Fatuma Shubisa: Twelve Hours in Heaven

By Dan Reany
The 700 Club

CBN.com – Fatuma Shubisa works hard to provide for her and her husband’s nine children. She lives in the little village of Alelu in rural Ethiopia. She considers her simple life a gift from God, because it was God himself who raised her from the dead.

Fatuma tells The 700 Club, "For two months, I was very, very seriously sick."

One day Fatuma’s mother came to care for her daughter.  But her daughter passed away. 

"She came  and touched my face. I was cold. My eyes were open. She closed my eyes and straightened my legs," Fatuma says. "My mother cried when she found out that I was dead. Because of that, everybody came and started crying."

The pain Fatuma felt during her long sickness was finally over.  Fatuma grew up Muslim but had converted to Christianity. She says after she died, she felt herself being drawn to heaven.

"I was very happy, and I was going with a very merry heart."

Along the way, Fatuma saw someone she recognized. It was her husband’s brother, who had died two years earlier.

Fatuma recalls, "He came and took my hands, and he took me away. I felt like the earth was like an open ditch, but I had gone up very, very high. When I crossed and went away from the valley, I reached a place where everybody was dressed in gold. I looked at the earth as very dirty, but where I was was very free and clean."

Back at her home, more and more people were coming to mourn Fatuma’s passing.

"My relatives had come, and they were non-Christians, Muslims, and they were crying very much," she explains. "But a few Christians were praying."

A missionary named Warsa Buta was walking nearby.

Warsa says, "After my salvation God told me, 'I will raise the dead through you.' With that word, I was praying earnestly from that day onward."

Fatuma adds, "When he was passing by the way, he heard that somebody had died. So he came and started praying. The non-Christians came, and they were asking, 'Why is this Pentecostal man praying over a dead body?'”

As Warsa prayed, Fatuma’s vision of heaven continued.

"My mother-in-law was dead, and she was there in that place," Fatuma remembers, "She was begging them to send me back so that I can raise my children. Those people who were in gold said, 'She is quite young, so send her back. Send her back.'”

By now, Fatuma had been dead a full 12 hours, but Warsa kept praying.

Warsa says, "I had faith the Lord would work through me. I prayed as Peter prayed. 'Fatuma, be raised. I ask you in the name of the Lord. Come to life.' When I prayed that prayer -- 'Fatuma, rise in the name of Jesus' -- she sat up in the bed."

Fatuma says, "Then immediately I found myself in my body. I sat up in my bed and started asking, 'What is this? What’s happening? What’s going on?' Then everybody was surprised. Some were commenting, 'A Pentecostal man can call back a dead soul to a body? If this is real, then we all will become Christians.’ And they were shouting.

"I was a Christian, and my husband was an evangelist. When I died, I died as a Christian. These people called Warsa, and they started commenting, 'Your God is a very powerful God. Now make us believe.'

"I came back, because it was the will of God for me to live with my children. But I would be very happy to go back there. Now I have seen when a Christian dies, he goes to a better place, and his body goes back to dust. For a non-believer that is a place of sadness, but when a Christian dies, he goes to a separate place where everything is good, where everything is very, very happy."