Customer Reviews

Beyond the Darkness

5 star:		(15)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(7)

 

 

I have read this book and I believe it. Anyone else that has posted about suicides going to hell I don't care for your comments, even if they were in the best interest of readers. I don't know where every single suicide goes, and I don't really want firsthand experience. I don't NEED to know. What I DO know is that God cares for every individual on this earth. I know that this woman died. I know that this woman saw what she wrote in this book. I know that she saw God the Father and Jesus the Christ, and that they gave her a second chance in life.
I know that the lessons the author teaches in this book are true. I'm glad I bought this book and it has been a blessing for me.
Again, I don't know where suicides go, but I know God loves me. He's asked for me to pick up my cross and follow him and thats just what I'm going to do.

Spiritual matters will never be resolved with bickering back and forth on forums. Spiritual matters can only be resolved with the spirit. Our earth is filled with people ranging from spiritually dead to enlightened. This site also seems to have that same range with reviewers--prideful scripture citing, name calling, and cruel accusations.

Ms. Fenimore had this experience. It was real. Whether a vision or literal, does not matter. When Moses spoke to God, was he really talking with a burning bush? We are taught truths by means that enable us to understand, but always, our understanding is dependent on where we stand.

C.S. Lewis described being in a dark shed and observing a shaft of light penetrating a hole in the wooden door. From were he stood, he could see dust and fine particles floating, swimming, and swirling in the air. What he saw was truth, limited by his perspective and from where he stood. But as he positioned himself up near the hole in the door, a view of the beautiful outdoor world of grass and flowers and trees opened unto him. Interestingly, from both positions he viewed the same light (or truth), but observed different results. Some in this world are content to see the dust and argue there is nothing more. But those that want to see greater truth must align themselves spiritually. The choice is ours.

Years ago, my wife saw a talk show where Ms. Fenimore was telling her story. Later that day, my wife told me of Ms. Fenimore's experience. I felt the spirit whisper to me that it was a true experience. I wasn't seeking this revelation. It just came. Then just two weeks ago, my son came home telling me that one of his former friends that had been kicked out of junior high had committed suicide. The rumor turned out to be false, but reminded me of Ms. Fenimore's story heard some ten years earlier. So I googled NDE/suicide and found this book--didn't know it even existed before then.

I have since read BTD and once again felt the holy spirit witness to me. I believe it! Whether it's literal or visionary does not matter. The message is the same, and anyone that will humble themselves and spiritually align themselves can also know it's a true message. Others may be content with the specks of dust (truth) but please don't tell me that's all there is. This book opens up a world that we would not have seen without the courage of Ms. Fennimore and her willingness to share.

For each and every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. The same applies to the spiritual realm also. If there is a Heaven, then there is also a Hell. Even though Angie Fenimore went to this place of darkness, her story also speaks of a loving, merciful God who wants only good things for his children. In many ways, this book inspired my hope more than Betty Eadie's wonderul book.

I read this incredible book in one night. What a page-turner! Aside from being unique because it shows the dark side of the near-death experience, it was also extremely well written. While many books of this genre are interesting or, at least, amusing, most are not finely crafted. Few, if any, are great literature. This book is a pleasant exception. In Beyond the Darkness, Fenimore shares with the reader a very important message AND a surperb piece of story-telling. Readers, not even interested in the near-death phenomenon, will not be able to put this one down, I guarantee it. It's a real grabber and a tear-jerker, too. Please, Angie, write another book. We love your clean, crisp style.

In this current age of medical technology, returning from clinical death is not uncommon. Neither are the stories about what happens there. But for a few of us, death is not such a wonderful experience. While many authors tell of the delights of heaven, few talk about the loneliness of hell that, unfortunatly, is just as real. For some of us, a loving pat, saying "it isn't your time." is not enough. But the harsh image of eternal loneliness is a clear sign that death isn't always an escape, but a beginning of something even worse than the pain of living. Angie Fenimore makes this quite clear with her vivid descriptions an stark imagery that outlines a very dark future for those who die by there own hand.

Let me first start off by saying that NDE accounts are not proof of a life-after-death existence. There is no way that such experiences can be substantiated or verified - they are simply anecdotal evidence. That being said, of all the NDE accounts that I have read, this is one of the most powerful.

Here is an account of a young woman who was raised in a family with lots of problems, the outstanding ones being: 1) An alcoholic father, 2) a mother who abandoned the family, 3) an emotionally-abusive and suicidal step-mother, and 4) childhood sexual abuse by unspecified persons (which she stated was too horrible to go into details about).

After Angie's very unhappy childhood, she got married to a military officer, whom she traveled around with from Air Force Base to Air Force Base. During her marriage and the rearing of her young children, the horrors of her childhood, and especially the ghastly childhood sexual abuse that she was subjected to, came back to haunt her, especially at certain times of the year that she described as "the cycle".

Things finally came to a head one day while the couple were stationed on Okinawa. Angie attempted suicide by swallowing a bottle of prescription medication and whatever else was involved to poison herself. Though she wished to enter the Light after death, instead she found herself in a realm of darkness, characterized by unimaginable fear and a total sense of disconnection and aloneness. She was among other suicides, who were in a stupor and incapable of responding to any of her queries, as they were completely self-absorbed in whatever it was that drove themselves to end their lives. She found herself next to a man who appeared to be sixty years old and dresses in the style one would expect to see around the time Jesus lived on Earth. This man was completely dead, not even radiating negative thoughts. It was at this point that Angie realized that all hope had died in this real of darkness.

She then heard a powerful voice rebuking her for taking her life, and she found herself in the presence of God. From the way she described it, I suspect that the voice of God was communicated telepathically, as opposed to our normal way of communicating via sound waves. This is probably so because of the fact that the others on the dark plane didn't respond to God's voice. God cut to the chase and didn't mince words; He told her point-blank that suicide is not an option, that the suffering that she would experience in this dark realm would be far greater than what she suffered through in life. Yet, thanks to the saving grace of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, she was redeemed from hell.

As someone coming from a Christian perspective, I do question why it was that she saw God the Father before seeing His Son, for Jesus does state in scripture that He is "the Truth, the Way, and the Life", and that no one can go to the Father but through Him. On the other hand, God the Father was in the realm of Light and Angie was in the realm of Darkness throughout the NDE, so perhaps there is no scriptural violation here. Another facet of her experience that doesn't jive with the traditional Christian perspective is the post-NDE revelation that she co-authored her life with God. I question this, for there is nothing in scripture that I'm aware of that states explicitly that we have a spiritual pre-existence; yes, in Jeremiah 1:5 we have the passage "Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born, I consecrated you...". Now this passage can be interpreted in a number of ways, though I am aware that the Mormons do interpret this passage to mean spiritual pre-existence, and Angie had exposure to the Mormon church. (NOTE: This is not meant to be an attack on Mormon beliefs, but just pointing out how Angie's experiences may have been influenced. Also, the myriad other interpretation of Jeremiah 1:5 are beyond the scope of this review.) As for me personally, I believe that we all came into existence upon conception in the womb, for we are not eternal spirits; I believe that God created us as mortals who die, and don't live forever, and any after-life existence would be a gift given by His grace.

In closing, I find Angie's NDE account to be very powerful, though I perceive some scriptural flaws. There is no way to substantiate her experiences, and I remain the skeptic about any such things I read, intriguing as they may be. As I stated at the beginning, NDE's are just anecdotes, and anyone can concoct a good story. I question how close she really was to death, given that she didn't get any medical attention. Whether she made-up this story (which I doubt), or whether this was based upon some vision (probably drug-induced), it was expressed in extremely powerful prose, and I guess I was drawn to the sincerity expressed therein. Nevertheless, my sympathies and prayers go out to her, and in the end, what is most important is if this experience (or whatever she went through) changed Angie's life for the better, and that she no longer desires suicide as the way out.

This book is just amazing. Her life, the things that she went through as she was growing up, made me just cry. It is incredible. You can see why God had mercy on her and let her come back. I HIGHLY recommend this book.

I think the author did a terrific job with this book. She was brave, came forward and told us exactly what happened to her when she passed over.
That it doesn't correlate with some doesn't give those a license to belittle her experience.

Anyway, bravo Angie, even though we've never met I want to thank you publicly for sharing your knowledge of the divinty of Christ, the Savior of all mankind, for explaining the plan and purpose of our lives, that we have a Father in Heaven who loves us and that Jesus will mediate for us if we choose him and accept him as our Savior.

Our heroine in this first person near death account is a woman raised by an alcoholic father and a suicidal step mother. Her challenge in life is not to imitate them and she misses her cue and winds up floating around in the darkness of the netherworld encountering what are apparently others like herself. A meeting with God is described with echoes of her Baptist upbringing: "God looked to me like an old man without wrinkles and with a young, strong body. His shoulders were broad, and His chest was full. His arms were strong, and the muscles well defined. His chiseled facial structure was strong and perfect, softened by a neat white beard." There you have it. He asked if this was what she wanted and then asked her "Don't you know that this is the worst thing you could have done?" As a young mother she was reminded how her absense would affect her family. Then she got to meet Christ and so on. It is hard to pass judgement on stories like this. Each new case is going to have differences from those that have gone before of which there are thousands at this point. The cultural perspective is Christian as would be expected here. We get to read a minilecture about Satan, antitruth and the second coming of Christ, but as Raymond Moody has pointed out ministers who have had NDEs come back amazed that God was not interested in their theology, just their service to their fellow man. I am sure that it was very therapeutic for the author to share her experiences with us, but from a useful information standpoint, there are many other books which far surpass this one in richness of detail. Nonetheless it is a quick and easy read taken in perspective and largely a reinforcement of basic spiritual truths shared across many traditions.

Here is a final warning on suicide that I feel I need to add as a final closing to my original review titled "A Powerful NDE Account, but Appreciated with Skepticism". As Fenimore's book shows, suicide is not a way out of one's problems in life; in fact, her book vividly shows that the problems one faces in life pales in comparison to the existence in hell that they would face should they commit suicide. Yes, I don't believe that God ever stops loving any of his children, but He has the ultimate "tough-love" program for those who commit suicide, and this "tough-love" program, known as hell, is far, far worse than anything that life can dish out. All I can say is that anyone who is feeling suicidal must seek help immediately. There are people out there to help those who feel at the end of their rope; life has its problems, but nothing in life is worth committing suicide over. In the book, God told Angie, "Life is supposed to be hard", but the problems of life can be turned-around to be used to make the world a better place. This "good coming out of evil" is one of the most beautiful things that a person can choose to do in this life, but this is not possible in hell, for hell is pure evil, so if anyone feels like giving up on life - DON'T. Seek out help from another fellow human being instead, and God will provide the way, but don't wait until it is too late.