Scarlett, shaking' at a Birmingham Methodist Church, said : “Our belief that we shall recognise one another in the after life is strengthened. Heaven is where Christ and our loved ones are. John Puckering was and is perfectly happy. The fear of death has gone. There is nothing ■to dread. Death is reunion. “Is this the beginning of discoveries about to be made in the spiritual world? T hope so. In any. case, the man who does not believe in miracles is behind the time.”