NDEs Explained

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How Small Are You? 

Near-death experiences (NDEs) are stories from people who almost died and say they saw heaven, hell, or met a bright being of light or demon of darkness. But that only happens to a few people who struggle with death.

A VISION OF HEAVEN

Out of nowhere, a strong clear voice spoke to me, “Write this down!” I had just had a small glimpse of heaven and I was angry about it. I stood up from my couch in the living room at around two in the morning, while holding on to a dining area chair, when I suddenly found myself in heaven and I was mad about it. I still had stuff to do on earth and this place is boring, I thought.

I had instantly decided that this place is going to be the “kingdom of eternal boredom”, and I did not want to be here yet.

But I had just gotten a small glimpse of the place. At first, what I saw confirmed my suspicions. All I could see was the back of a whole bunch of people in front of me all wearing white shirts. I thought to myself that I was right. They were all facing the same way, forward, and they were bent over. So I took the opportunity to look around. But I thought to myself that this place is better than the other place I could have gone. Hell.

VISION OR DREAM

I’m not sure if this experience was a vision, a dream, or that I was actually there. But that voice I heard right after that experience was clear, “Write this down!” So I’m writing it down now.

CHANGED MY MIND

And then I looked up and looked around a bit more. I got just the tiniest of a glimpse of the beauty of heaven. I was suddenly overcome with gratefulness! My attitude did a 180 degree turn in a moment. It wasn’t gratefulness for being in such a beautiful place.

Only one thought occurred to me in that instant, and it was inescapable. I was a sinner and I didn’t deserve to be here. The only reason that I could be here was because Jesus died for me. It was because of Jesus! I was overwhelmed with eternal gratitude and thankfulness. Christ died for me so I could be here with Him forever!

HEAVENLY WORSHIP

So all I could think of to do was to fall on my face and crawl forward looking for the nail-pierced feet of Jesus to thank Him forever and ever. Just as quickly as I went there, I was back in my home. But now I have a new attitude of grateful praise.

A REAL NEAR-DEATH EXPERIENCE

When my wife, Debbie, was just six years old, she had an out-of-body experience. She had asthma and was very sick with croup one day. Croup is a condition which refers to the swelling around the vocal cords and other parts of the upper and middle airway that also causes a harsh repetitive cough.

She suddenly stopped breathing. Her dad found her in bed blue in the face. Then she was rushed to the nearest hospital in the fire chief’s car. He lived nearby. They told her parents that it wasn’t quite the emergency they thought but decided they would have to give her a tracheostomy.

SHE DIED

But she died during the procedure. Suddenly, she woke up during the surgery while hovering over her body. Then she saw all the nurses and the surgeon working on her. She felt no pain, only embarrassment because she saw herself on the operating table below her with only green shorts on. She floated up toward the lights.

ANGEL NURSE

The next thing she knew, she was back in her body in an oxygen tent. It may have been an angel disguised as a beautiful nurse with a glowing face and beautiful blonde hair who came over to wish her a “Happy Halloween!” She said that her brothers and sisters were Trick-or-Treating and were going to fill a big plastic orange pumpkin with candy for her.

No one at the hospital saw a nurse that looked like that. It would be awhile, though, until she could have the candy because she was in the hospital for a week. After that, she thought about her NDE and whether she would go to heaven when she died.

BROKEN PRAYERS 

Then, one night, she was crying in her bed. She told her mom it was because when she prayed it felt like her prayers were hitting the ceiling and bouncing back. Her mom told her that she needed say sorry to God for things and pray and to accept Christ as her Savior! She remembered how she had tsken something without permission. She repented and asked Jesus to come into her heart and forgive her. She prayed with her mom. After that, she never again had that feeling of her prayers stopping at the ceiling! That NDE became her Christian testimony of how she became born again. 

MAN IS MINISCULE

But most people don’t care about death until they are faced with it, either themselves or with an aquaintance or loved one. They just go on living as if they are the center of the universe. Life revolves around them. They think they’re big stuff. But how big are they, really?

About 1.3 million Earths could fit inside the Sun. Shortly after takeoff, when an airplane gets to around 10,000 feet, it’s practically impossible to spot a human being on Earth. You just disappear. Astronauts cannot see individual cities on Earth from the moon with the naked eye because the city lights are too dim compared to the brightness of the Earth. Light from the Sun takes a little over 8 minutes to reach Earth, but a car traveling at highway speeds would take 170 years to make that trip one way. How big do you think you really are?

Our sun is surrounded by over 200 billion stars just in the Milky Way Galaxy alone. There are likely more stars in the universe than grains of sand on all the beaches of the Earth. While it’s impossible to count precisely, scientific estimates suggest there are roughly 7.5 quintillion grains of sand on all of the Earth’s beaches.

In James 4:14, the Bible asks,  “What is your life? It is even a vapour, that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth.” Yet, God still cares about you!

You may think there is no God. Job 38:4 asks, “Where were you when I laid the foundation of the Earth? Tell Me, if you have understanding?” God “stretches out the heavens like a curtain and spreads [stars] out like a tent to dwell in” (Isaiah 40:22). Isaiah presents the God of the universe surveying souls on Earth as He “sits above the circle of the Earth.” He sees people, “its inhabitants, like grasshoppers.” If the universe spans 100 billion light-years across, how big are you, really?

I sometimes think that our lives are about as big as a grain of dust on the bottom of an ant’s foot on the back side of Mongolia compared to the magnificance of God. Job 25:6 asks, “How much less man, that maggot, and the son of man, that worm!” We are just a grain of sand on the beaches of humanity, yet we think we own our universe. We think we really matter. We think we are the center of our world. We think everyone and everything revolves around us. Yet Psalm 144:3 asks, “O Lord, what is man, that You take knowledge of him?“

ETERNAL DESTINY

Many people aren’t sure if they are going to go to heaven or not. Many more think that this life on Earth is it and there is nothing after death. Yet some have died , and been resuscitated and come back to tell us about their experience. There are near death experiences (NDE), because they never actually died permanently. 

SHOULD I STAY OR GO?

Debbie reveals that she has had more visions of heaven after that first out-of-body near death experience. She said, 

“I Had a dream that I went to heaven and I was in this beautiful place that looked like a lush golf course with brilliant flowers blooming everywhere. They were like a 100 times brighter than any colors on earth. And then I saw trees that were brighter, green grass, bright green.  It’s like neon green 5D, and I saw this clearly.

MANSIONS

I went into this house, a big mansion. And in the front room Jesus was teaching. I just knew it was him. It looked like all of my relatives that had died and went on before me to heaven. There in the kitchen was my Nana and my great-grandmother cooking. It looked like they were getting ready for a big dinner like Thanksgiving.  And I got so excited to see my relatives that I wanted to stay there with them forever.

FREE WILL

Then all of a sudden, there’s this big whiteboard like a magical whiteboard with a little cherub angel wearing a gold outfit and the baby angel put everything up on the board reminding me of everything that I was supposed to be doing in my life: Be a teacher, married to my husband, and everything else. But every time I considered that I wanted to stay there with my relatives with everything so beautiful, then everything he had written would be erased off the board with a magic wand eraser.

COME BACK

Then I heard the doorbell ring in this mansion and I went to the front door. At the front door were two of my students from my classroom at school and their father.  They were troubled boys that had a lot of problems. And they were being raised by their older grandparents as father and mother. I asked, what are you doing here? They said, please, you have to come back with us. We can’t do it without you. We need you, please. I was like, I guess, I should go back to earth. And then, as soon as I decided to go back down to earth, the cherub put everything back up on the whiteboard; What I was supposed to do the rest of my life. And then as soon as I realized it, I was back, I woke up, I was back in my bed, but I had such a euphoric feeling about it all, it’s all so beautiful. 

HEAVENLY MUSIC

Another time when I was in bed at about two o’clock in the morning, I couldn’t sleep. My dad had passed away about two weeks before then. I was thinking about him being in heaven and when all of a sudden, I heard this beautiful heart music above my husband’s head. He was sleeping next to me. It was the most beautiful music I have ever heard in my life.  I’m sure it was heavenly music. It was like just for about one second. And then it was gone. It was like, what, where did that come from? Could it have been from the cell phone by my bed? No. My husband was asleep. It was all quiet in the house. I thought it was like a heavenly music. I was carefully listening for my husband’s breathing to see if he’s still alive. He was breathing alright.  But that music was heavenly like a window opened to heaven for a second.

EARTH MATTERS

So and then I had a dream. That was shortly after my dad had passed away. He came to me and said, “Once you get to heaven, your life on earth is over. Can’t work for the Lord anymore.” So he told me that I needed to go back to work at school. This was right before school started in the fall. He said, “You have to go and do your work for the Lord. Every day of your life, every day, is precious. Don’t waste it.  Go back and serve the Lord. I had a really great time going back to work at school knowing that my dad ordered me to go back and serve the Lord. 

PETS IN HEAVEN

I don’t know what heaven’s gonna be like, but there is one more story I want to tell you. I also had a dream after my dog died.  And she was waiting for me on the other side of this big bridge with hydrangea flowers in her mouth. Yeah. Her name was Rosie, and I loved that dog like my own child. We had her for 15 years. She was a red Chow Chow, a beautiful dog. The hydrangeas seemed like a symbol of my grandparents because they had blue hydrangeas growing their front yard. I just loved them. 

And then later, I had another dream that she was in heaven along with some other dogs. And my pets that died wre there too. Rosie and other dogs were under this big tree that looked like the Tree of Life, sleeping, waiting for us to get to heaven to greet them. And then when Rosie saw me, she woke up and ran over to me and jumped on me and kissed me. Then she showed me all around how beautiful it was there. And they had a river of water and  she said it was the River of Life. And it was so beautiful, just trees everywhere and animals everywhere, and it was like the Garden of Eden I guess

LOOKING FORWARD

So I know the Bible talks about how we’ll have some mansions that Jesus prepared for us in heaven. And it’s going to be a beautiful place. The streets were made of gold.  And I’m really looking forward to that day when either the rapture happens first or I die, and go to heaven again. I can’t wait to see Jesus face-to-face and all my relatives too. It will be a great day.”

LOVE IS OUR DESTINY

(A poem by Peter Zacharoff)

When life lets go—its final sting,

the cord is cut, the pain takes wing.

The body rests; the soul takes flight

and rises toward a loving Light.

A peace pours out like healing spring,

it soothes the wounds of suffering;

it lifts our eyes to holy height

and folds us in His warming Light.

Some stand where colors dance and sing,

where loved ones smile and welcoming;

but told, “Go back—set wrongs aright,”

and guide lost hearts toward Heaven’s Light.

Others reach a line no soul may cling,

where every deed returns to sting;

their lives unfold in searching sight,

each moment weighed in judging Light.

They fall through realms where shadows cling,

where flames reach out and searing stings;

yet mercy meets their desperate plight

hands pull them back from endless night.

A Voice that’s soft and reassuring,

yet firm with truth no lie can bring,

speaks, “Child, go back—walk in My might,

and share My love with faithful sight.”

We breathe again this

new morning,

yet heaven’s peace clings lingering;

it seals our hearts with hope so bright

and stirs our souls with pure delight.

Though visions change by land and king,

through tongue and tribe and everything,

one truth resounds in every flight—

Love calls all souls toward endless Light.

Love says, “believe,

turn to Christ now;

and Life receive.”

PEOPLE WHO EXPERIENCE TEMPORARY DEATH AND COME BACK ARE FROM ALL CULTURES THROUGH ALL TIME.

Near-death experiences (NDEs) are stories from people who almost died and say they saw heaven or met a bright being of light or encountered endless fright. Pastor John Burke writes books about these stories, and he explains them in ways that agree with the Bible. But many NDE stories found online or on TV say things that do not match what the Bible teaches. For example, the Bible says people die once and then face God’s judgment, so they do not normally come back to give new messages. It also warns us not to talk with the dead or trust “spirit beings,” because this can lead to deception. Some NDEs say everyone goes to heaven or that all religions are the same, but Jesus said He is the only way to the Father. 

Jesus said unto him, “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life; no man cometh unto the Father, but by Me,” John 14:6.

Other stories never mention God’s holiness or judgment, even though the Bible says only the redeemed can enter heaven. Some people return from NDEs saying we get to heaven by being kind or learning lessons, but the Bible teaches that we are saved by God’s grace only through repentant faith in the atoning work of Jesus on the cross, not by our good works. A few NDEs even act like they are giving new information about heaven, but the Bible says its teachings are complete and we should not add to them.

Pastor Burke tries to explain these problems by saying that NDEs are not actual death but “near death experiences,” so they are only previews before crossing a barrier at the point of no return. He says we must test every spirit to see if it honors Jesus, and he strongly rejects the idea that all religions lead to heaven. He reminds readers that some NDEs include frightening scenes of judgment, and he teaches that salvation is through blood-payment of Jesus alone. He also says Scripture is the final authority, and NDEs should never be treated as new revelation. 

Even with his careful explanations, many NDE stories still contain ideas that clash with the Bible, and meeting supposed dead relatives or mysterious light-beings is still hard to understand biblically. Because of this, Christians should be careful. Burke’s books can help people think about heaven, but all NDEs should be checked against Scripture—just like the Bereans in Acts 17:11, who studied the Bible every day to see if what they heard was true.

“These were more noble than those in Thessalonica, in that they received the word with all readiness of mind, and searched the scriptures daily, whether those things were so.”

We may be tiny souls, compared to heaven and the universe, but Jesus meets us face to face and fellowships with us personally.

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