'Family of God' was not there for me

In April, I lay dying in University of Iowa Hospitals. Only 3 percent of my liver was functioning. Words can't express the agony I felt. I'd always feared death, but now I feared not dying. I could only lie there and cry.

Finally, a liver from a twenty-something I.V. drug user became available. I was about to reject it until Rick McCaslin, a fellow prophet, said it was God's answer to our prayers.

I was taken to surgery. Near death, I asked God to provide for my children and to forgive my sins.

I barely survived the 12-hour surgery. Had I rejected that liver, my kids would now be fatherless and my wife would be a merry widow. I “woke up” briefly during surgery, in an out-of-body state, to observe the transplant surgeon standing between two angels.

As I recover, I reflect on the hypocrisy of many Christians. They claim they prayed for me. But when I reached out in unbearable agony, no one but my Catholic wife, Kristina, was there to hold my hand. I recall when my wife and I went without good food to pay a church member's $1,800 cardiology bill. Did he or his wife visit me at the height of my pain? Guess.

So much for the Pentecostal “family of God.”

James Dean McNeish

Iowa City