What The Near Death Experience Tells Us About The Love Of God

WEBVTT
00:01:17.025 --> 00:01:18.210
Hey everybody, this is Brian.
00:01:18.210 --> 00:01:23.629
I'm back with another episode of Grief to Growth and today I want to welcome to a special guest.
00:01:23.629 --> 00:01:25.585
His name is Pastor John Burke.
00:01:25.585 --> 00:01:31.743
If you've been with us, if you've been with me for some time, you might remember my conversation with him from a couple of years ago.
00:01:31.743 --> 00:01:37.109
If you haven't, if you don't remember it, or if you're new, go back to August of 2021.
00:01:37.109 --> 00:01:39.929
And I had a great conversation with Pastor Burke then.
00:01:40.560 --> 00:01:47.864
He's the author of the New York Times Best Seller, imagine Heaven, and I want you to, like I said, go back and look at that episode if you haven't heard before.
00:01:47.864 --> 00:01:56.545
But he's also written works including no Perfect People Allowed Soul Revolution and Unshockable Love, and they've reached hearts all around the world.
00:01:56.545 --> 00:02:06.087
Pastor Burke, together with White Catholic, is a spirit behind the Gateway Church in Austin, texas, which is a spiritual haven for countless numbers of souls.
00:02:06.087 --> 00:02:12.926
He's an international speaker and his message of spiritual enlightenment has spanned 30 different countries.
00:02:12.926 --> 00:02:21.884
Today I'm going to talk to Pastor Burke about his newest work, which is called Imagine the God of Heaven, and the subtitle is God's Revelation and the Love You've Always Wanted.
00:02:21.884 --> 00:02:29.567
And the subtitle actually leads me into my first question, because I thought that was really caught my eye when I heard that, or my ear when I heard that.
00:02:29.567 --> 00:02:38.448
So, pastor Burke, can you expand on the love that we've always wanted and why we feel that way?
00:02:39.960 --> 00:02:43.485
Well, first, brian, call me John, I'm more comfortable with that.
00:02:43.485 --> 00:02:45.884
Ok, fine, yeah.
00:02:45.884 --> 00:02:49.167
Yeah, our church is very casual.
00:02:49.167 --> 00:02:52.968
We say come as you are, and so I don't like the titles, but that's all right.
00:02:53.228 --> 00:02:54.168
Hey, cool I understand.
00:02:55.240 --> 00:03:01.024
So you forgot one thing in the subtitle Near Death Experiences God's Revelation and the Love You've Always Wanted.
00:03:01.045 --> 00:03:01.727
Yes, yes.
00:03:02.884 --> 00:03:32.929
So no, it's all right, it's just an important part because, as you know, it's my story really, from grief to growth and my father passing away when three decades ago, someone gave him the very first book, very first study on near death experiences and I read it and I was an agnostic and that set me on a journey, because I was an engineer like you, so very analytical, skeptical.
00:03:32.929 --> 00:03:49.866
But to me this was like maybe there's actual, some evidence that this is real, and so I've studied thousands of them now over the last 30 years and this new book, imagine the God of Heaven is taking a look at.
00:03:49.866 --> 00:04:03.528
I've got 70 people in this book from all around the world who not only have a near death experience, and you've covered those before, so your audience is probably fairly familiar with them.
00:04:04.330 --> 00:04:07.984
Yeah, I'd say they are, but we might as well we could go over a little bit for people that might be new.
00:04:08.840 --> 00:04:10.467
Yeah, because I mean that's really important.
00:04:10.467 --> 00:04:29.704
It is what convinced me and what convinced many skeptical cardiologists, oncologists, other doctors is when people die, when they clinically die, their heart stops beating, brain waves cease and yet they're resuscitated.
00:04:29.704 --> 00:04:36.726
Many come back saying that they experienced something of a life to come that was more real than this life ever was.
00:04:36.726 --> 00:04:43.110
And there are commonalities and I've traced about 40 commonalities.
00:04:43.110 --> 00:04:51.889
There are probably more, but I traced 40 commonalities in the book Imagine Heaven that then I was tying to how that shows up in the scriptures.
00:04:53.161 --> 00:05:23.509
In Imagine the God of Heaven, what I'm doing is I'm looking at people from all over the globe who not only have that as a commonality but they have experienced this God of light and love who is more personal than they could have ever imagined, who loves them with, quite honestly, a love that hyperbole is all they can do to try to express it, and in this God's presence they never want to leave.
00:05:23.509 --> 00:05:45.327
And so in the book Imagine the God of Heaven, what I'm doing is I'm showing, through the eyes of these 70 people, how this God has been revealing himself through history, his heart, his characteristics, his great love story that he's been revealing through history, and how that's what these people are confirming.
00:05:45.327 --> 00:05:48.423
And it doesn't matter their religious background, their culture.
00:05:48.423 --> 00:05:55.409
Many times what they would have expected is not what they found, but what they found.
00:05:55.409 --> 00:05:57.687
They never wanted to leave.
00:05:57.687 --> 00:05:59.706
It was the love they have always wanted.
00:06:01.340 --> 00:06:01.620
Yeah.
00:06:01.620 --> 00:06:06.086
So why do you think that resonates with us so much, that love that we've always wanted?
00:06:06.086 --> 00:06:09.985
Do you feel like people are missing that here, or what's the reason for that?
00:06:11.288 --> 00:06:26.885
Well, yeah, I mean and that's actually part of the second part of the book is it's really about God's great love story, revealed throughout the scriptures, and that often gets missed.
00:06:26.885 --> 00:06:47.808
And in the Bible it starts with people in relationship with God, in very close relationship with God, but then throughout the story there's rejection, there's betrayal, there's divorce, there's reconciliation, there's sacrifice to try to win back the beloved.
00:06:47.808 --> 00:06:55.210
There are all these metaphors of relationship that God likens what he wants with humanity too.
00:06:55.210 --> 00:07:04.826
And then the whole thing ends in the book of Revelation with this great wedding, which is kind of bizarre if you think it's pretty mysterious, like what?
00:07:04.826 --> 00:07:15.001
But if you miss the meta narrative of the whole story, I think you miss a lot of why God does the things he does or doesn't.
00:07:15.001 --> 00:07:26.062
And the main thing is that love can't be bought, it can't be forced or coerced, it can't be manipulated, it has to be free.
00:07:26.062 --> 00:07:51.344
And so if God created us for a love relationship first with himself and then with each other, then what's missing on the planet is the first love, and that's exactly what God said to Moses, what Jesus reiterated that love God first, first and greatest commandment second is love your neighbor as much as you do yourself.
00:07:51.344 --> 00:07:59.125
Do those two and you fulfill all the scriptures, all the commands of scripture wrapped up in those two.
00:08:00.721 --> 00:08:43.412
And so, yeah, I think part of the story of humanity and human life is that we're here learning about free will and love and choosing to choose God and then choosing to let the love of God flow through us to others as well, and that's one of the commonalities of near-death experiences, of course, all around the world, in the presence of this God of light, who is love, who knows them so intimately, they often get a life review and in that life review they re-experience.
00:08:43.412 --> 00:08:45.360
So that's another commonality that we have.
00:08:45.360 --> 00:08:48.068
Re-experience so that's another commonality is time.
00:08:48.068 --> 00:08:53.721
I kind of think time probably works in two dimensions, or maybe three.
00:08:53.721 --> 00:09:02.687
It's not our linear, one-dimensional timeline and so they can re-experience their lives in the presence of this God and he's showing them.
00:09:02.687 --> 00:09:20.527
They come back with two things One, god is love and secondly, what he cares most about is how we treat one another, and that's what he was showing them again and again, like the ripple effect, like Dr Mary Neal, who I was just recently with.
00:09:20.527 --> 00:09:22.806
Have you had her on your show before?
00:09:23.279 --> 00:09:24.966
I have not had her on my show, but I have met her.
00:09:25.460 --> 00:09:27.387
Yeah, sweet, wonderful person.
00:09:27.387 --> 00:09:48.829
She's a spine surgeon, very analytical person as well, but in Jesus' presence he gives her a life review and he shows her the ripple effect of every little kind action and how God used even the things that she thought were bad in her life.
00:09:48.829 --> 00:09:57.043
He showed her how 20 people, 25, 30 people away that was still having a ripple effect.
00:10:00.387 --> 00:10:04.276
So we talk about the word God, we use the word God.
00:10:04.276 --> 00:10:07.233
It's a loaded word for a lot of people, yeah, I know.
00:10:07.233 --> 00:10:13.776
And this community in the afterlife community, a lot of times some people shy away from it.
00:10:13.776 --> 00:10:18.716
I've heard some people who've had nearer depth experiences say and I don't know if I want to use that word.
00:10:18.716 --> 00:10:22.554
So what is your experience with the word God and how should we relate to that?
00:10:25.009 --> 00:10:25.990
Yeah, that's a great question.
00:10:25.990 --> 00:10:55.927
I think there's been a lot of damage done with misinformation about God and, honestly, what I'm trying to do and imagine the God of Heaven is show one, just like if you really understand who this God is, that all these people are encountering, you would want to seek Him.
00:10:55.927 --> 00:10:57.732
That's it.
00:10:57.732 --> 00:11:04.134
But the other thing I'm trying to show is he didn't just show up in the age of near depth experiences.
00:11:04.134 --> 00:11:25.029
So I'm tracing what actually convinced me as a skeptical engineer even before the evidence of near depth experiences, which I think scientifically, a scientific principle is that what is consistently observed is real.
00:11:25.029 --> 00:11:40.209
So if you have millions of people around the globe and I personally studied thousands of them my friend Dr Jeffrey Long has got a database of 5,000 now that he's studied I mean, there have been many studies.
00:11:40.209 --> 00:11:50.034
There have been 900 scholarly peer review articles published on this, like in the Journal of the American Medical Association and the Lancet and Psychiatry.
00:11:50.034 --> 00:11:53.689
So there's all this evidence.
00:11:53.689 --> 00:12:09.510
And then if you look at the fact that close to 50% of them experience who they know is God and most of them don't shy away from calling them that they're like I knew, there was no doubt in my mind.
00:12:09.510 --> 00:12:17.713
This was my creator, this is who made me, and yet that's consistent all around the globe.
00:12:17.713 --> 00:12:27.649
The being they're describing is consistent, and so that should tell us something Like that's a lot of data.
00:12:27.649 --> 00:12:31.170
And if it were that alone?
00:12:31.972 --> 00:12:38.692
In chapter two of Imagine the God of Heaven, there have been a lot of alternate explanations of near-death experiences.
00:12:38.692 --> 00:12:50.432
Right, maybe it's hypoxia, like the brain suffering from oxygen deprivation, or maybe it's the same thing, like DMT, or ayahuasca produces the same things.
00:12:50.432 --> 00:12:52.288
I've heard all these.
00:12:52.288 --> 00:12:57.097
Or what about the effects of drugs in the hospital and all that.
00:12:57.097 --> 00:13:05.057
So I go through 10 points of evidence that any alternative theory has to make sense of.
00:13:05.057 --> 00:13:27.855
Because what I find is, of all these alternative theories, they're taking one thing and saying, well, see, like DMT, well, yeah, there's the experience of these wild colors and connectedness to everything, and sometimes maybe you're traveling or a tunnel or something like that.
00:13:27.855 --> 00:13:34.416
Well, yeah, but that doesn't make sense of veretical observations.
00:13:34.416 --> 00:13:45.515
So when people have near-death experiences and they're out of their bodies, they say many times they're still in the room up above in a spiritual body watching their resuscitation.
00:13:45.515 --> 00:14:03.314
And there have been studies done where they've come back and 92% of the many observations that these many patients that were studied made, 92% were completely accurate of the things they said were happening in the room while they had no brainwaves Right?
00:14:03.314 --> 00:14:11.337
96% more, there were some things some of the observations they made were not completely accurate.
00:14:11.337 --> 00:14:14.072
Only 2% were inaccurate.
00:14:14.072 --> 00:14:17.904
Well, that's high correlation, right?
00:14:17.904 --> 00:14:19.129
Like, how do you make sense of that?
00:14:20.846 --> 00:14:38.338
Second, blind people see when they have a near-death experience and they come back and they're still blind and yet they said the same things, they had the same experience and even talked about things that they shouldn't have known.
00:14:38.338 --> 00:14:50.706
Like, they saw things in their life review, for instance, that when they came back they were able to describe, but they couldn't have seen that, you know.
00:14:50.706 --> 00:14:57.158
Third, you have these overlapping commonalities, but they're not all the same.
00:14:57.158 --> 00:15:09.850
So, like I said, there are like 40 commonalities, right, and if it were just a brain-based thing, then everyone would probably have all the same commonalities, but they don't.
00:15:11.064 --> 00:15:33.413
There are percentages of overlap which, if you're in a court of law and you have 10 eyewitnesses who all say exactly the same thing, that's collusion, that's sketchy, because, like they talked, right, you have 10 people who say mostly the same things and they overlap, but they're all a bit unique from different perspectives.
00:15:33.413 --> 00:15:34.809
That's very strong testimony.
00:15:34.809 --> 00:15:36.449
That's what we see with these NDE's.
00:15:36.449 --> 00:16:44.156
And then you know.
00:16:44.156 --> 00:16:58.086
The other one is how do you explain people from all different religions seeing the same God and that shouldn't happen, because they weren't necessarily experiencing that?
00:16:58.086 --> 00:17:05.799
And there are other reasons I go into, but those are just some that convince me like no, this is something real.
00:17:05.799 --> 00:17:15.898
We're getting these observations that again, you know, what's consistently observed is real, but there's something real here.
00:17:17.115 --> 00:17:23.120
And I'm really glad that you went through that because I find so many people do not understand what you just talked about.
00:17:23.120 --> 00:17:28.447
There is evidence, there's vertical evidence, from a lot of these NDE's.
00:17:28.447 --> 00:17:42.906
People from all across the world are having similar experiences, because the explanations that materialists come up with, like oxygen deprivation or dump of DMT of the brain, they don't explain all of that.
00:17:42.906 --> 00:17:48.739
So I'm glad you go into that in the book for people that are still skeptical about the whole experience itself.
00:17:48.739 --> 00:17:57.519
When it comes to people meeting God, what would you say is a general way that people describe God?
00:18:00.432 --> 00:18:15.437
Well, some, you know, some, see him as a brilliant light, bright, they consistently say, brighter than the sun, but easy to look at.
00:18:15.437 --> 00:18:21.733
And they say things like I knew this should just burn my eyes out, but it didn't.
00:18:21.733 --> 00:18:27.325
In fact, I was mesmerized and in his presence.
00:18:27.325 --> 00:18:35.690
So this I love the way this one, he, you know, that's the other thing about this Brian is like the people that I've interviewed.
00:18:35.690 --> 00:18:50.398
They're, they're like psychiatrists, you know, doctors, commercial airline pilots, nurses, I mean, these, these are, these are people who have a lot to lose by saying crazy stuff.
00:18:50.398 --> 00:18:52.663
Right, and yet they are.
00:18:52.663 --> 00:19:00.906
And like this, this one guy who his name is Ron, dr Ron Smotherman.
00:19:00.926 --> 00:19:04.935
He's a neurologist, anda psychiatrist, and it's a wild story.
00:19:04.935 --> 00:19:11.938
He he was living in San Francisco led a, led a guy stay in his house while he was gone.
00:19:11.938 --> 00:19:13.505
He was doing lectures around the world.
00:19:13.505 --> 00:19:23.669
When he came back the guy had a psychotic break and started stabbing him, stabbed him 13 times, once through the neck.
00:19:23.669 --> 00:19:27.597
That Dr said he absolutely should not have survived.
00:19:27.637 --> 00:19:41.250
He shows, showed me the, the scars and on the, as as the 14th was coming for his heart, he said I'm froze.
00:19:41.250 --> 00:19:53.773
And suddenly appears like instantly before him this, this brilliant light standing there that he knew again was divine.
00:19:53.773 --> 00:19:55.697
He knew this was God, didn't have any.
00:19:55.697 --> 00:20:00.112
They don't have any doubt of who this is.
00:20:00.112 --> 00:20:02.159
They have an honest experience.
00:20:02.159 --> 00:20:11.881
But he said imagine standing five feet away from the, the, the point of impact of an atomic explosion.
00:20:11.881 --> 00:20:15.331
He said that was the energy roiling.
00:20:15.331 --> 00:20:19.002
This light was just roiling with energy, and he.
00:20:19.002 --> 00:20:21.349
And then he said but, but the energy?
00:20:21.349 --> 00:20:23.853
What was roiling even more was love.
00:20:23.853 --> 00:20:28.663
And then he lost it, telling me this, he said.
00:20:28.663 --> 00:20:32.918
He said I'm, I'm sorry, I was just like, and that's.
00:20:32.918 --> 00:20:46.538
The other thing is that this memory for them is not up here in the brain, it's, it's somewhere in their soul and they relive it as if it were today and it just overwhelms their emotions because the love is so great.
00:20:46.538 --> 00:21:00.536
And so he said instantly, he was imprinted with, with these qualities and and that's what part of what I'm trying to show and imagine the God of heaven is the qualities, the heart of God.
00:21:00.536 --> 00:21:05.954
So he said infinite love, but also, instantly, infinite knowledge, he said.
00:21:05.954 --> 00:21:12.274
I, it's like I had a picture of a library but the books filled the universe and he wrote them all.
00:21:12.274 --> 00:21:16.805
And he said power, that was indisputable.
00:21:16.805 --> 00:21:35.309
You know what's fascinating about the power is I had another, a commercial airline pilot, who is flying into, like an airborne coming into the city of God okay, which, ironically, we'll have to come back to.
00:21:35.309 --> 00:21:44.431
I have an Indian man who had never read the Bible, taken by this God of light and he describes this same city of God.
00:21:44.431 --> 00:21:47.096
We can come back to that.
00:21:47.096 --> 00:22:07.733
But but both of these guys, this commercial airline pilot and this neurologist psychologist, said when I saw that light, it was like the very instant a nuclear explosion goes off, the whiteness of that and the brilliance of that, and yet you could look right into it.
00:22:07.733 --> 00:22:12.567
So power, he said, that's indisputable authority.
00:22:12.567 --> 00:22:14.532
There's another thing he said.
00:22:14.532 --> 00:22:23.637
He said, like you know, you didn't have any questions, he knew and he knew the right thing and you wanted to do whatever he said.
00:22:25.261 --> 00:22:31.824
Humor was another one, and this is one I bring out in the whole last section of Imagine the God of Heaven.
00:22:31.824 --> 00:22:34.533
There are things about God, I think.
00:22:34.533 --> 00:22:52.719
I think all of us, me included, we put God in a box and and, and some of us put him in a box where we we don't realize how great, how magnificent, how, how otherworldly and mysterious and in control and sovereign, all those words you want to use.
00:22:52.719 --> 00:23:22.377
But others put him in a box and we don't imagine how personable, how relatable, how even humorous and fun and funny, and some people, like they, can't go there, and that's what I'm trying to help people do stretch your box and see that God is the, that relationship, and so humor was one of the things he said, and many of them said that they had so much fun.
00:23:23.940 --> 00:23:36.570
Joy was another thing, and and and this is an interesting one because he said the joy was like you wish you could be that happy, and this is God, that he's that joyful, he said.
00:23:36.570 --> 00:23:41.022
But just experiencing that joy, he said, put me in ecstasy.
00:23:41.022 --> 00:23:57.061
Now here's a wild thing, brian and I, you know, I went there, but I had multiple people that I interviewed of these 70 people, and imagine the God of heaven Say things like that, like in his presence.
00:23:57.061 --> 00:24:03.395
I was like beyond anything I've ever experienced on earth.
00:24:03.395 --> 00:24:17.513
And I, and I said, you mean even like better than sex, like oh yeah, oh yeah, you name it, there's no high, there's no, there's no nothing, which you know some people like no way.
00:24:17.513 --> 00:24:26.483
But stretch your categories, you know, look at the, look at the evidence, because what I'm also showing is I'm showing that this is not new.
00:24:26.483 --> 00:24:29.451
This is what God's been revealing about himself all along.
00:24:29.451 --> 00:24:36.141
Joy is what he wants, because it's, it's his, it's his main state.
00:24:36.141 --> 00:24:38.891
Right, that's?
00:24:38.891 --> 00:24:43.262
Cs Lewis is one of my favorite authors, you know, who was a literary scholar.
00:24:43.262 --> 00:24:47.034
So joy is the serious business of heaven.
00:24:47.034 --> 00:24:48.918
Yeah, and it's true.
00:24:49.700 --> 00:25:02.115
Another thing that Ron, this guy, said is purity, and I asked him to explain it, and I think it's when, when, when religious people use the word holy, I think.
00:25:02.115 --> 00:25:03.257
I think it's the same thing.
00:25:03.257 --> 00:25:16.529
He said he was just so pure, so innocent, and he said but knowledgeable, so not, not innocent, like naive, but just pure.
00:25:16.529 --> 00:25:17.351
And he said what?
00:25:17.351 --> 00:25:18.213
What it did is?
00:25:18.213 --> 00:25:23.748
It stood in stark relief to me and and and.
00:25:23.748 --> 00:25:24.870
Then he said one other thing.
00:25:24.870 --> 00:25:35.486
He said, and humble, and when he said this, he said you know, you know, I'm a, I'm a neurologist, psychiatrist, I've written books, I've traveled the world.
00:25:35.486 --> 00:25:41.538
You know, I, I have been proud.
00:25:41.538 --> 00:25:45.024
He has real reasons to be proud.
00:25:45.024 --> 00:25:50.613
And yet he was so humble, and and again it brought him to tears Just remembering that.
00:25:50.613 --> 00:25:52.777
And we don't.
00:25:52.777 --> 00:26:07.198
It's hard for us to put all that into one being right, right, and yet that's what I think is important to do to more accurately, because we'll never fully imagine God.
00:26:07.919 --> 00:26:09.403
Yeah, Thank you for that.
00:26:09.403 --> 00:26:13.260
Excuse me, I think, as you were saying, that you know people.
00:26:13.260 --> 00:26:32.173
I think the reason why we have trouble with the word God is because, as you mentioned, we put God in a box and a lot of us were raised with a God who was less than all of that and probably the last thing we envisioned God is, or maybe people who misrepresented.
00:26:32.173 --> 00:26:34.118
Oh, absolutely, what God's actually like.
00:26:34.439 --> 00:26:34.900
Absolutely.
00:26:34.900 --> 00:26:35.522
That's what I mean.
00:26:35.522 --> 00:26:38.961
That's what I mean People representing God in a certain way.
00:26:38.961 --> 00:26:49.104
I, even to this day, I go back and forth with people who are representing the Bible, for example, a certain way, and so, as the Bible says this and it's like does it really, you know?
00:26:50.174 --> 00:26:52.102
Well, and again, think about it this way.
00:26:52.102 --> 00:27:02.348
So the Bible says a lot of things, and it honestly depends on the framework through which I'm reading the whole thing, right?
00:27:02.755 --> 00:27:03.740
Yeah, exactly right.
00:27:04.354 --> 00:27:24.583
So if the framework through which I'm reading the whole thing is what is right and what is wrong, and I'm doing right and you're doing wrong, and that's the framework, that's what matters most, it's going to be a hammer, yes, but that's actually not the framework Jesus told us to use.
00:27:24.583 --> 00:27:26.117
We already talked about it.
00:27:26.117 --> 00:27:29.841
If you love God, throw your heart.
00:27:29.841 --> 00:27:35.700
And if you love people and yourself, you know, if you don't love yourself, you're not going to love people.
00:27:35.700 --> 00:27:39.621
So it's a both and it's learning to recognize.
00:27:39.641 --> 00:28:04.246
You know, this is another cool thing of many of these stories is, they say, in God's presence and I have three people in the book saying the same thing, and one was an agnostic who literally I tease him, you beat the thief next to Jesus for last minute, crying out to God because he had never prayed, never thought about God.
00:28:04.306 --> 00:28:10.417
But literally, as he's dying of an opioid overdose, before his head hits the steering wheel, he says God, forgive me.
00:28:10.417 --> 00:28:16.403
And he and these others.
00:28:16.403 --> 00:28:29.824
And the reason I point that out is because this is not what they would have expected, because God was good, like he didn't require him to have done all the right things.
00:28:29.824 --> 00:28:38.223
All he required is their heart turning to him, because that's the point love and he can't force love.
00:28:38.223 --> 00:28:43.488
So so the thing Jesus said is love God, love people.
00:28:43.488 --> 00:28:49.606
That's the framework through which we've got to also read the Bible and understand what all that means.
00:28:49.606 --> 00:28:54.946
So doesn't mean the command to not lie is wrong.
00:28:54.946 --> 00:29:09.984
It means it's not loving, right, right, but if someone does lie, would you just beat them down and tell them how horrible they are and they're worthless people because they did that and treat them like that?
00:29:09.984 --> 00:29:11.919
Well, that's not loving.
00:29:13.034 --> 00:29:16.564
So anyway, yeah, that's a really good point.
00:29:16.564 --> 00:29:19.081
You mentioned the agnostic man.
00:29:19.081 --> 00:29:22.303
You also mentioned an Indian man who saw the city of God.
00:29:22.303 --> 00:29:25.240
So that comes back to do.
00:29:25.240 --> 00:29:28.266
We have to be Christian to experience God in heaven.
00:29:30.899 --> 00:29:32.924
Yeah, you're asking the Christian pastor.
00:29:32.924 --> 00:29:35.639
You're leaving me into the trap.
00:29:37.517 --> 00:29:38.801
I don't mean to lead you into a trap.
00:29:39.234 --> 00:29:42.596
No, I'm totally, I'm teasing, I'm teasing, but but.
00:29:42.596 --> 00:29:44.020
But there is something I think.
00:29:44.020 --> 00:30:05.559
So I think some of us have been burned by Christians who have not understood the, the magnitude of the grace of God and and, as a result, have have led people to believe that that God doesn't care about anybody but us.
00:30:05.559 --> 00:30:18.846
That's not true and I'm showing that in the very first three chapters it's called God of all nations, but the the other side of it is what these people experience.
00:30:18.846 --> 00:30:25.587
So, for instance, santosh Akarchi was this Indian manufacturing engineer.
00:30:25.587 --> 00:30:29.342
So again, very smart people who travel the world doing engineering.
00:30:29.342 --> 00:30:30.966
But he was raised in Hinduism.
00:30:30.966 --> 00:30:33.160
His dad was a Sanskrit scholar.
00:30:33.160 --> 00:30:34.163
That was all he knew.
00:30:34.163 --> 00:30:35.558
The Hindu gods was all he knew.
00:30:36.814 --> 00:30:40.861
He dies, he hears Code Blue, his pancreas ruptured.
00:30:40.861 --> 00:30:43.558
He hears Code Blue.
00:30:43.558 --> 00:30:48.043
They couldn't revive his heart and they put him on artificial life support for three days.
00:30:48.043 --> 00:30:52.884
Three days later, when he comes back, he tells what happened.
00:30:52.884 --> 00:30:54.539
He left his body.
00:30:54.539 --> 00:30:56.200
He sees his body there.
00:30:56.794 --> 00:31:02.695
This brilliant light comes and he knows it's a divine light, he says.
00:31:02.695 --> 00:31:09.436
And I knew this light had ultimate authority and I had to do whatever it wanted, he said.
00:31:09.436 --> 00:31:11.983
But I fell in love with this light.
00:31:11.983 --> 00:31:14.138
That was his first response.
00:31:14.138 --> 00:31:22.241
And then they go, they travel, and he said it was like through tunnels, and that's another one of the commonalities.
00:31:22.241 --> 00:31:32.519
But they come to this place where the light stops, parked over what he describes as this giant compound.
00:31:32.519 --> 00:31:40.407
Now, I've been to India many times and at first I was like, what do you mean compound?
00:31:40.407 --> 00:31:42.360
It took me a while to figure out what he was saying.
00:31:42.474 --> 00:32:03.564
But in India there are compounds, literally like high walled areas, gated, and he said it was like that, but these beautiful walls, high walls inside this beautiful landscape, but mansions and buildings of otherworldly material.
00:32:03.564 --> 00:32:08.745
And it was square in shape, thousands of miles long.
00:32:08.745 --> 00:32:12.554
He said when you're there, your eyesight is like telescopic.
00:32:12.554 --> 00:32:15.402
Well, that's another commonality as well.
00:32:15.402 --> 00:32:24.382
But he said and there were 12 gates, I counted them and outside the gates were angels.
00:32:24.634 --> 00:32:27.382
And that's when I realized I'm looking at the kingdom of heaven.
00:32:27.382 --> 00:32:30.743
And he said all I wanted was to enter there.
00:32:30.743 --> 00:32:34.563
He said I realized that's the goal of existence to be there.
00:32:34.563 --> 00:32:38.030
So he experiences.
00:32:38.030 --> 00:32:45.160
And if you've ever read Revelation 21 and you look at his words, it's like that's what he's experiencing.
00:32:45.160 --> 00:32:52.465
And then he's like where am I?
00:32:52.465 --> 00:33:01.060
And again, this is an experience more real than he said, more real than anything we've experienced here and he says where am I?
00:33:01.060 --> 00:33:15.479
And he looks and he's up on a high platform and he looks down to his left and he describes an abyss, he describes hell and he's like I want to go there, I don't want to go there.
00:33:15.479 --> 00:33:28.049
He turns and he sees who he describes as God now in the appearance of a giant man on a throne.
00:33:28.049 --> 00:33:31.619
That's what he describes Interesting.
00:33:31.719 --> 00:33:32.020
Okay.
00:33:32.100 --> 00:33:34.565
I know I'm not making this up.
00:33:34.565 --> 00:33:37.078
Yeah, you know, this is just what he told me.
00:33:37.078 --> 00:33:47.682
And he looks into his eyes and he gets a life review, like he sees all of it, the good and the bad, and he falls to his knees and he says God, forgive me.
00:33:47.682 --> 00:33:51.602
Forgive me Because he realizes all the wrongs he had done.
00:33:51.602 --> 00:34:09.746
And then the Lord speaks to him and he says I was shocked because there was such tenderness, such compassion, such mercy in his voice and he said I'm going to send you back and when you go back, I want you to love your family, especially your daughter.
00:34:09.746 --> 00:34:11.019
She needs your help right now.
00:34:11.019 --> 00:34:17.815
So see, this is this, is this stretches everybody's categories, right Is that?
00:34:17.815 --> 00:34:26.525
He's the God who is with us, all of us, and he knows everything intimately about everyone we interact with and he cares about all of us.
00:34:26.525 --> 00:34:28.027
That's the thing.
00:34:28.027 --> 00:34:30.802
If you miss that, you miss the, you miss the big picture.
00:34:30.802 --> 00:34:36.121
But we can also reject him, and that's what Santosh was also seeing.
00:34:36.121 --> 00:34:47.481
And so then he sees, right next to this throne, what he calls a very narrow door that was open to me and he could go into the kingdom of heaven.
00:34:47.481 --> 00:34:50.559
And he asked the Lord.
00:34:50.559 --> 00:34:52.623
He said when I come back.
00:34:52.623 --> 00:35:00.009
And he said because there was such mercy and compassion and love in his voice, I started to relax and I said when I come back, how do I go through that narrow door?
00:35:00.009 --> 00:35:06.606
And the Lord said, and he was thinking about religion, like what religion do I choose?
00:35:06.606 --> 00:35:08.315
What do I go to, you know?
00:35:08.315 --> 00:35:12.065
And he was thinking which temple or synagogue or church or do I go to?
00:35:12.065 --> 00:35:22.329
And the Lord said what I want is relationship, not one day a week, 365 days a year.
00:35:22.329 --> 00:35:29.063
How honest will you be with me, how real, how sincere, how honest will you be with me?
00:35:29.063 --> 00:35:33.360
And then he said he said the wages of sin is death.
00:35:33.360 --> 00:35:40.639
Walk with me and surrender yourself daily to me.
00:35:40.639 --> 00:35:42.476
And then he sends it back.
00:35:44.894 --> 00:35:52.119
Two years later, his daughter is invited to sing in a choir at a church because she was a choral major.
00:35:52.119 --> 00:36:06.788
Santosh goes to hear her sing and the pastor is speaking on the passage in John 10 where Jesus says you know, or Matthew seven where he says you know, I am the gate.
00:36:06.788 --> 00:36:09.201
I am the gate into the kingdom of heaven.
00:36:09.201 --> 00:36:13.425
And then John 10 where he says you know, I'm the gate and the sheep will come in and out.
00:36:13.425 --> 00:36:20.186
And Santosh goes and he starts reading the Bible and he's like that's what I experienced, interesting, wow.
00:36:20.186 --> 00:36:27.599
Well, if that were one story, you go, eh, one story, but I'm showing just in the first three.
00:36:27.599 --> 00:36:28.362
I mean throughout.
00:36:28.362 --> 00:36:54.826
I've got stories from people all over the world Bebe, who is a Muslim related to the Prophet Muhammad living in Tehran, who, in her near death experience, experiences the same, the same almighty giant in a robe and a beard, white hair, though right, and Santosh did who says to her I am he who is in Farsi.
00:36:55.668 --> 00:36:55.909
Yeah.
00:36:56.256 --> 00:37:00.461
Okay, she can't speak English, so she told me this through a translator.
00:37:00.461 --> 00:37:04.845
Okay, and I was like you got to be kidding, I am he who is.
00:37:04.845 --> 00:37:08.246
Well, when Moses asked God, who am I?
00:37:08.246 --> 00:37:10.715
To say sent me, you know, when he's delivered the?
00:37:10.715 --> 00:37:12.539
This is an exodus.
00:37:12.539 --> 00:37:15.526
God says I am, who is?
00:37:15.526 --> 00:37:17.818
I am the self-existent one.
00:37:18.300 --> 00:37:18.581
Yeah.
00:37:19.443 --> 00:37:22.320
Yeah, it's what Jesus said to himself before Abraham was born.
00:37:22.320 --> 00:37:37.423
I am so she, and she also, you know, come, comes to start following Jesus and then gets past to leave Tehran because they were going to kill her.
00:37:37.423 --> 00:37:41.242
Yeah, so I mean, it's not all free everywhere.
00:37:41.242 --> 00:37:48.867
You know, in fact, another Muslim, a mom from Rwanda that I interviewed.
00:37:48.867 --> 00:37:54.983
That's in the book and it's a fascinating story, too Awesome story.
00:37:54.983 --> 00:38:05.003
His mother was a Tutsi, his father was a Hutu during the Rwandan genocide and it, you know it, drove their family apart.
00:38:05.003 --> 00:38:20.384
He ends up a street kid at eight years old, doing drugs, then dealing drugs, then he becomes an Imam in the mosque and anyway, long story short, he too, he dies of blood cancer.
00:38:20.384 --> 00:38:25.039
And he says who was?
00:38:25.120 --> 00:38:33.503
There was a man like he saw in the movie the Passion of the Christ, because he got free movie tickets and he went to see the Passion of the Christ.
00:38:33.503 --> 00:38:50.242
And he says he enters and he's in this white robe with a beard, but light coming out of him like the sun, but I could look at him and he shows me and he sees holes in his hands and he says to him I died for mankind.
00:38:50.242 --> 00:38:52.140
You are one of those I died for.
00:38:52.140 --> 00:38:55.018
Never deny it until everyone.
00:38:55.018 --> 00:39:04.486
And he's still in Rwanda and he's now an Anglican priest and he's had six attempts on his life.
00:39:04.486 --> 00:39:06.149
Oh, wow, wow.
00:39:06.149 --> 00:39:08.528
What would convince someone to do that?
00:39:08.528 --> 00:39:14.655
Yeah, and I mean you can, you can go watch my, my video interviews with him and he's and and so.
00:39:14.655 --> 00:39:24.007
So the point is all over the globe there's another, another Indian man who Dr Rajeev Parti.
00:39:24.007 --> 00:39:24.688
Maybe you know.
00:39:25.637 --> 00:39:26.659
Yes, he's been in my program.
00:39:26.858 --> 00:39:27.902
Yeah, oh, he has.
00:39:28.082 --> 00:39:28.282
Yes.
00:39:28.844 --> 00:39:29.044
Yeah.
00:39:29.044 --> 00:39:32.480
So I don't know if he told you his whole story, but yes, he came.
00:39:32.480 --> 00:39:42.579
He came back confused too, because it's like why did these Christian angels bring me to this God of light who then later, when I ask who are you, Lord Says I'm Jesus, your savior.
00:39:43.983 --> 00:39:44.204
Yeah.
00:39:45.818 --> 00:39:47.724
This is happening all over the globe.
00:39:47.985 --> 00:39:59.679
Yeah, and I'm really glad that you're tying this back to to the Bible and stuff, because and when I asked you the question, you know I didn't mean to to to lead you into a trap, but I do for a reason.
00:39:59.679 --> 00:40:09.885
I I I moderated a board on Facebook and just last couple of days, you know, people are telling me NDE's are not biblical and these, you know they're, they're deceptions.
00:40:09.885 --> 00:40:16.963
And then one guy I was telling you know about this and he said, well, I said something about a Catholic person because, well, catholics are all deceived too.
00:40:16.963 --> 00:40:19.341
So these are, these are some of the people.
00:40:19.954 --> 00:40:29.449
I've got a priest, I've got multiple Catholics who met the same God and this guy became a priest because of his encounter Right.
00:40:30.655 --> 00:40:36.709
So and and so, brian, that's the thing that just is so difficult, you know, and that's what I'm trying to show.
00:40:36.709 --> 00:40:45.784
I'm trying to show, yeah, there's a lot of misinformation out there about God and a lot of us, all of us, look, all of us misinterpret.
00:40:45.784 --> 00:40:59.823
You know, I'm not completely right, I'm not even claiming to be, you know, but if you, but if you look at all the evidence and that's what I'm trying to put, I'm trying to put the biblical evidence, because I've studied it for three decades, right.
00:40:59.823 --> 00:41:10.303
I'm also trying to put I really think God is showing us in this global age of communication that he's the God of all nations and he always has been.
00:41:10.303 --> 00:41:15.124
And you know what, what a lot of Christians don't understand.
00:41:15.735 --> 00:41:34.057
Jesus said this a lot, and you know, you even like in Acts chapter Acts, chapter 10, you know, god basically reveals to Peter he's the God of all nations and he has Peter.
00:41:34.057 --> 00:41:36.747
Go to this Roman centurion.
00:41:36.747 --> 00:41:41.858
Well, they were auto worshipers, they were the, the pagans, right, they were the outcasts to the Jews.
00:41:41.858 --> 00:41:43.824
And Peter's like I would never do that.
00:41:43.824 --> 00:41:45.047
Why would he never do that?
00:41:45.047 --> 00:41:56.548
Well, because his culture told him God loves us, not them, right, right, and he says he realizes what God's telling him is, and he says this.
00:41:56.548 --> 00:42:01.744
It says I now realize that God does not show favoritism.
00:42:01.744 --> 00:42:06.768
He accepts everyone from all nations, you know.
00:42:06.768 --> 00:42:10.238
Basically, he said who fear him or seek him and do what is right.
00:42:12.775 --> 00:42:18.496
And so, yeah, in in Imagine the God of Heaven, one of my favorite stories, a good friend of mine.
00:42:18.496 --> 00:42:29.684
Now when, when I was on a New York national news show, she emails me afterwards this is after Imagine Heaven and she's a nurse.
00:42:29.684 --> 00:42:37.166
She was a nurse in LA names Heidi, and she said hey, I saw you on on that TV show.
00:42:37.166 --> 00:42:40.519
I don't know who you are, I've never read your book, but that happened to me.
00:42:40.519 --> 00:42:52.327
I was raised in an atheist, agnostic Jewish family, but when I, when my horse landed on me and crushed me, I was up in the air with Jesus.
00:42:52.327 --> 00:42:57.845
I've never told anyone that Thanks, yeah, that's all she said.
00:42:57.845 --> 00:43:04.443
Wow, and so I was like Heidi, we got to talk and we've become good, good friends since then.
00:43:04.443 --> 00:43:11.068
But yeah, what's fascinating and her, her story is in Imagine the God of Heaven as well.
00:43:11.068 --> 00:43:27.762
But what's fascinating is her dad had a mantra and you know, brian, a lot, of, a lot of our animosity toward God and toward people comes from our own hurt, unhealed.
00:43:29.370 --> 00:43:40.062
And you know that right I mean even even in grief work there's a lot of you know just the pain of not working through griefs and stuff like that.
00:43:40.062 --> 00:43:53.340
But her dad, who was, who was actually pretty abusive, had a mantra there is no God, your life is worthless.
00:43:53.340 --> 00:43:57.555
Jesus Christ is the biggest hoax ever perpetrated on mankind.
00:43:57.555 --> 00:43:58.137
Oh, wow.
00:43:58.137 --> 00:44:04.318
And he told his three daughters that every night they're whole growing up years while being abusive.
00:44:04.318 --> 00:44:06.044
Wow.
00:44:06.044 --> 00:44:19.059
Well, she always believed in God and she prayed to him every night and she felt that she felt like she would pray to him and she'd talk to him about all these things happening and she felt the comfort.
00:44:19.675 --> 00:44:22.744
In fact she felt like he was there, kind of rocking her to bed.
00:44:22.744 --> 00:44:41.106
That's what she felt At 16, after after going through her bat mitzvah and being raped by her rabbi or being sexually molested by a rabbi, you know, I mean, you know it's a pretty horrific story.
00:44:41.106 --> 00:44:54.923
But at 16, her she's in a horse riding accident and her horse lands on her and crushes her and she instantly left her body.
00:44:54.923 --> 00:44:59.711
She said she was up 30 feet above the accident watching her sisters freak out.
00:44:59.711 --> 00:45:04.903
But she felt great and she said my only concern was for my sisters.
00:45:04.903 --> 00:45:10.923
I knew I was dead but I was great, but I just hated that they had to see me die like this.
00:45:10.923 --> 00:45:21.200
And then she sees a light over her shoulder, moves up and there with her 30 feet in the air, is Jesus and he looks like you would think Jesus would look, except he's.
00:45:21.200 --> 00:45:22.903
He's brilliant.
00:45:22.903 --> 00:45:29.105
But she recognized it and she said I said oh, hey.
00:45:29.105 --> 00:45:33.865
And she said it was like an instant reconnection.
00:45:33.865 --> 00:45:37.198
She said I knew this man, I knew him.
00:45:37.198 --> 00:45:47.419
And she later said I can't explain how God can be a light and God can be love and God can be a man.
00:45:47.419 --> 00:45:52.722
But that's what I experienced and Jesus gave her a life review.
00:45:53.375 --> 00:45:54.440
Remember, she's 16, right.
00:45:54.440 --> 00:46:01.382
So he gives her a life review and in the life review, first of all, they laughed.
00:46:01.382 --> 00:46:28.582
She said their butts off Because, like, one thing that happened was when she was an infant in a crib and her mom, you know, put another infant in there and the infant picked up her little plastic rattle and whacked her on the nose and Heidi, just like gets indignant and starts to cry and all that and they just both burst out laughing because they knew she wouldn't really hurt, she was just mad, right.
00:46:28.582 --> 00:46:38.106
But they could tell all this and she said Jesus just loved to laugh and she said he was so fun.
00:46:38.106 --> 00:46:47.543
But he also showed her in her life review that when she was a young girl and she was praying to God every night he was there.
00:46:47.543 --> 00:46:52.503
She saw him there sitting by her bed comforting her.
00:46:53.528 --> 00:47:02.240
In her life review, wow, and and I think that's what this shows is that, you know, jesus said I am the light of the world.
00:47:02.240 --> 00:47:06.880
Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but we'll have the light of life.
00:47:06.880 --> 00:47:07.722
Mm-hmm.
00:47:07.722 --> 00:47:19.086
And this God of light also appeared to Moses, you know, 3500 years ago, as this Burning bush that wouldn't burn the bush.
00:47:19.086 --> 00:47:26.365
Yeah, this is this brilliant light that didn't burn, didn't burn the bush, and and and on and on.
00:47:26.365 --> 00:47:38.488
You know, you can, you can trace it through, and what I think this shows us is God has always been about Drawing people back to himself.
00:47:38.488 --> 00:47:40.724
That's what he's doing.
00:47:40.724 --> 00:47:42.329
He he's.
00:47:42.329 --> 00:48:06.046
The whole purpose of Jesus coming and Dying on the cross was to make a way that we don't have to pay for all our wrongs, that God in his justice, justice, would be willing and able to both be just and to forgive Anybody who wants him.
00:48:06.981 --> 00:48:08.124
Hmm.
00:48:08.144 --> 00:48:10.311
That's it, yeah, anybody who wants him.
00:48:10.721 --> 00:48:17.074
Yeah if you want him and you want his love, nothing can keep you away from him, because nothing can keep him away from you.
00:48:17.074 --> 00:48:20.960
Yeah, but here's the other thing is that he's with us already.
00:48:20.960 --> 00:48:23.748
He's with everyone already.
00:48:23.748 --> 00:48:28.224
Yeah, how in different ways, even the person who rejects him.
00:48:28.224 --> 00:48:34.144
And there are people in the book who he said that to them, it's like in in their life review.
00:48:34.245 --> 00:48:45.974
You know, he was one guy who was a medical executive and a CEO and In Jesus presence he's getting this life review and Jesus is showing him all these times.
00:48:45.974 --> 00:48:48.120
He suffered as a kid.
00:48:48.120 --> 00:48:48.922
He suffered a lot.
00:48:48.922 --> 00:48:49.724
He was in the hospital.
00:48:49.724 --> 00:48:52.532
I had bad asthma, he was overweight, he was bullied.
00:48:52.532 --> 00:48:56.570
He's showing me all and he says why are you showing me these things?
00:48:56.570 --> 00:49:06.034
And then he kind of had an aha and he said were you there with me Even through all that, even before I knew you?
00:49:06.034 --> 00:49:13.130
And and Jesus looks at me said yes, I was there waiting for you to turn to me.
00:49:13.130 --> 00:49:25.084
And and Then a really cool thing is at a later point, he's just experiencing a similar kind of like ecstatic joy.
00:49:25.084 --> 00:49:40.287
He's by you know, he's by this river in heaven, this gorgeous place, and he's by this river and he drinks of this water and he said it was just like, like he again said ecstasy, you think they say that mm-hmm.
00:49:40.287 --> 00:49:46.564
And then he he turns to Jesus and Jesus is holding a flask Like a bottle mm-hmm.
00:49:47.045 --> 00:49:48.067
This is what is that.
00:49:48.067 --> 00:49:52.760
And Jesus said I've been collecting your tears, beloved, hmm.
00:49:52.760 --> 00:49:56.409
And then he pours them into the river, hmm.
00:49:56.409 --> 00:50:02.470
And Randy instantly knows he's returning all my sorrows for joy.
00:50:03.942 --> 00:50:05.507
Wow, yeah.
00:50:05.507 --> 00:50:12.649
And then I Want to ask you this, because you talked about, you mentioned something about even those who reject him.
00:50:12.649 --> 00:50:13.110
I think it was.
00:50:13.110 --> 00:50:17.186
It was a phrase you used If you're familiar with the work of Thomas Talbot.
00:50:17.186 --> 00:50:19.613
You wrote a book called the inescapable love of God.
00:50:20.981 --> 00:50:22.103
No okay.
00:50:22.123 --> 00:50:34.755
So he and he argues that if we knew who God was and if we were in our right minds, having those two conditions, you could not reject God and the God.
00:50:34.755 --> 00:50:39.240
I hear you describing the way, the joy and the love and the laughter.
00:50:39.240 --> 00:50:43.200
How could anybody possibly reject that?
00:50:45.144 --> 00:50:46.509
It's even better than that.
00:50:46.789 --> 00:50:47.932
Yeah, so I mean.
00:50:47.952 --> 00:50:48.555
Heidi, heidi.
00:50:48.555 --> 00:50:55.519
So Heidi was a speed freak, right, she rode horses, bareback and just loved speed, mm-hmm.
00:50:55.519 --> 00:51:02.639
So they're up 30 feet in the air after getting a life review, jesus grabs her hand.
00:51:02.639 --> 00:51:05.592
I Didn't even, I didn't even tell.
00:51:05.592 --> 00:51:13.211
I went ahead and put it in the book, but in the end, because I figure if it's too soon, people won't they'll check out because they won't believe it.
00:51:13.211 --> 00:51:19.153
Because that was my first reaction Like no way, he takes her hand and they take off.
00:51:19.173 --> 00:51:30.307
And she said at first we it was like we were going through Earth's atmosphere and then out into like the universe, but they're going faster and faster.
00:51:30.307 --> 00:51:31.311
And she said that we were.
00:51:31.311 --> 00:51:38.480
We were flying like Superman and Lois Lane, mm-hmm, but but being pushed by a wave of light.
00:51:38.480 --> 00:51:45.349
She said it was like we were surfing this wave of light and I could feel that I was barefoot Because I could feel it on my feet.
00:51:45.349 --> 00:51:52.373
And I reached in and I touched my hand to it and I look over Jesus and he's just grinning ear to ear and he says isn't this the coolest ever?
00:51:52.961 --> 00:51:53.564
mm-hmm.
00:51:54.981 --> 00:52:00.393
Well, there are a lot of Christians who like right, right now, or checking out, like no, that's you're, you know.
00:52:01.661 --> 00:52:02.983
Right can't be like that.
00:52:02.983 --> 00:52:06.213
Right, right, but he is like that.
00:52:06.213 --> 00:52:08.164
You know, jesus.
00:52:08.164 --> 00:52:18.691
Jesus, his last night on earth said you know, I'm telling you these things so that my joy may be in you and your joy may be complete.
00:52:18.691 --> 00:52:20.595
Right, and see what.
00:52:20.595 --> 00:52:39.512
What I go into in the book that I think many Christians miss is that Everything we love, every wonderful experience, every pleasure, every adventure, all the things we love about life, we only do because he made us with the ability to love him.
00:52:40.800 --> 00:52:47.048
Yeah, exactly and he actually Enjoys us enjoying them right.
00:52:47.048 --> 00:52:50.559
I I love enjoying things with my granddaughters.
00:52:50.559 --> 00:53:01.053
You know right, if I give him a gift, I Enjoyed playing it with them and seeing them enjoying it right, yeah well, I'm not better than God.
00:53:02.421 --> 00:53:03.443
Yeah, and that that kind of.
00:53:03.443 --> 00:53:04.106
That kind of.
00:53:04.106 --> 00:53:06.312
Come back to the title of the book that was mentioned.
00:53:06.312 --> 00:53:08.385
He calls it the inescapable love of God.
00:53:08.385 --> 00:53:14.980
It's like it's so Attractive that no one in the right mind could turn away.
00:53:14.980 --> 00:53:22.144
I think what people reject is the, the limited view of God that we have, that the God, the heaven.
00:53:22.144 --> 00:53:23.414
That sounds boring, right?
00:53:23.414 --> 00:53:24.360
I don't want to go place.
00:53:24.360 --> 00:53:28.632
I'm going to be sitting on a cloud playing a harp all day, singing, singing songs for 10,000 years.
00:53:29.260 --> 00:53:30.041
And that's not it.
00:53:30.041 --> 00:53:54.670
And and, and you know you, you read the stories of these people and the eye witnesses of these people All over the world and you realize, okay, they're either whacked and there are millions of whacked people, but still, like I said, you know, I put all that evidence like it doesn't make sense, right, unless there's something real here, but what they say is it's more real.
00:53:54.670 --> 00:53:57.826
Now, what does that mean?
00:53:57.826 --> 00:54:02.900
I've, as an engineer, thought a lot about that and and I think this is what they mean.
00:54:03.039 --> 00:54:08.115
So imagine, if this you know, we're living in three dimensions of space.
00:54:08.115 --> 00:54:13.947
In one dimension of time, we Can't even imagine a fourth dimension of space.
00:54:13.947 --> 00:54:20.125
In a second dimension of time, five dimensions, right, we can't fathom it, no, you can't.
00:54:20.125 --> 00:54:24.173
But but, but we can, and we can understand it by analogy.
00:54:24.173 --> 00:54:32.227
So imagine, this experience is being lived on a flat black and white painting on my wall, and Death means separation.
00:54:32.227 --> 00:54:41.805
So your soul leaves this three dimensional realm, so your soul is peeled off that flat, black and white two dimensional realm when you only knew up and down and side to side.
00:54:41.805 --> 00:54:43.530
You didn't even know in and out.
00:54:43.530 --> 00:54:45.862
That's not a dimension You're familiar with at all.
00:54:45.862 --> 00:54:57.853
Mm-hmm, now you come out and your two dimensional self is now experiencing three dimensions and color in this room that was all around you and you're contained within this bigger reality.
00:54:57.853 --> 00:54:59.483
That's more real.
00:55:00.700 --> 00:55:11.021
Then imagine being pressed back into that flat two dimensional world and trying to describe three dimensions of color In black and white, two dimensional terms, right, right.
00:55:11.021 --> 00:55:16.914
That's why the more of these people I've interviewed, I've realized they have to use hyperbole.
00:55:16.914 --> 00:55:30.704
That's why some of the people in in the bible who have also experienced the same thing yeah, there are a lot of them talking about what they saw or experienced in heaven, and it's always it was like this Mm-hmm, you know.
00:55:30.704 --> 00:55:37.626
So the city was Like gold, but transparent like glass.
00:55:38.564 --> 00:55:38.806
Right.
00:55:40.332 --> 00:55:47.559
Well, what does that mean when you hear a manufacturing engineer say, well, it was otherworldly materials.
00:55:47.559 --> 00:56:06.173
And then you hear both a spine surgeon and a commercial airline pilot who'd never read the Bible before, talking about how it appears like glass or crystal, but it's actually light and love.
00:56:06.173 --> 00:56:10.157
This place is made of light and love.
00:56:10.157 --> 00:56:14.539
And they say I know that doesn't make any sense, but that's what it was.
00:56:14.539 --> 00:56:17.238
And I asked them but was it real?
00:56:17.238 --> 00:56:18.776
Was it like physical and solid?
00:56:18.776 --> 00:56:20.856
Oh yeah, more than this.
00:56:20.856 --> 00:56:23.718
Like hugs are like real?
00:56:23.718 --> 00:56:25.536
Oh yeah, much deeper than this.
00:56:25.536 --> 00:56:29.280
I mean communication and thought and memory is all this.
00:56:29.280 --> 00:56:29.872
Oh yeah.
00:56:29.872 --> 00:56:31.358
But you understand completely.
00:56:31.358 --> 00:56:32.374
It's thought to thought.
00:56:32.374 --> 00:56:34.233
Nothing's misunderstood.
00:56:36.673 --> 00:56:37.394
Yeah, I think.
00:56:37.394 --> 00:56:40.851
Well, I know what I saw from one of the notes you sent me I love.
00:56:40.851 --> 00:56:45.662
What this says is we're going to find it.
00:56:45.662 --> 00:56:52.414
You said basically that the NDE kind of puts color onto what's kind of black and white, I think in the Bible.
00:56:52.414 --> 00:56:55.718
And having this conversation with you, I can tell.
00:56:55.718 --> 00:57:06.300
And when you talk to people that haven't had NDE as much as you have, it becomes infectious and I can see it, I can feel it coming through you and so you're making us Well, it's exciting.
00:57:06.550 --> 00:57:12.655
Yeah, it's exciting and that's the thing I just wish everyone could know.
00:57:12.655 --> 00:57:15.541
All the things you long for.
00:57:15.541 --> 00:57:32.442
They are available and the reason we long it's another CS Lewis quote if you have a thirst for something that nothing on earth can quench, it probably means we were made for something else.
00:57:34.512 --> 00:57:36.218
Yeah, I love that quote by CS Lewis.
00:57:36.218 --> 00:57:36.920
I think it which.
00:57:36.920 --> 00:57:38.064
I just butchered by the way.
00:57:38.064 --> 00:57:42.201
Yeah, but it indicates like, yeah, we don't have a longing for something that doesn't exist.
00:57:42.201 --> 00:57:44.334
So he talks about these things that we long for.
00:57:44.334 --> 00:57:44.575
That.
00:57:44.575 --> 00:57:47.181
There's got to be a reason for them.
00:57:48.210 --> 00:57:54.181
Yeah, we hunger and there's food, but we want a love that never completely satisfies.
00:57:54.181 --> 00:57:56.396
We want a peace that it comes and goes.
00:57:56.396 --> 00:57:57.039
We want a joy.
00:57:57.039 --> 00:58:05.422
We get low glimpses and then back to mundane and we picture that that's how heaven or God's going to be, but that's not it.
00:58:05.422 --> 00:58:21.954
It's that it's like these longings, these desires are good, but there's something missing, and it's kind of like that homing device in birds that how do they fly thousands of miles and hit their target every year?
00:58:22.497 --> 00:58:22.678
Right.
00:58:23.309 --> 00:58:27.436
And there's something in them knows what home actually is, and it just points them there.
00:58:28.291 --> 00:58:29.236
Yeah, it just said that.
00:58:29.236 --> 00:58:30.716
It reminded me of a woman I interviewed.
00:58:30.716 --> 00:58:33.320
She had a near-death experience when her husband murdered her.
00:58:33.320 --> 00:58:38.896
But she's in heaven and she's with her sister and they're laughing and she's like it's just too much joy.
00:58:38.896 --> 00:58:40.675
She said it was just too much.
00:58:40.675 --> 00:58:42.777
I felt like I was going to explode.
00:58:42.777 --> 00:58:44.880
I didn't know if I could contain all of it.
00:58:44.880 --> 00:58:46.430
And I've heard several people.
00:58:46.470 --> 00:58:48.296
Five people that I've interviewed in the book say that.
00:58:48.637 --> 00:58:48.798
Yeah.
00:58:49.470 --> 00:59:08.341
I felt like I was going to just blow up One guy I love that he's an Australian lawyer and he said I was in God's presence and it was like he was filling me up with love and joy so much I felt like I was going to burst and I thought I don't know if I can take anymore.
00:59:08.341 --> 00:59:17.538
And he said he heard a chuckle from God and then it starts to go down and he said no, no, don't stop.
00:59:17.538 --> 00:59:23.041
And then more, but yeah, again, and again.
00:59:23.710 --> 00:59:24.775
Yeah, absolutely.
00:59:24.775 --> 00:59:35.211
Well, I really appreciate you having this conversation again with me today and remind people the name of the book and where they can get it and where they can find out more about you.
00:59:36.670 --> 00:59:48.010
It's Imagine the God of Heaven, and you can just go to imaginethegoddovevennet or johnburckonlinecom Right now.
00:59:48.010 --> 00:59:49.356
We'll take you to the same place.
00:59:49.356 --> 00:59:51.738
You can find out more about it.
00:59:52.651 --> 00:59:53.976
Again, thanks so much for being here.
00:59:53.976 --> 00:59:58.880
Thanks for sharing your knowledge and your wisdom and your joy with my audience.
00:59:59.950 --> 01:00:04.498
Well, it's not my joy and everyone can have it.
01:00:04.978 --> 01:00:05.920
Yeah, thanks a lot.
01:00:05.920 --> 01:00:27.653
Have a great rest of your day, okay, thank you everybody.