What Happens When You Die

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- So what happens when you die?

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Man, one of life's biggest questions,

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and we are going to dive into it today.

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But hey, before we get there, I want to introduce myself.

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My name is Andy Reider.

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I'm the community pastor for Crossroads Anywhere

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and we are a community of people all over the world

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running after God.

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And if you're watching this,

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I know at least two things about you.

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One, you are alive.

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So just great. Well done with that.

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And secondly, you're at least interested in God.

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So congrats on living. You're crushing it.

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And second, you are in the right spot.

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Crossroads is built for people

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that have given up on church, but not on God.

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We exist to help, well, people learn who God is

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in a language that we can understand.

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And we're really glad you're here today

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and think that you're going to

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get something amazing out of today.

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- When Jesus rose from the dead,

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He conquered death forever.

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And now He is calling us to rise up

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out of all the dead places in our own lives

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to live fully alive.

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Join us at Crossroads this Easter

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for the most important event of the year.

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A triumphant, joyful, hope-filled celebration

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of Jesus's resurrection and the gift of new life.

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Find service times and locations at Crossroads.net.

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- Hi, my name is Brian Tome.

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I'm what's called a senior pastor around here.

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How is everybody today? [cheers]

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Good. All right.

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So here's the story of today.

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I've got a good friend of mine.

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His name is John Burke,

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who's going to be with us in just a moment.

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John and I met 25 years ago.

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I was starting Crossroads along with some other friends

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who were here in Cincinnati.

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He was starting a church called Gateway in Austin, Texas.

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We just ended up meshing together

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and getting to know each other.

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Over the years, it's been a really great relationship.

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And then I fell out of touch with him

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for, like, a couple of years or something like that.

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And of course, during that time

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he becomes a New York Times best selling author.

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Maybe because we weren't talking.

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That's why, that was the magic sauce or something like that.

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And I had him on my podcast called

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The Aggressive Life several months ago,

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and it just took off.

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John is the world's foremost, I believe,

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the world's foremost authority

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on near-death experiences, NDE.

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He's personally interviewed about 2000 people.

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He's done the deep dive research.

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He wrote a book on it. Amazing.

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I had him on the podcast to talk about it.

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And we've had a lot of really impressive people

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on the podcast.

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We had Matthew McConaughey, an a lister on the podcast

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who petitioned us, "Can I be on your podcast?"

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Because we have some people who listen to it.

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It's actually the number one religious broadcast in Israel.

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I don't understand that.

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And if you ever listen to it, it's not very religious either.

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But that's how Apple or whoever has categorized it.

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John came on. It was so amazing.

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It just it blew away Matt McConaughey

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and all all the other A-listers we have.

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And because people started passing on,

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because it's filled with hope.

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This is what this is.

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Easter is about hope.

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That thing we just did with Holy Week,

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all of us have things Crossroads that,

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that we don't like. I do, too.

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And one of them is, is we haven't really made

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a big deal about Holy Week over the last few years.

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It's a big deal.

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So we're going to rectify that problem.

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We're going to actually fix that actually this year.

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I can't wait for it, because what Holy Week does

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is it sets our mind out of the humdrum difficulty

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that we deal with in our day to day basis.

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That's why Holy Week is a big deal.

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It sets our mind on eternity.

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And that's why John's book, I think,

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is a runaway bestseller and why people

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just globbed on to it on the podcast,

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because it it takes our perspective and, like,

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clicks it to to a place full with hope

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and full of meaning.

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So that's my intro of my good friend.

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Welcome up on stage right now, John Burke. [applause]

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All right. Can you -- Can you not screw this up?

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Can you? - I'll try. - Okay, good.

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- So. Yeah, Yeah. Welcome.

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It's great to be back.

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I was actually here 10, 12 years ago, something like that.

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I have, I've known Brian for 25 years now.

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I'll tell you three things about Brian.

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One, yeah.

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No, you have a senior pastor who truly does.

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He's a real deal. He loves God.

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And he is a great leader. He is.

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And he has no filter,

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if you haven't figured that out yet.

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Okay. Just so we got all that straight.

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So three guys were playing poker late one night

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and the conversation kind of turned deep.

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And one guy goes, "Hey, what do you want

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people to say at your funeral?"

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And the first guy said, "I want people to say

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I was a brilliant surgeon who saved many lives."

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And the second guy says, "Well, I want people

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to say that that I was a devoted family man

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and I made a difference in the lives of my kids."

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And the third guy said, "I want people to say,

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'Look, he's moving.'"

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Now, believe it or not, more and more accounts

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are saying, "Look, he's moving."

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Do you know the Gallup poll found that

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13 million Americans, 1 out of 25,

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have had what's called a near death experience.

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Their heart stopped beating,

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their brainwaves ceased,

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they were clinically dead,

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and yet modern medicine resuscitated them

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or miracle brought them back

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to talk about the realities of the life to come.

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Now, I got into this because my dad was dying of cancer.

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And I was an agnostic.

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I didn't believe in God, Jesus, none of that.

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And someone gave him the very first research

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that coined the term near-death experience.

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And I saw it on his bedside table

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and I read it in one night and said,

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"Oh, my gosh, this God, Jesus stuff may be real,"

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because so many of them were talking about encountering Him.

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And that opened me up.

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And the next year I ended up coming to faith in Christ.

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And fast forward the story,

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I went from a career in engineering into ministry.

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And after 35 years of studying thousands of these accounts,

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I finally wrote Imagine Heaven.

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And I wrote it for two reasons.

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One, for skeptics like me,

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because I wanted people to see

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there is real evidence that this God stuff is real,

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but also for Christians, because I find

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so few Christians really believe that this life

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is just the beginning of real life,

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so they don't live as if there's more to this life.

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And so I hope you're motivated because

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that's what motivated me to go all out for God.

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Now, a couple of things that I want to tell you first

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I'm skeptical of any one near-death experience story.

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Here's why.

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What I found is each one is interpreting

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an experience that's truly beyond this world.

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I like to liken it like this.

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Imagine if this three dimensional experience

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we're having is actually being lived on

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a flat, black and white painting on the wall in this room.

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Okay.

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And death means separation.

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So when you die, your two dimensional body

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is peeled off that flat, black and white painting

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and brought out into this three dimensional room

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all around you all the time.

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It was always there,

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you just couldn't even conceive of it.

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You experienced color in three dimensions.

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And then imagine having to be pressed back

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into that two dimensional world.

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And you have to describe three dimensions of color

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in two dimensional, flat, black and white terms.

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How would you do it?

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And after interviewing so many of these people,

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that's what they say they're having to do.

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Words can't really describe it,

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so they're having to interpret.

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So what I was trying to do is show

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the commonalities of what they reported

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and how it aligns with scripture.

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And that's what I'm going to do today.

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I'm going to show you some of the commonalities

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that I talk about in Imagine Heaven.

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And I brought some of these people with me by video.

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You're going to meet very credible people,

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a spine surgeon, a college professor,

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a commercial airline pilot.

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These people didn't need

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to make up wild, crazy stories to make a buck.

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In fact, the truth is,

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it hurts their career to talk about it.

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But they say nothing was more real

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and nothing is more important.

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Watch this.

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- Dr. Mary Neal is an orthopedic surgeon

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who shares her medical practice

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and her love for outdoor adventure

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with her husband, Bill.

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In 1999, they planned an adventure

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that took Mary on a spiritual journey few have taken

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and returned to talk about.

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- My husband and I really enjoy kayaking.

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We enjoy traveling. We speak Spanish.

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We've traveled internationally a number of times.

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And so for my husband's birthday, I said,

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"Okay, this is the year we're going to do it."

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So we went to Chile for a vacation to kayak.

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- After a week of kayaking,

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Bill sat out the final day with a sore back.

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Mary and the rest of their group

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kayaked through a treacherous stretch of the river.

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- These are drops of 10-15 feet, 20ft maybe,

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which for an experienced kayaker, is not a crazy thing.

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I went over the main drop

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and as I crested over the drop,

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I could see the tremendous turbulence

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and tremendous volume.

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And as I hit the bottom of the drop,

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the front end of my boat became pinned.

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I and my boat were immediately and completely submerged.

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I was absolutely pressed to the front deck of the boat

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and I couldn't move my arms

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even back far enough to reach my spray skirt,

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let alone push myself out.

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I very sincerely asked that God's will be done,

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and I meant it.

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- After several minutes of searching,

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the group leaders realized Mary was trapped under the falls.

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- They came out on the rocks

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and they kept trying to get to the boat,

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but the force and the volume of the water

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was such that they just kept being flushed through.

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I mean, they just couldn't get to me.

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At one point, they sort of recognized

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that it was really turning into a body recovery,

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not so much of a rescue.

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I know I'd been underwater too long to be alive,

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yet I feel more alive than I've ever felt.

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And this is more real than anything I've ever experienced.

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- And Dr. Neil was dead for 30 minutes.

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And yet she said she knew Jesus was holding her

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and she felt more alive than she's ever felt.

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So think about it, that moment that

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maybe you feared your whole life suddenly happens

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and you realize this is actually the beginning of real life.

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And one of the commonalities is they say

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they leave their body, but they have a body.

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They're out of their body, but in a new spiritual body.

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And what people commonly say is that

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this body doesn't have five senses,

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but more like 50 senses.

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In fact, you've never felt so alive before.

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And commonly they leave their body,

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but they're still there in the room

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and so they can watch the rescue or the resuscitation,

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and when they come back, describe what happened.

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And that's actually what convinced me

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as a skeptical engineer, but I write in Imagine Heaven

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about how many skeptical doctors, medical doctors

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have been convinced as well.

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Like, Dr. Michael Sabom is a cardiologist

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that I interviewed, and he told me that

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he set out to disprove near-death experiences.

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He didn't think they were real at all

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because he had never heard about it from his patients.

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And then he starts interviewing his patients

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and they start telling him.

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And he said, like before interviewing this guy Pete,

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he said he didn't believe in it at all.

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And yet he said Pete described

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watching Dr. Sabom do his resuscitation.

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And he said, "When I ask him to tell me

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exactly what he saw, he described the resuscitation

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with such detail and accuracy I could have

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later used the tape to teach physicians.

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And Dr. Sabom said the more people he interviewed,

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they told similar details of their resuscitation.

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Like, one patient he interviewed talked about

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how he saw one of the surgeons working on him

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had failed to wear scuffs over his white patent leather shoes.

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And he was able to check out these details;

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after five years of scientific study,

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he changed his mind.

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He came to believe that

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we exist after our physical clinical death.

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And he published it in

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the Journal of the American Medical Association.

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Now, another doctor, Dr. Long,

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Jeffrey Long, who's a radiation oncologist,

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read the article in JAMA, and he had the same thought,

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"That's not true."

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And then he started interviewing his patients.

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And more and more he found describing similar things.

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And he has now studied thousands like I have,

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he's become a friend.

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He's also a follower of Jesus.

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But here's what he determined. Dr. Long said:

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And in the book I show these stories

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that illustrate what happens, like,

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another another cardiologist in Holland,

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because these are all over the globe.

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He reported in The Lancet, the medical journal,

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the most prestigious medical journal in Europe.

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He reports of a guy coming into a hospital there in Holland.

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He'd been found dead in a park.

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But they decided they were going to shock him.

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And they went to intubate him

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and the nurse noticed he had dentures.

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So the nurse took the dentures out,

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put them in the lower drawer of the crash cart.

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They shocked his heart, got his heart started again,

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but he never came to in E.R..

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Moved his body into another room.

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A week later, he becomes conscious

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and they can't find his dentures.

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And then he sees the nurse and he says,

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"That nurse knows where my dentures are."

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And he describes how he had been up

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and all the doctors that were in the room in the E.R.

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and how that nurse had taken his dentures

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and put them in the lower drawer of that cart

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with all the bottles on it.

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And that's where they found his dentures.

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Now, these would just be stories,

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except there's actually been research done around them.

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Dr. Jan Holden is a professor of psychology,

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studied over 100 near-death experience patients

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and compared them to other patients.

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And they made out-of-body observations.

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And she went and researched it and found

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92% of them were completely accurate,

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6% contained some error,

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only 2% were were completely erroneous.

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So just the observations alone

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prove there's something going on here.

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Now, this is not new.

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Actually, if you think about it,

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Jesus raised Lazarus back to life, Jairus' daughter.

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And I believe the apostle Paul probably had

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a near-death experience when he got stoned in Lystra.

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Stoned with rocks, by the way, just -- [laughter]

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I'm from Austin.

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I always, you know, I'm not sure if people understand.

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And so it says this in Acts 14, it says:

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I wouldn't go back in the town

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where they just stoned me to death. Right?

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But it says this.

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Paul says this later in 2 Corinthians 12, he says:

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I think he was referring to this time.

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Why doesn't he know?

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Because we still are ourselves.

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We still have a body.

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But not with five senses,

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more like 50 senses, people say.

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And that also is a commonality that many say.

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So if you think about it, you know,

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when we die, we get a new body, but it's an upgrade.

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This is like version 1.0. We get 2.0.

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Jesus, by the way, has 3.0.

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But that's a talk for another day.

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But that's what Paul talks about in 1 Corinthians 15

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when he says:

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but they'll be raised in "Dunamis" is the Greek word,

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power, strength, it's power.

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And I explore more of this in Imagine Heaven,

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but some of these amazing powers of this new spiritual body,

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like, people say they could see for miles and miles,

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but they could see, like, every vein on the leaf

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of every leaf of a tree,

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or like communication was pure thought to thought,

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heart to heart, no misunderstanding.

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Or travel could be in an instant,

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or you could walk or float or fly even,

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all kinds of experiences that are new.

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And we experience these new things

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in new dimensions of beauty as well.

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That's another commonality is

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after observing their their bodies in the room

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many times, then people travel, they go through some --

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go through a tunnel, some are just going through space.

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But they come to a place not unlike Earth,

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very much like the beauty of earth,

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of grass and trees and mountains

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and all the beauty we see here.

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And yet they're experiencing it

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beyond what we've ever experienced.

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It's really what Paul meant when he said

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in 1 Corinthians 2:

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So think about it.

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You know, we experience God's beauty on this earth.

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Why would we think the world to come would be less?

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You know, Isaiah was taken into the throne room of God.

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And there he says Angels were crying out.

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And so this earth is full of God's glory.

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All the beauty we see, all the wonders of nature,

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all the things we love in this life

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are a reflection of the goodness of God.

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And yet this life is broken, it's marred, it's stained,

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it's struggling under famine and disease and entropy.

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Right? Everything falls apart.

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Why would we think God's world

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the way it was supposed to be would be any less?

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It's more.

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You know, Dean Braxton died of sepsis.

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He was a court supervisor. He died of sepsis.

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And he experienced the beauty of this world.

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And Captain Dale Black is another one.

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He's a commercial airline pilot

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who was actually in an airline accident.

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He was in a twin engine plane.

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He was a passenger.

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And when it took off, it stalled in Los Angeles

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and ended up hitting a 70 foot high monument

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at 130 miles an hour.

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I've seen the wreckage in the LA Times.

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Nobody survived, but Dale came back

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to describe the beauty of this place. Listen.

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- Things were more beautiful than I could ever imagine.

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It was past anything that I would believe

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that it would be like.

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- The colors were so alive

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that the most beautiful day on earth

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is just a reflection of those colors.

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- The greens were greener,

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the yellows, the golds, the blues.

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Everything reminded me

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that earth is a reflection of heaven,

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but heaven is perfection.

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- So one of the commonalities in near-death experiences

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is they experience beauty in new dimensions

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of time and space, flowers, trees, mountains, forests

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in colors more vibrant than we can imagine.

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And they are not limited in their experience

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of beauty like we are here.

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- About 52% of people having a near-death experience

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describe beauty in this heavenly realm

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that is beyond anything on Earth,

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things that are absolutely spectacular.

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- It seemed like everything there was glad I was there.

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The trees were glad I was there.

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The flowers were glad I was there.

00:20:53

The water was glad I was there.

00:20:55

Everything was alive.

00:20:56

There was nothing dead and everything was intelligent.

00:20:58

- Everything was far more intense.

00:21:00

The colors, the aromas, the flowers were such that

00:21:04

I felt that I could not only see them,

00:21:07

but I understood them.

00:21:08

- Gorgeous, beautiful, all of the adjectives,

00:21:12

but it's beyond words.

00:21:17

- I mean, just imagine the mystery that we have

00:21:21

to explore and we're going to do it together,

00:21:24

because that's the thing, another commonality

00:21:26

that people say is that

00:21:28

there are relationships in heaven.

00:21:30

In fact, heaven was made for relationship.

00:21:35

You know, those who experience this place

00:21:38

remind us that God is love

00:21:41

and love is why He created us.

00:21:43

And I find it ironic that sometimes we're afraid

00:21:47

of the life to come because we think,

00:21:49

well, we won't know each other, we won't remember each other,

00:21:51

we won't still have our humor or our same this or that.

00:21:54

And nothing could be farther from the truth.

00:21:57

We're ourselves, they're themselves,

00:21:59

in fact, more than we've ever been.

00:22:01

And it's a great reunion people say.

00:22:05

Jesus tried to remind His friends of this

00:22:07

the night before His crucifixion. He said:

00:22:20

Marv Besteman was a bank president that I write about

00:22:23

who died in a hospital.

00:22:26

And when he did, he said there was this welcoming party

00:22:29

consisting of his friends and his relatives

00:22:31

that came to greet him.

00:22:32

He said, both of my friends were prayer warriors.

00:22:35

We had spent many hours praying together.

00:22:37

I'm not sure if that's why God chose

00:22:39

these two guys for me to see.

00:22:40

They were significant to my spiritual life.

00:22:43

In fact, everyone I saw had been influential

00:22:45

in shaping my life in some way.

00:22:48

A woman who died giving birth said this:

00:22:51

I recognized my grandmother

00:22:52

and a girl I had known when I was in school

00:22:55

and many other relatives and friends.

00:22:56

It was a very happy occasion.

00:22:58

I felt they had come like a homecoming

00:23:01

to guide me and to protect me.

00:23:04

And a little word of warning here,

00:23:06

because Dr. Mary Neal told me as well that

00:23:09

this welcoming committee came and expressed love

00:23:12

and they were there to guide her, but also protect her.

00:23:15

And I said, "Protect you from what?"

00:23:17

She said, "I don't know."

00:23:19

And here's an important thing,

00:23:21

is that these these people having NDEs,

00:23:25

they're not seeing all there is to the afterlife.

00:23:28

So they may talk like they know it all,

00:23:30

but they don't know it all.

00:23:31

And that's why what you need to do

00:23:33

is interpret their experiences from Scripture,

00:23:36

because God's given us a bigger perspective.

00:23:38

They just have a little perspective.

00:23:40

They're not seeing everything.

00:23:41

It's kind of like Mount Rushmore, right?

00:23:43

You ever seen Mount Rushmore?

00:23:45

Everybody's seen Mount Rushmore, right?

00:23:47

But have you ever seen the other side of Mount Rushmore?

00:23:53

[laughter] Not so pretty, is it?

00:23:59

No, but in Imagine Heaven, I point out that,

00:24:03

you know, people experience another commonality.

00:24:07

There's a border or a boundary

00:24:08

they knew they couldn't cross and still come back.

00:24:12

And I believe that this border or boundary shows us

00:24:16

that near death experiences

00:24:17

are not telling us what is in eternity.

00:24:20

They're just giving us a peek

00:24:21

into the reality of eternity.

00:24:24

But this is an in-between, and I think that's why

00:24:26

they can still make choices as well.

00:24:29

But it does align.

00:24:31

All of this aligns with what Jesus was telling us

00:24:34

through the scriptures,

00:24:35

even the welcoming committee that people experienced.

00:24:38

You know, Jesus said this in Luke 16:

00:24:51

You know, listen, as a this woman,

00:24:57

Karen Marshall, who was in our church,

00:24:59

was in a coma and then died.

00:25:01

And she describes a relationship.

00:25:03

And then Don Piper, who was a pastor and an author,

00:25:06

he was literally run over by an 18 wheeler,

00:25:09

pronounced dead for 90 minutes by EMS.

00:25:12

They had to cut his body out of the car

00:25:14

with the jaws of life.

00:25:15

And yet he came back describing what relationship is like.

00:25:19

Watch.

00:25:21

- Many people who have had a near-death experience

00:25:23

say that they have this welcoming committee,

00:25:25

they call it, of friends or relatives, mainly,

00:25:28

who had died already.

00:25:30

And they come and they greet them.

00:25:31

And just imagine what that might be like.

00:25:34

- My family appeared.

00:25:36

One of them put their hand out.

00:25:39

And I knew it was my grandmother.

00:25:42

- When I looked up, there's my family.

00:25:44

Everybody that had been related to me,

00:25:46

a part of my family came to greet me in.

00:25:49

My grandmother Mary was out front.

00:25:51

She was bright, you know, she had a big smile and pure joy.

00:25:55

- I was immediately greeted by

00:25:57

a group of people, spirits, beings.

00:26:00

They were absolutely exploding with a pure love.

00:26:06

And I could be with them.

00:26:07

And I knew without any doubt that I had known them

00:26:10

and loved them as long as I've existed.

00:26:12

- 57.3% of those having near-death experience

00:26:16

describe meeting other beings.

00:26:18

When a deceased loved one is encountered

00:26:20

during a near-death experience,

00:26:22

they may be around the age they died,

00:26:24

or interestingly, they may appear decades younger.

00:26:27

- I'm surrounded by people

00:26:29

that I had known and loved in life,

00:26:30

and they were all perfect in every way,

00:26:34

fully recognizable as themselves.

00:26:36

- I looked straight ahead and saw my mom and uncle.

00:26:43

- I'm looking at this man who I recognize by my heart,

00:26:48

but I knew that that was Pa.

00:26:51

He's my great grandfather.

00:26:53

Now, Pa was standing next to Ma.

00:26:56

I knew her as an old woman when I was a kid.

00:27:00

When she was in heaven, she looked to be in her 30s.

00:27:04

This was my family.

00:27:07

- On this right side of me

00:27:08

were all these animals coming in.

00:27:11

You'll be surprised when you get there

00:27:12

and your pet's there to greet you in.

00:27:18

- So imagine, you know, one of the commonalities

00:27:21

that people say is that love is what it's all about.

00:27:25

In fact, a commonality all across the globe

00:27:28

is people experience this God of light who is love

00:27:33

and in His presence they're given a life review.

00:27:36

And what they come back realizing is

00:27:38

love is what matters most to this God,

00:27:40

how we treat each other.

00:27:42

It's amazing.

00:27:43

And I've just finished a new book that's going

00:27:45

to be coming out this year really focused on God.

00:27:48

And it's amazing how people,

00:27:50

it doesn't matter where they grow up,

00:27:52

what religious background or culture,

00:27:54

they're describing the God of the Bible.

00:27:57

And you may say, "Well, like, why would someone

00:28:00

who doesn't believe in Jesus,

00:28:01

why would they experience the God of the Bible?"

00:28:03

Because He's their creator.

00:28:05

And you've got to remember what Revelation 1:7 says.

00:28:08

It says that every eye will see Him,

00:28:11

even those who pierced Him.

00:28:13

So we shouldn't be surprised that

00:28:15

everyone at some point will see God.

00:28:17

The Apostle Paul was going to arrest and kill Christians,

00:28:22

persecuting Jesus followers

00:28:23

when this brilliant God of light appears to him.

00:28:26

Remember?

00:28:27

And he said, "Who are you?" And He said, "Jesus."

00:28:29

And he still had a decision to make.

00:28:31

And by the way, just because

00:28:33

someone has a near-death experience

00:28:35

doesn't mean they're right with God.

00:28:37

Just because they see God

00:28:38

doesn't mean they're right with God.

00:28:40

God honors our free will.

00:28:42

They still have to come back and decide,

00:28:44

will they give their life to Him?

00:28:45

But all across the globe,

00:28:47

people experience the same God.

00:28:49

And what's fascinating, even blind people.

00:28:52

So, I give three examples in Imagine Heaven

00:28:56

of people who are blind from birth,

00:28:58

but when they had a near-death experience,

00:28:59

they could see

00:29:00

and they see all the same things as sighted people.

00:29:04

Like, Vicky was 22 when she died in a car accident.

00:29:07

She's there in the hospital

00:29:09

looking down on them operating on her.

00:29:11

She knows she's dead.

00:29:12

She realizes she's seeing herself.

00:29:14

And as she's adjusting to this thing called sight,

00:29:17

she takes off, travels through this tunnel

00:29:19

until she comes to this place of immaculate beauty,

00:29:22

she said, that was full of light.

00:29:25

And she said that light was everywhere,

00:29:28

in the grass, in the trees, and the birds,

00:29:30

and even coming out of the people.

00:29:32

And this light was palpable.

00:29:34

It was life and it was love.

00:29:37

She said: Everything was made of light

00:29:39

and what the light conveyed was love.

00:29:42

And it was like love came from the grass.

00:29:43

Love came from the birds. Love came from the trees.

00:29:46

It was incredible, really beautiful.

00:29:47

And I was overwhelmed by that experience

00:29:50

because I couldn't really imagine what light was like.

00:29:53

It's still a very emotional thing to talk about.

00:29:57

Now think about this for a second.

00:29:59

Why in the world would blind people say

00:30:02

light comes out of everything in heaven?

00:30:06

Because they would never have heard that on earth.

00:30:08

Light shines on things, not out of things.

00:30:12

And yet they describe exactly what the Bible has always said,

00:30:16

in Isaiah 60, in Revelation 21,

00:30:20

John sees the City of God, the New Jerusalem, and he said:

00:30:37

And that's exactly what they say.

00:30:38

And even the Prophet Daniel talks about in Daniel 12:

00:30:53

And many talk about how this light and life

00:30:56

comes bursting out of people.

00:30:58

Now, sometimes we are just ourselves like we are here.

00:31:00

Marv Besteman said everybody was dressed normal

00:31:04

and he was in his favorite golf clothes. Okay?

00:31:07

So, it's not always the same,

00:31:08

but sometimes we're wearing these gowns of white

00:31:12

that allow the glory of God to be shared.

00:31:15

So Vicki experiences this, and then she turns

00:31:19

and there is Jesus, and she says

00:31:21

more brilliant than the sun.

00:31:23

And she knew Him and she went to Him

00:31:25

and He hugged her

00:31:26

and she could see and feel His beard and His hug.

00:31:29

And she said, "Nothing comes close to that."

00:31:32

And then He gave her a life review.

00:31:34

Now the life review is another commonality.

00:31:36

Now, again, just like Peter says in 2 Peter 3:8,

00:31:40

to the Lord, he says, a day is like a thousand years

00:31:44

and a thousand years is like a day.

00:31:45

And NDErs say time doesn't work the same way on the other side.

00:31:49

And so in God's presence they relive their lives,

00:31:53

but not just from their own perspective.

00:31:55

They see and feel how every interaction

00:31:58

felt to the people around them.

00:32:00

And God is trying to show them the importance

00:32:03

of every little act and interaction.

00:32:08

It's just exactly what it says in 1 Corinthians 4:5:

00:32:20

And at that time each will receive their praise from God.

00:32:24

Don't miss that last part.

00:32:26

God wants to reward you

00:32:27

for every little act of kindness.

00:32:29

And I know we all, like, "Oh, I don't want Him --

00:32:32

I don't want to look with God at all my sins

00:32:34

and all my shame and all that."

00:32:35

But that's why he paid for it already 2000 years ago.

00:32:39

That's what we're about to celebrate, right?

00:32:41

So that's not what we have to worry about.

00:32:44

He wants to reward you.

00:32:46

But here's the deal, God is the God of second chances.

00:32:49

There's nothing you can do

00:32:50

that can keep Him out of your life, except your pride.

00:32:53

Don't reject God, because if you reject Him,

00:32:57

He'll give you what you want.

00:32:59

But you don't want separation from God for eternity.

00:33:01

That's hell.

00:33:03

You know, Howard Storm is a tenured college professor

00:33:06

I interviewed.

00:33:07

He was an atheist when he was in Paris

00:33:10

and his duodenum ruptured.

00:33:11

And after nine hours trying to find a surgeon

00:33:14

on Saturday in Paris, he passed.

00:33:16

Now, as an atheist, he thought,

00:33:18

you just unplug the computer, there's nothing when you die.

00:33:21

So he didn't think he was dead

00:33:23

when all of a sudden he was feeling horrible,

00:33:26

now he feels great.

00:33:27

He's standing there in the room.

00:33:28

He feels wonderful.

00:33:30

And he also has a welcoming committee

00:33:32

of nice people who convince him to go with them.

00:33:36

He thinks they're taking him to surgery,

00:33:38

but they deceive him.

00:33:39

And they lead him into exactly

00:33:41

what Jesus described as the outer darkness.

00:33:43

And they turn on him and they maul him.

00:33:46

Now because he had not crossed that border or boundary,

00:33:50

I believe is why he could still call out to God.

00:33:52

And in that place he remembered a song

00:33:55

from when he was brought to Sunday school as a child,

00:33:58

Jesus Loves Me.

00:33:59

And he thought to himself, "If Jesus even is

00:34:03

and He is God, why would He love me?"

00:34:05

And yet, in his desperation, he called out,

00:34:08

"Jesus, save me."

00:34:10

And he sees a pinpoint of light come into the darkness,

00:34:13

grows brighter than the sun.

00:34:15

Arms reach out, pick him up

00:34:17

and hold him as he bawls like a baby,

00:34:20

realizing how wrong he was.

00:34:22

And then He begins to just rub his back,

00:34:25

like a mom comforting her child.

00:34:28

And listen to how Howard and others describe --

00:34:30

how Howard describes his life review

00:34:34

with Jesus in the presence of the Angels.

00:34:37

- Howard, tell us about this life review that you had.

00:34:41

- There was a number of angels, I call them angels,

00:34:44

who had been recording my entire life, all my life.

00:34:47

And Jesus wanted them to play out

00:34:49

in chronological order, the scenes of my life.

00:34:53

And the entire emphasis was on

00:34:56

my interaction with other people.

00:34:58

Of course, initially starting out with my mother

00:35:00

and father and my sisters and then school

00:35:03

and friends and --

00:35:05

- So you just saw it or you --

00:35:06

- We saw it, we felt it, experienced it.

00:35:08

It was really interesting because it was

00:35:10

the whole emphasis was on people and not on things.

00:35:13

Matter of fact, there were some instances

00:35:15

where I had won promotions, honors, awards,

00:35:21

and they skipped them.

00:35:23

And Jesus -- I said to Jesus,

00:35:25

"You're skipping the most important thing in my life.

00:35:27

This is what I live for, to get this award,

00:35:29

Kentucky Artist of the Year.

00:35:31

Big banquet in my honor

00:35:33

and a big cash prize and everything."

00:35:34

And He said, "That's not what we're here for you to see.

00:35:37

That's not important.

00:35:38

What I want you to see is how you treated the students."

00:35:41

So what I learned in my life review

00:35:43

was that the relationship with my father,

00:35:48

I had participated in the breakdown

00:35:50

of that relationship as much as he did.

00:35:53

He was not a good father to me and I resented it

00:35:57

and I was angry at him.

00:35:58

So I did everything I could,

00:36:00

subconsciously and sometimes consciously,

00:36:02

to be as rebellious and as cold hearted

00:36:05

towards him as possible, which only aggravated him more

00:36:08

and made him more of a hostile father.

00:36:10

So the things that I had seen in my life

00:36:12

that where I was the victim

00:36:13

and everybody else was the bad guy,

00:36:15

I came to find out it was a two way street.

00:36:18

We were both playing this game.

00:36:19

As my life progressed from my adolescence

00:36:23

into my adulthood, I saw myself turning

00:36:26

completely away from God, church, all that,

00:36:30

and becoming a person who decided that life was

00:36:33

all about the biggest, baddest bear in the woods wins.

00:36:39

And now I began to experience

00:36:42

Jesus' and the angels' literal pain.

00:36:47

- What do you mean?

00:36:48

- Emotional pain with watching scenes in my life.

00:36:51

And like, here's the nicest, kindest, most loving being

00:36:57

I've ever met, who I realize is my Lord, my Savior,

00:37:01

even my Creator holding me and supporting me,

00:37:05

trying to give me more understanding of my life.

00:37:09

And it was figuratively, not literally, like I was,

00:37:14

like, stabbing Him in the heart as we're watching this stuff.

00:37:17

And the last thing I wanted to do was to hurt Him.

00:37:19

And I don't want to hurt Him to this day.

00:37:22

Jesus is a very feeling man.

00:37:24

God is a very feeling creator.

00:37:27

- What were you seeing played out?

00:37:30

- I saw scenes where my sister was in bed crying

00:37:35

and I got up in the middle of the night

00:37:36

and went in and put my arms around her and hugged her.

00:37:40

And Jesus and the angels were so filled with joy

00:37:43

that I had been willing to do that to try and, you know,

00:37:48

help her a little bit --

00:37:49

- Comforter her. - In her grief.

00:37:50

But those were rare.

00:37:52

The scenes of my indifference, just seeing,

00:37:55

seeing people as objects in order to maneuver around,

00:38:00

through or, you know, to shift

00:38:03

to further my goals and my ambitions.

00:38:09

- And what God commonly shows people is that

00:38:13

just what Jesus said in Matthew 25,

00:38:16

when you do a tiny, small act of kindness

00:38:20

that nobody else sees, God sees,

00:38:21

and it's like you're doing it unto Him. Right?

00:38:24

And that's what He will reward you for as well one day.

00:38:29

What we do in this life really matters because

00:38:31

this life is continuous into the next one.

00:38:35

And the next one is the one really to live for.

00:38:38

Now think about it.

00:38:39

What could make Howard, a tenured college professor,

00:38:44

come back from this near death experience

00:38:47

and two years later leave his professorship

00:38:50

to become a Christian pastor?

00:38:52

His wife divorced him because she was still an atheist.

00:38:56

But he met the high light of heaven.

00:38:59

And what people commonly say is all the beauty of heaven

00:39:02

and all the relationships

00:39:03

and all the incredible mysteries of heaven,

00:39:07

nothing compares to being in the presence

00:39:09

of the one who created you,

00:39:11

the one who loves you unconditionally,

00:39:14

the one who knows you better than you know yourself,

00:39:16

and in whose presence you feel yourself

00:39:19

more than you ever have before.

00:39:22

And commonly they say He's the highlight of heaven.

00:39:26

You know, it says in Revelation of Jesus:

00:39:35

And one day we will all gather around as one big family.

00:39:40

And you know what always amazes me

00:39:42

is I've interviewed these people, you know,

00:39:44

CEOs and doctors and commercial airline pilots.

00:39:48

And when they talk about looking into the eyes of Jesus,

00:39:51

none of them can hold it together

00:39:54

because they say the memory's not up here, it's in here.

00:39:56

And as soon as they go there,

00:39:58

it's like they're there again,

00:40:00

and it's so wonderful it overwhelms their emotions.

00:40:03

Captain Dale Black, you know,

00:40:04

he has a PhD in aeronautical engineering.

00:40:07

He started several multi-million dollar businesses,

00:40:10

and yet listen to just the emotion he felt

00:40:15

thinking about being in the presence of Jesus. Watch.

00:40:18

- Did you -- Did you see Jesus?

00:40:21

- Later I did.

00:40:23

That was the last thing that happened.

00:40:24

After going through the city and asking questions

00:40:28

and going through, at the very last moment,

00:40:32

I had been ushered closer and closer toward the light,

00:40:35

toward the light, toward the light.

00:40:36

- The light that's in the center of the city?

00:40:39

- Yeah. And then there was a stairway

00:40:43

that was near the glass sea,

00:40:47

which it looked like a sea and a stairway that went up

00:40:52

and a large angel with the most power,

00:40:57

if we would say that.

00:40:58

And it was clear that he was basically

00:41:01

in charge of that stairway.

00:41:02

And I'd be just began to communicate to this angel,

00:41:09

heart to heart again, it's hard to say.

00:41:11

Did we talk?

00:41:12

It seemed like it, but then it seemed like we didn't.

00:41:16

This communication was just impeccably pure.

00:41:21

And I began to recognize I can't go up there.

00:41:24

I can't go up.

00:41:25

I can't go up and still go back.

00:41:28

And I was thinking, "Go back? Go back?

00:41:33

What do we mean? What's that mean?"

00:41:35

And as soon as I'm thinking, "Go back,"

00:41:38

the angel moved just to the side.

00:41:42

But I looked into the eyes of the warmest,

00:41:45

kindness, most wonderful,

00:41:48

I knew this was the Son of God.

00:41:50

I knew this was my Savior.

00:41:52

And all of a sudden my knees buckled,

00:41:54

my legs lost their strength, and I just went down.

00:41:57

I couldn't stand.

00:41:59

I was -- I was not worthy of this.

00:42:04

I was not worthy to stand in His presence.

00:42:06

Funny that I didn't feel worthy to be in heaven,

00:42:09

yet I knew I was worthy in the early part.

00:42:12

I was somehow given this -- granted this authority,

00:42:16

but I had this supernatural gift that I was worthy.

00:42:23

Somebody had done something for me.

00:42:27

- He had.

00:42:30

- Yes.

00:42:31

And so I'm down on my -- just falling down

00:42:35

and I see His feet and I grab them,

00:42:38

and I hold his feet and I see the scars.

00:42:43

And I know this is the Son of God.

00:42:44

He's my savior. He's my Lord.

00:42:47

It is because of Him. He died for everybody.

00:42:50

It's so cool because the Bible even says,

00:42:53

no, I take that back, Jesus said that,

00:42:59

"I have come not to condemn the world,

00:43:02

but that the world through Me will be saved."

00:43:06

And it was because of that, He was --

00:43:08

He's not condemning anybody.

00:43:10

It doesn't matter what you've done in your life,

00:43:13

what sins you've done, including murder.

00:43:16

It doesn't matter what you've done.

00:43:18

All of it is forgivable.

00:43:21

God can forgive anybody of anything.

00:43:25

And then we have this free gift

00:43:29

that we call salvation, you and I know about.

00:43:31

- And that's what you felt at His feet.

00:43:34

- And that support.

00:43:35

I just -- But to describe this experience,

00:43:38

I just stopped at His feet and I was worshiping Him

00:43:44

and down on the ground there.

00:43:47

And I heard the voice, "Dale, do you love Me?"

00:43:54

That's it. "Do you love Me?"

00:43:56

And I'm trying to think of all these words to say.

00:44:01

And I'm getting ready to say, in a sense,

00:44:05

I'm getting ready to say, but I've said nothing.

00:44:09

And I'm getting ready to say,

00:44:10

"Of course I love You, Lord.

00:44:12

I remember who You are and what You've done."

00:44:14

I'm getting ready to say that.

00:44:16

And He bends down and whispers into my ear.

00:44:21

And... I'm now back.

00:44:27

- Do you love Me?

00:44:29

That's really the question God ask all of us, isn't it?

00:44:33

And how do you answer that?

00:44:36

Why don't we pray together.

00:44:38

God, You are a god of love.

00:44:41

And You created us for Your love.

00:44:44

And Lord, maybe there's some people here today

00:44:46

who don't know Your love.

00:44:49

And thank You that what you did 2000 years ago

00:44:51

that we celebrate at Easter, that You died on a cross,

00:44:55

Jesus, so that all of our sins, past, present

00:44:59

and future could be forgiven.

00:45:01

And if you've never just told Him,

00:45:04

"I want what Jesus did to count for me.

00:45:07

I want your love. I want your guidance, God."

00:45:11

If you want relationship with Him,

00:45:13

tell Him right now in your heart.

00:45:15

He knows your heart.

00:45:17

And God, thank You that that is a free gift

00:45:19

that You offer, relationship with You forever.

00:45:22

Heaven is a gift.

00:45:25

And Lord, some of us,

00:45:27

though we have accepted that free gift,

00:45:29

maybe we've forgotten.

00:45:31

Maybe we've forgotten how much You love us

00:45:34

and we've just been living our lives for ourselves.

00:45:36

But, Lord, today we want to tell You,

00:45:38

no, we do love You and I want to live for You,

00:45:42

knowing that this life is just the beginning

00:45:45

of the real life that You created us to experience

00:45:47

with you forever.

00:45:48

We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.

00:45:52

Thank you. [applause]

00:46:00

- Wow. Great. Great.

00:46:02

I haven't read your book, but I've had --

00:46:05

listened to this a few times now.

00:46:06

I've had two parts on the Aggressive Life podcast.

00:46:11

And I know, for me, I'm just kind of --

00:46:14

I was convicted, you know, because I could always

00:46:17

answer the right true false question

00:46:19

of do you believe in heaven?

00:46:20

I know the Bible verses, all that kind of stuff,

00:46:22

but I crossed over this thing some time ago

00:46:26

where I just stopped thinking about heaven.

00:46:28

Maybe it's because I've met so many people

00:46:30

who are so heavenly minded

00:46:32

that there are no earthly good.

00:46:33

Maybe it's because I just got tired

00:46:35

of trite spiritual answers.

00:46:37

And so I've just, I mean, I've always believed it.

00:46:40

But when you talk about it, it just brings a,

00:46:42

like, freshness and a, like, centrality

00:46:47

to looking at life this way.

00:46:49

Why do you think it is that many of us

00:46:51

may believe in heaven,

00:46:53

but it doesn't really impact us at all?

00:46:55

It's like a cloak of -- a cloak of whatever over us.

00:46:59

- I mean, that is why I wrote Imagine Heaven, finally,

00:47:02

because I wanted skeptics like I was

00:47:05

to see this evidence,

00:47:06

but also to Christians to realize that, you know,

00:47:10

and Jesus teaches this,

00:47:11

but this life is continuous into the next.

00:47:15

It's not like these two different things.

00:47:18

And He very much tells us that the way we live

00:47:21

our lives does affect what happens in the life to come.

00:47:25

Relationship with God, heaven is a gift,

00:47:28

but how we live our lives really does affect

00:47:31

how we move into the life to come and how we experience it.

00:47:35

- What about the possibility that

00:47:36

these great interviews you showed

00:47:39

are people who are Christians,

00:47:41

they've read Bible verses,

00:47:42

and so something happens Neurochemically where, bam,

00:47:45

they're having things of Jesus

00:47:47

just because they know about Jesus before they die?

00:47:50

- Well, you'll have to wait for my next book because --

00:47:55

[laughs]

00:47:58

- Come on.

00:48:00

- Not that you'll read it anyway.

00:48:02

[laugther]

00:48:03

He doesn't read. - Have you read any of my books?

00:48:05

- Yes. I'm reading one of them right now.

00:48:09

- Oh! All right. Sorry.

00:48:11

- Yeah. - Sorry.

00:48:12

- His men's devotional. It's good. It's good.

00:48:15

So, but --

00:48:17

- I'm setting a softball.

00:48:19

You said people in other countries,

00:48:20

Hindus and stuff who'd never heard of Jesus are seeing this.

00:48:23

- I've interviewed Hindus, Muslims, Buddhists.

00:48:27

They don't experience the gods they should.

00:48:30

They experienced the God of light and love who is Jesus.

00:48:34

And many of them come back

00:48:35

and find Jesus and they follow Jesus.

00:48:37

- Amazing. Amazing.

00:48:38

- So, yeah, it's -- it is, believe, you guys,

00:48:41

that God is doing this in this time

00:48:44

and it's a global apologetic.

00:48:46

It's a new version of evidence of testimonies

00:48:51

from around the globe that He's real.

00:48:52

And in our age of both modern medicine

00:48:56

bringing so many people back and, you know,

00:48:59

global media, for the first time we can see.

00:49:02

- It's just crazy with all of the people talking about this,

00:49:05

the Gallup polls, the actual scientific reviews,

00:49:10

you mentioned 900.

00:49:11

It's just amazing to me that this isn't

00:49:13

more in the forefront of our mind.

00:49:14

So I'll just close this and say, hey, hey, friends,

00:49:17

let's not buy into the lie that this life is all there is.

00:49:20

Let's not get deluded by everybody else

00:49:23

who gets so upset about everything that's in this life

00:49:25

because that's all people live for.

00:49:26

I'm not living just for this life.

00:49:28

I'm living for a life that starts now and goes on.

00:49:31

So you've done an amazing job.

00:49:32

Thank you, my friend. Thank you. [applause]

00:49:36

- Let's go back to all of our sites

00:49:38

with a final instruction from our community pastors.

00:49:42

- Hey, my guess is that John's talk today

00:49:44

might have brought some things up for you

00:49:46

or even blown your mind a little bit.

00:49:48

Hey, we are not just content.

00:49:50

We're a community of people.

00:49:52

And if there's anything that we can do to support you,

00:49:54

if we can pray for you about something specific

00:49:57

or you just want to process through

00:49:58

some of what you felt or heard today,

00:50:00

we would love to do that.

00:50:02

You can go to Crossroads.net, hit the chat button

00:50:04

or you can just even email me directly.

00:50:06

Andy.reider@crossroads.net.

00:50:08

I'd love to pray for you.

00:50:09

I'd love to chat with you.

00:50:11

And hey, next week we kick off Holy Week.

00:50:13

You don't want to miss it.

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