Imagine being a Christian your whole life, only to stand before Jesus and hear, “I’m judging you. I’m cutting you off.” That is what Jeff Whiting says happened to him as he lay close to death. He had seen Jesus as a child, cast out demons in His name and spent whole nights in prayer. In this episode of God’s Truth Podcast, Jeff shares his warning to every believer who thinks they are on fire, but is really lukewarm.
A childhood touched by God
Jeff grew up in a churchgoing family in Oregon. At around seven, during a family communion service, God suddenly became real to him. “Wow,” he remembers thinking. “You’re real. You’re not just some story my dad’s telling me.”
About a year later, driving home from a long family trip, Jeff looked up and saw Jesus in the sky, in a white robe with a blue sash, His arm around a little boy from their church who had been fighting cancer. Both were smiling down at him. When the family got home, they learned the boy had died at that very time.
The power of the name, united with faith
At 17, during the Pensacola revival, Jeff rededicated his life to the Lord. Soon after, he began having frightening encounters: waking paralysed, with a demonic being staring into his eyes. He commanded it to flee in Jesus’ name, as he had been taught. It let go, then came back. The Holy Spirit told him to unite his words with faith. He said it again, believing, and was set free.
Another spirit, moving like a cobra, sneered, “In whose name you have spoken, he has not delivered you.” Jeff answered, “By the blood of Jesus, I command you to flee,” and was loosed. Afraid of the dark since childhood, he learned to switch off his bedroom light and put his trust in the Father of lights instead.
Hunger, then compromise
After a season with Youth With A Mission in Hawaii, Jeff spent months fasting and seeking God on a hill above his town. There the Holy Spirit came upon him in a tangible way. God spoke to him through Psalm 24 and the Beatitudes, “Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God,” and told him simply, “Remain in my love.”
But in his early twenties, Jeff says, a seducing spirit drew him back into sexual sin, including pornography. God warned him. He began to feel a burning heat on his head whenever he compromised. One night, after looking at something he shouldn’t have, a spirit he describes as Jezebel appeared and asked, “Do you want to go fast with me?” He rebuked it, but the sickness that followed would shape the next fifteen years.
A glimpse of hell
Very ill and barely conscious, Jeff felt himself descend through a portal black as ink to the bottom of a pit. There was intense heat, lava rock, and pools like stone hot tubs filled with greyish-green people in agony. He heard they crawled into these “worm pools” to escape the torment. Above all he felt hopelessness, emptiness and regret.
He came out with a deep fear of the Lord, and an understanding that giving place to darkness can lead to death. “We can’t be flippant with sin,” he says.
Building his own kingdom
Jeff married, started a construction business, and became a workaholic. God was calling him to something else, but he buried himself in work, and used the money to numb himself with food, drink and his own plans. His repentance, he says, was half-hearted. He points to Revelation 2, where those who won’t turn from Jezebel’s immorality are cast into a sickbed.
In 2008 he collapsed, and was ill for years. He was diagnosed with an autonomic nervous system disorder that left him fainting and exhausted. At the International House of Prayer in Kansas City, he prayed through the night and served on healing teams, but he kept getting sicker. He tried every medicine and herb he could find. Lying in a recliner one day, watching Jesus of Nazareth, something rose up from deep inside him: even if God healed him, he wasn’t sure he wanted to keep following.
“I’m judging you”
Jeff lost around 60 pounds and was drifting in and out of consciousness. He said goodbye to his wife. Then he saw Jesus seated with a book open before Him. “I’m judging you,” Jesus said. “I’m cutting you off. You are in danger of eternal condemnation.”
Jeff was told he had lived lukewarm: a whitewashed tomb, clean outside but dead within, with an uncircumcised heart. When he tried to argue, Jesus said, “My judgments are perfect and complete.” An angel thrust a sword into his heart twice. Then a huge demonic spirit appeared. “I’m here to take you down to death,” it said.
Jeff began to sink into outer darkness, grasping for anything to hold. “It was like the terror that passes all understanding,” he says. In desperation he cried, “Jesus, save me. Jesus, have mercy on me.”
“I love you. I want you to be where I am.”
Jesus flew to him and wrapped His arms around him. All the fear lifted. “I love you,” He said. “I want you to be where I am.” Jeff came to completely healed, able to walk ten miles a day.
Then Jesus touched his head and chest and said, “This is the baptism of fire.” Jeff felt the same burning he had once felt as a warning. He now understands it through John the Baptist’s words about Jesus, whose winnowing fork is in His hand to separate the wheat from the chaff.
Still a work in progress
Jeff is honest that he ran again. About five years later he drifted back toward what he calls “Egypt,” and from late 2022 into 2024 he was on his deathbed once more, until another encounter with the fear of the Lord and another healing. “I have by no means arrived,” he says. “I’m learning to die to myself.” When he lays his life down, he feels resurrection life. When he tries to save it, he loses it.
A warning for believers
Jeff’s message is for the church, especially in the West, where he says many carry a “Jesus card” like a store membership and build their own kingdoms. The answer, he believes, is to circumcise our hearts: rend your heart and not your garments, humble yourself through fasting and prayer, and let God replace a heart of stone with a heart of flesh. Abide in the Vine. Stay yoked to Jesus. Let Him do the heavy lifting.
Scriptures in this episode
- Psalm 24:3–5, clean hands and a pure heart
- Matthew 5:8, the pure in heart shall see God
- John 15:1–10, abide in me
- Revelation 2:20–23, Jezebel and the sickbed
- Revelation 3:15–16, neither cold nor hot
- Matthew 23:27, whited sepulchres
- Jeremiah 4:1–4, circumcise the foreskins of your heart
- Joel 2:12–13, rend your heart, and not your garments
- Ezekiel 36:26, a heart of flesh
- Matthew 3:11–12, baptized with the Holy Ghost and with fire
- Psalm 119:75, in faithfulness thou hast afflicted me
- Luke 12:48, to whom much is given
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