Thoughts from Mark "Hat" Rackley

“And afterward,
    I will pour out my Spirit on all people.
Your sons and daughters will prophesy,
    your old men will dream dreams,
    your young men will see visions.
Even on my servants, both men and women,
    I will pour out my Spirit in those days.

• Joel 2:28-29

Many cessationists, those who believe that prophecies are no longer sent from God, seem to ignore that Joel’s prophecy is repeated in Acts 2, and they are talking about a day that will come in the future.

The big issue is that God had given us all we need in the Bible.  Yet, Old men and women will dream dreams and young men and women will see visions.  If for no other reason than to tell everyone to turn to the Bible.  God is real.  Heaven is real.  And God loves us.  Repent and be saved.

My wife was 49 years old (old, young, I don’t know), and she could never figure out if it was a vision, being caught up in the Holy Spirit, or if it was a dream.  But this following story was told at her memorial service.  It is her testimony, but it ends with her vision / dream being fulfilled.

This eulogy is more about my wife’s testimony than it is a eulogy.  Many people have heard it over the past twenty years or so, but they do not know what happened next.

As for a eulogy, she found it natural to be kind to others.  She had a servant’s heart.  She grew up Catholic and she fell into that service of others thing without question.  After all, she was the oldest daughter in a family of nine children that held to some of the Asian traditions where the oldest daughter served the others.

And my wife always said that she never wanted to be a burden to someone else.  She found it hard telling the doctor about her pain, because she did not wish to burden him.  Mark had to go with her to the doctor to make sure the doctor knew what was going on.  As it was said about one of her brothers who passed away recently, her response was always, “I’m fine.”  But she would empathically share your pain, she cared that much.  In five minutes of knowing a new family, she would know all their names and their birthdays.  She said, “If you love someone and care about them, would you not know their birthday?!”

But that was my wife from an early age to her last day.

Her reason for caring about others changed on February 10, 2000.

She had a stomach virus.  Mark had a contract to teach at a steel mill in Gary, IN.  He could not leave her home alone, so he took her to Merrillville, IN, two blocks from a hospital and he made sure that the shuttle bus could take her there if it was needed while he was at work.

But that first day at work, she got so ill that she stared at the ceiling of their hotel room and she said, “God, I don’t want to die alone!”

At that moment the details became muddled.  She did not know if she had a dream or a vision, because the next moment, she was in a hospital room, sitting in bed next to her dead body.  She saw the nursing station because the wall to the hallway was all glass.  The nursing station was straight ahead, but it seemed a distance away.  The nurses were working on the computers and with paperwork, but not paying attention to her.

She then noticed that she was sitting with her chin resting on her knees.  It had been decades since she could do that.  She noticed that her knees smelled like fresh cut flowers.  Something possessed her to get a comb and start combing her hair.  She had a full head of luxurious hair.  It was highly manageable.  She could take a finger and curl hair around it.  Then she could pull the finger out of the curl and the curl would stay in place.  In this life, my wife’s hair was thin, fine, and curls would never stay in place.  So, she became fascinated by her hair.  And her hair smelled of lilacs.  And another thing that she noticed was as she combed her hair, she noticed that every time she moved, she became more energized than the moment before.  She wanted to move more so that she could gain more energy.

But then, at that moment, fog, what my wife called smoke, filled the room and the hallway to above the ankle.  No alarms went off.  She knew people might be on oxygen, so she was concerned if this really was a fire.  There were bolts of lightning in the hall.  Then a dapper man entered the room.  His attire looked to be about a hundred years out of date.  He had a brown suit, three-piece, wide lapels.  He wore a bowler hat and a bow tie.  And he had spats covering the gap between his pants and the shoes.

My wife was fascinated by his smile.  And he never talked.  She could hear his thoughts.

He nodded and thought, “When it is your time, I am here to walk with you.”

My wife thought, “Where?”

He thought, “To be with Jesus.”

She thought, “But who are you?”

He thought, “I am your guardian angel.  I have always been with you.  When you are ready, you will not be alone.  I will be here, and I will walk with you.”

They exchanged a few more thoughts and then he was gone after he thought, “It is not your time.”

She was suddenly no longer in the hospital.  She was back in her hotel room.  And she was facing the alarm clock.  It read, “3:16.”

A little later, Mark walked into the hotel room.  Instead of the usual greetings and asking how each other’s day had been, my wife exclaimed, “Mark! God is real!  Heaven is real!  Jesus is ready to greet us when we get to Heaven!”

Mark agreed with her, but he was confused as to why this sudden change in her.

Then she told him what she had experienced that afternoon. She said that as long as she had breath, she would glorify God.  2 Corinthians 5:17 was unfolding before them.  She was a new creation.  Her behavior was much the same, the same loving person who never met a stranger and could remember everyone’s birthday, but now she had a purpose in what she did, to glorify God in everything.  But when she finished talking about her vision, she asked, “I saw the clock.  It said 3:16, but what does that mean?”

Mark laughed.  He said that she had read the Bible many times to the children.  It has to mean John 3:16. ”For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”  But she said that the Bible had to have a lot of 3:16s.  Why that one?

So Mark asked her if she believed and she said she did not just believe.  After that vision, she knew!  There was no doubt.

Over the next twenty years, Mark would get a call many times each year just before he got ready to leave the office.  “You won’t believe what time it was when I woke up from my nap! 3:16!  God still loves me!  He is still taking care of me!”

But now let’s fast forward to a couple of months ago.  My wife told Mark to go home and rest.  He had a long day and it would be dark soon.  Mark got a call from the nurse that they were doing emergency surgery to install a pacemaker.  Her pulse had suddenly slowed.  She instructed him to not go to the hospital, but to stay near the phone and the doctor would call in a few minutes.  It was an hour later when the doctor called and said she would not be alive by the time he got there.  They had done all they could do.

When Mark got there and was guided to the side of her bed, he looked beyond her into the hallway.  She had been moved to the CCU where the wall leading to the hallway was all glass, and what he saw beyond the glass wall was a nursing station, but that nursing station was not occupied.  It was the middle of the night on a Sunday morning.  The nurses were huddled at the next nursing station, further beyond the one you could see out the glass wall.  They paid no attention to her because she was already deceased, and they had paperwork to fill out.  Everything was just like the vision a little over twenty-three years before.

Mark had no doubt that her guardian angel in the brown suit with the bowler hat and the spats had already come to walk with her to see Jesus face-to-face.  After praying and calling their son, he looked at her body and asked, “Why am I here?  You have already gone to see Jesus.”

He went into the hallway and asked the nurse what needed to happen next.  With that information, Mark was ready to leave, but he lingered a little longer.  He had to wait just a couple of minutes more.

It was not yet 3:16 in the morning.

I have heard that a prophecy is from the Lord if it came true, at least in part.  Everything was just as she described, at least what I could see.  I take it that the dapper man in the brown suit came to walk with her by faith.  When everything else was exactly as described, how could you think any differently?

Soli Deo Gloria.  Only to God be the Glory.