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For over three decades, John Burke has studied thousands of near-death experiences (NDEs) and discovered a striking commonality among them all: Every individual, regardless of their religious background, experiences the God of the Bible. “I interviewed 70 people on every continent, and found that they all encountered the same God; it didn't matter their culture, ethnicity or religious background. God is the God of all nations,” Burke told The Christian Post.Burke, who with his wife, Kathy, founded Gateway Church, a multisite church based in Austin, Texas, recounts some of these stories in his book,Imagine the God of Heaven: Near-Death Experiences,...

Bill Letson had an NDE (Near-Death Experience) after contracting the flu. He flew through a star-filled realm and met three beings and God in Heaven. An NDE (Near-Death Experience) occurs when someone dies, is revived, and knows there is life after death. For Bill, his NDE (Near-Death Experience) was a life-altering experience that changed him forever.

The first time I reached past the sheer horror of the concept of death and wondered what the experience of dying may be like, I was about 15. I had just discovered gruesome aspects of the French revolution and how heads were neatly cut off the body by a Guillotine. Words I remember to this day were the last of Georges Danton on April 5, 1794, who allegedly said to his executioner: “Show my head to the people, it is worth seeing.” Years later, having become a cognitive neuroscientist, I started wondering to what extent a brain suddenly separated from...

A study on monkeys found that stimulating a certain part of the forebrain wakes monkeys from anesthesia. Research suggests a tiny part of the brain plays a key role in enabling consciousness. The findings might someday be used to bring people out of comas, treat consciousness disorders or ensure patients stay anesthetized during intensive procedures. Past research has suggested that certain brain areas, like the parietal cortex and thalamus, are critical to consciousness. In the study, published in Neuron, a team of scientists used electrodes to stimulate various parts of the brains of two macaque monkeys. Macaque brains closely mirror...

Folks, I want to keep commenting on the article published in this month's Discover magazine by Jane Bosveld, titled Soul Search, which I began reviewing in One monk goes up over the rainbow. The article goes on to narrate a 1921 experiment perform by Duncan MacDougall, a physician, who claimed he was able to weigh a human soul. He accomplished this by measuring how much a person weighs before and immediately after death. After monitoring six deaths, he reported that people lost between 11 and 43 grams at death, which he attributed to the material weight of the soul. Others...

Eben Alexander, a neurosurgeon doctor who claims to have experienced the afterlife during a seven-day coma, says the experience was like Plato’s world of ideals. In 2008, Dr. Eben Alexander went into a coma after catching an acute bacterial infection that had a severe neurological impact on his brain. For seven days, he lay unconscious. When he awoke, he described seeing a beautiful spiritual guide on a butterfly wing that took him through a wormhole. Sharing his story with the U.S. Sun, Dr. Alexander described a land of “beautiful very lush forests and meadow waterfalls into crystal blue pools, absolutely...

Gary Habermas talks with John Ankerberg about the evidence for life after this life.

The spike in interest in all things related to Matthew Perry includes a nearly five-minute excerpt of an interview with Bill Maher where the deceased actor talks about a near-death experience, his belief in God and the "math" that was involved to feed his drug habit. "I believe there is a higher power. I believe I have a very close relationship with him that's helped me a lot," Perry said on Real Time with Bill Maher in November 2022 while promoting his book, Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing. "A lot of people did have you in the 'dead...

Since Galileo’s time the physical sciences have leaped forward, explaining the workings of the tiniest quarks to the largest galaxy clusters. But explaining things that reside “only in consciousness”—the red of a sunset, say, or the bitter taste of a lemon—has proven far more difficult. Neuroscientists have identified a number of neural correlates of consciousness—brain states associated with specific mental states—but have not explained how matter forms minds in the first place. As philosopher Colin McGinn put it in a 1989 paper, “Somehow, we feel, the water of the physical brain is turned into the wine of consciousness.” Philosopher David...

(SNIP) Over the last 70 or so years, declaring death has gotten progressively messier. Scientific advances such as ventilators and life support have made it harder and harder to find the line between being a person and being a body. Now, mind-blowing experiments in pigs, and the development of a souped-up life-support system called OrganEx, are reinvigorating a decades-old debate about how our lives end. (SNIP) Yale neurobiologist Nenad Sestan researches genes that control how neurons grow and form connections in the developing brain. To perform these studies, he orders slices of tissue from brain banks around the world. Eight...

New Movie Investigates Near-Death Experiences What happens after we die? The new movie "After Death," out today," investigates near-death experiences and the possibility of the afterlife.Are reports of consciousness after death believable? Moreover, are they scientifically credible? A new film from Angel Studies, After Death, investigates these questions by interviewing people in near-death situations. These subjects report encountering exquisite beauty, loved ones, and even the ability to see their physical bodies from a disembodied vantage point after death. Many doctors and neuroscientists are admitting that these testimonies are hard to dismiss through materialistic explanations. The movie is out today...

Photo source: Angel Studios. I’ve just watched a remarkable, riveting documentary that releases in theaters on October 27 – After Death. It’s too bad the famous line from Hamlet has become a bit of a cliché — “There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy” — since it so perfectly captures what I took away from the film. There sure are a lot more things about reality than are captured by a narrow naturalistic view.The message of the film, by directors Stephen Gray and Chris Radtke, is extremely well conveyed. It’s beautifully...

Jane Seymour saw a "white light" during a near-death experience. The actress, 72, famed for playing Bond girl Solitaire in 1973's Live and Let Die alongside Roger Moore as 007, said she could have been killed when she contracted bronchitis while filming a movie and went into anaphylactic shock due to wrongly administered antibiotics. She told The Times about her vision during her brush with death, when she was asked if she believes in an afterlife: "I have no idea. I do know that I left my body [after the near-lethal antibiotics]". "I did see the white light and I...

Support is coming in from around the world for a student who was paralyzed in a car accident on his way to Godwin High School in Virginia. Ryan Estrada, 16, says he lost control of his vehicle while trying to avoid a bicyclist on Gayton Road in Henrico County on Nov. 8, according to WTVR. “I remember swerving past the biker and there was another car coming in the lane so I had to swerve back into my lane,” recalls Estrada. “I remember losing control of the wheel, hitting the mailbox and then hitting the tree.” Estrada said two motorists,...

Does life after death really exist? The answer to this question has fundamental implications for every man, woman and child on the entire planet, and yet most people don’t spend very much time thinking about it. If this life is not the end, so much of the petty stuff that we spend so much time obsessing over in this life really doesn’t matter, and instead we should be focusing on the things that actually do matter for the life to come. However, if this life truly is the end, we might as well eat, drink, party and enjoy this life...

A new study suggests your consciousness carries on after your heart stops beating. WE know we are dead when we die because our brains keep working to make us aware of what's happening around us, haunting new research suggests. Top medical experts have forever been at loggerheads over what happens when humans die, with anecdotal evidence of bright lights and flashes reported by people who have 'come back' being the cause of much debate. However a new study suggests your consciousness carries on functioning after your heart stops beating and your body movements fail. This means you are essentially 'trapped'...

I knew unequivocally and with no misinterpretation I was between states of being. I could continue on towards the next realm/state of being, though the feeling was one of returning, or I could go back to where I had just come, though again the feeling was more akin to returning. Both states of being or direction were vaguely familiar, though at that point nothing was known with absolute clarity, just an understanding or knowing of familiarity and comfort.

A registered nurse who worked in ICU for years and later went into hospice work has logged fascinating deathbed accounts, including glimpses of hell and Heaven and a vision of Jesus that is among the most compelling we have read in this realm of alleged mystical encounters.The nurse, Kelley Jankowski, a mother of six who lives in Maryland, kept a journal and took meticulous notes after listening to what those dying were telling her and has recorded them in a splendidly written, vivid, and credible book, An Army in Heaven -- consoling indeed!There are stories of the simple process...

Near-death experience Many stories of those who tell of the phenomenon often don’t reflect what we know through Scripture Msgr. Charles Pope 9/16/2015 Question: I read a book by an author who had a near-death experience and claims that God told him that one’s belief system was irrelevant. This seems like New Age indifferentism. Can you comment on near-death phenomena and what this author said?— Bob Tisovich, Ely, Minnesota Answer: Near-death experiences (NDEs) seem to be a rather widely reported phenomenon with certain common features. One has an “out of body” experience with a reported capacity to see oneself...

Researchers conducting the largest ever study into near-death experiences have discovered that awareness may continue even after the brain has shut down, revealing more about what happens when we die. Scientists at the University of Southampton studied more than 2,000 people who suffered cardiac arrests at 15 hospitals across Britain, Austria and the United States. Around 40% of patients who survived described "awareness" during the time before their hearts were restarted, when they were clinically dead. One 57-year-old man, a social worker from Southampton, described the noise of the machines and what the medical staff were doing during this time....