Gabe Poirot’s 18 Days in Heaven (2026) is a work of Christian nonfiction that recounts the author’s near-death experience (NDE). At age 20, Poirot suffered a traumatic brain injury in an electric-skateboard accident and fell into a coma for 18 days, during which he claims his spirit traveled to heaven and met Jesus Christ. The book details the revelations that he received during this encounter, exploring themes of Jesus’s Presence Defines the Meaning of Heaven, Identity Reborn Through the Cross, and how Prayer and Words Shape Outcome.

Poirot, a pastor and evangelist, is known for his large social-media ministry, which reaches millions of people. His work fits within the popular subgenre of NDE testimonies, which has a significant readership in Christian communities. The narrative aligns with documented NDE patterns, such as an out-of-body experience and a life review, but interprets them through a strictly biblical framework, drawing on multiple Scripture translations. The book combines Poirot’s testimony with biblical interpretation and references to medical and scientific observations in support of its account.

This guide refers to the 2026 paperback edition published by Harrison House Publishers.

Content Warning: The source material and guide feature depictions of illness, death, addiction, and substance use.

Summary

Gabe Poirot, a pastor, evangelist, and YouTuber, recounts his near-death experience at age 20, when an electric-skateboard accident left him comatose for 18 days. During that time, he claims that his spirit departed his body, traveled to heaven, and encountered Jesus Christ face-to-face. Four years after the accident, he says he felt “released” to share the experience publicly.

Poirot sets the scene one month before his 21st birthday. He and his friend John Michael were riding electric skateboards at 30 miles per hour when Poirot’s board hit a small bump, launching him into a backflip. He landed on the back of his skull. From above his body, Poirot says he watched John Michael discover him, hold him up, and call 911 while another friend, Aaron, ran over. Blood poured from Poirot’s ears, vomit filled his lungs, and his body was rigid and unresponsive. Paramedics rushed him to the emergency room, where staff seemed to view his condition as likely fatal. Nurses spoke of him in the past tense, and his parents, a thousand miles away, received an urgent call to come immediately.

Poirot emphasizes that he felt no pain or sorrow during these moments. He describes his spirit slipping out of his body as though leaving behind a worn physical shell and then being drawn upward through a vertical tunnel of living light. A voice told him that he had an appointment. As his spirit ascended, his entire life replayed in a flash. He perceived that many material accomplishments he had valued mattered far less than he had thought, while certain people and moments mattered far more. He says that he saw Jesus standing beside him at every stage of the review, even during times Poirot had denied God’s presence. On earth, his body lay unconscious in the intensive-care unit for roughly 18 days; in heaven, the experience felt simultaneously as brief as a minute and as long as a lifetime.

After passing through the tunnel, Poirot says that he arrived at the center of a city illuminated not by sun or moon but by the glory of God. His eyes locked with Jesus’s eyes, and he describes being seized by a force stronger than gravity. Poirot describes the throne room around him as vast yet intimate, filled with elders, cherubim (angelic living creatures), the seven Spirits of God, a biblical image from Revelation, harps of praise, and golden bowls. He observed mansions handcrafted for each person, along with mountains, golden streets, libraries, and universities, but he emphasizes that nothing in heaven draws attention to itself; everything points to God’s glory. Overwhelmed by reverent fear at his own history of addiction and hypocrisy, Poirot fell face-down. Jesus called him by name, wrapped his arms around him, and welcomed him home with joy beyond description. Jesus’s eyes conveyed that Poirot was loved with the same passionate love that God has for Jesus himself. Poirot was shown a room in Jesus’s mansion bearing a special name on a white stone, which Poirot says the Lord has not permitted him to remember or share.

In response to Poirot’s fear about his sins, Jesus showed him the wounds below his hands, closer to his wrists. The pierced wounds glowed with what the author describes as sparkling wholeness, representing for him the finished work of the cross. Poirot says that Jesus questioned why he was looking for sin that no longer existed. Poirot perceived that his shame and guilt were a false delusion, already forgiven. Written above the scars on both wrists were Poirot’s first name. According to the author, Jesus told him that he had paid the price joyfully and that there is no record of sin in heaven, only a record of Jesus’s blood. Jesus then commissioned Poirot to reveal who Jesus really is and how much he believes in people so that they can be set free by the truth.

Poirot says that Jesus provided him with a detailed life review from God’s perspective. Before the universe was created, Poirot existed as a thought in God’s heart. At each difficult stage of Poirot’s earthly life, Jesus spoke prophetic declarations that countered the visible reality. When teachers identified young Poirot with a speech impediment and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, Jesus declared that he would speak for God. When the adolescent Poirot used marijuana, bullied peers, and cursed at teachers, Jesus declared that he would shine with God’s glory. When doctors predicted permanent incapacitation during the coma, Jesus declared that Poirot would fulfill his destiny. The author states that all these prophetic words eventually came to pass.

Poirot says that Jesus also took him to view the creation of humanity, experienced not as the distant past but as the present moment. Poirot watched as God breathed him into existence. Jesus showed him how many people struggle to see God truly because they have been bruised and rejected by those who were supposed to represent him, including fathers, pastors, and churches. Poirot says that he sensed Jesus’s deep anger toward religious institutions that, in the author’s view, have replaced his presence with tradition.

Poirot describes Jesus’s physical appearance as unlike the soft, passive figure often portrayed in media. In his account, Jesus stood roughly 5’11” to 6’ tall, with muscular strength, ultimate authority, and meekness combined. His hair radiated white light while also carrying curly dark tones, which Poirot describes as having a multidimensional quality. His skin tone was darker than Poirot expected: Middle Eastern, Jewish Israeli.

Poirot says that heaven’s colors are far richer than anything on earth, experienced through sight, sound, smell, touch, and taste. Songs come from praise at God’s throne and reverberate across all of heaven. Poirot also describes flowers and trees along the river of life producing songs and sounds, with each expression of praise seeming fresh.

Poirot says that Jesus took him to witness two biblical events on a timeline he describes as circular rather than linear. First, Poirot saw the Old Testament prophet Moses, afraid and feeling worthless, receiving God’s commissioning at the burning bush. When Moses protested his inadequacy, God responded by declaring his own identity. Poirot connects Moses’s fear to his own insecurities, which he says disappeared as he encountered the same God. Second, he saw the prophet Elisha from 2 Kings 6, whose servant’s eyes were opened to see horses and chariots of fire surrounding an enemy army. At the top of the hillside, Poirot says that he saw Jesus on a white horse as the central presence within the fiery scene.

In Poirot’s account, a holy fire in the throne room transformed his desires. He understood that Jesus died to free him from sin rather than to excuse continued sin. Jesus also showed him the crown of thorns, which bore Poirot’s name, and the full agony of the crucifixion, including separation from God the Father. Poirot then describes witnessing the moment God thundered from the throne and raised Jesus back to life.

Poirot recounts what Jesus revealed about evil’s origins as part of the book’s discussion of theodicy, the theological question of why an all-powerful and good God allows evil and suffering: Lucifer, originally created to serve close to God, eventually believed that he could replace God. In the Garden of Eden, according to Poirot’s account, Satan twisted God’s words to convince Eve and Adam to eat from the forbidden tree, a sacred space where God would fellowship with them. Adam’s choice transferred humanity’s God-given authority over the earth to Satan. Poirot states that God isn’t responsible for evil; it results from humanity’s free-will rebellion. He affirms that hell was created solely for fallen angels, not for human beings, and describes seeing Jesus weep over this truth. Addressing the scope of forgiveness, the author argues that even someone as evil as Adolf Hitler could have received forgiveness had he repented, while he explicitly states that he’s not dismissing responsibility for the atrocities of the Holocaust or the pain caused by them.

Poirot also describes the Lamb’s Book of Life, a biblical image that he presents as a heavenly record of those who are born again. In his account, he saw names written, signed, and sealed in Jesus’s blood. He then describes fallen angels as unseen spiritual forces operating in a second heaven, influencing human thoughts and using people’s fearful, ignorant, or angry words against them. 

Poirot includes the testimony of Ginger Ziegler, grandmother of his friend John Michael. A couple of weeks before, Ginger felt compelled to pray against death around John Michael’s house without knowing why. On the day of the accident, she sensed a fall in the spiritual realm before anyone told her what had happened. She later visited Poirot in the hospital with his mother and commanded death to leave. Shortly after, according to Ginger’s testimony, Poirot woke up.

By the week of November 12, 2021, just before doctors were set to perform a tracheotomy that Poirot says would have affected his voice, he woke from the coma. Despite weighing only 130 pounds, nearly half his normal weight, he got out of bed and walked. Over the following months, every injury healed: His shattered skull mended, his collapsed lung was restored, his hearing and vision returned, and his voice came back. The book includes before-and-after medical images that Poirot presents as evidence of his physical recovery. Within a couple of months, he was stronger than before the accident.

Poirot describes his life transformation: He repented, devoted himself to loving God and others, and married his wife, Ally; the couple expect their first child in the fall of 2025. He shares his testimony on YouTube, reaching millions, and travels the world. He concludes with a salvation prayer for readers and a bonus section addressing critics, inviting them to test the book against Scripture. He cites biblical accounts that he views as parallels to his experience rather than independent proof, including the apostle Paul’s account of being caught up to the third heaven and the first Christian martyr Stephen’s vision of Jesus while being stoned.