William Pope was a 26-year-old agnostic and Twitch streamer who spent his days gaming, smoking on stream and never giving God a thought. Then one afternoon at his computer, his heart began to race out of control, and he felt his spirit pulled down into the earth, toward a dread worse than anything he had ever known. With nothing else to hold on to, he called a name he hadn’t spoken in years.
In this episode of the God’s Truth Podcast, William tells Abigail Smith what happened, how he went looking for evidence afterwards, and why he is now urging the church to be bold. What follows is his account.
A gamer with no time for God
William grew up in church in Tennessee but “never bought in.” For more than twenty years he was agnostic. He became a Twitch partner, gaming all day for his audience, chasing money and success. He now calls that idolatry: “Idolatry is not just a golden statue in your house.” God was “just not on my brain ever.”
For a couple of months beforehand, he had felt strange “pings” in his heart for the first time in his life, along with a growing existential dread. Why was he here? Why did the world seem to be falling apart?
Sinking into the earth
One day, sitting at his computer, his heart suddenly started pounding faster than he thought possible. Sweat poured off him and his ears rang. He had had a panic attack before, he says, and this was “completely in a league of its own.” Alone in the house, he lay on the wooden floor to cool down. As he stared at the ceiling, his vision blurred, and then, he says, “my spirit popped out of my body.” It felt like being in two places at once. In half a second, his whole worldview changed. There was an afterlife, and a spiritual realm.
Then he began to sink. He felt himself being pulled down into the ground, lower and lower. All around him he heard the sound of bugs, as if a million were inside his head, the thing he had feared most since he was a child. And he felt “the worst feeling of dread and regret and panic I think I’ve ever had,” like a child called to the principal’s office, knowing exactly what he had done.
No doctor witnessed it. William believes he had a heart attack and was sinking toward hell. He is honest that others will draw their own conclusions.
“Jesus, please save me”
After a minute or two, he cried out in his mind: “Jesus, please save me.” Instantly, he says, he “rubber-band snapped back” into his body and was staring at his ceiling again.
Why Jesus? He had never heard a near-death testimony. It was “literally a Hail Mary,” he says, a gut instinct from the name he had heard in church as a boy. He thinks that says something: deep down, even unbelievers know where to turn. “Whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved” (Romans 10:13).
For weeks he was afraid it would happen again. When he started praying, thanking God and asking for a clean bill of health, his doctor ran an ECG, blood tests and a heart monitor and found nothing wrong. William gives God the glory. “I shouldn’t even be here,” he says. “It’s a story of God’s grace.”
Following the evidence
Soon, near-death testimonies began appearing in his feeds, though he had never searched for them. After watching dozens, he saw a common thread too strong to ignore. Then he opened the Bible, and found Stephen, dying, seeing Jesus standing at the right hand of God (Acts 7:55–56). Over a month or two, he weighed the claims of other religions and came to a settled conclusion: “It was Jesus.”
He is clear that his experience was not the foundation of his faith. “I am not a Christian because of my near-death experience,” he says. It was “a shove off a cliff.” What keeps him on fire is the evidence: a man who predicted His own death and resurrection, worked miracles in front of thousands, and rose again. “Truth by definition has to be exclusionary,” he says. Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me” (John 14:6).
He offers his own story as a kind of test: either he is lying, he is crazy, or he is telling the truth. And if it is the truth, there is everything to gain and everything to lose. Within a month, his habits and lifestyle had turned around completely. “When you read the Bible,” he says, borrowing his girlfriend’s line, “it reads you.”
A gamer’s view of creation
As a gamer, William sees creation through code. In a video game every character has a purpose, written in by its designer. Denying God, he says, is like “pointing your finger at the thing that coded you and saying, ‘I was not coded.’” People, he suggests, are like an AI that God made with free will, which has wandered out of the lab. God will not force us back. If He stomped around throwing lightning bolts, we would submit out of fear, not love, and what He wants is a relationship. Meanwhile, the enemy is battling for our minds and our free will.
Hell, he says, is not something God wants for anyone. It exists because Satan will never repent, and “we send ourselves” there by refusing God. “Hell is a real place,” he says. “I’ve partially experienced it.”
A message for the church
William’s plea to Christians is simple: be bold. He wishes someone, a co-worker or one of the thousands in his Twitch chat, had just asked him, “Are you a believer in Jesus?” His generation, he says, is drowning in distraction but craving hard truth. Lead with being for Jesus, not with pointing fingers. Be a city on a hill (Matthew 5:14). And read the Bible for yourself, including Revelation. He prays every day for the church to receive a spirit of confidence and boldness.
Connect with William Pope
- YouTube: William Pope
- TikTok: @williampopeyt
- Instagram: @williampopeyt
Scriptures in this episode
- Romans 10:13, whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord
- Acts 7:55–56, Stephen sees Jesus standing at the right hand of God
- John 14:6, no man cometh unto the Father, but by me
- 1 John 4:1, try the spirits
- Jeremiah 1:5, before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee
- Romans 8:17, joint-heirs with Christ
- 1 Corinthians 2:9, eye hath not seen
- Matthew 5:14, a city that is set on an hill
- Matthew 24:42, watch therefore
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