An Atheist Called Out to God in Agony, and What Happened Next Defied Everything She Believed

Beverly Brodsky had abandoned God at the age of eight. Growing up in a conservative Jewish family in Philadelphia, she learned about Holocaust atrocities and could not reconcile such horror with the existence of a loving divine being. By 1958, she had declared herself an atheist, and for more than a decade, she held firm to her rejection of faith.

Yet in 1970, lying broken and desperate in a hospital bed after a catastrophic motorcycle accident, Beverly found herself doing something she never expected. She called out to a God she did not believe existed. What happened next would shatter everything she thought she knew about death, consciousness, and the nature of divine presence itself.

Beverly’s story has captivated researchers, theologians, and skeptics alike for decades. Her account appears in Kenneth Ring’s book “Lessons From The Light,” where Ring described it as possibly the most moving testimony in his entire collection. But what makes her experience so remarkable is not simply that she claims to have encountered God during her brush with death. Rather, it is what she discovered about the nature of that encounter, a revelation that contradicted both her atheist convictions and the religious imagery she had grown up with.

Sunset Boulevard and a Life-Altering Crash

At twenty years old, Beverly’s life took a violent turn near Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles. A motorcycle accident left her with injuries so severe that doctors at UCLA Hospital compared them to wounds they had only seen on battlefields. Her skull was fractured, and the right side of her face had been torn away.

For two weeks, medical staff wrapped salt-soaked bandages around her wounds while she underwent intensive treatment. Pain became her constant companion, a relentless presence that seemed to consume every waking moment. When the hospital finally discharged her, they sent her home without any pain medication.

Beverly felt utterly hopeless. Her body was broken, her spirit crushed, and she saw no path forward through the agony that engulfed her. In that moment of absolute desperation, she uttered words that surprised even herself.

“God, if you’re out there, you can have me now because I’m finished,” she said.

What followed defied every expectation she had about reality, consciousness, and the boundaries between life and death.

Pain Vanishes and Reality Shifts

Instantly after her desperate plea, all pain disappeared from Beverly’s awareness. She found herself floating near the ceiling, looking down at her own unconscious body lying on the bed below. Her physical form appeared broken and still, yet she felt more alive and present than she had ever experienced in her twenty years of earthly existence.

Beverly barely had time to process the strangeness of her situation before she noticed she was no longer alone. A radiant being appeared beside her, bathed in shimmering white light that seemed to emanate from within. Although the being had no wings, it flew just as she did. Something about its presence felt masculine, though not in any ordinary human sense.

Reverent awe washed over Beverly as she turned toward her companion. She sensed immediately that she was not looking at an ordinary angel or spirit. Love and gentleness radiated from the being with such intensity that she felt certain she was in the presence of the Messiah himself. He reached out and took her hand, and in that moment, every doubt and panicked question that had been racing through her mind simply evaporated.

Together, they flew straight through the window. Beverly felt no surprise at her ability to pass through solid matter. In the presence of such a wondrous being, everything seemed exactly as it should be.

A Journey Over the Pacific Toward Brilliant Light

Below, Beverly and her radiant companion stretched the beautiful Pacific Ocean, its waters shimmering far beneath them. But her attention soon shifted upward, where a large opening appeared in the space above. A circular path led through the opening, angled upward and to the right, and at its far end shone a light more brilliant than anything Beverly had ever witnessed.

Even from outside, the light’s glory was partially veiled, yet it still poured out through the opening with breathtaking radiance. Hand in hand with the angel, Beverly entered a small, dark passageway that led toward that distant brilliance.

She traveled upward for what felt like a great distance, moving at tremendous speed yet somehow existing outside of normal time. Finally, she emerged at her destination and realized her angelic guide was no longer beside her. Yet Beverly was far from alone.

Standing Before a Presence Beyond Human Imagination

Before Beverly stood a living presence made entirely of light. Within it, she sensed intelligence, wisdom, compassion, love, and truth, all woven together into a single perfect being. But what struck her most powerfully was something she had never anticipated, something that defied every image of God she had encountered in religious texts or cultural teachings.

“There was neither form nor sex to this perfect being,” Beverly later explained when sharing her experience with author Kenneth Ring.

God had no physical shape. God had no gender. Beverly compared what she witnessed to white light passing through a prism and containing all the colors of a rainbow within itself. Every attribute, every quality, every aspect of existence seemed contained within that brilliant presence, yet none of it took any form that human beings would recognize from biblical descriptions or religious artwork.

Deep within herself, Beverly experienced an instant and wondrous recognition. Despite having rejected faith for more than a decade, despite her anger at a deity who would allow the Holocaust to occur, she knew with absolute certainty that she was standing face to face with God.

Questions, Answers, and Naked Consciousness

Beverly did not approach God with reverence and humility. Instead, she immediately lashed out with every question that had haunted her since childhood. She demanded answers about suffering and injustice, about the horrors she had learned of at age eight that had driven her away from faith in the first place.

She discovered something remarkable about divine communication. God knew her thoughts instantly and responded telepathically, without any need for spoken words. Beverly’s mind felt completely exposed, naked before the Universal Mind that faced her. Her ethereal traveling body seemed to dissolve entirely, leaving only her personal intelligence in direct contact with divine consciousness.

Every question received an answer. Every injustice she had witnessed in the physical world suddenly made sense within a larger pattern she could perceive. As understanding flooded into her awareness, Beverly kept thinking the same thing over and over.

It seemed that everything happening in earthly existence served a purpose, and that purpose was already known to some eternal part of herself that she had lost touch with during physical life.

Knowledge Blooming Like Infinite Flowers

Eventually, Beverly’s questions ceased entirely because she had been filled with something far greater than mere answers. All knowledge unfolded within her consciousness at once, like countless flowers blooming simultaneously in an instant. She was filled with God’s own understanding, and in receiving that knowledge, she became one with the divine being before her.

But her journey of discovery had only just begun.

God took Beverly on an extraordinary voyage through the cosmos. They traveled instantly to the centers of stars being born, witnessed supernovas exploding in brilliant cascades of energy, and observed countless other celestial events for which she had no earthly names. Throughout this cosmic tour, Beverly perceived something profound about the nature of existence itself.

Space and time, she realized, were illusions that bound consciousness to the physical realm. Out in the vastness of creation, everything existed simultaneously. Past, present, and future merged into a single eternal now. Beverly felt as though she were a passenger on a divine vessel, being shown the fullness and beauty of all creation by its architect.

The Core of a Marvelous Star

As Beverly’s vision neared its end, she witnessed one final image that burned itself into her memory. Before her appeared a glorious fire burning at the core and center of a magnificent star. She sensed that this blazing heart of stellar energy was a symbol for the blessing she was about to receive.

Everything external faded away, leaving only a richly full void in which Beverly and the divine presence encompassed all of existence together. Here, in this space beyond space, she experienced communion with the light being in a way that transcends human language to describe. She was no longer merely filled with knowledge but was now saturated with love itself.

Light seemed to pour into her and through her simultaneously. Beverly felt herself transformed at the deepest possible level. Every delusion she had carried, every sin she had committed, every guilt she had harbored was forgiven and purged without her even needing to ask. She had become love, a primal being, and bliss all woven together.

In some sense, Beverly remains in that state of union even now. Such a connection, she maintains, cannot be broken. It always was, always is, and always shall be.

Returning to a Broken Body Filled With Joy

Without warning or explanation, Beverly found herself back in her physical form. Her body remained broken and damaged from the motorcycle accident, yet something miraculous had occurred. She brought back the love and joy she had experienced in the divine presence, and an ecstasy beyond her wildest dreams filled her entire being.

All her physical pain had vanished. For two months following her return, Beverly remained in a state of boundless delight, oblivious to any suffering her injured body might have caused. She felt as though she had been made completely new. Everywhere she looked, she perceived wondrous meanings hidden within ordinary existence. Everything around her seemed alive, filled with energy and intelligence that she had been blind to before her journey.

A Life Transformed by a Few Moments Outside of Time

More than two decades after her heavenly voyage, Beverly has never forgotten a single detail of what she experienced. Despite facing ridicule and disbelief from skeptics over the years, she has never once doubted the reality of her encounter with God. Nothing so intense, so life-changing, could have been a dream or hallucination.

“I consider the rest of my life to be a passing fantasy, a brief dream, that will end when I again awaken in the permanent presence of that giver of life and bliss,” she has explained.

Beverly’s transformation from committed atheist to devoted believer happened in what seemed like a few moments of earthly time. She became a church member and dedicated herself to sharing her story with anyone willing to listen. Her account has reached audiences around the world through various channels.

McCall’s magazine profiled her experience. A BBC documentary called “Human Body” featured her testimony. She gave the first near-death experience interview ever broadcast on Israeli public radio. Her name appears in the 2006 edition of Who’s Who in America. For fifteen years, she ran groups in Philadelphia and San Diego associated with the International Association for Near-Death Studies.

What Her Vision Means for Those Seeking Answers

Beverly Brodsky’s near-death experience challenges assumptions on multiple fronts. Her encounter contradicts materialist explanations of consciousness, which insist that awareness cannot exist outside the physical brain. Yet her description of God also contradicts traditional religious imagery, which depicts the divine as a bearded patriarch or any other human-like form.

According to Beverly, God exists beyond human concepts of shape, gender, or physical presence. Divine reality contains everything within itself, just as white light contains all visible colors. Our earthly understanding of reality, bound by space and time, cannot adequately capture or describe what exists beyond physical death.

But Beverly was an atheist who expected nothing. She had rejected God and anticipated only oblivion. What she encountered defied both her expectations and the religious teachings of her childhood. For her, this makes the experience more convincing rather than less.

Beverly Brodsky spent more than fifty years answering these questions based on what she witnessed during a few timeless moments in 1970. Her answers may not satisfy everyone, but they have brought comfort and wonder to countless people seeking to understand the greatest mystery that awaits us all.