I saw heaven. I spoke to Jesus and my unborn child. I came back with proof of God

Standing in a lush meadow, Steve Boyls locked eyes with a young boy who, although he had never seen him before, felt oddly familiar.

'Hi, my name is Daniel,' the boy told him. 'I think you're my dad.'

Daniel was the name Steve and his wife, Dr Kathy Boyls, chose for their unborn child decades earlier before the couple suffered a miscarriage early in the pregnancy.

When Steve told Daniel his mother would love to meet him, he claimed the child said: 'I know, I've already seen her.'

In the days that followed, Steve also came across his brother who he hadn't seen in three decades and a niece who had died just one week before her wedding. Every family dog Steve ever had bounded up to him with wagging tails and youth in their eyes.

While the 66-year-old was experiencing this grand reunion, his body was lying in a hospital bed in Tulsa, Oklahoma. He had been placed in a medically induced coma and hooked up to a ventilator due to a severe case of COVID-19, while Kathy sat next to him pleading for answers.

But for the three weeks Steve's body sat motionless, his 'spirit,' he later told the Daily Mail, was in heaven, guided by a guardian angel named Marzuka, an Arabic name for 'blessed.'

'I'm here to take you to heaven for a little while, while your body heals,' Steve claimed the angel told him. 'You're going to be just fine.'

Steve, now 69, is one of the one in ten Americans who have had a near-death experience (NDE), a transformative event that occurs during a severe medical crisis.

Some feel themselves being propelled down into a black hole, blinded by a bright light or wandering a Matrix-like grid. Many, like Steve, are met by an angel and taken to heaven for a visit. But when they return, the medical emergencies that nearly kill them often leave these patients with emotional whiplash.

Back on Earth, Steve faced a grueling recovery - re-learning how to do everything from sitting up in a chair to walking more than a handful of steps and gradually working his way up to chewing solid food - that left him feeling 'like a prisoner.'

In October, The Boyls released a book about their experience titled, I've Been to Heaven: The True Story of a Husband's Supernatural Near-Death Experience of the Afterlife, His Wife's Prayer That Brought Him Back, and God's Message of Hope for the World.

It was November 2021 when the Boyls and their daughter, a high school senior at the time, all caught COVID, which struck each of them differently.

'Our youngest daughter, she just felt like she had a little cold,' Steve told the Daily Mail. 'Kathy had a splitting headache that wouldn't go away, and I couldn't breathe.'

Steve's condition rapidly declined, forcing Kathy to rush him to the emergency room that December. Kathy, who works as a pediatrician, assumed her husband needed to spend a few days on a CPAP machine, which is usually used for sleep apnea and helps open up the airways.

'We had no idea what we were in for,' she told the Daily Mail.

Five days after arriving at the hospital, doctors intubated Steve - which involved inserting a tube into his trachea - and placed him on a ventilator to help him breathe. He spent 45 days on the ventilator, about three weeks of which were in a medically induced coma while doctors worked to keep him breathing.

It was then that Steve claims he transported to heaven and was greeted by Marzuka. He claimed his 'guardian angel' said he had been with Steve his entire life. Though the angel didn't have wings, Steve described him as wearing a long white gown adorned with gold trim on the sleeves and collar, carrying a broadsword on his back.

He claimed Marzuka escorted him around heaven to a meadow with grass that was 'a really brilliant color of green,' mountains and a beach next to the 'river of life.' There were no clouds, just a bright light covering the landscape, Steve said.

Time didn't seem to pass for Steve, and his spirit felt light and energized, with hardly a need to eat or sleep.

'I didn't have any sense that I had a sick body on Earth somewhere because my spirit just felt great. It was really amazing,' he told the Daily Mail.

Steve claimed to have met Jesus in his 'throne room,' adding that he showed Steve pictures of his body lying in the hospital bed and told him: 'This is you, but you're going to be just fine.'

As they left the throne room, Steve claimed that Marzuka told him it was time to wake up. The next thing Steve knew, he was awake in his hospital bed with Kathy right beside him.

Steve spent about three and a half months in the hospital, moving from the intensive care unit to an intermediate hospital and finally a rehabilitation center.

Spending three weeks in a coma had caused the muscles in his legs, arms and face to atrophy, or waste away, and it took several weeks from him to be able to speak and chew again.

And for 16 months after being released, Steve went through intense physical therapy to learn how to sit up and walk. He claimed that during that time, a 'flood of memories' came back to him about his time in heaven, propelling his recovery forward.

Along with traditional medications like blood thinners, Steve took 60 pills and supplements each day and had a team of nearly a dozen doctors monitoring his lungs, heart and blood.

'Every single one of them told me that it's a miracle you're alive,' he told the Daily Mail.

But nearly four years later, just ahead of his 70th birthday, Steve has no lasting health problems from his NDE and no longer has to take any prescription medications, which he and Kathy attribute to both the intense therapy and their faith.

Throughout recovery, Steve would detail his supposed experiences in heaven to Kathy, who would 'stay up half the night' typing them out. This became the basis of their book, which released on October 14 from Baker Publishing Group.

'People need to broaden their understanding of what heaven really is,' Steve told the Daily Mail.

'God appears to people more times than they realize. And I'm hoping that I can share my experience and let people know that, yes, God's real. Jesus is real. He's more real than the road you're walking on or the chair you're sitting in.'

I've Been to Heaven: The True Story of a Husband's Supernatural Near-Death Experience of the Afterlife, His Wife's Prayer That Brought Him Back, and God's Message of Hope for the World is available now on Amazon and through Baker Publishing Group.