Part 2 of a 4 part interview with Winkie Pratney

Winkie Pratney

Winkie Pratney is a legend! He has been reaching young people for well over 40 years and is recognised as a worldwide leader in the church. At a recent summit of European leaders Jonathan Bellamy was privileged to spend a couple hours with him. Here's the results...

Jonathan: Now something very significant happened in your own world a couple of years ago and talk about a life experience - you spent two and a half weeks in a coma in a hospital in South Korea and within that period of time you also died! Can you describe that journey - that experience?

Winkie: The coma I was in - I felt a little bit like John Bunyan's Pilgrims Progress, or like Dante's Inferno. It was a surreal dream, but not marshmallows chasing around the moon; it had sequences, had night and day, had time, had eating and sleeping and all of those things. For that two and a half weeks I lived a real world, but not the world I knew. It was mind blowing to me. I saw things, astonishing things, things that I'd never seen and I'm a veracious reader; I read at least eight books a week. When I was a teenager I read about twenty a week. I saw things I'd never read about, or never even thought about. I didn't know whether I was seeing England that people don't see; people pushing the edges of culture in technology and music and the arts and stuff, or an England that was coming. I didn't know it - it was like a blade runner movie, when you don't know anything about a future London, but it was coherent and extremely real to the point of surreal. More real than real. The interesting thing is, it was in England. There's a lot of countries that I've been to in my life and for it to be in England was a surprise; but looking back - London's probably the most cosmopolitan city in the world. I mean a lot of the large cities, I think England, London particularly and that's where it was - half of it was on the underground and other parts were on top. I didn't know I was in a coma dying. As far as I knew I had no consciousness of the other world at all. At the end of that time as in real time, I was dying and in the dream, vision come whatever thing, I realised I'm going to die.

It came to that point and the actual thing and I'm standing in a white room. In real life I can't move; I had eight or nine tubes coming out of me and thirteen drips coming into me and I am unable to move. I'm just lying there like this sort of crucified position, with a huge cut from three major surgeries one after the other, the best chance they gave me of living was an optimistic ten percent. So by all intents and purposes I was dying and there was very little hope that I would ever pull out. So in the last medically induced coma for this last operation I didn't come out, I just stayed in the coma. They took the gas off and everything else. So they watched me basically dying. I had things keeping parts alive, but you don't know whether to switch machines off and leave or what. They thought that if I did come out I'd never walk again, see again or talk or remember anything. I'd be basically a vegetable.

So what actually happened in the dream; I'm standing in a white room; perfectly white, no furniture. I'm looking at the wall and I suddenly realise I can't breathe anymore. It's a funny thing, because you take those things for granted. Your heart's moving, your lungs are working, your brain's thinking. It's only when they're not there anymore that you think this is something really weird. But I couldn't breathe in; I could breathe out. I had one breath left in me. The analogy is like you wake up in a coffin - you've been buried alive and they find these fingernail scratches on coffins, as you've died after you've been buried and so the idea if that happened is you'd try to Houdini it. Just breathe a little. You wouldn't take a big breath because you're dead right away. So I'm trying to breathe out with what's left of that one breath, breathing tiny little breaths out. That's it. No more breath and I realise you're dead. So now I'm looking for the tunnel, the white light, angels, something. Nothing, nothing ahead of me just a white room. So I turn to the right and think well maybe there's something down there, maybe the Lord will come and take me to heaven or something. Nobody there. I looked behind me; I thought he may sneak up behind me and 'surprise guess who this is'. But there was nobody behind me either. The way it happened it was like a blink, a hundredth of a second; a whole shift took place. That whole coma that I was in I saw things I shouldn't - I could see through walls; I could see things, see what was going on in places behind the scene. I didn't know why I could do it. I could also see God very occasionally in very frightening situations, but it was like it was some kind of wall or glass or something between me and this threatening thing. So I'm looking for God to come get me, but I realised, he was inside me! He was looking out of my eyes and I was looking out of his; and I realised, he's been with me since I was seventeen years old and I said come into my life, live your life through me. So why am I looking outside for somebody who's taken up residence in my life. Then later looking through the Bible, I thought of all these wonderful things: greater is he that is in you than he that is in the world. I have this treasure in earthen vessels. Jesus saying you know, if you invite me I'll come and have a party with you.

It was transforming for me that death. Short but not long enough to write a book about. But short enough to do a radio clip on. But it changed perspectives for me. A lot of things you think are important aren't. A lot of things you take for granted are really important. Friendships; people you love or love you. Those are really really big things in the Kingdom of God. So, I joined a community of people who had died and come back, and had been able to tell their stories. For me it meant a renewed tension to what I've been doing for the last 47 years. And that is to, whatever way I can, help, particularly young people to reach what God dreams for them. That's what I've been doing with half a million kids every year for 47 years.

Jonathan: Within that dream, where you say that you were looking at the world the way that God or Jesus sees the world,

Winkie: Through his eyes.

Jonathan: Through his eyes and you were also saying that you were looking at England in particular and seeing us. Is there anything within there that you think is relevant for now?

Winkie: Because at that time it was curious but it was like, I'm visiting the country and I've got in this situation for two and a half weeks. It's not strange for me to be in London, but it was certainly strange to find out that was your whole leading up to your death thing. I never would have thought that when I was in it, until I got near the end of it. So, why England, why not my home country New Zealand, or why not Auckland or why not the US, where we live six months of the year. Why not Canada. Why London; why England in particular? Going back to what we talked about at the start of the programme, this is a unique area. Europe - coming to London, you've got standards of not only telecommunications, economics. It's one of the most cosmopolitan cities in the world. I think London is like a distillation of what the world looks like in one big huge striving city. So for me to be in that world, was like a distillation of being the entire globe in one city. So those who are fortunate enough to be born in a major city; I can identify with it; I'm from Paris, I'm from New York; that kind of thing. To say I'm from London would be a very special thing. So I think God has some great dreams for Europe and in particular the UK; in particular for major cities like London. So in visits like this I want to try and add my little ten cents to the pile, because there is potential, and I'm looking at the young in particular, for them to do what happened in the days of John Wesley and Whitfield and some of the others, where England was spared the fate that the French went through in the whole Les Miserable's thing. I don't think they ever recovered from it. So I'd love to see England reborn; renewed, revived and reformed. A whole new cultural rebirth. This nation and this particular block of cities in urban areas has given so much to the world. Huge things to the world. I would love to see them become a leader too in spiritual values, in real truth and transparency and honesty and those kind of things that align with great character and great influence in the world.

Jonathan: Recently you spent time with Dr Billy Graham and other leaders spending time with him. How would you sum up a man like Billy Graham and his legacy?

Winkie: I consider meeting him as one of the greatest honours of my life, because Billy is dying and he knows it. The time we spent with him was on Father's day and on the one year anniversary of his wife's death. To be able to sit in his home and talk with him is an amazing thing, because so many people in the world owe, sometimes their whole lives to a word that he shared with them at sometime. Billy Graham is a legend, an icon in history and Billy's great strength that I saw is still there. It's out of humility, he's transparent, what he says he really is like that all the time. He's spoken to more people, not just at one time, but globally, than any other human being in history. He's been friend and counsellor of Presidents. Some who didn't listen to him at all and now regret it. But a man of that statute; it's just wonderful to be able to hang out with him.

Those men that were there, some of the great leaders in the Christian church. We shared with him what his life and example had meant to each of us. He wasn't like the guru and we were the disciples. He was one of us. He prayed for us a very beautiful prayer. It was an inclusive prayer. Not like, from my position of great amazing global things; it was one of the boys talking about the Lord and how wonderful he was. I thought we're probably the last group of ministers who will see this man alive and he's sitting there in his chair. The shock of that voice that's carried around the world, but still in love with God. Missing his wife very much, he said he's "going to see Ruth soon". The humility of this man, one of the greatest names in all the world. People know, everybody knows who he is and he's just one of the boys.

That's with contrast to his friend who was actually a much better speaker, much smarter, who became an atheist. I was with him on a talk show in Canada. We'd both written books. I had written a book called Devil Take the Youngest, which is a quote from William Booth about the war on childhood, what's happening to children and young people, the human trafficking and prostitution. Much of it went on in Britain and was actually ok'd by the royalties; there were scary things in it. My book is called Devil Take the Youngest. His was called All the King's Men. It was all about the failures of American Presidents. We were both being interviewed. He just had half an hour to talk about the book and I was in the green room listening and the host was talking, about the guest book.

I said I know who that is, that's Billy Grahams friend. We met when the host introduced us at the gate and he said, "this is Winkie Pratney" and he said to me, "oh, you're the man that believes in the devil". I said to him, "you're the man that used to believe in the devil" and we crossed paths in the night, but thinking about his life compared to Billy's. A much better more gifted, smarter man. A few people know his name now because he became a famous commentator, television personality and stuff, but a man who was called to be an evangelist and Billy, not as smart, not as gifted, is now known by like every country and nation in the world knows who he is. So I was thinking, one guy humbles himself, loses his life in God and everybody knows who he is. The other man he walks out on all of those things and he is almost an historical curiosity.

I'm thinking of this team of two young brothers graduating from an English university and one of them said, "what are you going to do" and he said "I'm going to start a law firm. It will be one of the greatest law firms England has ever had. Why don't you come with me brother and we'll work together on it." He said "I'm going to be a missionary. I'm going to go to Africa and be a missionary." His brother said "why are you going to a place like that? What do they need a lawyer for?" He said "that's what I'm called to do and that's where I'm going." We remember the other brother because he was the brother of David Livingstone.

So this losing your life to find it: this generation needs to learn what that is and England with it's huge history of sacrifice, with Winston Churchill speeches or the willingness to really lay down your life to see something great and important come through. That's the strength of England along with it's history. CS Lewis, Charles Haddon Spurgeon, Dr Martin Lloyd Jones, a list of people who've been fed all over the world for more than a century sometimes. CS Lewis, Tolkien; all men who knew God and who wrote about him. This massive thing that England has to give to the world. England still has wonderful stuff to give and it is a sad thing if you see a nation with so much invested in it just lose it, in what Shakespeare calls shadows and miseries. Shallows and miseries.