Imagine Heaven | John Burke

Transcript

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Pull up a chair across the counter your one-stop shop for a variety of perspectives around Jesus and Christianity.

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I'm Grant Lockridge and I'm here with my co-host, jared Tafta, and today we are interviewing John Burke.

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John is the New York Times bestseller of the book Imagine Heaven.

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And John, just tell me a little bit about why you decided to start writing books.

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Well, man, it's a weird long story.

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I didn't set out to do any of this.

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Quite honestly, I actually was trained as I studied engineering.

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I worked as an engineer, actually was trained as I studied engineering.

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I worked as an engineer.

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Um, I got, I got kind of sidetracked on all this decades ago, when my dad was dying of cancer and I was an agnostic at the time, I thought Jesus was probably just a legend.

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Um, god, who, who knows and who can know?

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There's, there's no evidence, and so you know, I just kind of left it at that.

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And that's where I was when, when my, when my dad uh, gets cancer and someone gave him the very first research on that, coined the term near death experience, and I see this book on his, uh, his nightstand and I pick it up and I start thumbing through it and I couldn't put it down, because here are people who had clinically died, meaning in some cases their heart had stopped beating, they had no brain waves, and yet their modern medicine brings them back, they're resuscitated or miraculously they come back and they're talking about being more alive than they've ever felt, in a place more real than this, more beautiful than this, though not unlike it, and in the presence of a God of light and love who they never wanted to leave this unconditional love.

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And I'm reading it and I'm like, oh my gosh.

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I read the whole thing and I thought this might be evidence that this whole God-Jesus afterlife stuff is real.

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And so it didn't lead me to faith, it just opened my mind because I had become kind of, you know, cynical and because so many of them had talked about seeing this God of light and love, jesus, I started reading the Bible, started studying it and, um, and over the next few years I came to faith in Christ, not because of near-death experiences, but more because of the evidence I started to see and understand, even in history.

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But it all kind of came together and over the last 35 years I've had this bizarro obsession.

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I mean, honestly, it's always been weird to me.

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You know, just kind of like.

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Kind of like people think, oh, that's kind of weird, and I've always thought that, yeah, it's kind of weird, but at the same time and and looking back now I I think I think this is part of God's whole plan and purpose for me uh, that I kept running into these and I started collecting them because I started to see again.

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I'm an engineer, so I see patterns and I'm like, well, how does that fit with this?

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And I've come to faith in Christ.

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So I'm reading the Bible and I'm studying it and I'm trying to understand how do these things fit together?

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So over the last 35 years, I've studied well over a thousand probably closer to 1500 near death experiences.

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I've interviewed people on every continent on planet earth and finally, in 2015, I wrote a book called Imagine Heaven.

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Well, and in that process, I also went from a career in engineering to ministry and my wife and I actually started a church for skeptics like I was.

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So, as I told you guys, our motto was no perfect people allowed.

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Just come as you are, and we would say doubters are welcome, because I found that just not many churches created space for people to struggle and to ask questions and to doubt and to come with.

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You know all the crap that we, you know, get glommed onto ourselves over the course of a life, and you know God's not afraid of any of that.

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You know, I mean if you read.

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You know God's not afraid of any of that.

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Um, you know, I mean if you read the scriptures.

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That's where Jesus lived.

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He lived among people who had screwed up their lives pretty bad, and he wasn't afraid of it at all and they became his followers.

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Yeah and uh, and it was actually the religious who had a pro a problem with, with all of it and, and so we started a church like that.

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Finally, in 2015, I wrote a book.

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I'd written three other books, but they were really all more about creating the space where people can explore faith and find faith and then how do people really grow spiritually those kinds of books and I had the sense that I was supposed to write about this obsession I had had for years and years and I'd been speaking on it.

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I mean, I gave my first talk on this at the University of California, santa Barbara, in 1989.

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I spoke on the commonalities of near-death experiences and how it related to the Bible, and I just did it for students there at the university.

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So I've been speaking on it, but I'd never written on it.

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And so, imagine Heaven, I wrote showing there are about 40 commonalities of what people say they experience and they overlap.

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It's like it doesn't matter where they're from or what their background.

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They're having the same basic experience and I was showing how those 40 commonalities align with what God's been revealing through the Jewish prophets and through Jesus, you know all along.

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So that was Imagine Heaven.

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And I'll be honest, like when I went to hit send of the final manuscript, I said, well God, this might be the end of my ministry.

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Oh, why?

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Dang man.

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Well, because Christians rejected anything about near-death experiences.

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Really, oh yeah, I mean, the talk in most Christian circles is oh, that's just new agey or it's satanic.

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Don't listen to that, Don't believe that, Just stay away from it.

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Um don't, don't listen to that, don't believe that, just stay away from it.

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Was that rejection specifically evident in the academic Christian community or the more?

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Um, I'll say, you know, the believing community has people that say we're we're people of the word, and then there's the portion of the community that says we're people of the spirit.

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Did you see rejection in both sides or did you see it and there's, there's a third one.

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We're people of action.

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Yeah, yeah, yeah.

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Yeah, you know it's funny you say that because that was one of the tensions I always as a pastor.

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I was like because I saw that same thing.

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It's like you kind of group off and you ignore whole sections of what it means to follow Christ and how do you bring them all together?

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Yeah, but they tend to group in groups that all think alike.

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Right, it's hard to live in the tensions.

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Yeah, yeah.

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Then you begin to highlight you set metrics or standards that allow you not to fall into the ditches on the side that you see as problematic and it makes you the well, we're not like them people, but you got that attack, or maybe you got disbelief from all different sectors of the faith.

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Is that what you're?

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saying, and I can see, looking back.

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So when I first started studying this, you got to remember this is the late 80s, early 80s too and when these stories were first coming out.

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You know a lot of people don't realize this, but I mean there are millions of them.

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So, like 2019, the European Academy of Neurology did a study, reported on a study across 35 countries, and found that 5% of the population, across 35 countries, 5% of the population has had a near-death experience.

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Wow, and that's millions of people all over the world.

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Wow.

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And what I'm trying to show is that the commonality of what they report is right, in line with what the Bible's been revealing all along.

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Now, what they interpret is not always, and that's what the key is.

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That I found is that because early on in this research, the only people who were coming forward, for instance, had had a good near death experience.

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So people had had hellish near death experiences, but nobody wants to raise their hand and alone say, well, I didn't go to heaven and and, and you know they don't want to think about it Well, we kind of laugh about it.

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But when you understand that the experience they had is more real than this, yeah, yeah, okay.

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Well, what does that mean?

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Like how do you have a more real experience?

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But that's what they experienced.

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And so when they go to tell people and even when they go to tell people the good experiences they get mocked.

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They go yeah, well, that was probably the drugs or that was probably the.

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You know, it was just hallucination or you know, and so they kind of shut up about it.

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Even more so if you've had a, if you and the people I've interviewed a lot of them have PTSD from the experience they had.

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It's that real, wow.

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You mentioned the word neurology and we were just talking about neuroscientists and how that's a buzzword nowadays as well in biohacking and just in our culture and world.

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Has there been any in your experience?

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And as a side note, I loved in your book the consistencies or the statistic.

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The statistic consistencies in people's experiences but not their interpretations.

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I really loved that like perspective of I'm looking at the data and then the interpretation you know is not necessarily all that I agree with, so I really appreciated that neuroscience.

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has there been any avenue of trying to um offer like credit or proof in in ndes or is there nothing available there?

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Um, well, neuros, some neuroscientists have tried to offer alternate explanations.

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Okay, all right.

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And?

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And in a new book I just wrote, imagine the God of Heaven.

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In chapter two I write about skeptics, science and NDEs.

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Okay, and I go through.

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There have been about 30 alternate explanations.

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Okay, they come up with a new alternate explanation pretty much every year.

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And, as my friend, dr Jeffrey Long, who studied more of them than I have, even he's a medical doctor and he says you know, if they had one good alternate explanation they wouldn't need 30, but they're just throwing spaghetti on the wall.

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And so what I show in chapter two is the 10 points of evidence that convinced me and has convinced many skeptical medical doctors who have studied this phenomena, that these are really showing evidence.

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I mean, dr Long says he thinks it's scientific proof that there is an afterlife, that our soul lives on after this life, and he became a believer in Jesus as a result of all that as well, but wasn't before studying it.

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And so, anyway, neurologists have talked about the um, like the, the.

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The latest that was reported in I think it was CNN Um headline is you know, near death experiences are shown to be just in the brain.

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Well, if you actually read the whole article, that's not what they're saying and it's not what the researchers are saying.

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And of course they buried that lead at the very bottom.

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But but what they were saying is that they were trying to find a connection between REM sleep patterns and those who have near-death experiences, and they found some kind of association.

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The problem is you don't know which came first, the chicken or the egg, right and and, and there's no way to answer that question.

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So they're throwing this out there.

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But but I give these 10 points of evidence that I believe if you're going to have an alternate theory that sticks, you're going to have to make sense of these 10 points of evidence, and I, you know, I'll just give you a few of them because we probably don't have time to go deeply into all of them.

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But the couple that started to convince me when I was still a skeptical engineer is one.

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When people first clinically die, they say they leave their body but they're still themselves.

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So they still have a body, but they say it's like a spiritual body and they don't just have five senses, more like 50 or 100 senses, they have new senses and so they feel super alive.

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But what's key is that at first they're often still in the room where the resuscitation is taking place.

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So they're usually up above and they're watching, which means when they are resuscitated they can report things that they shouldn't have seen or heard or been able to report because they had no brainwaves.

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So, in other words, if this is just anoxia, that's one idea.

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Fighter pilot syndrome.

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When fighter pilots have this anoxia that happens lack of oxygen to the brain they feel like they're going through a tunnel toward a light.

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See, that's a near-death experience.

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No, not even close, not even close.

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No-transcript.

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So imagine the God of heaven I give.

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One of the most verifiable ones, I believe, is Pam Reynolds.

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So she's in this intense surgery where they're removing an aneurysm, a deep brain aneurysm, and it's a last resort.

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Like you're going to die, we might as well do this Hail Mary surgery.

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And so that's what it was.

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They have to lower her body temperature to 50 degrees Fahrenheit, drain her head completely of all blood and make sure there's no neural activity at all.

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So they put a hundred decibel clickers in her ears, they tape her eyes shut so there's no stimuli.

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So she can't, she can't see, she can't hear and she has no brain waves.

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And yet halfway through surgery, an hour into it, she claims she left her body.

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She's up above, she's watching the surgery.

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She sees them take out the saw that they used to cut open her head and she thought it would be like a saw, you know, like an electric saw.

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But she said it wasn't.

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It was like an electric.

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It looked like an electric toothbrush and the surgeon had, like this case, like a, like a case of socket wrenches, and there were all these different drill bits in it and he took one out and put it in.

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And then a doctor down by her legs said I can't, I can't find it, I can't find it.

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And the other, and it was a she um, and she didn't even know there were going to be male and female doctors.

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She didn't know what doctors other than Dr Spetzler that was even going to be in there.

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There were about 10.

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She could describe all of them and what happened is they couldn't find the femoral artery in her leg.

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So she reports all these things, what the saw looks like, what was said, what happened.

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And then she ends up in the presence of this God of light and love and has this conversation and sees her, her grandmother and he, and he says you got to go back, um, you still have a purpose.

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And and as she's coming back into her body, um, they're playing hotel California.

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Now, again, she has a hundred decibel clickers in her ears and they did that to monitor her brainwaves and make sure there are no registered signals on the EEG.

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Okay, so where are these memories being stored if it's just in the brain?

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And they shocked her heart not once, but twice, to get her going again.

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She reports all of this, going again.

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She reports all of this.

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And there was actually a movie done this year on.

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It was based on my book Imagine Heaven, called After Death, and you can hear some of the surgeons that were there with her on duty and they say it freaked me out because she reported things she should not have known and been able to report on.

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So that's just one of that.

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Yeah, what Describe it?

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That's just one.

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You know no big deal.

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There's another one.

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Well, there are, and I give lots of examples, you know, in the books.

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I mean a lady in London who, you know, dies giving childbirth and she leaves her body.

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But she notices on the top side of the ceiling fan this is in London in the 90s when you know, it still had ceiling fans in hospitals she notices a red sticker.

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And as she comes back and she has a full-blown experience as well and she's trying to tell the nurses and doctors about this incredible experience in the presence of this God of love, she never wanted to leave and they're like you know, she's hallucinating.

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And then she said to one of the nurses here's what you said and here's what you did.

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And the nurse realized you were completely gone during that time and so it got her attention.

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And then mary the, the patient, said look, I can prove it to you.

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Go get a ladder, look on the top side of the ceiling fan and you'll see a red sticker and here's what it says on it.

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And the nurse gets the help of an orderly, goes up there.

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Sure enough, red sticker on the top side of the ceiling fan.

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Now there've actually been studies done.

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Dr Jan Holden did a study, like a scientific study, of about a hundred patients who had had cardiac arrest and claimed to have a near-death experience and then a control group of cardiac arrest patients that did not have a near-death experience and then ask about the observations they made, found that 92% of near-death experience observations were completely accurate.

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Another 6% of their observations were completely accurate.

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Another 6% of their observations were mostly accurate.

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Only 2% were inaccurate.

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Versus the control group which I asked, what do you think happened during your resuscitation?

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And it was guesswork.

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It was like what they'd seen on ER and it wasn't even close like 20% accurate.

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So that started to convince me when I was still a skeptical engineer.

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The other one that really blew me away is that when people blind from birth have a near-death experience, they can see and they report seeing the same things as sighted people all over the globe.

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So these 40 commonalities that I write about in Imagine the God of Heaven I mean in Imagine God they report the same things and things that a blind person would not have heard on earth.

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So you start to go okay, how do you explain that?

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That can't just be brain-based that that that can't just be brain based.

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Right, that is something I appreciated about your book is you looked at like several different angles so you're like, okay, do they have a reason to lie about?

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This was one of them.

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That I thought was key, because the first thing you think about is, okay, they just wanted to be famous and they wanted to mess around and, you know, get some cloud or Some of them.

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It was worse for them to tell their NDE experience, which was interesting.

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I like to point out that the people I've interviewed they're spine surgeons, married to another surgeon.

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They don't need money.

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She lives in Wyoming, the most beautiful place on earth.

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She doesn't need money.

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Commercial airline pilots, lawyers, bank presidents, ceos, like you know the CEO when, when he came forward, he was like I know I'm going to, I'm going to lose all my clients and all my business, I'm going to have to close my business.

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But I, but I can't not tell this is the most real thing that ever happened.

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So they only get discredited.

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It only costs them.

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They're not doing it for money or fame or fortune.

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Yeah, exactly, and I wanted to give you a chance to say that because that was one of the things that kind of shocked me a little bit in the book, other than just the overwhelming proof that NDEs have commonalities just all over the place, which to me, it's interesting that the Christian culture would be upset by a book like this in any way, shape or form because it didn't seem like you were trying to impress your views on other people.

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It didn't seem like, hey, this is reality and you have to think like this and you have to believe it like this.

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You just gave the evidence and mountains of evidence.

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By the way, you did a ridiculous amount of research.

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You've just went through so many different NDEs and you just gave them the research and said, hey, this is what the Bible says, this is the research.

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You didn't try to tie a bunch of dots and make your own systematic theology about what this means after death and what heaven looks like, and you were just like what, if you were just like?

00:23:55.347 --> 00:23:56.270
This is really cool.

00:23:56.270 --> 00:24:01.112
I don't have an explanation other than this is literally what people are seeing.

00:24:01.112 --> 00:24:02.705
They have no reason to lie.

00:24:02.705 --> 00:24:06.730
And can you just dream with me for a minute?

00:24:06.730 --> 00:24:08.968
Which was I loved.

00:24:08.968 --> 00:24:13.925
You weren't impressing like this is what heaven looks like, this is how it operates.

00:24:13.925 --> 00:24:20.290
You were like look at the similarities of this in the Bible, and isn't that really cool?

00:24:20.290 --> 00:24:21.919
You know what?

00:24:21.939 --> 00:24:25.068
I mean, well, and look, there's a lot of mystery to it.

00:24:25.068 --> 00:24:34.214
Yeah, I mean, I use analogy because I think analogy is the only way we can really try to understand.

00:24:34.214 --> 00:24:38.461
Analogy is the only way we can really try to understand.

00:24:38.461 --> 00:24:51.163
And the analogy I've used, even with near-death experiencers I've interviewed, is, you know, I've said, after talking to so many of you, I think about it like, okay, we're living a three-dimensional experience and death means separation.

00:24:51.163 --> 00:24:54.932
It's when your spirit leaves your body right, or your soul leaves your body.

00:24:55.780 --> 00:25:07.510
But imagine if we were living this experience on a flat black and white painting on the wall in your home, right, and so you have up and down and you have side to side.

00:25:07.510 --> 00:25:10.910
You have two dimensions, but you don't even have in or out.

00:25:10.910 --> 00:25:13.488
That's not even conceivable to you.

00:25:13.488 --> 00:25:19.204
In or out there, that's not even conceivable to you.

00:25:19.204 --> 00:25:29.992
And then when you die, your flat soul, it peels off that two-dimensional world and now is brought out into this three-dimensional reality that was always there and you can even see your flat world because it's contained within it.

00:25:29.992 --> 00:25:35.442
So you can make observations in your flat world, but they don't know where you are, right.

00:25:35.442 --> 00:25:48.602
No, and then imagine getting pressed back into the flat world and you have to describe three dimensions and color, but in black and white, two-dimensional terms yep using the language you have said to me.

00:25:48.662 --> 00:26:02.528
That's exactly what it's like, like that, that they are moving out beyond our finite three dimensions of space and one dimension of time, because that's what they commonly say as well.

00:26:02.528 --> 00:26:15.971
On the other side, time works differently, and you know, peter, jesus' disciple said in 2 Peter 3, 8, to the Lord, a year, a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years is like a day, right?

00:26:15.971 --> 00:26:19.269
Well, near-death experiencers have said almost the same thing to me.

00:26:19.269 --> 00:26:21.544
They've said things like you know.

00:26:21.544 --> 00:26:27.213
I know I was only dead for five minutes, but I relived my whole life.

00:26:27.213 --> 00:26:28.444
So how did that work?

00:26:28.444 --> 00:26:31.105
But it seemed like it was seconds.

00:26:31.105 --> 00:26:33.230
But it also seemed like it was years.

00:26:34.220 --> 00:26:35.832
Some said there was no time, others said, no, there was seconds, but it also seemed like it was years.

00:26:35.832 --> 00:26:39.146
Some said there was no time, others said, no, there was time, but there was all the time.

00:26:39.146 --> 00:26:56.152
Nothing was rushed, and so they're experiencing something that truly is beyond this world, and I think that's also why, when they come back, they're trying to describe things that are their mystery.

00:26:56.152 --> 00:27:00.781
Right, you know, deuteronomy 29,.

00:27:00.781 --> 00:27:03.887
29 says you know the Lord.

00:27:03.887 --> 00:27:17.704
The secrets, the secret things, or the mysterion, the mysteries, belong to the Lord, our God, the things revealed belong to us so that we can fully follow his will.

00:27:17.704 --> 00:27:48.342
So there are mysteries and they're trying to describe some of these mysteries and so sometimes what they describe, they're also interpreting and they're going to interpret in their own worldview and and so sometimes that that, sometimes that goes against what scripture seems to be revealing or teaching, and so that is why a lot of Christians early on in this one is no one came forward reporting hellish experiences early on.

00:27:49.364 --> 00:28:08.387
Second, a lot of people came forward early on saying that God is this incredible light and love and I had a life review in his presence and I saw all my good and all my bad, but he wasn't judging me.

00:28:08.387 --> 00:28:09.744
God just loved me.

00:28:09.744 --> 00:28:13.191
He was just supporting me and just loved me unconditionally.

00:28:13.191 --> 00:28:15.167
But I was judging myself.

00:28:15.167 --> 00:28:38.988
And so early on, a lot of people were saying, well, see, this isn't the Christian God or the biblical God, because the biblical God's this judging, harsh, punishing God who just wants to get you, and you know it's just a misunderstanding of who God's revealed himself to be, and you know it's just a misunderstanding of who God's revealed himself to be, jesus, interestingly said by your own words.

00:28:38.988 --> 00:28:53.855
Will you be acquitted by your own words will you be condemned, which, fascinatingly, is exactly what near-death experiencers say watching their life review.

00:28:53.875 --> 00:28:59.846
God is love, and so God cannot not love every single person because he created them to be his child.

00:28:59.846 --> 00:29:01.431
He does love you, even if you don't love him.

00:29:01.431 --> 00:29:07.462
Still, you can't stop him from loving you, and so, of course, that's what they experience.

00:29:07.462 --> 00:29:23.356
But also it says that God sent his son into the world not to condemn the world, but that the world through him might be rescued or saved, set right with God.

00:29:23.356 --> 00:29:31.049
So you know all the things that they're reporting and I've interviewed in the new book Imagine the God of Heaven.

00:29:31.049 --> 00:29:53.748
I interviewed 70 people from all around the continent, every religious background Hindus, buddhists, agnostics, atheists, christians, and on every continent, and they are experiencing the same God who revealed himself to Moses in this brilliant light that didn't burn the bush up.

00:29:53.748 --> 00:29:54.873
Remember that.

00:29:55.394 --> 00:29:55.615
Yeah.

00:29:56.280 --> 00:29:59.968
I mean, I interviewed a woman from Tehran.

00:29:59.968 --> 00:30:32.660
She was related to the Prophet Muhammad and she has a near-death experience and in her near-death experience she was expecting to be judged by the Prophet Ali and, as Shiite Muslims believe, happens and instead this giant man of light comes to her and says one thing.

00:30:32.660 --> 00:30:34.744
He says I am he who is.

00:30:34.744 --> 00:30:43.048
And boom, she's back in her body with a peace and a joy she's never felt before and she's completely confused.

00:30:43.048 --> 00:31:05.253
And the next year she's seeking this God and the next year she realizes who this is and that she experienced the risen Jesus and that he is God, and that the same God of light said to Moses I am basically the same thing, I am he who is.

00:31:05.253 --> 00:31:07.567
That's how it was translated into English.

00:31:07.567 --> 00:31:29.470
She said it in Farsi, but I mean yeah, so you're talking about people all over the globe, and it's evidence to me again that God is the God of all nations and he loves everybody equally and what he did through Jesus, he did for all people.

00:31:29.470 --> 00:31:32.705
Yeah, it's wild.

00:31:33.559 --> 00:31:37.630
That's so cool dude, you were making me think.

00:31:37.630 --> 00:31:41.025
I mean, you have a literal library shelved behind you.

00:31:41.025 --> 00:31:47.365
So I feel like there's not a chance that you haven't read this, but have you read the Weight of Glory by CS Lewis?

00:31:47.987 --> 00:31:51.221
Yeah, all right, cs Lewis is like my favorite author.

00:31:51.301 --> 00:31:55.592
Yeah, you were talking, I was like he's going to say something about higher up and further in.

00:31:58.240 --> 00:31:59.263
But the weight of glory.

00:31:59.324 --> 00:32:15.403
Lewis tells the story of a woman that gave birth to a son while confined in a prison, in a dungeon, and since the, with no windows, and since the boy had never seen the outside world, the mother basically does pencil drawings of trees, of landscape, of everything in the outside world.

00:32:16.307 --> 00:32:21.766
And the day comes of release, when the boy and the mother are going to be released from prison and the boy says I don't want to go.

00:32:21.766 --> 00:32:33.048
And in his story, basically, the boy says this world and this prison is more real than the pencil drawings you've said exist outside of this prison.

00:32:33.048 --> 00:32:52.051
And the mother comes to understand oh, this boy, in his, in his imagination, in his, in his broad, deep, wide imagination, believes that we're about to go into a world of a two dimensional plane, that we're going to move into a pencil drawing plane.

00:32:52.051 --> 00:32:56.852
And he said I don't, I mean this is prison, but it's at least three-dimensional.

00:32:56.852 --> 00:33:08.711
And so when you're talking, you're making me think of her, like telling her something like oh no, like it's not that, but her ability to transliterate, or translate what it was.

00:33:08.711 --> 00:33:22.896
There was no way for her to do anything other than him to go and experience that with her, and that is exactly why I wrote these books, and what, and, and, and.

00:33:23.017 --> 00:33:28.909
So what I, what I'm trying to do, you know and, and when you, when you read it.

00:33:28.909 --> 00:33:33.083
And again, I'm nothing special, I'm just like an editor, right.

00:33:33.083 --> 00:33:36.311
So what I was trying to do is I could.

00:33:36.311 --> 00:33:41.780
I've studied so many of them and I start hearing the same things, and I know they don't know each other.

00:33:41.780 --> 00:33:43.565
I know they haven't talked to each other.

00:33:43.565 --> 00:33:57.528
They're on different continents, they don't even believe, they don't have cultures that brought them up believing the same thing, but they experience the same God, the same things about this God, you know, it's like it's just wild.

00:33:57.528 --> 00:34:03.806
And so what I was trying to do is show the overlapping testimony so you hear it through their words.

00:34:03.806 --> 00:34:13.463
What the scriptures are saying and and so, and the analogy I use is similar to what you were just talking about with CS Lewis, is similar to what you were just talking about with CS Lewis.

00:34:13.463 --> 00:34:31.210
So the scriptures like draw a pencil drawing of all this, but what their words do is not add anything to what it is, but it adds color, right, so that you begin to see a fuller picture of, oh my gosh, like God is love.

00:34:31.210 --> 00:34:35.786
Okay, what Christian doesn't know that and say I believe that, right.

00:34:35.786 --> 00:34:38.590
And even you doesn't know that and say I believe that, right.

00:34:38.590 --> 00:34:41.114
And even those who may not believe in Jesus at all, but they're probably.

00:34:41.114 --> 00:34:42.215
Oh yeah, god is love.

00:34:42.215 --> 00:34:47.692
We kind of universally would agree if there is a God, we sure hope that's God.

00:34:48.780 --> 00:35:10.969
But when you hear through the words of these people what it was like to be in God's presence, when they describe this love and and they, they grapple for words, and I put that in there because then you start to experience, it's like, oh my gosh, like this one, this one guy.

00:35:10.969 --> 00:35:11.431
In fact I was.

00:35:11.431 --> 00:35:12.744
I was just on the phone with him.

00:35:12.744 --> 00:35:17.847
Again, he's a neurologist, okay, so again, why is he making that?

00:35:17.847 --> 00:35:20.063
He's a neurologist and a psychiatrist?

00:35:21.086 --> 00:35:40.704
But he had a patient turn on him and stab him with a knife 13 times, trying to kill him, and right before the 14th he said it was like time stopped and there before him is an explosion of light, he said.

00:35:40.704 --> 00:35:43.268
He said there was no doubt who this was.

00:35:43.268 --> 00:35:58.422
He knew this is God and they're, and and they often say that they're like there's no question, you know who this is and but he said, imagine being five feet away from a nuclear explosion.

00:35:58.422 --> 00:36:00.123
That's what it was like.

00:36:00.123 --> 00:36:02.824
And it just kept roiling.

00:36:02.824 --> 00:36:05.405
You know, like you would imagine he said.

00:36:05.405 --> 00:36:09.266
But what was roiling was not just the light, but the love.

00:36:09.867 --> 00:36:34.978
Mm-hmm it's a tsunami of love.

00:36:34.978 --> 00:36:39.929
And he said, and it washes away every concern about anything else.

00:36:39.929 --> 00:36:44.407
He said I didn't care I was being stabbed to death, it didn't matter to me at all.

00:36:44.407 --> 00:36:52.088
All that mattered is this being and um, and they say things like that.

00:36:52.088 --> 00:36:52.389
You know.

00:36:52.389 --> 00:36:57.045
Another guy, dean Braxton, said you know as he as he looks into Jesus eyes.

00:36:57.045 --> 00:37:01.297
He said guy Dean Braxton said you know as he, as he looks into Jesus eyes.

00:37:01.318 --> 00:37:02.139
He said you just get lost in these eyes.

00:37:02.139 --> 00:37:16.414
They are otherworldly, mesmerizing, but they see right into the deepest parts of you and know everything about you and love you beyond what you've ever even imagined you could be loved.

00:37:16.414 --> 00:37:18.503
And that love, he said said, is growing.

00:37:18.503 --> 00:37:20.338
It's like every second.

00:37:20.338 --> 00:37:22.264
It was growing greater for me.

00:37:22.264 --> 00:37:30.844
And he said, and I felt like I was the only one he loved, like I was his only unique son.

00:37:30.844 --> 00:37:41.019
And he said it kind of shocked me and so I thought about my wife and then I realized, oh, he thinks about her like she's the only unique one.

00:37:42.362 --> 00:37:48.764
And and now, you know, lots of times I'll hear, I'll, I'll hear something at first and I'll be like huh, that's interesting.

00:37:48.764 --> 00:37:52.157
But I kind of put it on the shelf Like yeah, maybe.

00:37:52.157 --> 00:37:58.467
But then I hear a CEO say the same thing.

00:37:58.467 --> 00:38:10.280
I hear a commercial airline pilot say and you know, john, what was so wild is when he looked at me I felt like I was the only one he loved, like I was the only one.

00:38:10.280 --> 00:38:13.407
And then he said and that's how he feels about you.

00:38:13.407 --> 00:38:20.097
And so you know, yeah, it's, it's just wild when you hear it over and over and over again.

00:38:21.420 --> 00:38:26.068
And what it does again is it puts color onto the words of scripture.

00:38:26.068 --> 00:38:44.708
You know it, it just colors in the fullness of not just words that go into your brain but hopefully that connect with your heart, you know, and make you realize, oh, okay, you know, because I wasn't just interested in writing these books as evidence.

00:38:44.708 --> 00:38:49.068
I mean, yes, I was a skeptic and yes, I think it can convince skeptics.

00:38:49.068 --> 00:39:00.650
But more importantly, I think it can help you trust God fully because you start to realize, whoa, okay, there is evidence.

00:39:00.650 --> 00:39:03.335
But also, why would I not?

00:39:03.335 --> 00:39:05.460
Why would I not trust God?

00:39:05.460 --> 00:39:16.923
Why would I not want to follow God's will and ways when he is this joyous, enjoyable, fun being?

00:39:16.923 --> 00:39:20.650
I mean those words a lot of people are like huh, whoa, what.

00:39:21.130 --> 00:39:21.251
Yeah.

00:39:22.155 --> 00:39:26.706
But that's true, and that's not only what near-death experiencers report.

00:39:26.706 --> 00:39:32.367
By the way, it's the last thing Jesus said his night before being crucified.

00:39:32.367 --> 00:39:37.722
He said I've told you these things so that my joy may be in you and your joy would overflow.

00:39:37.722 --> 00:39:42.668
But sometimes we put God in a little box and we don't let him out.

00:39:42.668 --> 00:39:58.567
And I'm trying to break open people's walls of that box and see that no, god is way more mysterious than the box you keep him in, which is often I mean, you guys what causes the wars.

00:39:58.567 --> 00:40:03.880
Right, it causes all the you're wrong and I'm right and all that.

00:40:03.880 --> 00:40:11.023
Well, god doesn't fit in many of our boxes, but people put them in the box on the other side.

00:40:11.023 --> 00:40:16.701
It's way more personable, way more relatable than you've ever imagined.

00:40:17.862 --> 00:40:20.947
Tell John about our first NDE experience, both of us.

00:40:20.947 --> 00:40:24.304
That happened today, which I feel like literally.

00:40:24.474 --> 00:40:27.855
Well, one, it's not our NDE, it was somebody else.

00:40:27.894 --> 00:40:29.041
So yes, we did not.

00:40:29.041 --> 00:40:31.503
We did not have an NDE, we didn't die today.

00:40:31.954 --> 00:40:36.739
So, john, this was nuts but also doesn't really, I'll just tell you.

00:40:36.739 --> 00:40:39.621
So we're at Barnes Noble, right, john, this was nuts but also doesn't really, I'll just tell you.

00:40:39.621 --> 00:40:40.722
So we're at Barnes Noble, right?

00:40:40.722 --> 00:40:45.565
We're dreaming up this little nonprofit company, something that helps nonprofits, whatever.

00:40:45.565 --> 00:40:54.112
And we are just sitting next to these two women at Barnes Noble, whatever.

00:41:00.715 --> 00:41:01.836
And we were talking about the podcast.

00:41:01.836 --> 00:41:03.119
We were like, okay, what are we doing?

00:41:03.119 --> 00:41:06.005
You know kind of vision for the podcast, that sort of thing.

00:41:06.005 --> 00:41:10.742
And they, uh, one lady just turned around and says, hey, you know what's the podcast about.

00:41:10.742 --> 00:41:14.699
And we said, hey, it's a christian podcast, you know, we gave her the whole vision, whatever.

00:41:14.699 --> 00:41:18.255
And then we were talking about who we've interviewed, whatever.

00:41:18.255 --> 00:41:23.407
And then I basically said, hey, I'm interviewing john burke today, who?

00:41:23.407 --> 00:41:24.898
And they're like who's that?

00:41:24.898 --> 00:41:29.072
And I was like he's the guy that knows about near-death experiences.

00:41:29.072 --> 00:41:31.440
It's a really cool book, imagine heaven, you should check it out.

00:41:31.440 --> 00:41:36.396
And she says, hey, my daughter had a near-death experience.

00:41:36.396 --> 00:41:43.364
And we were like, okay, well, that's crazy, because this is like the first time I've heard somebody say something like that.

00:41:44.465 --> 00:41:51.659
And it was like I was introduced to NDEs by your book, so the concept of them, so this is pretty fresh.

00:41:52.554 --> 00:41:55.422
And she was like, oh yeah, no, my daughter was dead.

00:41:55.422 --> 00:41:56.385
And now?

00:41:57.358 --> 00:41:58.782
She said the first time she died.

00:41:58.782 --> 00:42:00.320
And we said continue speaking.

00:42:00.360 --> 00:42:01.204
Yeah, the first time.

00:42:01.204 --> 00:42:03.159
But she started with.

00:42:03.159 --> 00:42:05.260
It was like what are you talking about?

00:42:05.315 --> 00:42:07.864
Whatever we were doing is not happening anymore.

00:42:09.516 --> 00:42:10.802
We let her go for a little bit.

00:42:10.802 --> 00:42:26.222
But the two traits that I took away with, other than it's just crazy that she brought up in the ease you know we'd said it, and then she was like, yeah, my daughter had an NDE, so that's just kind of a weird thing.

00:42:26.222 --> 00:42:36.601
But, um, what was wild is and correct me if I'm wrong but she said that her daughter had the telepathy thing, so they weren't using words.

00:42:36.601 --> 00:42:38.295
She said that her daughter had the telepathy thing, so they weren't using words.

00:42:38.295 --> 00:42:41.320
She said that her daughter had.

00:42:41.320 --> 00:42:45.447
She knew that Jesus was there but she couldn't see him.

00:42:45.447 --> 00:42:48.322
Correct, I'm just making sure that I'm getting the facts right.

00:42:48.322 --> 00:42:57.250
And I think in your book you said something about that telepathy kind of aspect of like the minds we're connecting.

00:42:57.250 --> 00:43:00.094
Is that right or am I just making that up.

00:43:00.275 --> 00:43:18.045
Yeah, that people can, on the other side, speak with like using a voice, but the more seemingly preferred way of communicating is just thought to thought, heart to heart, and that's usually the way God communicates to them.

00:43:18.045 --> 00:43:19.335
So it's complete.

00:43:19.335 --> 00:43:23.867
A lot of them use the word telepathy, but a lot of them say, no, it's way more than that.

00:43:23.867 --> 00:43:34.619
I mean, imagine if all my thoughts, all my feelings and all the associated thoughts, boom, you just understood fully.

00:43:34.619 --> 00:43:37.807
There's no misunderstanding.

00:43:38.414 --> 00:43:41.601
Yeah, when you said some people say telepathy, I was like no, it's knowing.

00:43:41.601 --> 00:43:47.001
Like that's the word in my mind, but I don't even know what the language would be, because there's not a language right.

00:43:47.001 --> 00:43:48.262
Like that's kind of yeah.

00:43:48.414 --> 00:43:50.302
Well, there was one more thing too that I forgot.

00:43:50.302 --> 00:43:57.545
So she said that her daughter said that she saw the unborn child.

00:43:57.545 --> 00:44:02.518
So said that she saw the unborn child.

00:44:02.518 --> 00:44:05.606
So another sister that she had, that her mom had a miscarriage or whatever, and that comes up in your book.

00:44:05.606 --> 00:44:09.396
I believe, too, there's some sort of something going on there.

00:44:09.615 --> 00:44:26.684
So, yeah, well, that was another line of evidence that I saw of how many kids come back from a near-death experience reporting having met their sibling and their parents say similar things.

00:44:26.684 --> 00:44:30.313
Like you don't have a sister.

00:44:30.313 --> 00:44:32.460
They're like no, I met my sister.

00:44:32.460 --> 00:44:34.909
And he's like do you mean your cousin?

00:44:34.909 --> 00:44:37.456
Because you have a brother, you don't have a sister.

00:44:37.456 --> 00:44:42.086
And he said, no, she told me that she she died in your tummy.

00:44:42.086 --> 00:44:52.592
And then the then the parents are like, oh my gosh, we never told our child we had a miscarriage and we didn't even know it was a she.

00:44:52.612 --> 00:44:53.175
That's crazy.

00:44:53.695 --> 00:44:56.965
And stuff like that, like consistent things like that.

00:44:56.965 --> 00:45:00.175
That's crazy and stuff like that like consistent things like that.

00:45:00.175 --> 00:45:01.679
Or this one woman reported during her near-death experience.

00:45:01.679 --> 00:45:04.344
She sees this man who is there smiling.

00:45:04.344 --> 00:45:08.646
Never talked to her, he was just smiling at her with this very loving smile.

00:45:08.646 --> 00:45:10.501
She never communicated with him.

00:45:10.501 --> 00:45:22.670
She comes back and 10 years later her mom is on her deathbed and her mom confesses to her that she, her father, was not her father.

00:45:22.670 --> 00:45:35.442
She was born out of an extramarital affair and her mom shows her the picture of her father and it was the man who was smiling at her in her near death experience and he had, he had passed away.

00:45:36.936 --> 00:45:45.606
So it's like like, yeah, stuff like that, you know, if you, just if you know and this is why it took me 35 years to write it.

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At first I was just kind of like, yeah, right, you know.

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Imagine Heaven | John Burke | Episode 59