Ritchie George G. - Return from Tomorrow

RETURN

FROM

TOMORROW

RETURN

FROM

TOMORROW

30th Anniversary Edition

GEORGE G. RITCHIE

with ELIZABETH SHERRILL

1978, 2007 by George G. Ritchie

Published by Chosen Books
A division of Baker Publishing Group
P.O. Box 6287, Grand Rapids, MI 49516-6287

Printed in the United States of America

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any meansfor example, electronic, photocopy, recordingwithout the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Ritchie, George G., 1923
Return from tomorrow / George G. Ritchie with Elizabeth Sherrill. 30th anniversary ed.
p. cm.
Originally published : Waco, Tex. : Chosen Books, c1978.
ISBN 10: 0-8007-9432-X (pbk.)
ISBN 978-0-8007-9432-3 (pbk.)
1. Ritchie, George G., 1923 2. Christian biographyUnited
States. 3. PsychiatristsUnited StatesBiography. 4. Death,
ApparentCase studies. I. Sherrill, Elizabeth. II. Title.
BR1725.R58A37 2007
277.3'082092dc22 2007014232

Scripture is taken from the American Standard Version of the Bible.

To His three ladies:

Marguerite Shell Ritchie, who married not only me but the experience that has governed my life;

Catherine Marshall, who first insisted I tell it all;

Elizabeth Sherrill, who helped me find the words.

All who wonder about life after death...

all who yearn to know their Savior... all

who seek the true meaning of life...

will be moved and changed by George Ritchies

encounter with Jesus, of whom he says, Above

more even than power, what emanated from

this Presence was unconditional love. A love

beyond my wildest imagining. Accompany

George Ritchie past the boundaries of life

understand the everlasting despair of helland

glimpse with him a vision of the heavenly city.

It will change you, as it has changed others.

Table of Contents

It was a phone call from Catherine Marshall in 1956 that made me eager to meet George Ritchie. I recognized the name. I had been hearing about him for several years, ever since receiving a letter from a reader of Guideposts magazine, recounting the incredible story he had just heard. A certain Dr. George Ritchie had spoken at his church that morning and kept everyone spellbound with an account of his own clinical death, his resuscitation nine minutes later and what he experienced in between. Someone from the magazine should come to Richmond, Virginia, the letter concluded, and write the story.

Incredible is the right word, I had thought as I added the letter to my already bulging Story Leads folder. I did not doubt that the letter-writer had heard an inspiring speaker, but... dying and coming back to report on the next world? Prettyfarfetched.

I did mention the letter to my husband, John, and other editors at Guideposts, and all of us had the same reaction. Too far out!

Over the next two years the magazine received several more letters about this same George Ritchie. Id gone to church all my life, a 79-year-old woman wrote, but after hearing Dr. Ritchie, I went home and committed my life to Jesus for the very first time.

That was a recurrent theme in these letters: a casual churchgoer getting serious about his faith. Scare tactics, was my guess. The fellow was probably frightening people with some outlandish tale about the fate of nonbelievers in the afterlife.

Then came the call from Catherine. Though at that time we were acquainted only through the mail and over the phone, I knew by working on her manuscripts that she was a bulldog for facts with little use for spiritual flights of fantasy.

Her voice over the phone bubbled with excitement. Ive just met the most remarkable man! His name is George Ritchie.

They had had a long conversation from which she had come away absolutely convinced of his truthfulness. Tib, this story belongs in Guideposts! Youve simply got to interview him and do an article.

Catherine was the last person on earth, I was sure, to be bamboozled by a sensation-seeker. If she felt that this Dr. Ritchie had something important to say, I was ready to listen.

At the magazine, though, the idea was again turned down. It would mean endorsing a tale no one could prove. Someday, maybe, as part of a series presenting many different accounts of deathbed visions.

In the early 1960s that day arrived. By then the whole subject of threshold experiencespeople who, near death, believed they had had a glimpse of another worldwas very much in the air. In April 1963 Guideposts began a ten-part series titled Life after Death. For the third installment I traveled down to Richmond, Virginia, to interview George Ritchie.

Because of the impact he had on people, I was expecting to meet a human dynamofluent, energetic and persuasive. Instead I found myself in the presence of a tall, gentle, soft-spoken, rather reserved man of 39 with a head of luxuriant dark hair and the kindest brown eyes I had ever seen.

We were meeting in Dr. Ritchies consulting room at his office in Richmond at the close of his workday. Though clearly tired after the long hours with patients, he was courtesy itself, holding my chair, inquiring about my comfort on the flight down, very much the Southern gentleman. In the drawl unique to that part of Virginia, he began to relate his story.

It began in December 1943 when a twenty-year-old buck private in basic training at Camp Barkeley, Texas, began to run a fever....

At 7 p.m. we broke off the interview and moved to his homestead, a substantial, redbrick, Colonial Williamsburgstyle house just a mile away. There I met his wife, Marguerite, with blue eyes and light brown hair, a striking physical contrast to her husband. At dinner we were joined by their two young children, Bonnie Louise and John, after which the three adultswe were now George, Marguerite and Tib to each othercontinued the interview.

Did I believe the extraordinary story George was relating? It was clear, at any rate, that he himself believed it. And after only a few hours acquaintance, I recognized in him a scientifically oriented man, not given to imagination.

It was Marguerites comments, though, that told me the most. Georges entire life since his return from clinical death, she said, had been directed by what he had seen in those nine minutes of another kind of existence. It was from her that I learned about his work with young people, the Universal Youth Corps he had founded (which became the inspiration for the Peace Corps), his medical service without pay for those who could not afford it, his many charities, his entire life of loving and giving. Could delirium broughton by fever or drugs, I asked myself, have dominateda mans every act and decision for twenty years?

I spent the night there, and next morning George and I resumed our talks.

Do you believe youve had an authentic preview of what awaits us after death? I asked him.

No, he said. I have no idea what the next life will be like.

He had been permitted to go, he reminded me, only as far as the doorway. As for the things he had seen from there, he did not know whether he would see them after his actual demise or not. What he was sure of was that he had been in the presence of Christ, and this remained the most important event of his life.

I flew home the following day with 27 pages of notes in my briefcase. Often after an interview, there is a particular scene I cannot wait to write. In this case it was that of a young soldier walking down a corridor with another man bearing down on him from the opposite direction. He is coming too close; they are going to collide. Look out! George shouts. The next second the man has passed him, walking through the very space where George is standing.