When Bishop T.D. Jakes experienced a life-threatening medical emergency in the middle of a sermon last year, he had no idea it was actually a massive, near-fatal heart attack.

In an exclusive interview with TODAY on March 26, the famous pastor at The Potter’s House of Dallas told Craig Melvin he didn’t know the severity of what was happening to him because he hadn’t experienced any of the telltale symptoms of a heart attack.

“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 said. “And the reason I didn’t realize it was because I had none of the symptoms that they say. No numbness, no sharp pain, no anything. I just kind of drifted off to sleep. I didn’t know what it was, but I almost died.”

On November 23, 2024, the 67-year-old Bishop was in the middle of Sunday service at the nondenominational Christian megachurch when he suffered a near-fatal heart attack. In a livestream video of the moment, Jakes was seated while speaking into a microphone. Then, as he described on TODAY, Jakes paused his sermon, appearing to drift off, and began twitching before church officials quickly ran to help him onstage.

“[The doctor] said five minutes later, I’d have been dead on arrival,” Jakes shared on TODAY. “The right side of my heart had completely stopped getting blood at all.”

Jakes recalled that he had “felt fine” while he was standing during his sermon, but his “adrenaline dropped” when he sat down. “It exposed the fact that I was preaching with half of my heart closed through a clot,” he said. “And they had to go get it.”

Bishop TD Jakes during Woman Evolve 2024 at Globe Life Field on September 26, 2024 in Arlington, Texas. Photo: Eugenia R. Washington/Getty Images

At the time, The Potter’s House of Dallas issued a statement thanking the community for an “outpouring of love, prayers, and support,” only sharing that Jakes had experienced a “slight health incident.” On New Year’s Eve, returned to the church for service and shared with his congregation that he’d “almost died” more than a month prior. “Franky, I think I did, but God, in his infinite wisdom and great grace, brought me back to the same spot,” he said, as NBC 5 DFW reported, adding that he underwent emergency surgery

Jakes told Melvin on TODAY it’s “hard” for him to watch the video of the startling moment. “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.”

Four months after the heart attack, Jakes is busier than ever. He continues to deliver inspiring sermons onstage, hosts a weekly podcast, and has plans to sit down with Oprah Winfrey at the 2025 Good Soil Forum.