What’s the best way to help a child work through the passing of a relative or close family member? When a grandparent or another family member dies, it’s only natural for kids to start asking questions. Kids will likely want to know where grandpa has gone and whether he has become a “guardian angel.” So how do we respond without confusing them?
Strobel didn’t think the Bible supported the proposition that near death experiences were real… (Ummmm, hello, Lazarus? The girl with the fever?) As he began to do research, he found that there have been 900 scientific articles published in the last 40 years exploring NDEs. The Lancet did an article that said that when you look at the alternative experiences for them, they are not sufficient to explain what people claim is happening.
When you look at the core of what actually takes place, it’s consistent with Christian theology. There are plenty of stories, but he was only interested in what could be corroborated: A study of 21 blind people (blind since birth) all could see for the first time and then when they came back they were blind again.
He tells the story of a woman who had a heart attack in the hospital, similar to our guest today, and she could sense her spirit leaving her body. When the hospital team revived her and she returned to her body, she said that there was a man’s shoe on the roof of the hospital: left foot, blue, wear on the toe, with the shoelaces tucked under the heel. (She was floating out of the building, obviously.) And when someone from the hospital staff went to check, it was exactly as she described. That’s corroboration.
He also tells the story of Howard Storm, an atheist at a secular university who was head of the art department. He dies in a hospital, but he says that he was standing next to his body. Some guys in the hallway say, “Hey, come with us!” So they walk down one corridor and then another and then another, and he was like, “Where are we going???” And the guys start to get mean to him, clawing and biting and swearing at him. They reduced him to roadkill: His eye was gouged out. His hand was chewed off. He said no horror movie could capture what they were doing to him. And he cried out to Jesus. Jesus came and rescued him. He is revived and his spirit rejoins his body. He leaves his job at the university because he becomes a Christian and becomes an ordained pastor and has a tiny church in Oklahoma.
Annie Lobert has a similar story of floating away into blackest darkness like outer space. Strobel says 24% of NDE are hellish/negative in some way.
Our guests today are dear to me (Renee), my childhood best friend, Jana, and her mom, LaDonna Brown. And they have a Near Death Experience testimony to share with our listeners. Welcome!
Tell us a little bit about yourselves. (Family, work, education, ministry, hobbies, etc)
Take us back to that day May 29 2022 at _St Thomas Hospital.
Why were you there?
Walk us through the story
Jana, what was your reaction?
LaDonna, what did you experience as you “died” that is, as your spirit left your body?
Has this experience changed how you view death? Life after death?
What should we be teaching our kids in light of what Scripture says and the testimonies of people like LaDonna?
Summary
We are body, soul, and spirit. Our spirits retain consciousness when they no longer have a body to operate in. John Lennox puts it this way: The brain is not the mind and the mind is not the brain.
If you believe the physical world is all there is, then you cannot explain consciousness. We are more than our physical brain. The example given by a Cambridge neuroscientist who wrote the book, Am I Just My Brain? put it this way: If there was a world-renowned expert on the human eye, and she knew all about how it worked but she was blind, would she know anything else about vision if she received her sight? Yes! Of course. There is knowing about something and there is experiencing something. NDEs show us that we can still consciously experience things apart from our brains.
Just as the Bible tells us, when our physical bodies die, our soul/spirit (ie consciousness) leaves our body and we are now in an intermediate state: either with Jesus in Paradise or separated from God in Hades. Then, the second phase begins when Jesus returns at the consummation of history: our spirits are united with a resurrected physical body that can never die, we go through final judgment, and we go to a physical place: heaven or hell. (Jesus said to the criminal on the cross, “Today you will be with me in Paradise.” And apostle Paul said to be separated from our bodies is to be present with the Lord.)
Science corroborates this with NDE studies.
1 Thessalonians 4
The Coming of the Lord
13 But we do not want you to be uninformed, brothers, about those who are asleep, that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope. 14 For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus, God will bring with him those who have fallen asleep. 15 For this we declare to you by a word from the Lord,[d] that we who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will not precede those who have fallen asleep. 16 For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command, with the voice of an archangel, and with the sound of the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first. 17 Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we will always be with the Lord. 18 Therefore encourage one another with these words.