Transcription
We all put God in a box, and we need to let him out. God is the love you've always wanted. I've interviewed people all over the world, on every continent, who have had near-death experiences and claim to see the same God of Light and love. Who is this God of all Nations, and why is it that none of them ever want to leave his presence? Well, I'm John Burke, author of the New York Times best-selling books *Imagine Heaven* and *Imagine the God of Heaven*, and this is the Imagine Heaven podcast.
I grew up in Council Bluffs, Iowa, in a Jewish family. My dad's an atheist, a hardcore atheist; my mom's an agnostic. Despite my parents, I had always believed in God, always. It was spring, and I was 16. My horse reared up, fell over backwards, and as she hit my chest, I immediately left my body. I was up 30-40 ft in the air. I just left. I knew I was dead. There was a light over my shoulders, and it was illuminating everything in front of me. As my Hindu belief, I thought if I die, then that should be it; maybe I'll come back as another, another living thing in this life, but it did not happen. I heard "Code blue, code blue." I asked the doctors what, what actually happened. He said, "Well, they could not revive your heart." A bright light was appearing before me. I knew that light had superior authority, superior power. I knew it was a Divine Light. I fell in love with this light.
Has SP Wonder to the parents who, with different ethnic backgrounds, one another, one to mixing with Islam and the tradition ancestry worship. I was diagnosed with blood cancer. The doctor said that, uh, this cancer is on the first stage, and they cannot be here. When I died, I found myself in a very big, very big room. A—in his white gown—was very shiny, shiny; that kind of sunshine pierced my eyes. When all the co-situation was happening, and I was sick, I just knew that I was going to die, and I started floating on top of my husband's head, and I'm looking at my body. I was just like, "Am I dead?" And I started screaming, "God, please forgive me," cuz I realized he was real. In that moment, I knew that there was something missing. This light pops bold, like seeing the sun without burning. I knew that that was the voice of God because of the authority and the love. It was like, "I am who created you." I just knew, knew that I was made by this.
Well, you're going to hear more from Heidi and Santos, Suedi, and Karina about their experience of this God of Light, this God of all Nations. So let me give you just a little of their background. You know Heidi, as she said, she grew up Jewish with an atheistic dad, agnostic mom, and also in a very abusive household. But interestingly, she always believed in God. In fact, she told me, "I felt like God was my true father, and I prayed to him every night and would pour out her heart, and she felt like God was there comforting her and putting her to bed every night." That's significant because of what she will experience.
Santos, interestingly, grew up in India. His father was a Sanskrit scholar, which meant the, the Hindu script scriptures were all Santos ever knew. He's a very smart man, a manufacturing engineer by trade. He traveled the world doing manufacturing engineering until the day that his gallbladder erupted into his pancreas. He was in the hospital; he hears "code blue," and his heart stops. Suedi lives in Rwanda. If you recall, that's where the genocide was between the Hutus and the Tutsis. Well, um, he grew up with a father who was a Sheik and, and a mom, and a Hutu; his mother was a Tutsi, so the opposite sides of the genocide, and his mother was a worshipper of the African goddess, Beo. In the genocide, their family was torn apart. Suedi, at the age of eight, ended up living on the streets and eventually doing drugs and dealing drugs just to survive. He later kind of comes back, and, uh, he, and he became a Muslim, a mom, um, and then gets blood cancer and dies from it. He was on palliative care.
Karina grew up in Colombia. She grew up Catholic but pretty much left the faith when her parents, uh, when she was a 16-year-old, took her here to America and pretty much abandoned her with her grandmother while they moved to another state without even telling her. As a result, she dealt with a lot of abandonment issues and, you know, really struggled to want to be loved and accepted. Got into every kind of, kind of rebellious behavior you can, was promiscuous, got pregnant as a teenager, had an abortion. I mean, all these things she went through, um, and was really seeking, she told me, "I was just seeking for, you know, the love that I felt like I, I, I never could find." Well, eventually she did. She got married, she had a family, she started having heart issues. They ended up misdiagnosing her and putting in a pacemaker, and during COVID, the pacemaker failed. And like she said, she was sitting out by her pool with her husband and, and suddenly she knows she's going to die, and she starts to leave her body.
Now, if you notice, they all talked about this God of life that they experience, and interestingly, all over the world. Um, in the book *Imagine the God of Heaven*, I report on 70 people, um, like Dr. Bel Chung from Singapore, Chin in China, Ian in who was in Malaysia, a professor in Australia. I mean, all over the world, they are seeing and experiencing the same God of Light and, and love. Now, who is this God of, of all the nations, and, and what is it that they consistently describe? That's what I want to talk more about. Light and love is, you know, the main characteristic. 48% of people who have had near-death experiences describe this Divine Light that is love. And just as they said, there's no doubt who this is; they know that that this is God.
Over 35 years ago, when I first started studying all this, um, as I've said, I was a skeptical agnostic, an engineer by trade, and honestly, I thought Jesus was just a legend, you know, it's probably a good man, good teacher, but just made into a legend. This whole Son of God stuff was bogus, um, and I thought you just can't know about God. Maybe there is, maybe there, you just can't know. What blew me away is when I started hearing more and more of these near-death experiences; they opened my mind. And because so many of them were talking about this God of light and love and even experiencing Jesus, I started to read and study the Bible. So, so inie ease opened my mind. But when I really dove in and started studying the Bible, I realized that this same God of Light and love has actually revealed himself in real history. I want to show you some of that. You'll have to stick with me a little bit; I'm going to geek out just a bit, but man, what I found. I mean, if I had known there is this much evidence, um, you know, I, I, I wouldn't have remained a skeptic and an agnostic for so long. So I, I share this because not only has it personally changed my life, but I've, I've experienced how to walk in relationship with this same God of Light and love, and it's profoundly changed me. And that honestly is why I'm doing this, to help, hopefully help you discover the things I did and, and find something that really does help you live your best life as well.
So interestingly, the same God of Light is found in actual history. Now, to understand that, you have to understand what I did not know, which is I thought the Bible was just a book, right? Just it's just some religious book, um, probably someone just made up. Well, the truth is the Bible is 66 separate books; it's really like a library of books. 39 of them written by Jewish prophets, 27 of them written by eyewitnesses to or reporting eyewitnesses of the life and teachings of Jesus. But also, there are written over a 1500-year period, between 1450 BC and about 100 AD, and written by about 40 different authors in three different languages in different countries, and yet there's a cohesive story about the love story of this God of Light for all people of all Nations. Now, now just think about that for a second; how crazy that is. Because imagine going to a library, right, and just pull 66 books off the shelf. And how likely are they going to agree on any one topic, even if you got different books on, on the same topic? And yet that's what we see across these 66 books of the Bible, this consistent story of this God of Light and love in history, and that's what I want to show you because that's what I discovered that really opened my mind.
In 2000 BC, and, and by the way, this is before any of the world's religions that we have today even had a sacred writing. So 4,000 years ago, God claims to have intersected actual history and, through Abraham and Sarah, said this. Okay, this is found in Genesis 12:2 and 3. God says to Abraham, "I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you, and all peoples on Earth will be blessed through you." This is wild because he's saying that I'm going to raise up this nation, which is going to become the Jewish nation, and he's going to do this for a couple of reasons: to preserve the scriptures for the sake of all people, but also to give proof of his identity in history, and I'll, I'll show you how in just a second. But this claims that the God of Light intersected actual history for the sake of all Nations. If you read the scriptures of the world's religions, you find that most Gods, most deities are local in nature; they're not speaking to all Nations. And yet here this God of Light, before any of the world's religions even had a sacred scripture, is caring for and speaking to all, all the nations.
3,500 years ago, in about 1450 BC, Moses sees a brilliant light, uh, that looks like a fire up on the top of Mount Horeb that isn't going out, and he's curious, and so he goes up. It's all Mount Horeb is also called Mount Sinai. And here's what it says there: "The angel of the Lord," and the angel of the Lord, um, many times is thought to be the, the physical appearance of God in the Old Testament. Okay, so the angel of the Lord appeared to him in a blazing fire from the middle of a bush. Moses stared in amazement, though the bush was engulfed in flames, it didn't burn up. So here you have this miraculous fire, this brilliant light in this bush, but it's not burning the bush, and then it speaks. God called to him from the middle of the bush, "Moses, Moses, here I am," Moses replied, "Do not come any closer," the Lord warned, "Take off your sandals; you're standing on holy ground. I am the god of your father, the god of Abraham, the god of Isaac, and the god of Jacob." Okay, so here this, this God of brilliant light is connecting himself to God, to the god of Abraham, who wants to bless all the nations. And then Moses asked for God's name, and look what he says. God replied to Moses, "I am who I am." Okay, in other words, "I am the self-existent one, the Eternal," okay, the one who is not caused or created. "I am who I am." And then he says, "Say this to the people of Israel: 'I am' has sent me to you." God also said to Moses, "Say this to the people of Israel: Yahweh, the god of your ancestors, the god of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, has sent me to you." Okay. Now, what's wild is I interviewed a woman in Tehran, Iran, who experienced God appearing to her when she had a near-death experience. She only speaks Persian, so I, I'm going to let you hear some of what she said in Persian. I know you won't understand it, but it's so wild, I want you to see as the translator translates what this God of, of light, this, this man she saw, but that was glowing with light, what he said to her. For so the first part is her spirit departs her body; she sees her body. The second part, part is she sees her body is dead; she was waiting for a very horrible judgment for Ali to come, but Ali didn't come. And then she sees a man come completely in a white robe, and he, that man just says two words to him: "I am he, I am." So, so tell me more about that. What did she—so she's there in the room up above her body. Yeah, she said, "After I, I forgot to say that, and when she, he, the man said, 'I am who I am,' or 'I am he who I am,' so she said, 'When I heard that, I felt my spirit, my body fell down on the ground, and then I went back. I saw my spirit is back to my body, and I'm alive again.'" I mean, isn't that wild? And BB told me that she woke up with a peace and, and a joy that, that she had never had before, um, and she started a search, and search for a year to discover who is this man of light in the white robe who she knew to be God. I mean, just like Santos said, just like Karina said, there was an authority and a presence and a love about him that it was, it was not questioned who this is; they, they knew that this was God.
Now, interestingly, when, when God appeared to Moses, when he gave the Ten Commandments, first of all, he appears, and all the Israelites see God as this again brilliant fire that doesn't burn up. Moses would come down from the mountain glowing because of the light of God. But also, God tells Moses and the people of Israel his heart for all people. Listen to what he says, because this is the beginning of the character of God that near-death experiencers are experiencing all around the world. Exodus 34:6: "The Lord passed in front of Moses, calling out, 'Yahweh, the Lord, the god of compassion and mercy, I'm slow to anger and filled with unfailing love and faithfulness. I lavish unfailing love to a thousand generations, and I forgive iniquity and rebellion and sin.'" This is 3,500 years ago. This God of Light says, "This is my heart; this is my character. I am full of unfailing love; I love to pour out and lavish love on people, and I forgive their, their sins; I forgive their wrongs." Now, the Shema was the Creed of Israel that, that they said over and over again, and Moses reminds the people in this Creed that this is what matters most, most to God. It says this here: "O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one," um, meaning there's only one God; there aren't three Gods; there aren't thousands of gods; there's only one God. And then it says, "Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength." So there's one, I am this self-existent, eternal God, and what he wants is love; he is love; he loves to lavish love on people of all Nations, and he wants us to simply love and follow him as a result and, out of that, to love others. In fact, he later says to Moses in Leviticus 19, "Love your neighbor as yourself. I am the Lord." And of course, Jesus comes along and says to love God and to love others; those two commands sum up all the commands of God.
Now, I find it so fascinating that near-death experiencers all around the world, when they have a near-death experience in God's presence, many times they get a life review, and they consistently come back saying two things: God is love, and how we love or treat one another is what matters most to God. And that's what we have to understand: what motivates God and all he does, and even the things that confuse us, which I'm hoping to explore a lot of, um, as we travel in this podcast together, is love. Love is what motivates what God does, and when he doesn't act, and sometimes that's hard to see, but I think it's also what near-death experiencers are confirming today. How do we know that this God of Abraham and Moses is real? Okay, like historical, not just fanciful and made-up myth? And then how do we know it ties to the same God of Light of near-death experiencers today? I'll show you something that again just blew me away cuz I had no idea it was actually something that is historically verifiable, but God actually told Moses how you could know he's real. Okay, so check this out. He says, "Any prophet who falsely claims to speak in my name must die." Okay, so like, I'm sorry, but there weren't many Jean Dixons back then. It's not like all these prophets who say all these things, and half of them take place, and half of them don't, right? Or even a worse, you know, percentage than that. No, there was a very strict like, you don't go making stuff up and saying, "God told me." So then it says this: "But you may wonder how will we know whether or not a prophecy is from the Lord? If the prophet speaks in the Lord's name but his prediction does not happen or come true, you will know the Lord did not give that message." So, so again, this is in 1450 BC that God tells this to Moses. This is before any world religion has any sacred writing yet, okay? Even the Old Testament began to be recorded with Moses.
So now fast forward to 680 BC. Another prophet, Isaiah, in 680 BC, says this: "Present your case," says the Lord, so he's saying the Lord is saying this to them, "Present your case, declare to us the things to come, tell us what the future holds, so that we may know you are Gods." So again, here God is saying through his prophets, "I'm the only one who can tell you what the future holds in advance, and that's how you'll know it's me speaking." All right. In another place then, in Isaiah 45, he says this: "Who foretold this long ago? Who declared it from the distant past? Was it not I, the Lord Yahweh?" That's when you see "Lord" in all caps; it's literally Yahweh, and there is no God apart from me, a righteous God and a savior; there is none but me. Turn to me and be saved, all you ends of the Earth. Again, he's speaking to all people, all nations, right here in 680 BC; he, he says this: "No longer will you need the sun to shine by day or the moon to give its light by night, for the Lord your God will be your everlasting Light, and your God, God will be your glory." And I, I, I talked about this in an earlier episode, but, um, he's talking about in Heaven. There is no sun or moon; God is light, and that is the light of heaven, and that's exactly what near-death experiencers say. And then he gives a sign. You know how we say, "God, give me a sign," like, "If you're real, give me some sign," and I've, I've heard atheists and agnostics, and I used to say the same thing. But what if God actually has given a sign in history, and the problem is we haven't really taken the time to look for it? I mean, to search, to even read, uh, and study what he has done in history. That is what I actually discovered. To understand this, you have to understand God's claim was that he was going to raise up the Jewish people to bless all the nations, right? That's what he said to Abraham. And how is he going to bless all the nations? One, by preserving his scriptures, his writings that we're looking at today through the Jewish prophets, and so much of the bizarre laws around the Jewish nation was to set them apart to preserve that. But the second thing is to foretell the coming of this Messiah, and we'll look more at that, but this, uh, self-revelation of God in a form we could understand, and he foretold that as, as we'll see. God foretells a time when the Messiah comes, and then the Jewish people would be scattered to all the nations, but then he would bring them back to Jerusalem, and he says as a sign to all the nations that he is real. Okay, so here he's saying, "I'm going to give you a sign." So let's look at it in Isaiah 11:10 through 12. Remember, this is written in 680 BC. "In that day, the root of Jesse," okay, the root of Jesse stands for Messiah because they knew the Messiah was going to come through the line of King David, and Jesse was David's father. So, "In that day, the Messiah, the root of Jesse, will stand as a banner or a sign for the peoples; the Nations will rally to him." Again.
He's speaking to the Nations, and his resting place will be glorious. In that day, the Lord will reach out his hand a second time to reclaim the surviving remnant of his people of Israel. He will raise a banner, a sign for the Nations and gather the Exiles of Israel. He will assemble the scattered people of Judah, the Jewish people, from the four quarters of the earth. You know, remember God already said, "Here's how you'll know it's me: I alone can foretell what the future is going to be." God will give a sign, he says, to all the nations that after the Messiah comes. So in that day, the Nations will have rallied to him; the Jewish people will have been scattered, he said, to the north, south, east, and west, to the four quarters of the earth. Now he said a second time, interestingly, the first time was when the Jewish people were scattered to Babylon during the Exile. That happened, and they were brought back to Jerusalem and rebuilt it in 444 BC, okay? So that real history actually happened. The second time they would be scattered to the Nations turned out to be 40 years after the crucifixion of Jesus. So Jesus is crucified, you know, claims to be the Messiah, is crucified in about 30 AD. Forty years later, in 70 AD—and this is actual historical records, you can go look it up—the Roman general Titus comes in and destroys Jerusalem, wipes it out, and the people are scattered to the Nations. The second time they're scattered to the Nations, and for 1900 years, okay? So, so think about that, and notice this is real, verifiable history, all right, that you can't go make up.
God told Isaiah in 680 BC that he would regather the Jewish people again as a sign to all people. And Isaiah the prophet, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Jesus, they all foretell this event that happened in our day in 1948: the regathering and the birth of a nation in one day. Okay? So again, in Isaiah, in 680 BC—this is Isaiah chapter 66—God says this to Isaiah, who writes it down: "Who ever heard of such a thing? Has a nation ever been born in a single day? No, it's never happened in history. Has a country ever come forth in a mere moment? No, that'd be miraculous, right?" But, "By the time Jerusalem's birth pains begin, her children will be born. Would I ever bring this nation to the point of birth and then not deliver it?" asks the Lord, asks Yahweh. "I will gather all nations and peoples together again"—this is all nations he's speaking to—"and they will see my glory. I will perform a sign among them; they will bring the remnant of your people, the Jewish people, back from every nation. They will bring them to my Holy Mountain in Jerusalem." Now, if this doesn't blow your mind, you're not understanding; go back and listen again. I, I, I wrote it down in "Imagine the God of Heaven," so you could read it carefully, because this is the sign everybody wants. I, I don't see how you can explain it any other way. God says, "I'm going to tell you how you'll know I'm real. I will tell you the future before it happens." He says, "I'm going to give a sign to all the nations: the scattered Jewish people are going to be regathered a second time, and a nation's going to be born overnight."
So how do you explain this? That the Jewish people were not a people for 1900 years. They were scattered across the globe; they had no king, no president, no government, no common language—Hebrew. The Hebrew language had been lost; it was just reborn just a couple hundred years ago. And they had no land for 1900 years, from 70 AD to 1948. And then suddenly, Russian Jews, Ethiopian Jews, American Jews, European Jews, Australian Jews, African Jews come back and resettle the land from all over the world, um, all speaking different languages, and they came back as one, quote, "chosen people," to form a new nation born overnight. Now this is a sign God said to all the nations. So I, I know this is very timely; it's very timely because of what's happening right now in Israel and Palestine. And I, and I need to say something that's a little bit of a caveat because some people will, will ask questions, is like, "Well, why did God choose the Jewish people? Why does he favor them?" And you need to understand, "chosen" does not mean favored. God loves all people equally. God loves the Palestinians; um, God loves Hamas and Hezbollah as much as he does the Israelites. Okay? Doesn't mean he loves what they're doing. And Israel, though he loves them and has chosen them, can also do things that God does not want and is not his will. And yet God can still use all these things to show that he is God and he is Sovereign Over All Nations, and that is exactly what he's doing. So "chosen" doesn't mean chosen as better than or favored; chosen means chosen for a responsibility. And the responsibility the Jewish people had was to preserve the scriptures and foretell of the Messiah who would come for the sake of all Nations.
You know, it's fascinating because God said, uh, to the Prophet Jeremiah, "You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart." And that's exactly what's happening with near-death experiencers today. They are discovering the same God in their near-death experience, but they don't always know who he is until they come back and they seek, and when they seek, they find. My dad had a mantra: "There is no God; there is no Heaven; there is no hell; Jesus Christ is the biggest hoax ever perpetrated on mankind." My heart hit my chest; I was up 30, 40 feet in the air. I realized there was a person standing right there, and he moved forward, and I looked at him, and he looked at me, and I, like, "Oh, Jesus!" I was not thinking, "What is a nice Jewish girl like me seeing Jesus?" No, I knew this man. I saw him from the time I was formed in my mother's womb; he had been with me. He just—when I used to talk to God at night when I was a little kid, he'd been there; he'd been there sitting by my bed. I saw that—I can't explain how God can be a light and God can be a man and God can be love. I, I can't explain it, I can't, but that's what I experienced. They even called me Gina. "Come, come," they were celebrating me. I'm like, "Me, out of everybody?" And I kept saying, "God, I don't deserve you; I'm filthy; send me back to hell." I knew I was going there, and he said, "Come, I love you." I knew I was home. That is home.
When I died, I found myself in a very big, in a very big room. A person entering a white garment with sandals, you know, holding his hand, you know, showing them to me with very, these very big holes into his heart. He told me, "I died for men; you are among those I died for; never deny it again, and tell this to everyone." I woke up; people had come for me, so I started shouting, "Jesus is in front of you! I'm seeing him; he's there; he's the one who has brought me back!" I fell in love with that light because it was protecting me from any harm, taking me somewhere safer. The light stopped, and I saw that light was shining on top of a beautiful compound. Inside that compound or complex, I should say, there's a lot of mansions, big buildings, absolutely gorgeous, square shaped; it is very high walls. And I saw there's 12 magnificent gates, there, beautiful gates; many angels, they're protecting that gate. I knew I was looking at the Kingdom of Heaven. I saw there was a huge throne, and on that Throne there was the Almighty. I knew he was the Almighty; I knew it automatically. His eyes were like lightning balls, and all the sins I committed in my life were flushed before my eyes, so I kept repeating the same thing that, "Lord, please forgive me; please forgive me." And then finally he spoke to me; his voice was full of tenderness, mercy, and grace. He said, "I'm sending you back to the Earth." When the Lord spoke to me, I experienced the love, tenderness from him that I did not expect. Just a few short distance from him, on the, on the platform level, I saw a very narrow door or narrow gate that was open, and that is the only gate through whom I can enter into the kingdom of. I ask the Lord, "Lord, when you see me again, please tell me how I can go to this Naro, this next time." When he's seeing me, "Lord, I want to go to the narrow door."
You know, this is what got me studying all this, uh, 35 plus years ago, is I, I kept hearing these people talking like this, this God of Light, and many of them then know he's Jesus; um, some don't, you know, like, like Santos. Santos told me he came back and he was seeking this God; he said, "Who was this God?" He was so unlike the gods of the Hindu scriptures, you know. He said, "He showed me all my sins, and he had seen a vision of Hell," uh, just like Sedik had a reality of that too. And, and yet Santos said, "This God had so much tenderness and mercy and compassion toward me, and he had asked for forgiveness," and, and, and God gave him another chance; he sends him back and, and seeking. And interestingly, it's almost like God gave him a parable, right? Because he sees these 12 gates; he describes the city of the holy city of God, just like, uh, in Revelation, but then there's only a narrow gate next to the throne that is open into the kingdom of heaven, and he wants to go in. Two years later, his daughter is invited to sing at a church by her friend because she was a choral major. Santos goes to hear her, and the message is on this Matthew 7: "You can enter God's kingdom only through the narrow gate." And then the pastor talked about John 10, where Jesus says, "I tell you the truth, I am the gate for the sheep; yes, I am the gate; those who come in through me will be saved." And Santos was blown away; he started reading the Bible; he told me everything I experienced was in that book, and he came to, to faith in Jesus.
Now also, you know, why would this Jewish girl, who had only heard Jesus as a hoax in her near-death experience, see this man of brilliant light and know that this is the same God that she prayed to as a little girl? And like she said, in her life review, Jesus showed her that when she prayed at night as a little girl, she could see him sitting by her bed with her, comforting her, and, and basically putting her to sleep at night. And why would a Muslim, a mom, come back saying that Jesus saved him, and then he became an Anglican Pastor who has had seven attempts on his life, uh, because you can't convert from Islam to, uh, to follow Jesus in Rwanda? What these people are describing, and like I said, I have 70 other accounts in the book, "Imagine the God of Heaven," but what these people are describing aligns with the God of history. And think about this: Jesus claimed equality with this God of Light. You know, it says that at one point Jesus took three of his disciples, Peter, James, and John, up to a mountain and showed them his glory, and they said that his face was transfigured so that it shone like the sun, brighter, brighter than the Sun. And then at another point, Jesus said, "I am the light of the world; whoever follows me will never walk in darkness but will have the light of life." God revealed himself through Jesus for the sake of all the nations. You know, Isaiah also said, in Isaiah chapter 9, "In the future, God will honor Galilee. The people walking in darkness have seen a great light; for to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders, and he will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. And of the greatness of his government and peace there will be no end." So this is very clear: this one God, this one unseen "I am," will come in the form of a man, right, to Galilee. This is very specific; Galilee is actually where Jesus grew up and then did most of his ministry. And then after Jesus' crucifixion and resurrection, he says to his followers, "Go tell all nations there's forgiveness offered in my name," and the Nations have rallied to him, just like Isaiah said.
Now, when I was a skeptic, I would have said, "Yeah, but you know, probably after Jesus someone took the text of Isaiah and doctored it up to look like it was foretelling Jesus coming." But we actually have proof that that was not the case, you know, in 1948. So interestingly, the same year that Israel is made a nation again, reborn overnight, two Bedouin shepherd boys were up in, uh, the mountains outside of, behind Jerusalem, were chasing their, their sheep, and threw a rock into a, into a cave that went down and shattered something. They go in, and they discovered what was called the Dead Sea Scrolls. In these sealed jars, these ancient Scrolls, over 2,000 years old, had been well, well preserved. And in what has come to be called the Dead Sea Scrolls, we've actually found copies of 38 of the 39 books of the Old Testament, or fragments of them, and most of them predating Jesus. But the one that's significant here is they found something called the Great Isaiah scroll that was a complete copy of the book of Isaiah that dated somewhere between 150 to 300 years, depending on the carbon dating or, or the method of dating, 150 to 300 years before the time of Jesus. You can go read this online on the internet if you can read Hebrew, but you can read the translation of the actual scroll that we have in our copy today that's older than Jesus, and yet this is what it says: "To whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed? He grew up before him like a tender shoot." This is speaking of the Messiah. So again, you know, Jesus is not all of the infinite God that we could know; it's just his arm reaching into our three-dimensional plane to reveal what God is like in a form we can understand. It goes on and says, "He was despised and rejected by mankind; surely he took up our pain and bore our suffering; he was pierced for our transgressions"—remember, he was nailed through the wrists and through the feet to a cross—and by the way, this Muslim mom saw that that Jesus still has those holes, those scars, because they are the scars of his love for you and for me, the price God was willing to pay to forgive us all our wrongs. And that's what it said years before Jesus ever came. "He was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was on him; and by his wounds we are healed." Why? Because we all, like sheep, have gone astray; each of us has turned our own way; we've all gone our own way rather than seeking God's way. And the Lord has laid on him the iniquity, or the sin, the wrongs of us all. God's love and God's justice met on the cross, and he foretold all this.
You see, God created you and me and every person and every nation to be his children. He, he loves us like far more than we love our own children. And yet part of love is love must be free to choose, which means even free to reject the one who loves us most, to reject God. And we all have, we've all basically said, "God, I got this; I'm going my way; I know it's best for me; you know, I'm going to be God of my life." That is at the root of, of every other wrong, of every other sin; it's the opposite of loving God and following God. And as a result, we've all failed; we've all done wrong. You know, in my book, "Imagine the God of Heaven," I go through the religious, moral law found in, in every religion, in the five pillars of Islam, in the eight-fold, uh, path of Buddhism, you know, in, in all the religious cultures, we have the same moral law, and yet we all fail when it comes to the moral law; no one has perfectly kept it. And yet God is willing to forgive us. Why? So that he can be just in taking us back in relationship and loving us and walking through life with us so that we can enjoy this life with the God who wants to, to enjoy it with us. Do you realize that that is who God is? And I ask, "Lord, Lord, please tell me what I need to do to enter when you see me next time. I want to enter to—" He said, "I want to see how honest, how true, how sincere you are with me 365 days of year, not just once a week. I want to see your relationship with me. What's your relationship? Once you are back to your family, I want you to love your family and love your children." The wages of sin is death; commit no more sins; surrender yourself completely—should underline completely—unto me in your daily lives; walk with me. After this Life review, he took my hand and we flew; we surfed; it was like we had this wave of light under our feet, and we were holding hands and flying like Superman and Lois Lane, so faster and faster and faster, and he was grinning from ear to ear, and it was the most fun thing I ever done in my life. I saw a light, and it was getting closer and closer, and it's a living light, and it's the brightest thing you can imagine, but I could look at it; it's perfect; it's blemishless; infinite in its scope, and that light was love. And Jesus took me directly into the light, and the next thing I knew, I found, found myself sitting on God's lap. And I have a granddaughter, a two-year-old granddaughter, and you know, if she needs comforting, she'll sit on my lap and bury her, her face in my chest, and I'll put my arms around her, and she'll, she'll have her arms around me. That's what I was doing; I was like a little kid, and I buried my face against his chest, and I put my arms around him, and he had his arms around me, and I never ever wanted to leave. And everything in my body started shedding down. We have the documentation and the timing that my heart and my lungs—I was considered clinically dead for an hour and 45 minutes. I found myself leaving my body and going toward this light, and I knew that's where Jesus and the Father is, and I wanted to be with them. And when I first came in, I remember there was a forest right before me, and when I got on the other side of the forest, that's when I saw Jesus Christ. He was real bright, brighter than any light I've ever seen, even the Sun. And probably what amazed me is I could look at him, and I went down on my hands and knees, and I said these words, "Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you." Only reason I was there is because of what he had done. Somebody always said, "Well, did you see the nail prints?" I said, "I saw them, but that's not what I was concentrating on. What I was concentrating on is the love that everything was coming out of him for me, like I was the only one he loved." Anybody I thought of, in the switch of my thinking, all of a sudden I saw the love for them, like he only loved them. And I came to understand that God Almighty goes out and creates love for us that only we can receive, and that's what I was receiving, that love that God had made for me. Now that light coming off of him, I remember it wrapping itself around me. Someone asked me one time, "Was he hugging you?" I said, "Everything about him was hugging." Give me, you know, God is, is far more personal and loving and relatable than you've probably ever imagined. You know, so many people, I think, don't wholeheartedly follow God because the truth is we think he's just a killjoy, you know. We think he's up there in heaven, and he's like, "Anybody having fun down there yet? Well, cut it out; get back to work." And yet that is not the heart of God revealed through Jesus and through the prophets; it's not the, the God that near-death experiencers are meeting today. You know, the Bible tells us that, that God gets us, you know, that the whole reason he came in the form of Jesus was not just to pay for our sins but also to know that he understands us. It, it says this in Hebrews.
Chapter 4: Jesus understands our weaknesses, for he faced all the same testings we do; yet he did not sin. So let us come boldly to the throne of our gracious God. There we will receive his mercy and we’ll find grace to help us when we need it most. You know, not only can God relate to you, but he’s kind and he’s merciful, just like Santos and Swedi discovered. He’s ready to help when we ask, and nothing’s too big and nothing’s too small—that’s how great God is.
You know, people say things like, “Well, there are 8 billion people on this planet; God doesn’t have time for me,” or, “God couldn’t hear my little prayers or care about them.” But you’re wrong. God is actually so much more than you’ve ever imagined; that he does care for each one of us specifically and uniquely. You see, God is far more mysterious and majestic than you’ve ever imagined as well. You know, there’s a lot of mystery to this God. It says in Ephesians chapter 4, “There is one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all, and in you all.” God is the very life force sustaining all things. He is with you always, just waiting for you to turn to him. He’s far beyond what we can imagine; he’s everywhere, always, and yet he’s more than all he’s created. He’s overall. Theologians call this imminent—God is with us imminently—but he’s also transcendent; he’s beyond everything that he’s created.
You know, Jesus said, “No one has seen God,” and that’s true. And I’ve heard Christians say, “Well, see, that’s why these near-death experiencers are liars, because they’re claiming they’ve seen God.” And Jesus said, “No one’s seen God.” Well, if you stop and think about it, that can’t be what Jesus meant, because Jesus knew that Moses had seen God in a brilliant light and a burning bush, and so had the Israelites. Jesus knew Isaiah had seen the Father on his throne in Isaiah chapter 6; he says that, as did Daniel and Ezekiel. And in the New Testament, Stephen and John. So clearly, Jesus did not mean, “No one has ever seen any form of God.” So what does it mean? Well, I think what it means is that God transcends anything a human could ever see or imagine, but even transcends what the inhabitants of Heaven see. In other words, we’ve seen God in the form of Jesus on Earth; they see God in the form of the Father on his throne in heaven. But God is Spirit, who is everywhere, always, and eternal. So that’s what Jesus meant—that no one has seen God.
You know what’s fascinating is near-death experiencers help us understand more of this mystery, though we will never understand all the mystery of God. Suzanne Seymour is a nurse that I interviewed. When she was 12 years old, she died in a ski accident. And what’s fascinating is she was taken by Jesus to heaven, and there she’s sitting under a tree with Jesus. She said it was just like he’s just comfortable—father, brother—and then he said, “You know, I’m more than I’ve let you see.” And then she said, “Over the mountains comes this giant light that was like—like a giant hand, but a light that comes and merges with Jesus’ light.” And she said she said to me, “You know, all those words, those big words like omniscient and omnipotent and omnipresent and holy and eternal and infinite,” she said, “all those words are trying to describe something, and it’s real.” She said, “But all I could say is, ‘Whoa!’ Just the sovereignty and mystery and magnitude of God.” And that wasn’t even, you know, all there is, because she can’t see all there is to God as well.
You know, another fascinating thing about the mystery of God is both Susan, this 12-year-old girl, and Heidi, this 16-year-old Jewish girl, both describe the Triune mystery of the nature of God. They both had Jesus take them to the Father, and then when he put them back in their bodies, leave them with his presence, which they later realized was the Holy Spirit. You know, NDEs help us understand more of this mystery of God—that there’s only one God, and yet the scripture claims that he’s revealed himself in three persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. That sounds like a contradiction to us, but I believe that’s because we live in three finite dimensions of space and one finite dimension of time. So I put an analogy in the book to help imagine a three-dimensional hand reaching into a two-dimensional Y, okay? So in this flat two-dimensional world, you know, if I stuck my three fingers into that world, into their plane of existence, this is what it would look like: it would look like three round slices. But if I said to them, “I’m not actually three slices; I’m actually one hand,” well, that would sound like a contradiction to them, because these three round circles can never be one in two dimensions. That’s because they don’t have a third dimension where those three slices can stack up—my arm—in a third dimension into one unified me. All analogies break down to some degree, but perhaps three persons—Father, Son, and Spirit—stack up in higher dimensions into one unified being that we call God.
But what’s fascinating is in heaven, the three and the one—the contradiction—it just doesn’t exist. Listen as Dean Braxton, who died of sepsis—and by the way, has hospital records that he had no heartbeat for an hour and 45 minutes—listen to how he describes the mystery of the Triune God, and then listen to this neurologist, Dr. Ron Smotherman, describe some of the amazing, mysterious characteristics of God. One of his patients had a psychotic break, turned on him, and stabbed him 13 times. When he said it felt like time stopped, and suddenly there before him is this explosion of light that he knew was God. People always talk about a throne room; it wasn’t a room like people think it is, because to me, I was—it was more of, um, being out in nature. I was there when we all gathered around the Throne of God to tell our Father how much we love him. This was not my belief system; I didn’t even know it was in the Bible at the time, but he sung a love song back to us, each and every one of us. When I was talking to him, I was talking to Jesus and also the Holy Spirit. It wasn’t like they were all together, but they—you could not separate them in the sense of communication. The fullness of the Father is inside Jesus; the fullness of the Holy Spirit is inside of Jesus; the fullness of Jesus is inside the Father; the fullness of the Holy Spirit is inside the Father. He is one. You know, it’s not one like we think is one. Some people say in the Trinity, you know, the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit—no one thinks that way there; they’re just one. When God shows up in a face like a bomb blast, it really gets your attention. And I’m standing there in awe with a—with a knife aimed at me, by the way—and time stopped. All I know is that God showed up as a light, and the light was roiling with energy, as you would expect if you were up close to say an atomic bomb. What was roiling even more was the love that came with it. It was—I’m sorry, I—I have a hard time talking about this. And in one single instant, all of his qualities were in my face. God’s overarching quality is love; everything is contained within that. His knowledge came very suddenly as an image of a library filling the universe. His power was undisputable. The joy—it will make you happy for a lifetime. Times I can’t think about it without getting full of joy. His authority is so great that um, you would follow any instruction. Kindness—um, you probably know someone who’s—someone who is kind. If you can imagine that kindness magnified a thousand times. Humor is—is something rather surprising; you don’t expect God to show up ready to—to—to laugh. His purity—he is so pure it puts your own condition in stark relief; you can see that you’re not that. And there’s—and there’s humility. If I had his qualities, I would be so proud, you know, but he’s not; he is humble. Such humility.
You know, Ron—Ron told me, “If I had the characteristics of—of—of God, I would be so proud,” and yet he was so humble. And you know, it reminded me of what Jesus said when he was here on Earth. He said, “Come to me, all you who are weary and carry heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.” You ever feel like that? You ever feel burdened? You ever feel anxious and worried? You ever thought God’s putting that on you? That’s not God. He says, “Come to me; I want to relieve your heavy burdens.” He says, “Take my yoke upon you.” A yoke was something you put on two oxen to plow a field, to work together. So come, get under my yoke, work with me, let me teach you, because I’m humble and gentle at heart. You know, if you’ve imagined God is this demanding taskmaster who’s just on you all the time, you need to get a new God. That’s not who God has revealed himself to be. He’s gentle and humble, and he wants to lead you in the unburdened way of doing life. You know, the truth is we all put God in a box, and we need to let him out of that box that we’ve put him in, so that we see that God is the love you’ve always—always wanted. And God wants to lead you into the life that is the best life you can possibly live.
You know, Ron even noted that God was humorous. Does that surprise you? Does that shock you? You know, I interviewed um, Greg Richard and Heidi—uh, who you just heard from—who both told me while they were watching their life review with Jesus, Jesus laughed multiple times—not at them, but at funny things that happened in their life. I mean, does that throw off your paradigm to think that God actually could have a sense of humor, or that God could actually be enjoyable? Well, the truth is God is the most joyful and enjoyable being that there is. As I’ve said before, I don’t believe everything every near-death experiencer says. I look for patterns, for commonalities, and how does it align with what God has revealed already? When Heidi first told me that Jesus took her hand and shot off—uh, like Superman and Lois Lane—through the universe, you know, surfing this wave of light, I was like, “Yeah, probably not.” And and when I hear things like that—sorry, Heidi, if you watch this—but I—I’m skeptical still, and so I—I hear things like that, I kind of put them on the shelf, like, “Well, we’ll see.” And then, you know what started to happen as I interview more and more people? This 14-year-old girl who died in a car accident, Sarah, and then was later revived, says that Jesus took her on the ride of a lifetime. Listen to what she said: “I looked at the water of Earth and wanted to see the water, and then whoosh, just like that we were flying so fast it was awesome. I was smiling like I’ve never before—like a roller coaster ride, but a million times better. There was no fear of heights or falling; it was a ride I will never forget.” And then I had this doctor couple in our church come forward one Sunday when I spoke on this topic of near-death experiences, and and they said, “Hey, we have to tell you why we started coming to your church and how we came to faith in Jesus.” And they told me they had both been atheists; they had never taken their kids to church. Um, when their son was four, one night when Christie, the doctor, the wife, was putting him to bed, he started saying, “I want to run and play with Jesus in the fields again.” And she was shocked. She was like, “What are you talking about?” But night after night he kept saying it, and then she—she was thinking, “We’ve never let him watch TV about Jesus; we’ve never been to church; what’s he talking about?” And finally, she asked, “What are you talking—when did you run and play with Jesus in the fields?” And he said, “When he came and got me in the hospital.” When he was a little boy, he had almost died multiple times while in the hospital, and that’s what opened them up to go, “Like, we’ve got to find out more about Jesus,” and they came to our church, and they came to faith. So I hear all these, and suddenly, you know what I’ve put on the shelf? I go, “Wait a second, why not?” I mean, who do we think created us with the ability to enjoy life—all the pleasures of life that we have? We wouldn’t be able—able to enjoy the pleasures of life if God hadn’t created us with the ability to enjoy those pleasures. So why do we think that God would be less able to enjoy us enjoying those things? You know, I have two little granddaughters; I love to enjoy them as they enjoy doing life. God is—is not less than I am, right? Not less than we are. So the truth is God is the most enjoyable, joyful being there is. And Jesus said this his last night on Earth, John chapter 15, he says to his closest friends at the Last Supper, “I’ve told you these things so that you will be filled with my joy. Yes, your joy will overflow.” Near-death experiencers talk about how joy comes from being connected to God—that if you’re connected to God, if you have turned your heart to God and accepted his love and his forgiveness offered through what Jesus did, joy is actually your birthright, and it’s not a joy that’s dependent on circumstances. Circumstances come and go; happiness happens, but joy is something God can give us through the highs and—and even through the lows of life, because it comes from him. You know, in Psalm chapter 37, it says, “Take delight in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart.” God is a God who desires to give us good things. It doesn’t mean life is always easy; we’ll—we’ll talk more about that at another time, but the heart of God is to give us good things. You know, Jim W. Woodford is a—a man that I interviewed who knows that better than anyone. Jim was a commercial airline pilot for years—a very wealthy man; he had actually started many multi-million-dollar businesses—he had his own airplane, his own yacht, his own horse farm, and in the garage on his horse farm, 19 British sports cars. And he said, “None of that mattered the day he died of an accidental opioid overdose.” He said, “John, I’d never prayed to God a day in my life,” but his wife was a—was a follower of Jesus and had been praying for him. And he said, as he’s sitting there in his truck, and he had Guillain-Barré syndrome, which is a very painful disease, so he gets addicted to opioids; he took too many. And he said, “You know, when you’re dead,” and he said, “right before his head hit the steering wheel, he had this thought, and I believe it’s God pursuing us to the last minute, and the thought was, ‘You’ve never thanked God for the life that you thought was your own making.’” And in his last moment of breath, he said, “God, forgive me,” and his head hits a steering wheel, and he leaves his body. Listen to how Jim talks about this, because first he saw where he was headed, and he—he sees a—a vision of this outer abyss of darkness and a creature who knew his name, and he realized, “Oh my gosh, hell is real.” But he’s rescued by these three angels who then show him how God is a God that delights to do good for us, even though we might not deserve it.
“I knew I was dying, and I cried out, ‘God, forgive me.’ In that nanosecond of death, I realized all that I had been given, all I had been blessed with, and I had never once thanked the Creator, because I couldn’t find proof of his existence. We talk about heaven is real, but so is hell. I cried out, ‘God, help me! Help me!’ I who should expect nothing, because I gave him nothing, why should he help me? Because he’s the God of never too late, if you are contrite. I look, John, and these three magnificent beings are coming toward me—very tall, luminous creatures, beautiful in every way. First one who I later found out had been my guardian angel since my birth, since my conception. The angel came forward and said, ‘Would you walk with us?’ We walked down this beautiful 10- to 12-foot-wide path lined with flowers, that of colors that I’d never seen. And I think what happens is God—God knows us each so intimately, he tailors our experience to the—the life we had on Earth. So for me, when we rise up, I’m looking down on the holy city; it gave me an aerial view of—of heaven, I suppose, because I was a pilot. We came back down and resumed the walking, and—and I’ve always loved horses. The guardian said, ‘James, look,’ and behind a group of trees came three of the most magnificent horses I’d ever seen. And as I’m standing there, I look up in the sky of heaven and I see these brilliant streaks of light going straight up, and I said, ‘What are these?’ And the guardian said, ‘Those, James, are the prayers of your family for your soul, even now going toward God’s throne.’ The angel said, ‘Every prayer you’ve ever issued, ever thought, ever contemplated is recorded,’ and—and it’s not to create an ‘I gotcha’ moment when you have your life review when you cross through the veil and you have your life review; it’s to help you understand why you made the decisions you did. But I realized I hadn’t seen the tall angel in a while, and so I turned to look, and the tall angel was—was bowing very low, and he was facing this other tall, commanding figure. It was as though this golden liquid light flowed down all sides of this magnificent figure, and the flowers that were already in bloom when that golden light flowed over it, they bloomed again. And that light pulled around my feet. Suddenly, this knowledge of who I was looking at, and I’m looking at none other than Jesus Christ, the Son of God—someone that I thought was just a Jewish legend, and here I am looking at this magnificent being, and I realized then that he was—what the angel was holding up was the book of my life, and it’s—it’s no bigger than a cheap roadside diner menu. Mankind should have been in my business, and I was just so self-consumed, and—and I was overwhelmed with sadness and shame. Jesus turned toward me, and he smiled at me—smiled at me. When I looked into those eyes, I saw such sadness for the way I had lived my life, but I also saw love for me and forgiveness. From that moment forward, whatever happened, I was his. When he smiled at me, and I realized he loved me, and I loved him, it felt like I was the only one that he had ever created. You know, there was that instant connection, and you’ll all go through that. You are his child; you are his child; you are his child. You were created to be his child and to know him, to love him, and to walk through life with him, experiencing more and more of his joy. And all he needs is your heart—just your willingness. So where is your heart right now? You know, God knows your heart; he’s right there with you; he always has been. No one knows you better; no one cares more about you, and all he’s looking for is a heart that just turns to him and simply says, ‘Yes.’ You know, ‘Yes, I want your forgiveness; I want your love; I want your guidance; come do life with me.’ You know, if that’s your heart, just tell him in your heart, because he has done all that he’s done so that you can be confident of his love, so you can walk through this life with God. That’s what he said to Santos—what he wants—this relationship. Well, I hope you’ve enjoyed this podcast. If you like it, you know, do all—all the stuff—click like and subscribe and all that, as we continue to dive deeper into near-death experiences and the Bible and how it can make a difference to help us live our best life today.