Pastor TD Jakes spoke to Craig Melvin on Today, where he opened up about the recent health crisis that left him being rushed to the hospital in the middle of a sermon. Jakes was preaching at his home church of The Potter’s House, in Dallas, TX on November 23 when he began to shake and appear to be passing out. “I didn’t really realize what was happening to me onstage until I got to the hospital in an ambulance and fussing that it happened onstage, by the way, because I didn’t want it to happen, and the doctor leaned over my ear and said, ‘You had a massive heart attack,’” Jakes told Melvin.

Jakes informed Melvin he’d had “none of the symptoms.” “No numbness, no sharp pain, no anything. I just kind of drifted off to sleep,” he said. “I didn’t know what it was, but I almost died. “ His doctors would later inform him that the right side of his heart had stopped receiving blood. “As long as I was up preaching, I felt fine,” he said. “But when I sat down, the adrenaline dropped, and it exposed the fact that I was preaching with half of my heart closed through a clot. And they had to go get it.”

Despite the fear of the onlookers, Jakes described the moment in peaceful terms. “They had to claw the microphone 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,” he said. “Afterwards in retrospect, it was such a privilege to stand on the other side, to get a little glimpse of what it might be like, or at least what it was like in that moment for me. I think it was absolutely amazing.” Months after the incident, Jakes is packing his schedule with church events and a new podcast. He agreed with Melvin that he hadn’t let the experience slow him down. “No, I’m getting faster because one, I’m older. Two, I’m grateful. Three, I’ve got something to say,” he said.

Jakes also addressed the defamation suit he filed against Duane Youngblood, who claims Jakes sexually assaulted him in the 1980s. “I filed the suit because if you don’t ever speak back, it just continues to go on and on and on, and I decided enough is enough,” he said. The suit states that Youngblood’s accusations are “patently false.” Jakes called it a “desperate” move by the accuser. “I think that there’s a hopelessness and desperateness. Desperate people do desperate things, and they filed a motion to have it dismissed. … I don’t know what’s next. I didn’t see this coming.”