[[She descended into a cold darkness where she couldn’t see anything at all and just the sensation of suffocating pressure on her and despair all around]]
That was my 3xperience too- only it wasn’t cold, but unbearably hot (due to the fever I had no doubt). I too spoke out, after I failed a test God gave me (which proves that the nde wasn’t biblical at all), and the voice told me not to worry, that I didn’t exist, and that is when I felt a deep deep despondency as I was cast into the outer darkness where I didn’t exist in body, but where I knew I was all alone forever- it was more frightening than the “hell” I had descended to.
Mind you, I never knew anything about outer darkness, hell, or anything at that point- it was an experience that frightened me so badly that I grabbed ahold of the doctor who had revived me and told him he needed to accept christ so that he didn’t experience what I had just gone through.
I know now that the ‘experience’ was very likely misfiring synapses because what happened was not biblical (ie the test by God to see if I would remain in hell or not), knowing ehat I onow now, it’s pretty clear that Satan tried to discourage me by making me believe I had gone to hell despite. Being born again. And he really did cause me some really awful doubt for a long time after that.
I do beleive that nde’s, whether an actual event or one that is conjured up in the mind because of misfiring synapses, that Satan can and likely does use them to keep people blind to God and his word- the unsaved person who “sees the light, and their loved ones in heaven” are very likely to convince themselves that they must be a Christian, and never seek salvation because of it because they wrongly feel that they had a “special message from God” when in fact it was the opposite.
Have you ever seen the movie “Wristcutters?” It was a little independent film years ago that starts off really dark but by the end turns very optimistic. It’s about a sort of Limbo that suicides go to…the main character, Zia, has killed himself by cutting his wrists and wakes up to find himself in a place that is “just like real life, only worse.” The movie then evolves into a Buddy road trip theme where he travels with other suicides to try to find his ex-girlfriend, who has also “offed.” On the way, they pick up a hitch hiker, Mikal, who is trying to find The PIC (People in Charge) to inform them that she is here by mistake because her heroine overdose was accidental.
yes, the movie misses opportunities to talk about the effect such a selfish act has on those left behind, but it focuses on these extremely narcissistic characters who start to come to realizations by the end. Plus, Tom Waits has a cameo and the music is by Gogol Bordello. It drives home the point that the Hell we experience in real life is all a creation of the mind.