Bishop T.D. Jakes Reveals His Mid-Sermon Medical Emergency Was a ‘Massive Heart Attack’: ‘5 Minutes Later I’d Have Been Dead’

Jakes was rushed to the hospital for emergency surgery in November 2024 after collapsing in the middle of his sermon

Bishop T.D. Jakes is sharing new details about his November medical scare that shocked his congregation and the world.

On Nov, 24, 2024, Jakes, 67, was preaching to his congregation in The Potter’s House of Dallas and on a livestream when he suddenly slumped over on his stool, prompting people to rush to his aid. 

“I didn’t really realize what was happening to me onstage until I got to the hospital in an ambulance,” Jakes shared on the Wednesday, March 26, episode of the Today show. “And the doctor leaned over in my ear and said, ‘You’ve had a massive heart attack.’ “

Jakes noted that he didn’t have the traditional symptoms of a heart attack, which made the news surprising to him. 

“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 continued of his health incident, “The right side of my heart had completely stopped giving blood at all. And as long as I was up preaching I felt fine. But when I sat down, the adrenaline dropped and it exposed the fact that I was preaching with half of my heart closed with a clot.” 

The public figure had to undergo surgery to remove the clot, an experience Jakes said he was awake for. 

“The surgeons were operating while I was awake. They never put me to sleep,” he shared. “Technology, it’s amazing.”

And while he’s seen videos of his moment on stage, Jakes added that he didn’t feel present in that moment. 

“I wasn’t there in the chair. I didn’t experience like it looks like, it’s hard for me to look at that video because they had to claw the microphone out of my hand,” he recalled. “They had to claw it out of my hand, but in my mind I was in a quiet, peaceful, serene, white-enveloped, cloud-enveloped space. I was on my way out.” 

As a man of the cloth, Jakes found the entire incident to be a spiritual experience.

“In retrospect, it was such a privilege to stand on the other side to get a little glimpse of what that might be like or at least what it was like in that moment for me,” he said. “I think it was absolutely amazing. And then I had my whole church — and when I say my whole church I mean global not just the congregation, even people who didn’t go to my church — people everywhere sending prayers. I’m so thankful.”

After Jakes’ alarming onstage moment in November, he has since returned to preaching. And while this new interview marks his first time detailing exactly what happened to him, he previously shared that he had suffered a serious emergency. 

“Many of you don’t realize that you’re looking at a miracle,” Jakes told his congregation on Dec. 1 in a virtual appearance one week after the incident. “I faced a life-threatening calamity. I was rushed to the ICU unit. I had emergency surgery.”

At the time he said he’d had a complete physical shortly before his heart attack and had been given a clean bill of health. 

“The truth of the matter is sometimes things happen and they’re beyond our control. And sometimes things happen in this spiritual warfare,” Jakes said at the time. “I haven’t deduced the finality of all of that, but what I do know is greater is he that is in us and he does endure.”