There is a line in the Eucharistic prayer that I cannot hear without a shudder running down my spine: “Even when man disobeyed you, you did not abandon him, but sent him prophets, and in the fullness of time you sent him your Son to die for him.”
The words are simple enough. But they carry the weight of the entire gospel inside them. They tell of a God who watched humanity turn its back on Him, and chose, anyway, to keep pursuing.
Not with wrath or abandonment. But with prophets, with patience, and finally with His own Son.
That line is the story of Scripture in a single breath. And it is the story of Gabe Poirot too.
The Day Everything Stopped
Gabe Poirot was twenty years old when his life nearly ended on a stretch of pavement.
He was riding an electric skateboard at roughly thirty miles per hour when his board hit a bump. Gabe flew off, twisted in the air, and landed on the back of his skull. He was not wearing a helmet. Blood poured from his ears. Vomit filled his lungs.
By the time paramedics reached him, his body was rigid and unresponsive. He had flatlined.
At the hospital, doctors delivered the kind of news no family is ever ready to hear. Gabe had suffered a catastrophic traumatic brain injury, subdural haemorrhages, contusions, and massive swelling.
Dr Forrest Moore, the trauma surgeon who treated him, later admitted there was little medicine that could do except supply oxygen and hope the brain healed itself.
His family, a thousand miles away, was told to come immediately.
Gabe would spend eighteen days in a coma, three in a natural coma, fifteen more on life support in a medically induced coma to protect what remained of his brain. Doctors warned that even if he survived, he might never be the same.
What He Says He Saw
While his body lay motionless in the ICU, Gabe says his spirit left it.
He describes watching from above as his friend John Michael found him and called 911. Then, he says, he was drawn upward through what he calls a “vertical tunnel of living light.” A voice told him he had an appointment.
As he ascended, his entire life replayed before him in a flash. He says he saw Jesus standing beside him at every stage, even during the years Gabe had denied God’s presence, even during the seasons he now describes with shame.
Material accomplishments he had once valued shrank in importance. People and moments he had overlooked suddenly mattered more than he could have imagined.
He arrived, he says, in a city illuminated not by sun or moon but by the glory of God. Gabe saw golden bowls, which he understood to be the prayers of believers gathered before the throne. And then his eyes met the eyes of Jesus.
The Question That Dismantled His Shame
Gabe felt overwhelmed by shame as he stood before Christ. He fell face-down, conscious of his addictions, hypocrisy, and failures. Gabe expected correction and braced for it.
Instead, Jesus called him by name. He wrapped His arms around him. And He asked a question that Gabe says he will never forget: “Gabriel, why are you concerned about that which I paid for?”
Jesus showed him His wounds, not on the palms, Gabe notes, but closer to the wrists. The scars glowed with what he describes as “sparkling wholeness,” a sign of the finished work of the cross. Written above the scars on both wrists was Gabe’s first name.
He was told there is no record of sin in heaven, only a record of the blood.
Jesus also gave him a message to carry back: “Tell My family who I really am” and “Tell them I’m coming back soon to get them.” Gabe was told his time on earth was not finished. He was sent back.
The Book and the Aftermath
Gabe later wrote 18 Days in Heaven: I Left My Body. I Met Jesus. What He Told Me Will Alter Your Eternity, published by Harrison House. The book blends his personal testimony with biblical reflection, and his account is presented as supported by medical documentation and eyewitness accounts.
John Burke, author of Imagine Heaven, called Gabe’s near-death experience “one of the most miraculous, awe-inspiring, and biblically confirming cases I’ve encountered.”
Whether or not one accepts every detail of Gabe’s account, the shape of his story is unmistakable. It is the shape of the gospel.
The Thread That Runs Through Everything
The line from the Eucharistic prayer and the story of Gabe Poirot are saying the same thing. You did not abandon him.
That is the heart of the Christian faith. Not that God waits for us to clean ourselves up before He comes near.
Not that He turns His back when we fall. But that He pursues us, through prophets, scripture, the quiet conviction of the Holy Spirit, and finally through the Son who died in our place.
Gabe Poirot with his book
Gabe’s story, at its core, is not really about a skateboard accident. It is about a God who refused to let a young man go, who met him in the darkness, called him by name, and sent him back with a message.
The same God who did not abandon Adam in the garden, who did not abandon Israel in the wilderness and who did not abandon us at the cross is not finished with any of us.
“Even when man disobeyed you, you did not abandon him.” That is not just a line in a prayer. It is the story of our salvation. And it is the story of every soul who has ever been found by grace.
