A few days ago someone referred to Dr. Eby's Near Death Experience. NOTHING could be farther from the truth. Dr. Eby was DEAD for 16 to 18 hours with most of that time in the hospital!
 
After Dr. Eby's fall from a second story balcony, his head hit the sidewalk and cracked open with part of his brain matter spilled onto the concrete. He was hanging upside down which caused his body to drain all it's blood. The Paramedics knew he was dead at the scene. They did not even run the siren on the way to the hospital. Being the wife of a doctor, Richard's wife knew that meant there was no chance of life.
 
Illinois law required at the time for a person to be transported to a hospital to have a doctor actually pronounce death. The doctor signed his Death Certificate as well as stitched up his open head to prepare the body to be transported to the funeral home.
 
Also according to law Dr. Eby's body was hooked up to electrodes and machines to prove his being brain dead. For the rest of the day and all thru the night there was a malfunction with the machine causing blips on the screen. Now because of the law Dr. Eby's dead body was moved to a private room. Later that night the doctors sent Mrs. Eby to a hotel to wait for their call to come and sign a release for her husband's body to a funeral home. Nurses made visits to the closed room every few hours to check on the mysterious blips. At 6 am when Jesus put Dr. Eby's spirit back into his body the blips stopped. Mrs. Eby was called back to the hospital. (No blood transfusion was done on Dr. Eby's body because Chicago law forbids transfusing a corpse. Jesus did not put the blood back into Dr. Eby's body until after He performed His surgery to repair the body and brain.)
 
This woman of great faith looked in on her husband's body. The bandages were beside his broken neck on the pillow. She looked at the stitches the emergency room doctor had put on his head to hold it together. She noticed the 196 stitches were holding together healed tissue. With that assurance from God that He had all under control she decided not to sign the transfer papers but to go to the Cafeteria for breakfast. (My verse for this is Hebrews 11:35 " ...by faith...women received their dead raised to life again.)
 
When Mrs Eby returned to the room she saw her husband sitting on the side of the bed attempting to get up to go to the rest room. Again in faith she said, "Dick, lie down or you will fall and kill yourself again!" For the next hour Maybelle had to teach Dr. Eby to walk again because he had trouble remembering. His feet did not work properly at first after being without blood for so long. (Lest anyone thinks Jesus did not do a complete work of healing, remember in the Gospels the story of the man who's blind eyes Jesus had to touch twice for him to see properly. Even with a miracle sometimes God uses progressive healing to complete the work.)
 
On the second day after Dr. Eby came back to life the doctor who signed his Death Certificate came to look at him. He told Dr. Eby, "I am Dr. ____ _____," he said coldly.
 "You're a dead man. No blood in you. Can't give you any...I don't know why the H___ you seem alive, but quickly tell me anything you want to tell your wife before you're gone."
 
Dr. Eby told the doctor that Jesus had told him he would live and his wife knew that already.
 
The doctor jumped to his feet and said in disgust, "g__ d__ it, they told me you were a physician, not an idiot! Any doctor knows that science has proved there is no God. Well, you're dead anyway like your God."
 
After this conversation, the atheist doctor made Dr. Eby's room "off limits" to all but the most essential staff. He did not want this testimony getting out to any more people than necessary. I believe Dr. Eby was in the hospital for thirty days recovering before a flight could be prepared to return him to California where he lived. For the rest of his life, like the Apostle Paul and Jacob with his hip joint, Dr. Eby suffered from the effects of his death. As he prayed and praised God removed the worst of the aches and pains and slight problems with memory. He was able to continue in medical practice as well as becoming an evangelist and preacher.
 
Dr. Richard Eby was the most humble of men. He claimed to be nothing outside of the will and greatness of our LORD.
 
(As an aside note here, God did not have Dr. Eby see Hell in a vision until five years later.)