This testimony includes an attempted abduction and references to crimes against children. Some readers may find it distressing.
Ryan had just signed a major record deal. Everyone in Florida’s music scene, he says, wished they were him. Then one night he got into a stranger’s car, and God showed him a gun hidden in the driver’s door.
In this second conversation with Abigail Smith on the God’s Truth Podcast (read part one in I Saw God Face to Face), Ryan shares how God rescued him that night, why he walked away from fame, a dream in which he stood before the Father’s throne, and an encounter in which Jesus met him at the door of heaven with two rewards. “This is not about me,” he insists. “I’m here to testify of Him.” What follows is his account.
“Play along, and I will provide a way of escape”
It was 2001 and Ryan was 22, an athletic six-footer waiting to start recording his album in Orlando. After a night out downtown, he found both tyres of his borrowed bicycle flat, no money left for a taxi, and five miles to walk home at 2am. A friendly middle-aged man pulled over, insisted on putting the bike in his boot and promised to have him home in five minutes. Still a little drunk, Ryan got in.
The chatter stopped. The car turned off the main road. In that instant, Ryan says, a vision opened in front of him like a flat screen, zoomed in on the driver’s door, and showed him a gun tucked beside the seat. Then God spoke: “Ryan, do not try to escape. If you do, you will not be successful. Play along and you’ll survive. Play along and I will provide you a means of escape.”
So he played along. The man drove in circles until the streetlights ran out, then showed Ryan a converted trailer in his yard fitted with a bed and tools that looked like something from a horror film. Inside the house, Ryan refused an open bottle of spirits, guessing it was drugged, and asked for a sealed beer instead. On the patio, the man began boasting of terrible crimes against children. As he spoke, Ryan says, his face contorted and a voice that was not human came out of him.
God had already given Ryan an instruction: count to thirty. When you get to thirty, get up and leave. He’s going to get a gun. At thirty, the man stood up, told Ryan not to move and went down the hallway. God told him the front door was unlocked. Ryan ran, dived behind a hedge and heard a voice like several voices at once scream his name. For the rest of the night he threw himself into ditches each time the car’s headlights swept toward him, and finally escaped through the woods. The man never laid a finger on him. Paul’s promise held: with the temptation, God “will also make a way to escape” (1 Corinthians 10:13).
Months later, troubled by what he had heard, Ryan tried to report it. Today he knows that a single prayer in the name of Jesus would have silenced that voice, and that the reach of our prayers matches the weight of our faith (Mark 11:23).
Walking away from the dream
Ryan moved into the recording studio house on 10 September 2001. The next morning, as the planes struck the World Trade Center, God spoke again and showed him his future in another vision. If you continue on this path, you’ll be wildly successful. You have the right to choose it. But it will fundamentally change you as a person, and this is not My will for your life. He saw who he would become among the people his career would surround him with.
Against the pleading of his producer, manager and attorney, Ryan negotiated his way out of the deal. “It might be my dream for myself,” he says, “but it’s not God’s dream. The one who does miracles gets to write my destiny.” He went on to build recording studios of his own, first in Orlando and then in Los Angeles. Looking back, he says, everything good that came of it was either God’s protection or God’s blessing. As Jesus asked, what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and lose his own soul (Matthew 16:26)?
“You’re not going to be like one of them, are you?”
Ryan says he has heard the Father’s voice many times and seen Him in dreams three or four times. In one, he found himself standing on a platform carpeted with clouds. He ran like a seven-year-old up three short steps and saw God the Father on His throne. Beside the throne stood a small marble table with a pair of golden tweezers on it. Ryan grabbed them and turned to go.
“Ryan, those are not yours,” the Father said. Ryan could hear the smile in His voice. “I know,” Ryan replied, “but You have so much. I’ll bring them right back. You won’t even know they were gone.”
Then the Father’s tone changed. “Ryan, I have done everything that can be imagined for the children of earth, and I’ve withheld from them no good thing. And yet they don’t thank Me. They don’t show Me gratitude.” He fought back tears. “They don’t even acknowledge Me. You’re not going to be like one of them, are you?”
Heartbroken, Ryan threw the tweezers down and ran to Him, burying his head in the Father’s lap and trying in vain to wrap his arms around Him. God was enormous, perhaps eleven or twelve feet tall, and yet He felt like Dad. The Father reached down and rubbed Ryan’s back to comfort him, comforting Ryan over the pain He Himself was feeling. When Ryan woke, he had the answer to something he had been praying about for months. The dream echoes the nine lepers who never came back to say thank you (Luke 17:17–18) and the promise that “no good thing will He withhold” (Psalm 84:11).
Dreams in Hebrew
Ryan never studied Hebrew, yet he began seeing it in his dreams. In one, a giant, perfect oak tree glowed in golden light with a shining symbol in its upper branches. A voice said: “Behold the tree. The tree is the symbol and the symbol is the tree… because you were dead, but ye shall be alive again.” A friend later identified the symbol as the Hebrew word chai, meaning “alive.”
In another, he was sent to a restaurant run by an arrogant boss, wearing a plain grey tracksuit with golden Hebrew letters across the chest. When the boss mocked him, Ryan opened his jacket and said, “He sent me.” The man went white, fled to the phone and protested that it was not fair. The voice on the other end replied that the decision had already been made. Ryan later looked up the letters: nin, meaning offspring or descendant, the word used in Genesis 21:23.
Thirty minutes in heaven
Years earlier, Ryan says, he fell asleep and was shown his own death, more than a decade in the future. He watched himself rise above his body, arms outstretched, drawn backwards away from the earth until it was a dot, then turned and rushed through space past streaks of light. At the edge of the stars stood an ordinary white door with a brass handle, floating in open space. It opened, and he was pushed through.
He landed on a floor of clouds. Thirty-five feet to his left stood Jesus. Both of them ran, and they collided in an embrace. Jesus kissed his cheek and said, “Ryan, I’ve been waiting for you.” Ryan’s legs gave way, and Jesus held him up by the shoulders so He could look him in the eyes. Ryan describes eyes as blue as all the world’s oceans poured into one glass, flawless sun-kissed skin, chestnut-brown curls to His shoulders and a perfectly groomed beard. More than anything, he felt that he was the most precious thing Jesus had ever laid eyes on, and that Jesus would have done it all for him alone.
“I have two rewards for you for what you’ve achieved in your life,” Jesus said. Ryan protested that it was enough just to be with Him. Jesus chuckled and said, “No, it’s as I’ve said.” He slipped onto Ryan’s right hand a ring of gold so pure it was clear as glass, set with a large purple stone: “the purple ring of creation.”
Then He waved toward the second gift. Ryan realised he was standing on a stage before tens of thousands of people. Every one of them, he understood, had been touched by his life in some way, and each had chosen to wait for him there from the moment they arrived in heaven, just to greet him.
“Take this ring and go down amongst them,” Jesus told him, “and fill this portion of heaven with whatever your minds can imagine. Just speak the word and it will be.” In what Ryan calls heaven’s playground, a boy asked for a purple river, and the moment Ryan spoke it, there it was. Everyone ran in. The water soaked into him with a refreshment beyond perfect, yet left him dry when he stepped out. A man asked for red across the sky, and a living ribbon of colour unfurled from horizon to horizon. There was no sun, only light everywhere (Revelation 21:23). The colours were so alive they took his breath away.
Abigail pointed out that for believers, the judgement seat of Christ (2 Corinthians 5:10) is not something to dread but a reward ceremony. Eye has not seen, nor ear heard, what God has prepared for those who love Him (1 Corinthians 2:9).
How to seek Him
Asked how others can encounter God like this, Ryan’s answer comes from his heart: “If He doesn’t exist, I don’t even want to be here.” He came to know God’s personality by reading the Bible, he says, and fell in love with Him there. He points to one verse above all: “Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God” (Matthew 5:8). Guard your thoughts, he urges, assume the best of people, and cry out to God with your whole soul, as though you will die if you do not meet Him. Those who seek Him with all their heart will find Him (Jeremiah 29:13).
And above all, thank Him. The Father’s question in that dream is one Ryan has never forgotten, and one worth asking ourselves: you’re not going to be like one of them, are you?
Scriptures in this episode
- 1 Corinthians 10:13, a way to escape
- Mark 11:23, say unto this mountain
- Matthew 16:26, gaining the whole world
- Psalm 84:11, no good thing will He withhold
- Luke 17:17–18, where are the nine?
- Genesis 21:23, son and grandson, the Hebrew nin
- Revelation 21:23, no need of the sun
- 2 Corinthians 5:10, the judgement seat of Christ
- 1 Corinthians 2:9, eye hath not seen
- Matthew 5:8, the pure in heart shall see God
- Jeremiah 29:13, seek Me with all your heart
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