Meeting Jesus

Overview

I recently read Imagine Heaven which is a book that looks into NDE’s (Near Death Experiences) and the studies that have been done on them and it takes these visions of Jesus and heaven and puts them together so that we can get a better vision of what heaven and Jesus will look like.

Before we get too far into this I just want to say while this is extremely interesting it is not biblical. We don’t see the bible talking about people dying and coming back to life and saying that they witnessed heaven and so we have to take this for what it is. Possible extra biblical evidence that heaven exists. Some people do say that these visions are from demons not of heaven. Take that as you may.

Evidence

The evidences for Near Death Experiences being real is very strong. There are a very large number of people who have these Near Death Experiences and many of them describe very similar experiences across multiple cultures and can describe things in ways that do not make sense otherwise. I am going to discuss a few of the stories here that they talk about in the book but not to the extent to discuss them. I will talk about the 3 that made the biggest impression on me. If you are interested in more information about NDE’s I highly recommend checking the book out.

The first one was of a woman who died in the hospital. Her heart stopped, she was dead. While dead she said that she remembers floating over her body and watching the doctors work. She then floats out the window and up to the third floor of the hospital. On her way up she noticed a shoe on a window on the third floor that was blue well worn with a hole in the toe.

The second one was a man who leaned on a hand railing and fell 3 stories I believe. He landed on his head and was pronounced dead. His skull basically splattered on the sidewalk. He went to heaven and witnessed Jesus. When talking to Jesus he gets to see a recap of his life. Not judgement exactly but just the good and the bad of what he has done. He tells Jesus that he was not done and he wants to go back. 8 hours later he woke up in the morgue.

The third one that got my attention is about a family in a car crash. A mother and father and their 2 children. I cant remember the exact story but they were in a terrible car accident. The mother and one of the children ends up dying. After the accident before anyone shows up to help them the father appears and heaven and meets Jesus. Jesus tells him that he needs to go back. He then meets his wife as well. His wife tells him that she and the son will be ok and that he needs to go be with the other son. He asks several times where is son is but the wife just continues to insist that he goes back. He wakes up in the car and his wife and son are dead and his other son is screaming. He is able to get out of the car and help his son.

These three experiences to me are very convincing but it doesn’t stop there. You might be saying to yourself “these were all Americans and so of course they would see Jesus. It is the primary religion in the United States. What if I told you that they have also studied NDE’s in other countries, especially India. When non-christians have an NDE and they tend to describe the same exact figure that Christians describe. A man that is essentially made of light. They will say it is one of their Gods however their description does not match any of the Indian gods. Based on Paul’s version of seeing Jesus and the Apostles when they see his transfiguration we can see that these descriptions match what people who witness Jesus during their NDE.

My experience with Near Death Experiences

Several years ago my father in law had a heart attack and ended up on a ventilator in the hospital. While on the ventilator he was highly sedated and as they tried to work him off the ventilator he began screaming at us. He was pointing in the corner of the room screaming about how that’s not Terry! I am Terry! To this day it still brings me chills. Later after he had fully recovered we talked to him about it. He told us that he was floating above the room looking down on his body but didn’t even recognize his own body in such terrible shape it was in. He was urgently trying to tell us and his doctor that it was not him he was right there. At that time I thought he was just high on the medications and that he was hallucinating. Admittedly this could still be the case but I have started to lean towards this being an actual out of body experience. While he was not exactly dead at the time of the he was definitely not conscious (at least not from the perspective of his body). His story does seem to match other out of body experiences.

Conclusion

Looking at the evidence from the book I am very convinced that not only are Near Death Experiences real but that life after death is real. I highly recommend checking out Imagine Heaven. If you don’t believe in NDE’s (I was skeptical before reading) this book may help convince you. If you do believe in NDE’s this is a great book to get more evidence or just listen to the amazing stories or all of the studies that have been done and are being done on the subject. To me the amount of people who have looked into NDE’s is incredible.