Posted on 05/01/2014 3:20:40 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
A recent piece I wrote on hell was inspired, in part, by the story of 23 Minutes in Hell, an account from a gentleman named Bill Wiese of a nighttime experience in which, he believed, he was permitted to experience hell for a short period of time in order to return to the land of the living and tell everyone that hell is for real. MY own post was not a careful exegetical treatment of the issue of damnation, but a description of a personal struggle between the vision of the afterlife I have inherited from my evangelical upbringing and my own scripture-shaped intuitions of what it means to call God loving.
In this guest post, Hank Hanegraaff asks an important and related question: What are we to make of these near-death experience accounts in the first place? I’m exceedingly grateful to Mr Hanegraaff — the famed “Bible Answer Man” and author of a new book on the afterlife — for this guest post:
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By Hank Hanegraaff
In 2006 real estate broker Bill Wiese became a New York Times best-selling author with the publication of 23 Minutes in Hell. During his alleged out-of-body experience, Wiese uncovered a wealth of brand new information regarding the hellish side of afterlife, including temperature (300 degrees/zero humidity); location (center of the earth); reptilian-looking demons (some in excess of fifteen feet tall) who rule over and torture humans; rats the size of dogs and snakes as big as trains.
The flip side of the afterlife hit the headlines with the 2010 publishing phenomenon Heaven Is for Real: A Little Boy’s Astounding Story of His Trip to Heaven and Back. In it, Wesleyan pastor Todd Burpo tells of how his son Colton endured the equivalent of a near-death experience. Speaking “with the simple conviction of an eyewitness,” Colton revealed a heaven with “jeweled gates, shining rivers, and streets of gold”; a God with blue eyes, yellow hair, and huge wings; a Jesus with sea-green-bluish eyes, brown hair, no wings, but with a rainbow colored horse; and a Holy Spirit who is bluish but hard to see.
It wasn’t until 2012, however, that the mother of all near-death experiences emerged. “As arrogant as that might sound,” writes Dr. Eben Alexander in his mega-bestseller Proof of Heaven: A Neurosurgeon’s Journey into the Afterlife, mine was “a technically near-impeccable near-death experience, perhaps one of the most convincing such cases in modern history.” Through it he grasped the essence of all religion and the single most important truth in the universe, namely, unconditional love. Says Alexander: “You are loved and cherished, dearly, forever. You have nothing to fear. There is nothing you can do wrong.”
Though novel, near-death experiences are hardly new. During medieval times stories of trips to heaven and hell were a potent means by which unbelievers were converted and believers convinced to stick to the straight and narrow. Still, it wasn’t until 1975 that the moniker near-death experience (NDE) was coined by the occult parapsychologist Raymond Moody in the run-away best-seller Life After Life. Since then the endless stream of stories concerning subjective experiences occurring during a state of unconsciousness brought on by a medical crisis, such as an accident, suicide attempt, or cardiac arrest, have flooded the market. Precipitating the question, “What’s up with near-death experiences?”
First, we should note that the subjective recollections of near-death experiencers are wildly divergent and irreconcilable. Wiese’s notion of reptilian-looking demons commissioned to torture humans as care-takers of hell hardly squares with Alexander’s version of an afterlife in which unconditional love reigns supreme. Both can be wrong. But both can’t be right. Not only so, but the implications of such subjective predilections are profound. If Wiese is right the biblical authors are wrong. One may find demons as caretakers of hell in medieval tomes but never in Scripture. Conversely, if Alexander is right, Hitler merely dies in the comforting arms of his mistress with no eternal consequences. Such is no doubt solace for modern-day killers. After murdering his mother, twenty children, and six adults in the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre in Connecticut, Adam Lanza blissfully soared off on what Alexander has romanticized as “the wing of a butterfly.”
Furthermore, worthy of note is the subjective specter of hyperliteralism. As such, it is not surprising for heavenly travelers to return from the afterlife with tales of “a great domed hall” (Mary Neal, To Heaven and Back), “streets of gold” (Don Piper, 90 Minutes in Heaven), and “pure, white angels with fantastic wings,” green demons with long fingernails and hair made of fire, and an earless devil, replete with three heads, a nasty nose, and moldy teeth (Alex Malarkey, The Boy Who Came Back from Heaven). Such exacting literalism has become pandemic. For example, it is not uncommon to see heaven described as a translucent cube measuring fifteen hundred miles in each direction. (One wonders if, by the same interpretive method, the present earth is set on pillars. After all, does not the Bible say that God “shakes the earth from its place and makes its pillars tremble?”) Small wonder then that terrestrial travelers return from near-death experiences with stories of pearly gates, brightly colored horses, and a Holy Spirit that is, well, “kind of blue.”
Finally, while near-death experiencers seem convinced that their particular version of the afterlife is the real McCoy, in reality natural explanations might actually be far more realistic. Psycho-active drugs ingested during a medical crisis can cause experiences strikingly similar to NDEs. Physiological factors, such as oxygen deprivation and the release of endorphins may play a role in NDEs as well. In her book, Dying to Live: Near-Death Experiences, Dr. Susan Blackmore argues that a lack of oxygen in the brain can trigger both autoscopic and transcendental episodes in which NDErs leave their bodies and/or move through dark tunnels in route to being embraced by the light. Moreover, psychological factors, including fantasy proneness, may also play a role in near-death experiences. Statistically, one out of every twelve Americans is predisposed to creating a fantasy out of thin air and then believing it to be true.
Considered collectively, psychopharmacological, physiological, and psychological explanations provide a compelling naturalistic rationale for near-death experiences. But a word of caution is in order. Naturalistic explanations assume that consciousness is merely a function of the physical brain. However we can be certain that this is not the case in that the mind and brain have different properties. As aptly noted by Drs. J. P. Moreland and Gary Habermas (Beyond Death: Exploring the Evidence for Immortality), “the subjective texture of our conscious mental experiences—the feeling of pain, the experience of sound, the awareness of color—is different from anything that is simply physical. If the world were only made of matter these subjective aspects of consciousness would not exist. But they do exist! So there must be more to the world than matter.” Indeed, if we are merely material, libertarian freedom (freedom of the will) does not exist. Instead we are fatalistically relegated to a world in which everything is a function of factors such as brain chemistry and genetics. Reason itself is reduced to the status of conditioned reflex. Moreover, the very concept of love is rendered meaningless.
In sum, purely naturalistic explanations may account for autoscopic and transcendental episodes, but what they cannot account for is consciousness. Despite the fact that near-death experiences are wildly divergent and dangerously subjective, they nonetheless serve to highlight the reality of consciousness—something Dr. Alexander should have comprehended long before flying off on the wings of a mythological butterfly.
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Hank Hanegraaff is president of the Christian Research Institute and host of the Bible Answer Man broadcast heard daily throughout the United States and Canada via radio, satellite radio Sirius-XM 131, and the Internet at Equip.org. Hank is the author of many books including the recently released AfterLife: What You Need to Know about Heaven, the Hereafter, and Near Death Experiences (Worthy Publishing, 2013).
Familiar ground rationally discussed here. There are a couple of worthwhile personal experiences posted.
I also recommend “The Wisdom of Near-Death Experiences: How understand NDEs can help us live more fully” by Dr. Penny Sartori
Perhaps that's why it's called a Near Death Experience, no?
Are you saying that you don’t believe the Bible? Jesus didn’t raise Lazarus from the dead according to you? I think you are mistaken.
Hence “NEAR death”. Been there done that.
I find it difficult to believe that Christians should look at Jesus bringing Lazarus back from the dead as being the new normative experience.
“Abraham rejoiced to see My day...God is God of the living, not of the dead”
The 3 children of Fatima were taken to see heaven and hell. I believe there were many other accounts among saints and holy people. They all attest to the happiness of heaven but also tell of hell much like Dante described.
The patients sometimes would describe what was going on to her and close to the end what they were seeing although they could not really describe it. One day she got called in on her day off. She had been working about an hour and another building called her and told her to get to her grandmothers room STAT. Her grandmother was in her last couple of hours and she was with her. In the final minutes she watched her grandmothers hand movements. She had been a piano and voice teacher and her hand movement were her directive ones.
In ICU she heard a monitor go off meaning someones heart wasn't beating. The nurses rushed in and check and asked her if she was OK. She said yea but that person across the rooms alarm went off. They told her that was yours no one is over there. The next thing in ICU she remember was fear and suddenly feeling the bed rocking as if it were rocking bed.
My dad tells me of something he saw after his dad had passed. He was in the Navy when word came and he went home on leave. WW2 had just ended. They released him on a hardship so he could care for his mother and two minor siblings.
He said he was awake laying in bed and his dad walked in the room and sat down on his bed and looked at him a minute then got up and left. He never said nothing. Dad wasn't one to make up stories or tall tales especially on something like this.
I believe near death experiences many times are what our spirit witnesses and not as such our physical being. For whatever reason it may not be time for the spirit to depart from the earthly body even if the earthly body is at death. GOD breathes life into us. It is His to give or takeaway, extend or cut short, for our own sake or the sake of others.
Do you realize that hypoxia (lack of oxygen) causes euphoria (a sense of well being)?
God declared that ‘life is in the blood’. So, when the blood is dead, you really are dead; the blood broken down to where even ‘harvesting’ some organs is pointless. I think it was just this sort of understanding that possibly caused the Lord to delay his visit to Lazarus’ tomb. Four days.....; he definitely took it ‘over the top’, making sure no one could dispute that that was truly a resurrection from the dead.
Thank you for sharing.
Baloney. Those are assumptions based on nothing.
They have nothing to do with the topic at hand.
I’ve seen more than enough Catholics use that same tactic on this board. It’s disingenuous.
Thanks for the ping. I think people report having different Near Death Experiences because they go to different places.
In cases where they report different experiences of heaven, it is worth remembering that the New Testament Greek word translated “heaven” is actually plural — heavens.
God works all miracles — even near death experiences.
About 29 years ago my wife and I worked in a nursing home. I was not involved in patient care but she was. She worked as a Nurses assistant for 5 years. In that time she sat with many dieing patients in their final hour and seconds. When a patient told you I'm going home I won't be here tomorrow they didn't mean they were going back to their residence. It usually meant next morning when you got to work they told you the patient passed earlier.
The patients sometimes would describe what was going on to her and close to the end what they were seeing although they could not really describe it. One day she got called in on her day off. She had been working about an hour and another building called her and told her to get to her grandmothers room STAT. Her grandmother was in her last couple of hours and she was with her. In the final minutes she watched her grandmothers hand movements. She had been a piano and voice teacher and her hand movement were her directive ones.
My wife has has several near death experiences which began a couple of months after we had met. The first one I was with her and she collapsed at a mall. She had suddenly lost all ability to move her limbs. I put her in her car and was rushing her to the ER. She was in the process of leaving this world and was describing it to me quite clearly. Yes she did see lights. She was also at peace during this. This was about 3:00pm. We made it to the ER and the first night was touch and go.
In ICU she heard a monitor go off meaning someones heart wasn't beating. The nurses rushed in and check and asked her if she was OK. She said yea but that person across the rooms alarm went off. They told her that was yours no one is over there. The next thing in ICU she remember was fear and suddenly feeling the bed rocking as if it were rocking bed.
My dad tells me of something he saw after his dad had passed. He was in the Navy when word came and he went home on leave. WW2 had just ended. They released him on a hardship so he could care for his mother and two minor siblings.
He said he was awake laying in bed and his dad walked in the room and sat down on his bed and looked at him a minute then got up and left. He never said nothing. Dad wasn't one to make up stories or tall tales especially on something like this.
I believe near death experiences many times are what our spirit witnesses and not as such our physical being. For whatever reason it may not be time for the spirit to depart from the earthly body even if the earthly body is at death. GOD breathes life into us. It is His to give or takeaway, extend or cut short, for our own sake or the sake of others.
A metaphysical naturalist cannot deal with qualia - things which can only be experienced and cannot be conveyed, e.g. love/hate, pain/pleasure.
He also cannot deal with mind, soul or spirit and must declare them to be epiphenomena of the physical brain. Epiphenomena are secondary phenomena which cannot cause anything to happen.
If he really buys such nonsense, why would he accept an award - after all his brain did it? How could he ever justify punishing the whole physical body for something the brain did? LOLOL!
Thank you for sharing.
They’re still alive.
Ask Martin’s daughter about that. She might tell a different story than the sanitized Hanegraaff version.
Self-ping for later.
I've read that when children have NDEs, Catholic children are far more likely to report seeing the Virgin Mary during their time in Heaven. Protestant children almost never report this. I'd like to believe that NDEs are real, but things like this make me wonder.
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