Transcription
This is a great quote. What is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life? Mary Oliver said that. And today we explore how that question takes on a whole new meaning when you've died and come back to life. I sat down with John Burke. He's the author of Imagine Heaven to talk about the common patterns he's seen in thousands of near-death experiences. People who have literally died and come back to life and what they reveal to us about what really matters in life. Whether you believe in an afterlife or not, I think this conversation is worth a listen. It will stretch your view of life, death, and everything in between. I hope you enjoy it.
Welcome, John.
Hey, Nick. Great to be here.
Let's do it. Right here in Nashville.
Yeah, let's dive straight in. I love, uh, I love just asking a wild question out of the gate. So, how sure are you that there is life after death?
I'm 100% sure.
I love that. I mean, I don't know. Is, is, is there a 100% certainty of anything?
But that's true. That's true. But at the same time, I mean, yeah, I'm, I'm dang sure. That's what I love about, but you know, it's been, you know, it's been 40 years of studying and research that has led me there.
Yeah. Can you tell us a little bit about that? Like all the people you've interviewed and just how you got to this, this place of sharing all this knowledge about near-death experiences?
Yeah, I, um, as of now, I've, I've, uh, interviewed or studied, researched probably close to, 500 cases of clinical death. So when people clinically die, meaning, you know, no heartbeat, no brain waves, and yet they're resuscitated, modern medicine brings them back, or in some cases, it, it's not really explainable by modern medicine. I mean, we're talking, you know, I've interviewed people with hospital records that they were clinically dead for an hour and 45 minutes.
Oh my gosh.
Yeah. So that's not just CPR, right? But this is, this is common. And I've interviewed people all around the world on every continent and, uh, and what they say is is consistent. Now, um, I didn't start there though. So, uh, I, I, I kind of came at this, uh, accidentally. I was, I was an agnostic. Uh, so I, um, I'd kind of come to the conclusion. I, I studied engineering. I worked as an engineer. So my, my brain kind of works that way. Very analytical. I'm like, "Well, how do you know?" And, you know, how does that make sense? I just question. I'm, I'm kind of skeptical, a little cynical. Try not to be too cynical, but, um, but I am always asking, you know, well, why? How do you know? So, um, you know, growing up hearing people talk about God or Jesus, the son of God, and I'd always be like, "Well, how do you know?" You know, and, and I, I would ask the questions and I couldn't find, I couldn't get people to give me any answers. And so I eventually just concluded, well, Jesus was a good man, good teacher, um, made legend, you know, like, like happens. God, who knows? There's just, there's no evidence, right? And so I just kind of went on my way, um, you know, like a lot do who just kind of dismiss God. That's basically what I did.
Well, when my dad was dying of cancer, um, someone gave him the very first research on this topic, the, the book that coined the term near-death experience. And, um, this was a professor at the University of Virginia who was doing a, um, a class on post-mortem survival, what happens when we die, studying philosophy.
Wow.
And every class he would have, uh, two or three of his students come up and tell him about how they actually died and what happened. And, so he ends up collecting about a hundred of them and put it in this book. So someone gave my dad that, they knew he, you know, he was terminal and they gave him this book and I see it on his bedside table and I'm like, "What is this?" And I, I pick it up and I just start thumbing through it and I, I'm so curious. I'm like, "Oh my gosh, I keep reading. I read the whole thing in one night." And because so many of them are saying the same thing. They're saying, you know, they died, but they were still themselves, they felt more alive than they've ever been in a place more real than than this has ever felt. Uh, they talked about how many times they were in the presence of this God of light whose love unconditional. Some of them talked about seeing Jesus. And again, I'm an agnostic, right? So, I'm reading this and it's kind of like blowing my mind like, "Okay, maybe this is the evidence." I, I read the whole thing in one night and I was like, "Maybe this is the evidence I've been looking for." And so, it didn't convince me. It just, it just opened me up. And, um, and as a result, I actually started reading the Bible because I hadn't. Um, and I started really studying and trying to understand more and, and I came to faith for, for actually other reasons, for historical reasons. Um, but I, but I then became very, uh, intrigued like, "Okay, well, these near-death experiences, how do they relate to what I'm learning, uh, about what God's revealed through the scriptures throughout the throughout history?"
I was still working as an engineer. I was out in Santa Barbara and, um, turns out that Santa Barbara and, and again, this is like, you know, this is the early '80s and these, these whole, all these experiences are just coming out.
Wow.
They're just starting to be told and a lot of medical doctors were starting to interview more of their patients and hearing more and more and writing them up. Well, Santa Barbara actually ended up being kind of the center for research on near-death experiences. So coincidentally, I don't think, but, uh, I end up there working as an engineer. I run into more stories. I start, the more I'm hearing, the more I'm like, "Oh, I heard that one on over here and that's what I'm reading in the Bible over here." And I literally like started charting it out, kind of the way my brain works. Y and, um, I did my first talk on this at the University of California, Santa Barbara in 1989.
Whoa.
So since then, I've just had this, uh, kind of obsession with understanding how what these are and how they fit. And, so like I said, I've studied now, um, well, for, for, it took about 35 years and I'd studied well over a thousand of them and in 2015, I finally wrote Imagine Heaven, which is my first book.
Great book.
Um, and that, in that one, I was trying to show there are about 40 commonalities of what people describe happens. Um, and, and they're consistent and I was showing how they're all found in the expectation of the afterlife that that's revealed in scripture.
Wow.
And, um, and then in just a year and a half ago, I wrote the book Imagine the God of Heaven. Um, which is really, I interviewed 70 people from all over the globe on every continent, every religious background and I'm basically showing how they're all experiencing and describing the same God and just helping people see, you know, just how actually, um, I guess misunderstood, you know, so, so many times I find, uh, people's idea of God or of the life to come, you know, and, and so the imagine idea is like, you know, we, we need to do a better job of perceiving what is actually ahead and realize that this is really great. This is great news for everyone.
Yeah. Can you walk us through the, the most common experience that someone might have? So, not, I mean, it can be through a story or whatever, but, uh, just what are the, the most common experiences someone would have after they, they're dead for a short window of time and come back?
Yeah, let me, let me say this, um, first is when I, at first, I was still skeptical about this as I'm studying them. You know, I'm, I'm working as an engineer. I'm hearing about more. And I was like, "Well, how do you know these aren't just hallucinations or, um, you know, the, the brain's dying, uh, neurotransmitters flooding the brain, you know?" Uh, and two things that first convinced me. One, when people die, they say they leave their body, but they, they still have a body. They have a spiritual body. They're still themselves, like fully ourselves. In fact, one, one woman I interviewed told me, you know, the first person you'll meet on the other side is you. Like, you, you finally understand yourself better than you ever have as well because you, you understand who you really are. And who you really are is not just what we see here. There's so much more. Um, but they often are up above their body and they're watching their resuscitation take place.
Wow.
So when they're resuscitated, when they come back, they're able to describe things that happened, um, that they shouldn't have been able to see or know about because they had no brain waves. So like, I, I'll give you one example and then I'll go into the story. Um, a woman I report on in Imagine the God of Heaven, uh, her name is Mary. She was in, uh, labor in a hospital in London. This is in in the '90s and she bleeds out, dies. Um, she rises up above her body. She's looking, uh, down at that and then she begins to travel. And this is, this is another commonality, often through a portal or a tunnel they say and she comes to this place of incredible light, love. She knew she was in the presence of God and God tells her, "Your son's going to live. You need to go back. He's going to need you." So she comes back. Now, as she's coming back, and this is the wild part, right? She comes through her spirit, her soul comes through the ceiling of the hospital back to where the resuscitation or, you know, they're trying to, uh, stop her from bleeding and get blood transfusion and all that. She passes through the ceiling and sees a red sticker on the top side of the ceiling fan and then she comes to in her body. She's trying to explain this amazing experience she had. No one believes her. They think, "Oh, hallucination, psychotic." Um, and she gets one nurse to listen to her and she tells the nurse everything the nurse said and did. And the nurse is kind of freaked out and she said, "Look, I can prove it to you." She said, "Go get a ladder. Look on the top side of the ceiling fan. You'll find a red sticker and here's what it says." And the nurse gets an orderly. They go get it. And sure enough, that's exactly what was there. Now, you might say, "Okay, good internet story, right?" But there are hundreds and thousands like that and they've actually been studied. And so, Dr. Jan Holden did a study of about a hundred near-death experience patients and found, uh, that of the observations that could be checked out, so observations that they made, they may make 10, 15 observations, 92% of near-death experiences, NDEs, observations were completely accurate. 92%.
Wow.
So one, one medical doctor told me, "There is no way." He was a cardiologist. He said, "There's no way, Pete, this patient should have been able to tell me with such precision the, the medical procedure I did for, for, um, for resuscitating him, for getting his heart started." But he, he said, "I could have used the recording to teach other physicians." So 92% completely accurate. Uh, Dr. Holden found 6% were mostly accurate. Maybe some details missing. Only 2% were inaccurate. That turned out to be one of the patients in the study.
Wow.
So, we're talking about an experience grounded in our reality. And that's the first thing that, that started to convince me, but also has convinced many skeptical medical doctors that there's something to this. In fact, these have been written up in the Journal of the American Medical Association, uh, in the Lancet, Europe's most prestigious medical journal, in psychiatry, and about 900 scholarly peer-reviewed articles. There have been studies done on this. So it's not just this pastor spiritual thing. It's like there's something real going on here and this grounds this in our reality. So that is, that's commonly where the experience starts. Um, the second thing that convinced me and I'll tell you Vicki's story because she has most of the elements. So Vicki was born blind and, um, when she's 22, she's in a car accident and in surgery after the accident, she finds herself up above in this room looking down at this chaotic situation and she's trying to figure out what is this perception because she's seeing but she's never been able to see. And this is the second thing is that consistently and I, I report on, um, I think six people blind from birth in Imagine Heaven and Imagine the God of Heaven who when they have a near-death experience, they can see and when they come back, they can't see because their physical body's blocking it, but they can report things that they visually saw in their near-death experience and it's all the same commonalities. So, you know, those two things alone, you know, where, where skeptics say, "Oh, this is just happening in the brain as the brain's shutting down."
Well, the most common kind of skepticism.
Yeah. I mean, there are lots of explanations, but they all come down to it's brain-based.
Yeah.
Right. So, it's, it's neurotransmitters flooding the brain, giving this similar to a DMT experience or Ayahuasca or something like that, but that doesn't explain it. Um, you know, fighter pilot syndrome. Uh, fighter pilots when they're pulling like 9 Gs, they have this tunnel-like feeling and there's a white light at the end of the tunnel and sometimes they feel like maybe they're leaving their body. So these elements sound similar, but none of those alternate explanations account for the points of evidence that convinced me.
M.
Like none of those people can tell you what was going on when they had no EEG, flat brain waves, right? Where are the memories being stored? If our memories are stored in neural networks across our brain and there's no electrical activity, where are they being stored?
Wow.
And yet they're, they're coming up with new things they couldn't have known or seen.
Mhm.
So Vicki, like other blind people, she, she's having this perception and she sees her body on the table and she starts to realize, "I must be dead." And this is the other wild thing, Nick, is so many of them that I've interviewed at, at some point, they're telling me there's this journey into this other world and, and I say, "So, so you know your dad?" And they kind of chuckle usually and go like, "Well, I didn't until now." And I'm starting to realize, "I think I'm dead because I felt alive and then I felt more alive. I felt conscious and I felt super conscious."
Yeah.
I felt like myself, but then myself not just with five senses, but more like 50 senses. So it's wild. And, um, so Vicki is, is up above her body. She's starting to realize she's dead. And she's like, "I feel great. You know, I don't know why they're panicking. I'm, I'm fine." She's, she was trying to tell them, but of course, she can't be heard. Y and so then she's like, "I'm out of here." Um, and she takes off through the ceiling up out of the hospital and it's like this portal opens up. Some of them call it a tunnel, some a portal. Sometimes it's, it's a black, there's no light. Sometimes it's a, a tunnel or a portal of light. Um, they travel and sometimes it's not through that tunnel or portal at all. Sometimes disappear there. Sometimes they find themselves with two angels or a welcoming committee. These are consistent common themes as well. Usually it's with angels. Um, and they, and they travel just like out of our atmosphere and out into what we call outer space. But, but here's the thing, you know, it sounds so sci-fi, and it really is. I mean, when you read Imagine Heaven, it's almost like you're reading sci-fi, except there's basis in truth, right? I mean, that's the thing that's so wild. Um, but the thing I like to explain at this point, because, you know, some of your listeners, viewers may be going like, "Okay, this guy's just whacked, right?" But here's a way to think about it. Imagine we're living this experience in three dimensions of space and one dimension of time. So, but, and, and when you die, what I believe happens is your soul, which is the really who you are, your thoughts, your your emotions, your decision-making leaves your body, right? And as soon as that happens, your body deteriorates. So the energy that keeps you, you know, something else fascinating, Nick, little side note, do you know that we replace every cell in our bodies completely about every 7 to 10 years?
Wow.
So who you were 10 years ago is not the same as who you are now.
Whoa.
So then who are you? If you're not just your brain and your body, who are you?
The soul.
I think I think so. And I think this is proof of it. Um, and they're medical doctors who have studied this like I have and have said, "I think it's proof of the soul and proof of the afterlife."
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So imagine we're living this three-dimensional experience on a flat black and white painting on the wall here. Okay? So at death, your soul is peeled off. Now, now remember, two dimensions, we only know up and down and side to side. We don't even have in or out. That's a third dimension. So we can't even conceive of in or out or where that is. So, at death, your two-dimensional self is peeled off that flat two-dimensional world and brought out into this three-dimensional world that was always around you, but you couldn't even conceive of where it is. And yet, now you can look back and see what's going on in your two-dimensional world. Hence, they can see their resuscitation, but where are they?
Right?
Mhm. So they're, they're here, but they're here in a dimensionality beyond ours that we can't see. And so then, you know, I've used this analogy with near-death experiencers I've interviewed. Imagine getting pressed back in, resuscitated in two dimensions, and trying to describe a three-dimensional experience with colors, but you're having to use two-dimensional black and white terms to do it.
Yeah.
And that's, they, they've said to me, that's exactly what it's like. It's, it's so hard to find the words to adequately describe. And that's why they say things like, "It was more real and I was more alive." Cuz, you know, you come out, you're still your two-dimensional self, but you're experiencing more than that.
I feel like they're always trying to explain from what I've read and seen the love that they're feeling. Like they can't put it into words, the exact feeling that they're having specifically.
Well, and that comes, so in the typical experience like Vicki's, she travels and like I said, sometimes different modes, but they travel often to, they, they come out to a place of exquisite beauty. So Vicki comes out into this garden-like setting, grass and flowers and trees and just incredible beauty. But what she said was, um, and the light there was not like, like I had felt on earth. It was, it was palpable in that it wasn't, it wasn't just light. It was love and it was life and it was coming out of everything. It was coming out of the grass and coming out of the trees and coming out of the birds and the flowers and even this group of people coming toward her, which is another commonality, um, of this welcoming committee. And so she sees her grandmother who had died and she sees Diane and Debbie, her friends who she grew up with in a home for the blind who died at age nine and seven. And yet Diane and Debbie are, she called them in their prime. And this is another commonality. People are typically about late 20s or early, early 30s passed away, even if they passed away at 90.
Wow.
Yeah. Um, and, and not always. Sometimes they can appear, they can appear at the age we last saw them, like if we didn't even know them young. But sometimes people see their grandparents young and just realize intuitively who they are and are like, "Wow, they were, they were like, they were 30." H So Vicki, so, so these are all commonalities. Now, here's the fascinating thing. Um, this light is love and it comes out of everything. And blind near-death experiencers consistently say this. So, um, I just started a podcast myself.
Yes.
And, uh, one of the guys that you can hear talk about this is Brad. He was 8 years old and he was also blind from birth. And he talks about, he talks about leaving his body. Actually, I don't think I have him talking about the light, but he did. And the same thing, he said the grass and the, and the trees, all palm trees and this, this steep hill was going up and everything was soaking in this light and the light conveyed love. Now, now here's the wild thing is that a blind person on earth would have never heard that light comes out of everything or that light is love. That's not how we experience it. That's not how they would have heard it. So, why do they consistently say this? And why does it align with what near-death experiencers all over the globe consistently say about the light of heaven?
Okay, now even more trippy. So again, you know, Nick, my, my big, um, my big thing is to show this is not new, right? None of this is new. God's been revealing it all along. I think he's just raising, heightening awareness in our global day as everything's accelerating.
Yeah.
So Isaiah was a Jewish prophet writing in 780 BC, 780 years before Jesus. Okay? And he writes that there is no sun or moon in heaven for God is its light. Okay? Then fast forward, one of Jesus disciples, John, writes the book of Revelation when he claims that Jesus takes him up into heaven and shows him in the spirit, in his spirit, shows him heaven. He sees this holy city of God and he said there was no sun or moon there because the glory of God is its light and the lamb, referring to Jesus, is its lamp and the nations will walk in that light. It's exactly what he said. And nations will walk in that light. This is what near-death experiencers, including blind people, are testifying to again and again and again of the, of the light of heaven, which actually fills everything. And, and you know, I, um, in a recent podcast I did on, on relationships in heaven and how the things we can learn from how things are supposed to work can help us with our relational difficulties today.
Love, if you share that.
I know. And, and, you know, one of the things, um, that's fascinating to think about is that when we are there, uh, we will share in this. It's, it's, it's called in the Bible, the glory of God. And, you know, I always wonder, like, what is that? You know, it's like, um, you know, extreme narcissism, "Oh, look how great I am." No, the, the glory of God is something tangible. It is the light that gives life to everything. And God is love. And by the way, Jesus said, "I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness but will have the light of life." And so light and love and life that are coming out of everything is the glory of God. Also, we share in that, you know, uh, in, in the New Testament, Paul says, um, "We will share in the glory of God if we share in his sufferings." And what does that mean? Well, I think it means, you know, God entered our suffering. That's, that's the claim of what he did through Jesus. You know, God is, God is not limited to Jesus. God is infinite. That's what I'm trying to show in Imagine the God of Heaven. That there's a lot of mystery to this infinite, all-knowing, all-powerful being, but at the same time, he's, God is better than you've ever imagined. And he entered our world through Jesus and entered our suffering and united himself with humanity, with his creation because he created us for relationship. M so the love you're talking about, yes, is consistent that people experience this love, um, that is from God and it's a love that our word "love" just doesn't do justice to at all. And just a brief thing I want to touch on, why do you think, um, people are very turned away by the word name Jesus at times, or why does this, it's just hard to grasp onto? And I feel like people will try anything except it. Um, you know, it's hard to phrase the question correctly, but what is your thought on that? Why has it gotten to that place?
Well, I think, and, you know, that's, that's what I'm trying to do, Nick, in, in Imagine the God of Heaven, is I'm trying to show people what is God really like, evidenced by people. And again, I have Hindus and Buddhists and Muslims and agnostics and atheists and Christians, all people who experience the same God. And I'm showing how this is the same God who revealed himself through Jesus. And he is the God of all nations. And he's always said that. That's so the reason I think is because sometimes Christians do a really bad job of conveying, uh, well, what God is really like, the love. Well, and not just that. I mean, there are lots of things, but, you know, again, we're all messed up, fallen, broken humans. We all, we all screw up, right? So, I think the problem is, is that we tend to put the face of humans on God, or the face of Christians on Jesus, right? And we don't realize who this really is or what he's really like. Um, and so I encourage people, well, just keep an open mind. Don't just close off because then if you close off, you're just stuck. You're just stuck with what you know. And, and maybe if you're not God, then there's something beyond what you currently know that you would actually learn and you would like it. And that was my experience as a skeptic and an agnostic, you know.
Yeah.
I just didn't know what I didn't know. And just because people didn't know and couldn't explain to me, it didn't mean it wasn't there. But I had to search. And, and how many of these, you mentioned people of other religions and, um, I'm never trying to come at other religions by any means. I'm just, I'm just curious, um, how many have like met what they would call Jesus, what they would say was actually Jesus versus the light and love of God, or is it the same thing? I'm trying to just wrap my head around it.
Well, um, yes, both. Yes, both. Um, so, yeah, it's wild because, um, in Imagine the God of Heaven, like, I have, uh, a woman I interviewed from Iran, so Iranian. She's related to the prophet Muhammad. She built the synagogue in this gated community neighborhood, uh, next to the president's legal counsel. So she was a very high-standing Muslim and she has a heart attack, rises up above her body. Same, same thing. And, and she's fearful. She's waiting for the prophet Ali to come and judge her because that's what Shiites believe happens when you die. And that's not what happens. What happens is this man of light in a glowing robe, but huge, comes and says to her, "I am he who is." And boom, she's back in her body, but with a peace and with a, this joy she had never felt before. And she's confused. She's like, "Who was that?" She knew this was God, but she didn't know who this was. And why did he say, "I am he who is?" Okay. Well, she starts seeking. And, you know, and, and the, the fuller story is in there. But, um, you know, this same God of light, 3,500, uh, 3,500 years ago, in about 14,500 BC, reveals himself to Moses on Mount Sinai as this burning bush, this light that doesn't burn the bush, right? Just what people are experiencing around the globe today. Um, and when Moses says, you know, "Who do I tell them sent me?" He said, "Yahweh, I am he who is," or he said, "I am who I am." Basically, I am the, the self-existent one. And so BB starts seeking and, and she ends up, then having a vision of the same, the same being that she knew was God, but this time he touches her and she knows this is Jesus. Wow. So she converts from Islam and got kicked out of, I mean, they were going to kill her, so she had to leave Iran. I have a Muslim imam in Rwanda that I interviewed, his name is Swedik, and, um, you can see him on my podcast as well talking about this. Okay. Now, again, what would motivate them to do this, right? And, and I, I like to point that out with the people from other religions, this is not in their expectation what they end up experiencing, right? And, and then again, many of the people that I interview, they're, they're doctors, they're lawyers, they're, uh, neurosurgeons, you know, they're, they're, they're people who have a lot to lose.
Yeah.
Making up wild stories. They're not doing it for money.
True.
And it hurts their career. And yet they say it's the most real thing that ever happened.
Wow.
So Swed was, um, he, his mother was a Hutu, his father was a Tutsi, and if you remember the Rwanda genocide, those were the two that hated each other. Split their family apart. He ends up a street kid doing cocaine, dealing cocaine, all that. Anyway, long story short, um, he has a fascinating story, but at, uh, about age 20, 21, he gets blood cancer and it's stage four and he's dying of blood cancer and his mother, um, his mother worshiped the goddess Beo, an African goddess, does all the, you know, magic African stuff they could and nothing helps him. Father gets the imams to come and pray and do what the Muslims do and finally, he's, he's going to die and she has heard that sometimes people are healed in the name of Jesus. So in desperation, she goes to the Anglican church in, in, uh, in the village and said, "Will you pray for my son?" And they ask her, "You pray too, in the name of Jesus." And they were praying and fasting for a week. Sweet dies. So he dies and he is at first in a hellish experience. And some start in a hellish experience. But into this place comes Jesus. Well, he doesn't know at first. It's this man again, beard, hair to the shoulders, uh, white robe, but light bursting out. Swedik said, like light like the sun coming out of him and shoots right through me and saw everything about me in an instant. W and he holds out his hands like this, almost like a welcome and kind of has a little smile on his face. And Swedik said, "I saw the scars, the holes in his hands, like right about his wrists." And that's when I knew who this was because he had been given three free tickets to movies and one of the movies that he saw that came to Kiraali was, uh, "The Passion of the Christ" and he had seen it. And so he was like, he, he knew who this was. And Jesus says to him, "I died for mankind. You're among those I died for. Never deny it and tell it to everyone."
Wow.
And he, he sits up on this table and a sheet falls off of him. Back in real life here. Back in real life now. But I mean, it's all, it's all real to them.
True.
So he's, he's trying to figure out and all of a sudden, he's, all these people are screaming and running. Oh. And he's like, he just came back. He just came back, but he doesn't realize. He's like, "What's going on?" And he looks down to his right and there is a grave, a hole.
No.
To bury him. He had died the night before. And it's the morning and they're about to bury him.
Oh my god.
And, and so about half the Muslims there that day started following Jesus. He starts following Jesus. He has had seven attempts on his life because he won't shut up about how Jesus rescued him from hell.
We need to talk about hell. That's for sure. That is a crazy story.
Let's not go there.
Yeah. Yeah. Let's not go there. I, I've interviewed, I interviewed a woman from Colombia. Okay. Who also has. So, so she's headed to hell.
Yes.
But she cries out to God for forgiveness. And this is the amazing thing, Nick. God is so loving, so kind, so merciful. Any person, doesn't matter where they've been or what they've done. I mean, she, you know, she'd gone down a very wild. She had a really tough past. Her, she grew up in Colombia, but her parents took her here at 16 and then abandoned her. Like, literally one day, her, her mom and stepdad were just gone. She's left with her grandmother. She finds out they moved to New York and, and left her in Austin. So, she's struggling. I mean, you can imagine. She doesn't speak English. She's trying to grow, you know. So, she ends up, um, just kind of doing every wild thing you can imagine. U has an abortion, uh, when she's like 19. Um, just all kind of. But eventually she gets married, has a family, and it's during COVID that she dies. Her heart stops. Um, she, uh, actually had a pacemaker because she was misdiagnosed and COVID hit and all this stuff. And, and she's up above her husband's head and she's thinking, "Oh my gosh, I, I must be dead." And suddenly she realized, "Oh no, it's real. Heaven is real. Hell is real. God is real." She just like knew it. And she starts praying the, the Our Father. She was Catholic from Colombia, but didn't know if she even believed in God at that point. And, um, but she's praying and she comes to, "Forgive us our sins." And she was like, "I was sincere. I was like, God, forgive me. Forgive me." And she is, she knows she's going down. She's going to this abyss. And this light comes down, turns her around, back up she goes, and she sees in this, this brilliant golden white light. She can see silhouettes of people. It's like they're people, and they're welcome. They're celebrating her. She's like, "Celebrating me? Me?" And the voice of God. And she knows it's God. Cester. And again, communication on this other side. By the way, they say some of them say telepathic, but it's more than that. It's not just thought to thought. It's, it's feeling. It's thoughts. It's complete pure. No misunderstanding. And he says to her, "Come, come. You're home." And, and she says, "No, I'm not worthy. I'm not worthy. I was going to hell. I know that's what I deserve. Send me back there." And here's an interesting thing, Nick. You're like, "Why would she do that?" Right? So, fascinatingly, on the other side, you know, on this side of life, we can justify, we can hide from the truth, we can rationalize. You can't there. So, another commonality is a life review. Now, Karina didn't have it, but Vicki did. Vicky, the blind person there. Um, but just to, to finish real quick with Karina, um, she knows the truth, right? And she knows what she deserves. She says, "I'm not worthy." And God says to her, "No, you are worthy. Come, I love you." And she says, "Um, God, if, if it is safe for me, let me see someone that I love who's died before me." And he says, "Look to your right." Now, usually the welcoming committee are people, grandparents or ancestors or friends that have died before us. She looks to her right and it's her dog that had died the week before and another dog who had died like three years earlier. And she goes, she goes in and she's in this place of exquisite beauty and she's like, alive like she's never felt and bursting with joy and, and, um, and realizes because the Lord later explained to her when she cried out to him for forgiveness, he made her worthy. Cuz see, Nick, I mean, and this is the big misunderstanding, right? Like what Jesus claimed to do was to pay for the sins of all people for all time. All nations, all people for all time. What God was doing is removing every barrier between every human that he created to be his, all of us to be his children. And he, he removed every barrier between us and God except our free will. So if in our pride we say, "I don't need God. I don't believe in God. I don't want your will. I want my will." Then he goes, "Okay." But it, but in horrific sadness. But he lets us have what we think we want. Even though, as we'll talk about, that is hell to, to reject the one who is the source of light and love and life and joy and every, everything we love about this life. I mean, if there's a creator, everything we love was created by God. We experience pleasure because he created us with the ability to experience pleasure, right? Mhm. I, we can, we can abuse all of it, you know, and as we, as we turn and go my way, not God's way, we do and we hurt each other. But still, it's all from him. It's good. You know, we're going to pause this conversation quick. I got a question for you. Do you love having real conversations and really connecting with the people around you? I personally hate small talk and so we made a game called No More Small Talk that gets straight to the good stuff. It's based around my love for wisdom as well as great questions and connection. It's kind of like a book club. Every card starts with a quote, something wise that gets you thinking and then it's followed up with a thought-provoking question. So, so many of you have already said that you've been loving this game and it means the world to me. You guys can check it out on Amazon. and it's called No More Small Talk if you want to get it there. It'll also be linked in the show notes. I hope you enjoy the rest of this conversation.
You mentioned the life review and, yeah, and I want you to touch on that because that is one of my favorite parts. I feel like people come back changed after that. Scared to death of it.
Yeah.
Tell us about that.
Yeah. Well, and, and I, and I don't think we need to be. Mhm. If we have truly humbled ourselves and said to God, you know, if we recognize, "I do need your forgiveness. I have gone my own way." All of us have. Nobody. Oh, yeah. You know, I like to point that out is like, you know, there's, there's not a, a Christian or a Jew who's perfectly kept the Ten Commandments. There's not a Buddhist who's perfectly kept the eight-fold path of Buddhism, which, by the way, is way more morally rigorous, if you've ever studied it. I have. I've studied the world's religions. No Muslim has perfectly kept the five pillars of of Islam. No atheist has perfectly kept his own or her own moral code. You ever let yourself down? Oh, yeah. You ever said, "I'll never." But you did. So, we're all screw-ups. And the question is then, does God condemn us for that? Or is he willing to forgive? And this is the great news is that he is fully willing to forgive anyone whose heart wants it and just turns back to him. And, but it cost. So that's the other part is God is also just. And so he doesn't just wink at our evils and all the horrible things we do to each other. He paid for it. So he took the bullet for us, just like a parent would stand in front of a, a train, you know, and push their kid out of the way to save him. That's what he claims he did through Jesus.
Wow.
And he's the God of all nations, you know, and that's what near-death experiencers are are testifying to. So yes, all across the globe in God's presence, um, and again, it's the same God. It's at least this God of light, but this God of light has characteristics that are incredibly consistent with the God who revealed himself to Moses on Mount Sinai. So for instance, what God said to Moses in the Ten Commandments and, and in Judaism was the first and most important is to love God with all you have. That was the creed, the Shama. You know, there's one God. There's only one God. Love God with all you've got. And then the second that it talks about in Leviticus is that we should love our neighbor as we do ourselves. Well, okay. Then 1500 years later, Jesus comes along and he's asked, "What's the greatest commandment?"
Yep.
And he repeats it. He says, "Love God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength." In other words, everything. You know, let God be God and, and love God. And the second, he said, is to love your neighbor as yourself. Do these two. And that sums up all the commands of scripture.
Mhm.
So that's what it's all about.
Yeah.
Okay. Now, think about this, Nick. You know, I, I interviewed, um, a, um, chief anesthesiologist of the Bakersfield Heart Hospital who grew up in India and was Hindu. Okay. And so he's brought many people back from death. He's heard people tell their near-death stories of, "I traveled this beautiful place and this god of light and it was so amazing." And he'd give him a shot of antipsychotic drug. He thought psychosis. He did not believe it. And then he had one. So he's in the LA medical center. He has, uh, this horrible rupture of, you know, all his intestines spilling out in his body and sepsis and he dies. And he also, he, he had become addicted to opioids. His name is, uh, Dr. Parti. He, he was abusive verbally toward his son. And this is by his words to me. He'd become a materialist. So he didn't care about his patients. They were just an object through which he could get more money, invest in the stock market, and buy and build bigger houses and faster cars. So he starts off in a hellish experience as well. Again, he cries out to God for forgiveness. He said, "I was repenting." That's the word he used with me. Then these two angels that he said were angels from the Bible, which really confused him, um, take him through this tunnel-like portal-like to this place of exquisite beauty and the presence of this God of light who is love. And again, the personality of knows you intimately. Everything about you.
Wow.
You just, you've never felt so understood because there's no one, think about it. There's no one who has been through everything with you. Every high, every low, you know, and yet is still crazy in love with you. Now, that's, you know, like we're like, "Yeah, well, if anybody had been through everything with me, they wouldn't like me anymore." But not only that, he actually likes you. And that's what they consistently say. And Rajie then in the presence of this god has a life review. And in the life review, he sees the way and, and, and this is typically how this life review goes. Um, and it varies by unique individual, but usually in the presence of God, they relive their entire life in a 3D panoramic replay right before them. Now, here's the wild thing though. Um, one of, you know, one of Jesus disciples, Peter, in 2 Peter 3:8 in the New Testament says to the Lord, "A day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years is like a day." Well, that's exactly what near-death experiencers say. They say, "I don't know if it was seconds or hours or days. Time doesn't work the same way on the other side." Some of them say, "There was no time or time stopped." But others say no, there was time because things happened and things changed, but you always had all the time you needed. And someone would say, "Well, it was past, present, and future, all the same moment." So I, in Imagine Heaven, um, I talk about, you know, we live in one-dimensional time, but I, I expand on what would it be like to be in two-dimensional time and how that's exactly what they're describing. So, in this life review, that's how they're able to basically relive their lives. Now, they're, they're watching every scene play out, but they're also, they're re-experiencing it. So they remember what they were thinking and feeling and, but also from God's perspective, they're experiencing what the other person in every interaction was thinking and feeling. So this is the wild part and this is the, you're right. It's, it's what has the most impact on them other than the presence of God. So I'd
Say the presence of God is first. They're like, "I never wanted to leave," and He is the relationship we've always wanted. But the second is the life review changes them because they realize that every little act of kindness matters. It counts, and they see how it affected that other person. And not only that other person, but many times God shows them the ripple effect, life to life to life.
Um, this one, uh, this one woman, um, Penny Whitro, is a nurse. She, um, she dies when she has an allergic reaction. Um, so she's there having her life review, and God, God shows her a time when she's in line at a grocery store, and she had been a single mom, and it's a single mom with kids, and she's trying to figure out what groceries to put back 'cause she doesn't have enough money. And Penny, just out of compassion, goes, "Hey, don't worry about it. I got this." And the mom was like, "No, no, no, no, no." She's like, "I've been there. I got this. Please." And, and so she bought it, bought the rest of it for her.
Well, then God shows her how that single mom goes on and starts to volunteer at a soup kitchen and how it makes a difference in the lives of these people that she was serving. And so you see this life by life. But they also see their mean actions or or the things that they do that are, you know, selfish or self-centered and how, or yeah, you know, I, I was thinking about this, um, guy I interviewed just a few weeks ago, and he said, um, "You know, I saw when I was in middle school and this kid I bullied. I just picked on him and I bullied him." And God showed me what he felt and how it affected his self-esteem and how it even affected his parents trying to then help him. And it really, it really changed the trajectory of his life in many ways. So it's like eye-opening, to say the least.
But here's the other thing that's, it shows us, Nick. And again, you're talking about, you know, Rajie is a Hindu, and yet same God of light, same life review. And then at another point, he, um, he later asks this God of light, "Who are you, Lord?" And he says, he tells me, "Out of the light steps a man in a robe with a gold sash and a beard," and says to him, "I'm Jesus, your savior." Now, he, he comes back. Now, again, we're talking chief anesthesiologist. Yeah. He was the one who was injecting people when they came back because he thought they were, they were crazy. Yeah. Um, so it changed his life completely, and, and, and he was very confused by, by it.
But what I like to point out is that God has always been the God of all nations. You know, all the way back in Genesis. So in Genesis 12, and this is Abraham, um, who God raises up Abraham and Sarah to start a nation, right? It's going to be the, the Jewish nation. They started from Abraham and Sarah. And God says to them, "I'm going to bless you, and you will be a blessing to all the nations." So that was the point from the beginning. Okay? This is 4,000 years ago, by the way. This is before any of the sacred writings of any of the world's religions have been written. Okay? That most people don't realize that. So this God has been communicating since the beginning of written human history, probably before, but we only have records since then, right? And then all through the prophets, about 500 times in the Jewish prophets, God is speaking to all the nations. And he keeps saying what he's going to do, he's going to do for all the nations. Jesus comes and claims to lay down his life to forgive all the nations. And then he, he tells his followers, he says, "Go and tell it to all nations. There's forgiveness offered in my name because of what he did. He paid the price of justice." Then the very last book of the Bible, John, in the book of Revelation, sees people that he says are gathered there worshiping God from every nation, tribe, language, and people group. So this is, this is, you know, most, most gods are tribal gods. If you, if you read the, you know, the history of the gods, you know, they're, they're local. They're not speaking to or doing things for all people. But this is the God of all nations, and always has been. And so, right now, I believe He is raising up these testimonies all over, um, that are just showing again, evidence. Yeah.
And, um, you know, back to why, why are people so turned off by the word Jesus or even God? And I think it's misunderstanding. You know, it's just what people do in the name of God, you know, and it, and it just turns us off. But I like to remind people, well, you know, the Jewish religious leaders of Jesus' day, they were the most religious. They were the ones looked up to, and yet they crucified Jesus in the name of protecting God's glory. So, people can get it wrong, but God can use it for good. Yes.
What, what would you say to yourself back when you didn't believe in Jesus? Like now, with all this, all that you know, kind of how would you speak to yourself? Would it just be, "Have an open mind and explore it," or what would you say?
"You don't know everything yet." Yeah. I mean, that's the, that's the bottom line. You know, just seek. Stay open-minded. Um, and, and seek. There's a lot out there. You know, interestingly, Nick, it wasn't near-death experiences that led me to faith. Um, they just confirmed what I was discovering. You know, what, what really led me to faith? Um, I'll try to quickly so we don't go too far down this rabbit hole, but I think it's so cool because, you know, these near-death experiences are talking about this God of light whose love and Jesus, and I'm like, "I don't, I don't believe in that." But so many of them were. I was like, "Well, maybe I should start reading and studying." And so I start asking questions. I read the Bible. I'm asking, you know, Christians and other people trying to understand. And what I discovered is that, you know, all the way back, um, 3,500 years ago, again, before any scriptures have been written, not the Hindu scriptures, not the Buddhist scriptures, not the, not even the Old Testament, um, God says to Moses, "Here's how you'll know I am the, the one true God. I alone know the future. And if a prophet's going to speak for me, uh, what they say must happen. If it doesn't, that's not me. I'm, that's not me speaking." Okay? So, He gives us a test. His, his test is, He alone can foretell the future. And we're not talking about like, you know, psychic foretelling, Jean Dixon kind of stuff where it's like 50% accurate. Mhm. Um, it was actually the death penalty if you got one wrong. So it kind of cut out the, the fakes. The fakes. Yeah.
Um, but so, so in Isaiah, so Isaiah, again, was a prophet writing in about 780 BC. Okay. So in Isaiah, God says the same thing again to Isaiah. "Here's how you'll know." And he, he kind of challenges the, the other gods. He says, "So you're really gods? Tell us what the future holds so that we may know you are truly God." And he says, "I alone know the future." Okay? Then Isaiah chapter 11, he says this. He says, um, "In the last days, I will put a sign for all the nations." Okay? Now, again, here's God saying, "I'm going to do something for, for all the nations. I'm going to give them a sign." You ever, ever said, "God, if you're real, give me a sign." Right? Well, maybe He's already given it, and we're just not even looking, which I think is true, by the way. Um, so He says, "I'm going to put a sign for all the nations in the day the, the root of Jesse." Okay? So the root of Jesse is referring to the Messiah. So the Messiah was going to come through the line of King David, and Jesse was the father of, of David. So in that day, um, the nations will rally to this Messiah. So it says that. Okay, think about it. How do you, how do you predict that? I mean, in, in our church, we had 70 nations represented in Austin, Texas. I mean, and yet Isaiah foretold that this Jewish prophet in 780 BC. But then it goes on and it says, "I'm going to gather the scattered people of Judah, the Jewish people, from the four quarters of the earth." So, north, south, east, and west. "I will gather them back a second time to their land as a sign for all the nations that I'm, that I'm real." Okay? So, this is very clear, right? It's going to happen or it's not going to happen. The first time the Jewish people were scattered was in about 580 BC when the Babylonians conquered them. They were taken to Babylon, and then they came back in the early 500s, rebuilt the temple, all that. The second time they were scattered was 40 years exactly after Jesus' crucifixion. Now think about that because 40 in the Bible, many times 40 years is the 40 years of wandering in the desert. So it's, it's kind of 40 years of testing. Jesus was 40 days being tested. So I think God was giving the Jewish people 40 years to realize their Messiah actually came. You know, um, whether they did or not, I don't know. I don't think so. Because Jesus said before, you know, in, in Luke chapter 24, no, uh, Matthew 24, Matthew 24, Jesus is asked, you know, "When's the end going to come?" And he starts saying all these things are going to happen, right? Um, and, and then he says that, uh, that the Jewish people will be scattered to the nations because they did not recognize the time of God's coming. So then 40 years after He's crucified, the Roman general Titus marches on the city, levels the city, levels the temple. The temple was a center of Jewish worship. It's, it hadn't been rebuilt to this day. Okay, think about that. The Jewish people are scattered to the nations. And for 1900 years, from 70 AD till 1948, there was no land, no Jewish nation, no nation of Israel, no king, no president, no common language. The, the Hebrew, modern Hebrew was just rediscovered 200 years ago. And yet God predicted all this. Okay? So He said they'll be scattered to the four quarters of the earth. And, and then in Isaiah 66, okay? Again, this is written 780 years before Jesus, right? God says, "Can a nation be born overnight?" Of course, the answer is no, right? Never happened. He says, "But no sooner is Zion in labor." Zion is the mountain on which Jerusalem is built. Okay. Then, then I will bring her to birth. Rejoice all you nations with, with Jerusalem as, as she's reborn, basically. Okay? So in 1948, I mean, think about it. Um, this scattered people had, had been all over the world, and yet then suddenly they come back to the na, to the land of Israel, and this is after the Holocaust. German Jews, Polish Jews, Russian Jews, Ethiopian Jews, American Jews, Australian Jews, I mean, literally all over the world, and they start coming back, and in 1948, a nation is born overnight. I have the article in the, in, in the Wall Street Journal, I mean, or is the New York Times that says, "Israel is born a new nation." The UN declared it. And yet God foretold it 2,780 years ago. He said, "Here, I'm going to put a sign before all the nations. I'm going to tell you what's going to happen, and then it's going to happen." And, and how do you explain that? How do you manipulate thousands of people spread out all over the world? How do they even remain a people? Never happened.
So was that the, the prophecy? That was it for me. That was, I mean, that one, there are many more. Yeah. I mean, many more. But that one for me was like, dang, I can't explain that away. Yeah. It's incredible. And it happened in our day.
And when was that that you realized that or kind of looked into that? Like, I mean, when I started, you know, when I was still a skeptic, I mean, I, I, um, you know, I, I came to faith. So here's the interesting thing. The way faith works, Nick, is, you know, there's, there's the head, right? And so my head had to understand there's evidence. But I never, you never have all your questions answered. So at a certain point, I realized, "Oh, now it's an issue of the heart." Like, I know all this knowledge. I believe God really is real and really did all this stuff, but what am I going to do with it? And then it's a, am I going to let God be God, or am I going to keep playing God? And, yeah, I'll be honest. Like, that was terrifying because I knew what I wanted in life. "My will be done. Don't screw it up." And I, and I honestly, and I think we all do, quite honestly. Oh, yeah. I think we all get our plans and our ideas, and we think God's gonna mess it up. Which I like to remind people, if He's God, do you think He needs your permission if He wants to mess it up? No. He, He waits for our permission because He is love, and love respects the free will of the other and needs to be loved back. God doesn't want to dominate. God, you know, we want to dominate when we turn away from God. God is love. And so God works with our free will, and He wants to do good for us and give us good things, but only as we're willing.
And, and what does that look like to let God be God? Like you said, when you had to transform that heart, what does that actually, actionably look like for someone?
Well, I think at the root, it's very simple. You know, it's, it's, it's very simple. In, um, I mean, the best illustration of how simple it is. Relationship with God and heaven are a gift. And it's simply a heart turning back to Him. It's that simple. And then you can know you're right with God. You don't have to fear His judgment. You don't have to fear His condemnation. And the best example of that is Jesus on the cross. You know, coming up on Easter, uh, Jesus is hanging between two thieves or criminals, and one of them mocks Him and says, "If you're really the Son of God, if you're really the Messiah, get us all down off the cross. Prove it." And Jesus doesn't even answer, which is very insightful, right? It's like God doesn't really feel the need to give into our demands. Yeah. But our humility, on the other hand. So the other thief says, "What are you doing? We deserve this. He doesn't deserve this." And then he just says, "Jesus, when you come in your kingdom," so he acknowledges He is the King. "When you come in your kingdom, will you remember me?" That simple. And Jesus turns to him and says, "You'll be with me today in paradise." Wow. So relationship with God is that simple. Is a heart turning to Him, acknowledging He's God, I'm not. I've, I've gone my own way. I need His forgiveness. And when we know that He's, He's done what He's done in Jesus, we can have that assurance. Like, no, He's paid a very dear price for this. But He doesn't do that. And Nick, I think this is what a lot of people misunderstand. He didn't do that just so we get our ticket checked and, oh yeah, I, I'll be in heaven one day. Yep. No, this life is continuous with the next life. And this is what the life review shows as well. Like, what we do and who we become is who we will be when we step into the next life. It's not like everything just changes. We're still ourselves, fully. Wow. So who are you becoming, right? It matters, and it affects who you are as you enter eternity. Inner life that is real life. And so this life really does matter. And so it, it too is simple. I think what God really wants is not our perfection because we can't, but it's our daily willingness. So it's like any other relationship. You know, you're, you're willing to talk to God throughout the day. You're willing to consider His thoughts in your thoughts. You're about to do something. "What do you think about this?" I mean, that's, that's not just saying "My will be done," but that's like, "Well, what's Your will, Lord?" And that's how we grow. And the Bible tells us that as we do that, as we walk with the Spirit, as we walk with God's Spirit, you don't have to, you don't have to fight hard to give up that addiction or that porn, you know, porn habit or the obsessive anger and impatience or, you know, habit of lying or whatever those things are. It says you just walk daily trying to listen and do the next right thing that God places your heart with a willingness, and all those old things start to die away and new things start to come. Love, this is Galatians chapter 5, if you want to read it. This is, this is the Bible. Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, gentleness, goodness, faithfulness, self-control. These fruits of God's Spirit start to grow up naturally in us. And I, and I've experienced that, and it's a great way to live. Yes.
People think following Jesus or, you know, giving their life, surrendering their life to God would be prison and would be horrible and He's going to destroy my life and ruin it. And it's not. That's not the heart of God. I, I'm just, I just have chills right now talking to you. I love this, uh, because I can relate so much. And, you know, what I hear you say there is like, there's a first step of like turning back and being like, "God, I just want to walk with you. Like, I'm willing to open up to you and, you know, allow you into my life," just like a relationship, you know? And then kind of a process of just understanding what is it that He cares about, you know? And that's, it's really like, and that's where reading the scriptures, you know, I, I say start with Jesus. He is the most tangible, um, example of what God is like in a form we can relate to. Yeah.
And what would you say to someone who scriptures can be hard, man? Like, I'm new to this, and it's like, I mean, I love the Gospels. I love reading what Jesus said, but a lot of stuff is very hard for me to like, it's like, "What am I supposed to learn here?" You know?
Well, and, you know, there's, there's so many great resources now. Yeah. So, so I encourage people to get this, um, it's called the Uver Bible app, okay? Uver version, all one word. And then to use the New Living Translation, the NLT translation, and then do a reading plan. I'm, I'm actually, I'm going through, uh, with a guy who, who's just new to faith, um, and we're going all the way through the Bible, but I would start with the New Testament and go through. And there's this thing called, um, what's it called? Um, the Bible Recap. So, The Bible Recap. Terra Terry Cobble is her name. And she's really good. And what it is is, you know, you can, and in fact, you can read it, but you can also just hit play, and it'll read to you. Cool. Right? So, I listen to it sometimes in my car, and you're hearing the scripture, and you're hear it in three or four chapters, uh, or two or three chapters a day, and then she does a little seven-minute commentary to help you understand it and answer questions. That's super helpful. It's very helpful. Yeah, that's a very, It's like a modern way of consuming that will fit in. Yeah. So, you owe, you owe me Terry Lee. I never, never met her, but she's cool. I like her. It's, She's doing a great thing. That's great.
I, you know, it struck a chord for me when you said, you know, you don't have to try to like white-knuckle that addiction or that porn addiction or whatever it is. Um, and, you know, I've just been experiencing that recently where, like, I've said, I'm newer to, to faith, and I never thought I was going to be this guy. Like, I never thought I'd be on a podcast talking about Jesus. Like, I never saw this coming in my life.
Well, but welcome to my world. I mean, you know, if, if you had told me what, so, so what's funny is, I did once say I would never be a pastor. "What a waste of a life." I've, and, and I would never have been the near-death experience expert. I even when I first started studying, I thought, "This is weird." It's why it took me so long to write about it. Right. But, you know, the other side of it, Nick, is like, when you do learn to walk with God, man. Worrying about what other people think. Yeah. Feeling more confident in yourself, um, experiencing deeper friendships, relationships, um, more bold, more willing to take risks, and then seeing God work in your life. It's like, it's, there's no better way to live. M. I mean, I have lived the adventure. Yeah. I, I've been to 30 countries. I wouldn't have, if I'd stayed an engineer, I wouldn't have gone to 30 countries. I have friends in 30 countries, you know. It's like, it's crazy. It kind of makes the rest of life, like, you don't see the point as much in like chasing other things. Like, it's just like, I just want to focus on love and relationships and what Jesus cares about. It just shows, it just is so much more, has so much more depth to it. Uh, that's what I'm experiencing right now. It's like this clash between, like, I used to be really obsessed with like self-help books, and I still love them, and I think it's good to hear from people, you know, how they're approaching life, but that felt, it felt very white-knuckling everything. And now as I'm like, just consuming God and scripture and what, who Jesus was, like, I'm, I'm noticing this, it's like a lighter walk through it, and it feels like it's just falling off of me.
Well, what people don't realize, Jesus, you know, the, the Bible says it was for freedom that Christ set us free. For freedom. You know, G Jesus said, um, "If you, if you remain in in my teachings, if you remain in my word, you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free." Wow. So, God actually wants to set us free. And most people don't really get this and don't believe it. And, and in fact, even me as a pastor, I mean, it's not like, boom, it happens. I think about, you know, like, like kind of stress and worry. I'm a type A personality, you know, I, I get a lot done. I make a lot happen, but I've worried and I've stressed and, you know, probably taken myself way too seriously a lot of the time. And it was just like seven or eight years ago that I felt like, "I'm, I'm reading the Bible," and I've read it many, many times before. I've taught on it. I, I know it, you know, and I felt like God's Spirit in my thoughts, kind of like NDEs get the communication right. It's just thought to thought, but, but it wasn't a thought I was thinking about. And it was like, "No, I'm serious." And I was reading about, "Do not worry. The birds don't worry. God takes care of them. The flowers, they're beautiful. And you don't worry. You can't add a single second to your life by worrying." And I felt like He said, "I, I was serious about that." Wow. Meaning like, "I don't want you to live this way any longer." So we get in these habits, and we think, "Well, this is how it's supposed to be. This is how it has to be."
But I think a lot of them, shame is a lot of people live under so much shame, and they think that's from God. It's not. It's not this, this, you know, fear of condemnation and like, "I did something wrong again," and, you know, "God doesn't want to hear from you anymore. You know, get your act together or don't talk to Him." It's not God.
I experience shame. Where do you think that comes from? Like, I mean, you know, all of us get wounded. Yeah. Growing up, all of us get messages. Some of them are true. You know, even like, you know, what you're talking about, the self-help stuff. I mean, there's truth to be found everywhere, right? God's truth is anything that's true. In other words, it's according to the way things really are designed to work are from God. Yeah. They don't have to be found in the Bible. They can be found in lots of places. But there are also lots of lies. And the best lie is like 80% true. And that's how we get deceived. And, and so, you know, we hear things growing up, we get wounded and hurt. I think that, Nick, is how evil works. Is evil is able to get a hold of a person that then out of their own hurts and wounds wounds us, and then into that wound is seated a lie. Okay? So, um, well, I'll give you one that, you know, as a pastor, I dealt with a lot with like women or men who were sexually abused as children or as kids, you know, or teenagers. And I can't tell you how many, you know, it's like, it, you know, when, when people say sex is just physical, well, sexual abuse proves that's not true because it, it stays with them so long. It wasn't just a physical act. It did something to their soul. Yeah. There was a wounding. And, um, and, and many times what, uh, you know, what happens is they hear lies, which I think this is evil. I do. I think that's the way evil works. Sewing lies into those wounds. "You deserved it." Um, "Somehow it was your fault." "You're dirty." "You're worthless." You know, "You might as well just go do whatever with your body because it doesn't matter anymore." You know, "You're stained. You're tarnished." And we kind of think maybe that's from God. It's not. But it drives us to then do other things that wound us or wound others even, even further until someone, and you know this is, this is what I often find. They can get healing through traditional therapy, starting to understand the truth. Uh, but many times when they come to faith and they start to understand that that was not from God and God wants to set them free, there is no condemnation. "There is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus." That's Romans 1:8. And, um, and then that shame starts to lift as they start to realize, "No, you know, I didn't deserve that. That was evil and that was wrong. And I am, I'm not, uh, out of control of myself or my body." And so healing can take place.
Man, I could talk to you for days. Um, but I'm gonna, for your audience's sake, we won't do that. No, I love it. I love it. I, I guess there's a couple things. Uh, I love the concept of God glasses, but I guess we kind of touched on that in the life review a little bit, seeing things through His eyes. Um, well, not, not completely. Let me say one more thing about that is that, you know, what God shows people in this life review, two things very clearly they come back saying is God is love, and how we love or treat one another is what matters most to God. M. And it's wild because in some cases, like, like Howard Storm, who is this atheist tenured college professor, who starts out in a hellish experience and then cries out to Jesus, who becomes, who comes into this outer darkness as this light brighter than the sun and pulls him out, pulls him out, and then as Jesus is holding him in the presence of angels, he gets a life review. And he says some very interesting things. So, and, and some of these are commonalities. So, one of the things he saw is that, um, like Jesus showed him when he was a teenager and his little sister lost a pet, and he hears her in the middle of the night crying, and he gets up and he goes in and sits on the bed and just holds her. And he said, "And I could feel Jesus' joy. I could feel how it affected Jesus and the angels that I would do that for her." And he said, "But those were few and far between." Yeah. And he said, "I also saw when one of my students came in and, and he was, he was, uh, just a mess because his girlfriend had just broken up with him, and he started pouring out his heart and what should he do?" And Howard is re-experiencing his thoughts before Jesus and the angels, which his thoughts were, "Who does this kid think I am? You know, I'm not your therapist. You think I really give a damn? You know, I don't get paid enough to listen to this e-expletive, right?" And so now he's seeing this, and he said, "As I'm watching these other scenes from my life where I was just, just mean and cruel, even in my thoughts." So our thoughts have power. It's not just our actions. It's our, it's our thoughts, our motives. It's all of it. All of it matters. And all that has an influence. That's what we don't often realize. And, um, and he said, "It was like I was stabbing Jesus in the heart." And he said, "And I don't want to hurt Him." He said, "Here I'm being held by the most loving, kind, wonderful being I've ever experienced, who I realize is my God, my Creator, even my Savior, who he had just blasphemed and, you know, tried to. And yet here He is, and he feels unconditional love, but also support because Jesus was trying to show him, 'You're going back, and I want you to live a different way.'" Wow. And he did. So when he came back, think about this. Tenured professor. You get tenure. You cannot be fired. It's what professors live for. And yet two years later, he leaves his professorship to become a, a Christian pastor. His wife divorces him because she's still atheist and thinks he's lost it. Wow. And for 30 years now, he's, he's been this incredibly faithful, loving pastor to people. It's, it's, it's like the Damascus road, right? Where Paul.
What's that?
Um, so Paul was, uh, in Acts chapter 10. Okay. Paul was a Pharisee, one of the ones who crucified Jesus. He's arresting the early followers of Jesus and having them thrown in jail and even killed. Mhm. And he's on the Damascus road to go to Damascus to arrest more Christians when this brilliant light brighter than the sun appears to him, and he falls down, and he says, "It's just like Rajie, who are you, Lord?" And he says, "I'm Jesus, who you're persecuting." Now think about that. Paul was persecuting these people who were following Jesus, not Jesus. But what near-death experiencers show us as well is that we are all way more connected than we realize. And we're connected through God, who created us to be one with Him and each other. That was Jesus' last prayer. People don't realize this. John chapter 17, Jesus' last prayer for us before the crucifixion that night. He prayed, "Father, may they all be one, just as I am in You and You are in me. May they be one in us so the world may believe You sent me." So there is, there is a connection that we don't even realize we have. And that's what people see in their life review, that when I do something to you, I'm, I'm also going to feel it one day, but also it has an effect on the next person, the next. And at the same time, the reason what's most important to God is how we love or care for one another is that is His plan to change the world. And it's going to work. It's life by life by life. One act of kindness, one act of love, one act of taking what we've been given. Doesn't mean our jobs aren't important, but how do we do our jobs? Do we do it just for us, or do we do it to serve the people around us? What kind of co-worker am I? What kind of boss? What kind of employee to my boss? Do I care about any of that? Do I do it out of love for God? Because that counts too. Everything done in faith matters.
That's beautiful. And so it, it, it shows you that, you know, not all of us will be movie stars. None of us will, you know, inter, inter, invent the personal computer or be the next, you know, AI thing that changes the world or write a great song that hits the billboards. But all of us can be completely successful in the purpose we were created for, which is, well, it is unique to each one of us. And that's the book I just started. Oh, I can't wait. It's a teaser. Wow. Did you see me, uh, there? Did it sue it? So, you'll have to have me back. I will. I will. No, it, it is both simpler and more complex than we make it. So, more complex in that we, we think, "Oh, my purpose is to be, uh, a singer-songwriter who has Billboard chart-topping hits and to tour the country, have thousands worshiping me on stage." No. But music might be a part of it. Mhm. Right. And that, and, and your career is a part of it. But it's your purpose is way bigger than that. It involves who you are from your parents, the experiences you went through early in life, what you do with those. It involves every person you interact with along the way. It involves the gifts you've uniquely been given. And whether you give into fear or you move into them in faith and you use them not just for your own glory but to serve God and to love others and to serve others. And so, yes, it has to do with your career, but your career in all of it. So it's way more complex than we make it, but living it out is way more simple. And it, it comes back to that simple day-by-day listening, walking with God. I can't wait for that book. That's for sure. I'm gonna read it. Please send that to me. I will buy it as soon as it's out. I will.
Um, the, the last question I want to ask you, I guess too, but you kind of summed this up, but you've interviewed thousands of people who have had near-death experiences. What, what are the main impacts when they come back from that near-death experience? The ways that their lives change and their outlook on life? What's, what's like a message we can walk away with if we haven't had a near-death experience? You live in plenty of them, but what would you, what would you say?
Well, they, they clearly come back if, if they've had a full-blown experience. Some, some just have shallow experiences. And this is a little side note. This is why I don't encourage people to just get their whole view of the afterlife and God from listening to just near-death experiences because you may just leave your body, feel great, uh, meet someone on the other side, and boom, you're back in your body. Well, you can interpret that in a million ways. You don't see all the pieces, right? And so that's why I'm trying to look at all the pieces together and how it, how it relates. Um, but I would say consistently they say God is love. Um, God is not out to condemn us or judge us but to love us. And God just wants relationship. It's what He created us for. And then the second thing they would say and what changes their life is that, um, before, many times if they were very materialistic or just like very, um, self-absorbed and just trying to get fame or fortune or possessions or whatever, that kind of doesn't matter as much to them. M. It's not that it's not a good thing to enjoy, but it's not the center anymore. And they're more like, "How can I, how can I do good in the world? How can I serve people? How can I be of help to mankind?" Um, and so I would say that's the biggest, the biggest lesson that people come back, and it really does change their life.
That's beautiful. That is so beautiful. Like I said, I could talk to you for hours, but, um, we're going to wrap it up here, but I do have to ask you, do you have a favorite quote? I ask everyone that. Is there one on the top of your head? A favorite quote? It's okay if not.
Oh man, I know I'm pulling it out. A favorite quote? Um, well, mine, uh, yeah, I mean, mine would probably be a, a, a quote from the Bible. Yeah. So, "He's, nothing can separate us from the love of God that's found in Christ Jesus." And that comes after a long list of things. Nothing can separate us from the love of God. So I love that.
Thank you so much for doing this.
Sure. Thanks, Nick.
This book, Imagine the God of Heaven. Incredible. Imagine Heaven. Incredible. Your podcast, what's it called?
Imagine Heaven Podcast with John Burke. Easy.
Okay. So, go check that out. Um, if you enjoyed this conversation, I hope you did. It was a blessing to me and I hope it was to you as well. Thanks, John.
Thanks, Zach.
Thank you so much for tuning into this conversation. We hope you loved it, and we hope you share it with your friends, and we also hope you subscribe. It's free for you to do and it helps us out so much. These episodes are directed and edited by the one and only Mason Allen. This show would not happen without him. Thank you, Mason. And feel free to check out some other episodes while you're here. I'm Nicholas John. I hope you have a great day.