Posted on 01/21/2010 6:27:18 AM PST by marshmallow
In new book, he says that near-death accounts transcend cultures and ages
The near-death experience story is so common that it has become a bit of a cliché: A medical patient, hanging in a murky limbo between life and death, is drawn through a tunnel of bright light, meets their maker, and is told they must return to the land of living.
But that scenario played out letter-perfectly for Mary Jo Rapini. And her story is getting firm backing by a doctor who has studied some 1,300 near-death experiences. Medical doctor Jeffrey Long chronicles Rapini’s story, along with his own research, in a new book: “Evidence of the Afterlife: The Science of Near-Death Experiences.”
In the book, Long contends his study shows that accounts of near-death experiences play out remarkably similarly among the people who have had them, crossing age and cultural boundaries to such a degree that they can’t be chalked up simply to everyone having seen the same Hollywood movie.
Through a tunnel
Appearing with Dr. Long on TODAY Wednesday, Rapini related her near-death experience to Meredith Vieira. A clinical psychologist, Rapini had long worked with terminal cancer patients, and when they told her of their near-death experiences, she would often chalk their stories up as a reaction to their pain medication.
But in April 2003, she faced her own mortality. Rapini told Vieira she suffered an aneurysm while working out a gym and was rushed to the hospital. She was in an intensive care unit for three days when she took a turn for the worse.
“All of a sudden [doctors] were rushing around me and inserting things into me, and they called my husband,” she told Vieira.
“I looked up and I saw this light; it wasn’t a normal light, it was different. It was luminescent.
(Excerpt) Read more at today.msnbc.msn.com ...
If I’m not mistaken, when Bill Clinton had his heart attack several years ago, he described something that sounded like it may have been something like that. It wasn’t described as a “near death” experience, but that’s what it sounded like to me, only in reverse.
For some reason, there never seems to be any reports of people going to the bad place, and coming back to tell of it, like there are of people seeing the light and coming back...maybe there is no bad place?
...or no coming back, just the welcome matt.
If that is their experience it should be enough to scare the hell outta them and set them on a new path.
It typically is.
Jesus said to the thief on the cross : "Today you will be with me in Paradise", so in that sense, sure - but there is no "time" as we know it in heaven (try wrapping your mind around the concept of "eternity").
If we are not "saved", though, we cannot enter the presence of God because we are still stained by sin - until and unless that sin is washed by the "blood of the Lamb", which is what happens when we ask Jesus to be our Lord and Savior (even for a wretch like me).
Nice post - thanks.
There was one on FR about a week ago. Long story short: the once-agnostic Doctor who brought this heart-patient back from a completely horrifying vision of hell is now a Christian.
.
The afterlife. Massachusetts just discovered it.
Well, we really won’t know until after the fact.
Thanks for sharing that. Very beautiful and sad at the same time.
Another person who went to Hell that comes to mind was Faith Movement pastor Kenneth Hagin Sr. “Pop” Hagin also wrote a booklet called “I went to Hell” where he described the experience.
Baloney.
He has evidence that he just wrote a book.
Soon at fine retailers near you, of course.
I knew a young girl with leukemia and she told the priest that she was ready to go but couldn’t until her mother was ready.
The day she died she was laying in her mother’s arms when she perked up and insisted that they had to kneel and pray and then she was in total peace.
I can recall two teens who waited until thier mom’s accepted they were dying. I was there for one of them. Gustavo was 15, he told his mom that it was ok and to let him go home. He would be there for her. And that God would be right beside her.
She accepted this, and a few hours later he died in her arms. It was astounding!! He was a good kid.
I am so sorry for your loss...thank you for sharing that story. (hug)
Case of misplaced comma. Try Luke 23:43 as, And Jesus said to him, “Truly I say to you today, you shall be with me in paradise.” In other words, “I’m telling you right now that someday you will be with me in paradise.”
I’ve seen such reports mentioned, but never found them myself. According to the summary I read, there are people whose NDE involved something so truly horrifying that they only remember it for a short time. A day or 2 later, they’d insist they experienced nothing, remembered nothing.
Once when I was a teenager I had a dream about Hell. I remember the fact that I saw it, but I don’t remember the details of what I saw. And to be honest, I never want to.
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