Bishop T.D. Jakes is speaking publicly for the first time about the frightening health scare he experienced late last year.
The 67-year-old spiritual leader revealed on the Today show this week that he suffered a massive heart attack while preaching live during a church service on November 24.
VIDEO
“I didn’t really realize what was happening to me onstage until I got to the hospital in an ambulance,” Jakes recalled. “And the doctor leaned over in my ear and said, ‘You’ve had a massive heart attack.’”
The bishop said he hadn’t experienced any of the usual signs associated with a heart attack. “I just kind of drifted off to sleep. I didn’t know what it was,” he explained. “[The doctor] said five minutes later I’d have been dead on arrival.”
Jakes shared that the right side of his heart had completely stopped pumping blood. He said the adrenaline of preaching kept him going, but when he sat down, the drop in adrenaline revealed the seriousness of his condition. “I was preaching with half of my heart closed with a clot.”
He underwent emergency surgery to remove the clot — all while awake. “They never put me to sleep. Technology, it’s amazing,” he said.
The moment he collapsed on stage was captured live and circulated widely online. But for Jakes, the experience felt completely different in real-time. “I wasn’t there in the chair… I was in a quiet, peaceful, serene, white-enveloped, cloud-enveloped space. I was on my way out,” he said. “They had to claw the microphone out of my hand.”
Jakes described the experience as deeply spiritual, even saying it was a “privilege” to have a glimpse of what he believes may lie on the other side. He also expressed immense gratitude for the wave of prayers and support he received worldwide. “Even people who don’t go to my church were sending prayers. I’m so thankful.”
Just one week after the incident, Jakes appeared virtually before his congregation and called his survival a miracle. “I faced a life-threatening calamity. I was rushed to the ICU. I had emergency surgery,” he told them. “Many of you don’t realize that you’re looking at a miracle.”
Jakes noted that he had recently undergone a full physical and received a clean bill of health prior to the heart attack. “Sometimes things happen and they’re beyond our control,” he said. “And sometimes things happen in this spiritual warfare.”
