Blurry Creatures - EP: 365 The Hell Question: What Near-Death Experiences Reveal About Judgment and Eternity with John Burke

Episode Date: October 14, 2025

John Burke returns for a deeper dive into the harder questions surrounding near-death experiences. After 40 years of researching over 1,500 cases from every continent and religious background, Burke tackles what people consistently report about hell, spiritual warfare, angelic beings, and the nature of God.This episode explores the uncomfortable testimonies of hellish experiences—from the outer darkness to pits of fire, from victims of spiritual torment to those trapped chasing earthly addictions. Burke discusses why some NDEs involve deception by malevolent beings, the role of tunnel experiences as spiritual protection, and whether there's a "liminal space" where souls can still cry out to God before crossing into eternity.Burke shares stories that don't make it into most Christian discussions: the Muslim imam who saw Jesus with holes in his wrists and woke up at his own burial, the Jewish woman who sat on God's lap while Jesus stood nearby (but they were somehow "one"), the Hindu engineer who saw a lake of fire despite never reading the Bible, and the atheist professor dragged into darkness by deceptive beings claiming to be hospital staff.These aren't ghost stories or hallucinations—many occurred during documented clinical death with flat EEGs and no heartbeat for extended periods. Burke explains the consistent patterns he's discovered: the tunnel as protection, the life review, the welcoming committee of angels, and the terrifying reality that some people initially head toward places of torment before being rescued. We discuss AI deception, astral projection, why time works differently on "the other side," and whether these experiences prove the Bible's descriptions of the afterlife are more literal than we thought. - Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Rough Greens makes any dog food better. Well, that's my whole thing with AI as a whole. It's like, okay. Why are we not thinking? Because there is a common moral law. That's CS Lewis. There's a common moral law, right? Yeah.

We better train it on the common moral law. Right. Or in trouble. The problem, though, is you're at the behest of who's the programmer. So then if you have immoral people, then you essentially have an immoral program. Well, that's the thing. If it's just all of human experience, then it just gets better at, you know. At being at lying.

It being sinful and absolute power corrupts absolutely. There's that whole thing that's been like viral where they query to say like can you say yeah one word answer yes no or Apple have you seen this thing that's been going around? Yeah I saw that. A bunch of people did it and it kind of went viral but they essentially went to chat GPT and they're like I'm going to answer a series of questions you need one word answer answer yes no and if you can't answer what truthfully then just say Apple they start asking them like who's who's monitoring this stuff And it'll be like agencies.

Like who's doing this? And literally they went down this whole rabbit trail of asking AI like questions about what nefarious things AI is being used for. And it's actually interesting if it's real. I mean, then you have to go like is this all. Yeah. Is the programming telling us the truth? I mean, it feels like it's like a very advanced version of Google right now.

But. But. Yeah. We talked to Hardy about this last week. We asked them like, dude. How scary? How scary is the music industry now that AI can, you can create songs and write songs? Well, and you asked, or your buddy chat at or what?

Claude. Claude. Claude. The old boy. Yeah. Asked about falsified near-death experiences. That's really troubling to me. Yeah. As I've been, as I've been researching, it's really clear.

Like, in fact, I think, I think somebody is going like, I think it's someone. who was like so turned off from Christians but knew quite a bit, maybe raised in the church and not burned or something like that. And they're like, I am going to make a fortune off these stupid people. Watch this. And the muddy is the waters. Because they're basically prompting AI with near-death experience stuff and then things that would get your attention. Right. Like what Jesus said about masturbation. Right. In a near-death experience. Put all that together. And then it, it, it, does. And the way I discovered it is when I've been researching for a book I'm writing right now, I found a story like, okay, that's perfect, right? And so I'm trying to find her.

They're trying to source the person. To source it. Yeah. And then I find seven other channels she's on, but they're all read with just B-roll behind it. It's not real. And it's getting, it's getting scary. Yeah. This is a great way to roll in the episode. Yeah. I mean, we are rolling. We are rolling. We are rolling. No, this is good though. But this, I want to, we'll get to that, I think. But I think that's interesting as well. Like, because to me, it's the deception thing.

It's always like, I feel like the darkness and Satan, demonic forces. It's like what's packaged to us is always like two lies and a truth. Exactly. But there's enough of it. The best lie is 90% true. Right. There's enough to be like, this is palatable. I can believe this.

But it's not. Right. It's ultimately like, especially if Inde's are pointing. which we talked about in our last episode if this pointing to God of the Bible to Jesus. That's reality, yeah. Then wouldn't the concerted effort

be to discredit, to muddy the waters, to make it too hard to find, too far to find the truth within all that because the rest of the world will say is universalism. It's like, you know, all roads lead here. It doesn't matter what religion is. Or there's nothing,

this religion is just a construct of man. Come a long way since this. Yeah. I remember that. I remember that. I remember a message. this. Yeah.

My grandma had one of those. So as he passed away, she used it. We used to. Yeah. This is the pinnacle of human technology and morality. I just did a friend's father's memorial service. Yeah. And he was like my best friend growing up.

And all of a sudden it hit me as I was doing it. 713-497-8305. Don't call that people. That was, you weren't, you, the house is gone now. Yeah. that was his number. Yeah. I don't know my son or daughter's cell phone number.

Is 714 Orange County? 713. Oh, 713. But I still remember that because you had to call it. 714 is? And now I have what? Dan's like 714 is Orange County. Oh, you got it.

Still in there. Yeah, but do those. Isn't that wild though? I know my grandmother's, your grandfather's phone number. And I don't know my son or daughter's number. Okay, so on my, this is really random. We should get going on my way here.

So my wife and I were talking about how we're so dependent on phones, on cell phones. Like what if it, what if all power went out? Yeah. What we wouldn't know how to do. We have a newf ball now though. What? We have a brand new Nerf ball. We can play, we can throw the Nerf ball around.

Well, that would be fun. We could play some board games, John. Yeah, but to your point. So my cell phone goes out. Yeah, yeah. And I got lost. I literally. You didn't know where you were.

I couldn't, yeah, because I didn't have a map. Yeah. And I couldn't get it to reboot. And you were just in your backyard. I was in my own city. I couldn't get the way back into the house. I couldn't get back in the house. Where am I?

You know, these themes, though. It's that bad. But these things are showing up, though, in entertainment that is not funny. It's like the zero-day film that was on Netflix with De Niro. So be careful. And like the Obama's film, which is like basically all, the whole grid goes down. Yeah. And Tesla's like,

stop self-driving and create wrecks and no one has any communication. And this is getting dripped out into the next level of doomsday films. Because when, you know, when we were, you know, 10 years ago, it was like natural disaster stuff.

It was 2012. It was 2012. It was asteroid hits. But now it's like, your tech goes down. The grid goes down. Yeah. Everybody goes, it's homestead,

like, which is on, which is the whole like, how do you survive if it all goes down? And then we look at all these billionaires are building bunkers. That's a whole other show we could do on that. Not with me. Yeah, not with me. I don't know much about that.

So here we are. Welcome back to Blurry Creatures, part two, follow up interview with author John Burke. Get into some of the sort of the harder questions that we sort of scratched the surface on our first episode with you. But last time we covered near-death experiences, heaven descriptions, kind of just like a broad brush of like what you wrote about and there's thousands of stories that you've accounted for to kind of piece together sort of this afterlife experience.

But you know what we do often when we bring somebody back on the show is we kind of go deeper into that discussion. So I think today we can cover themes of God, hell and spiritual bodies, 2.0 and 3.0 and some of the things that, you know, you've sort of uncovered. I don't know if you set out to uncover these things, writing. I didn't set out to do any of this. But, you know, on blurry creatures, we're always trying to answer these, get better answers to these questions because people will have hauntings in their house or they'll have all these paranormal experiences they can't explain.

And we try to explain those through a biblical framework of like, okay, this is how it all makes sense as a Christian, but it would require going into some interesting places to kind of get those answers. So thanks for coming back on the show. Yeah, great to be here. Yeah. And I say this all the time. Like this is, people ask, we're 354 episodes in, and we talk about this pre-roll.

Actually, what's your favorite episode you've done in this, of them five years? And I answer with yours. So episode 316, if you haven't listened, this is, and Nate says, this'll be a deeper dive. That is, where we go and we die. And John Burke, you've 30 years doing this. You've been on some of the biggest shows now

in the world. You were on Sean Ryan, for example, twice. I know you were on with Lee Drellba, was also on our show, a friend of our show as well. And he's a good friend. We kind of talked about what people experience when they go to heaven. And there's some amazing stories and all that. And if you haven't listened, go back.

That'll be sort of your homework or prerequisite for this show. We did talk about hell once the last episode. It was a story of an atheist in, I believe it was France, who had the experience dying, and then the orderlies were calling him out of his bed and all the way down. And then he's dragging down into hell. Howard Storm. Yeah. And that's as much as we really talked about that issue.

And I was. I would love to start there and dive in. Yeah, because this is a hotly debated topic in Christianity. Like, what is hell? Does it exist? Where do you start? How do you? People ask you these questions, because I'm sure they ask you all the time on planes or, you know, friends.

Yeah. I mean, for me, you know, like, as I said in the first time we did this, I didn't, I didn't intend to go into any of this. It was an accident. You know, it all started for me when I was still an agnostic. and I studied engineering, so I have a very analytical, like, how do you know, how does it fit, prove it, kind of brain. And I had concluded that Jesus was just probably a good man made legend. Yeah. God, you just couldn't know.

There's no evidence. So was agnostic. And my dad was dying of cancer when someone gave him the very first research that coined the term near-death experience. So it was the very first. And he was on hospice. So someone gave it to him. I saw it on his bedside table. I read it in one night.

And I was like, oh my gosh. Like maybe this is the evidence I've been demanding because of how many when they clinically die. So we're talking no no heartbeat, no brain waves. Yeah. And yet they're resuscitated either by modern medicine or just I can't explain how, but they come back. Sometimes it feels like when you get that phone. bill. It's like the crash site document. You can't read it. There's a bunch of numbers, random fees, vague language, stuff's blacked out. You're like, what am I actually paying for? I don't know about

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Yeah. And so I started reading and studying the Bible and then came to faith for other reasons. Became a pastor. Did that for a very long time. Well, yeah. Then I left engineering years later and I became a pastor and started a church for skeptics, which turns out there's a lot of them in Austin. Oh, we know.

Yeah. And but the point of that is so, so. Over the last, yeah, it's been more like 40 years. I've studied and interviewed close to 1,500 people all around the world, from all around the world, tracing these commonalities. And imagine having I trace about 40 of the commonalities that they are consistently describing this journey into the life beyond. But one study showed that 23% of people who came forward talking about a near-death experience, talked about. a hellish experience. Now that was that was actually a long time ago and again I think we talked about this in the first but people are very reticent to even come forward and talk about it because

it is it's a another dimensional experience of life. How do you explain how do you explain other dimensional experiences in our limited three dimensions of space and one dimension of time when there's more than that. What kind of feels like when you read Revelation is? I think John's trying to do that. Well, it is. And what these people say completely correlates. I mean,

that's amazing. Yeah. Like, I have interviewed people from all religious backgrounds who described the same holy city of God just like John did in Revelation, which we can get into later. Yeah. It's like the,

it's like when the Super Nintendo comes out. It's way better than the original. It's way better. So, I mean, how do you explain that to people, though? Because I think that's a lot of what, you know, people just throw out those terms. all the time on our show.

Dimensional, dimensional, like Bigfoot, interdimensional. What does that mean to you? Well, the way I think about it, and I've used this analogy with people I've interviewed who've had near-death experiences, and they say, yes, that's exactly what it's like. So imagine, you know, we're living a three-dimensional experience, right?

We have forward and backside to side up and down. Three-dimension spatially. The fourth dimension is time, right? Right. So, but what if we were living this experience on a flat, two-dimensional black and white painting on this wall? Okay. Just imagine. It's a flatland experiment. It's flat land. So we can go up and down and side to side. We don't even conceive of in or out. And yet it's there, but they can't even conceive of it. All right. Now, death is when your soul separates from this dimensional reality. So imagine at death, your two-dimensional self. is peeled off that and now brought into this three-dimensional reality and you have a greater experience of reality. You still experience your two-dimensional self expanded new colors, new experiences,

and then you're pressed back, you're revived in a two-dimensional world. And you have to explain three dimensions of color in black and white two-dimensional words. That's kind of what you remember from our first episode, John, as you're talking about people talking about the city of God and like the stones are made of light and all the colors. And they're trying to describe the way that even like simple things like a stone that we all can, you know, have an idea, anybody here. But it's tangible too. Yes.

You can touch it. So it's not. So I guess the point is they struggle for words. And sometimes it feels weird what they're trying to say because it doesn't completely make sense. Just like trying to describe a third dimension and two dimensional words. Like an upgraded better version of life on earth? Well, what they say is that is the real life. This is more like the shadow.

Okay. So this is more like an incubator for that. And interestingly, both of the good and of the bad. Right. So let's talk about the bad. Like what have you pieced together on like the theme of hell and like what does that look like? Yeah. So like I said in one study, 23.

percent had hellish near death experiences. In the more recent 2019 European Academy of Neurology study of 35 countries, they found about one out of five or about five percent, one out of 20 people who had clinically died or been close to death had a near death experience. And they said more like 50 percent talked about hellish experiences. Now, I think that's, they're including like drug trip kind of things that I think is more not necessarily clinical death. But I still think we don't know, we don't know the percentage. But I've interviewed a lot of them. And they talk about varying, I guess, places, levels.

I don't know what you would call it. You know, Howard Storm, who we talked about in an episode. one, you know, he was an atheist who, at first, he didn't know he was dead. Right. Because he felt so alive. So no matter where you're going, no matter which direction you're going, you feel super alive, not five senses, more like 50 senses. And so it is a heightened experience of how bad things can be as well. And so he's deceived by these people that he think are the hospital staff trying to help him. He needed surgery. And he's like, I need surgery. And they're like, oh, we know all about you. Come. Don't you want to get better? Come with us. But they deceive him, like you said, and they lead

him in this, what he said was blacker than black darkness. And then they turn on him and mall him. Wow. That's one experience. Others talk about like a void. So like this guy Gary, he had a car accident and the snow ran off a bank into a freezing cold river. And he's up above his body watching people come and try to, you know, they're stopping the cars and they're trying to figure out how to help them and they're praying for him. They're thinking about him. and he said he's feeling this concern and care and love and compassion from these people. And then suddenly it was connected to the source of all that. This is the way he described it.

And it scared him. It was like, no. Like, I don't want to, I don't want that. I don't want to be that vulnerable. And he said no. So he knew this was the source of all love, all this compassion, all this care. concern and he says no and he said boom he shot out into what he said and i don't know is it is it like outer space but in another dimension of i don't know but it was a void and this is a commonality of

some near-death experiencers uh of this this void and it's just like it's just nothing it's blackness no sound no no nothing and he's cognizant of this he's oh yeah it started to drive him crazy because you're There's no sound. Terrified. There's just nothing. No. I mean, nothing. And so he comes back.

Others have had that same experience of that void. Some have had an experience of what I would call hell on earth. Dr. George Ritchie was actually one of the very first reported near-death experiences in our modern medical age. In fact, he actually was a psychiatrist at the University of Virginia who Dr. Moody first heard from that got him asking his students. And that's how he wrote that first book that I read. Okay. Yeah. So it's all.

So Dr. George Ritchie, he's in the Army. This is like 1945. He gets double pneumonia. He dies. at first he doesn't again he doesn't know he's dead either and he's like traveling trying to get to medical school because he was he was supposed to catch a train to medical school so he which i don't understand that completely like how do you not know right like you're flying across the land that's not normal yeah well it's like a dream well it's but it's not that's what they say yeah it's hyper

vivid yeah it's hyper real but in the like in your dreams you're doing things you would never do in real life and you don't ever stop to think this is a dream because this doesn't happen. You know, I can't do these things in normal life. Kayak gets my flight, hotel, and rental car right. So I can tune out travel advice that's just plain wrong. Bro, Skycoin, way better than points. Never fly during a Scorpio full moon. Just tell the manager you'll sue.

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out how do I get to where I'm trying to go? And then he realizes he's dead because he goes right through him. Uh-huh. Do you think- Later he is traveling across the United States and starts to recognize the same things and goes and finds that place with the Papp's blue ribbon sign. Really? So he really went there.

So it exists. But here's the other side of it. So then he comes back to Camp Barkley in Texas where he was assigned. and he's like he sees his body he goes to find his body because he realized i'm dead i got to go back yeah and he couldn't go back he sees his body he realizes he's dead and then this man of light brilliant man of light appears who he knows is jesus he he recognizes you're in the presence of the son of god he has i mean it's a long experience i write about it and imagine heaven but one of the things jesus shows him

he shows him this vision of hell on earth before he takes him and shows him a heavenly vision or a heavenly place and he's taking him across it's like earth to these different scenes but what he's showing them are these people who are essentially imprisoned to their own devices to their own earthly idols so so one's an alcoholic in a bar and he keeps trying to snatch a drink but he goes right through it so it's like like a loop huh like a loop or so you can't loop like no no no it's not like a loop like he's unsatial he's jonesing for a fix but he's dead but he's dead okay but the people he's around aren't and he and he's but he's still there but see time and space doesn't work the same way on the other side so so that's the tricky part about it. Was he like a ghost? I guess you would call it that. Um,

because this is hard for Christians. It's the ghost thing. I know. There's so many ghost stories and we just assume that's impossible because that person can't be trapped in some sort of in-between world, sort of not here but not there. Well, and what George Ritchie said, I mean, because, and he saw, he saw, I mean, this is kind of bizarre, but I mean, he saw a mother, following her son badgering him still, still trying to control him and get him to do what she wanted. But she was dead too. Now interestingly,

this guy Kyle, who he's a pastor today, but he was a college student, he was an alcoholic, and he actually died of alcohol poisoning. And he also has a hellish experience. And he's going down, these levels and he gets to this kind of the first level is what he called it were all these

people and they're looking it was like a hospital scene but they're looking for drugs they're looking for alcohol they're looking for something to satiate the insatiable craving that i guess was their idol on earth so he had the same experience um that's a that's a Just like Pleasure Island in like Pinocchio, right, where you go to this place and it's like all these people are are chasing their vices. And it's, and even in that weird, I remember watching as a kid, that's terrifying. And it's a terrifying place of like, you know, people trying to satiate their vice. And, you know, in this case, they don't. Well, I think that's the stories we hear about like demonic possessions.

They have, they're a disembodied spirit. They're stuck out of a body. They want to get back in a body. and try to feel that experience again, which is why they possess people. Yeah. Because they're sort of that. They're kind of trapped in this.

They're not dead, they're not alive. They're kind of, and they so that if they're in a body, they feel alive again, they can sort of satiate those vices maybe. Interesting. Are you talking about like an angelic, demonic? Like a demon? A demon from our understanding is the dead spirits of the giants. Yeah.

And they had a body at one point. lived a life, but then they inhabit people to feel, you know, because experience that again. The disembodied part is the torture. So they can't eat, they can't drink. Yeah, they can't do anything. Kind of like, you know, but they still are hungry. And Pirates of Caribbean, you know, and they're like, yeah, that kind of whole, people can relate to that, that they're not dead, but they're, they're, they're sort of cursed to like wander and feel that. Yeah. Forever. But it sounds like humans kind of go through the same experience. Well, I mean, again, I'm just

I'm just reporting what I've consistently heard. I want to, yeah, let's go through the gamut and then we'll talk about like, maybe we can talk about, because you're an analytical guy, the commonalities perhaps, and what to take from this, right? Because you don't necessarily want to build your theology on people's experiences. However, like these are verifiable real experiences,

then we have to take that and try to see how does this all make sense? Well, yeah, I think when you, They're testimonies. Right, right. So, you know, I don't, I don't believe everything every near-death experiencer says. I think some of them are whacked. Right.

Yeah. Yeah. And some of them, they're not. They're sincere and they're reporting something accurate and consistent, but they interpret it in a different way. Because we're all different people. Because we all have an interpretation, but their interpretations don't all align. And so I have a whole case I make in my second book, imagine the God of Heaven. and for why we've got to use scripture to interpret near-death experiences,

not the other way around, you know, because they all come back. Right. So this is not, I do not believe near-death experiences are crossing over into either eternal life or eternal death. I think it's somewhere in between. Yeah. I think that's really critical because I think that's also why they still have a choice. They can still cry out to God.

and he rescues them. I mean, most of the people I know that I've interviewed from these hellish experiences, they're pastors today. Yeah. Because they cried out to God

and they found, he rescued them and they discovered, oh, it was Jesus. But there's no easy answer. I think when we ask you, what is hell, you kind of have to start back here

and kind of work your way through of like, I mean, the Bible doesn't really give you an easy answer either. It seems like there's layers. Well, and so some of the things

that, you know, the Bible talks about, near death experience the outer darkness that Jesus talked about where there's wailing

and gnashing of teeth well I mean that's what George Ritchie saw as well on this plane of human existence so all around us and there was

I mean he saw people like in this battle for control yeah like and this is what Howard Storm told me. He said, it's victim or victimizer. You either get victimized or you become

the victimizer. It's like the worst prison. He said that. It's like the worst prison scene you can imagine. Here's the other bizarre thing since we're going bizarre. Yeah. I mean, we're even talking being raped. In the like in like the hell on earth situation? Yeah. And like the worst possible men and women. So that's where Howard he's said to me because I've interviewed him many times I'll push him

kind of like you guys are gonna push me right? Like it was it like and he's like you know what I had PTSD from this I can't go any farther because it's real

because it's more real than this so I explain something more real than this but that's what they said who have you had anybody talk about that outer darkness experience

in that particular part of what we can, Jesus talks about you said and that description of. Yeah, so is the outer darkness like what Howard experienced? So it's some, it's some plain of the earth going into this place of darkness. I don't know. My friend Paul O'Heda, he was a cocaine addict. He and his stripper girlfriend were involved with cartels and all kinds of dealing. and he overdosed on cocaine.

He said instantly I was dropping through this blacker than black darkness, like just free falling, and I was sober. And he said, this was real. And I was like, what happened? And he knew I died and I'm going to hell. And he's like, wait, there's been a mistake. Like, I'm a good guy. Like, I don't, I've never killed anybody.

Like, I'm nice to people. And the more he justified, the faster he dropped. Yeah. And then he gets to the end of himself and he just cries out, God help me. And he doesn't stop dropping. But he said, this presence is right there with him. Peace comes over him. And he hears in his thoughts.

He knew this was the Lord. And he said, the thought in his head, but was communication. It's kind of how communication happens on the other side. Paul, what have you done with the life I gave you? This is a Bose moment. You've been there. Small talks going nowhere, but then the Bose speaker kicks in. Music you can feel fills the room.

And no more chat with Danny from accounts. Your life deserves music. Your music deserves Bose. Find your perfect product at Bose.com. And he's thinking like, oh, dang, I better get this right. how do I answer you know this is my but before he could answer it's like boom his whole life like a life review his whole life review and the life reviews are different right but they're the same so he's experiencing every moment and scene of his life and everything about it but instantly

but even instantly what's instant when time is multi-dimensional right yeah but but he's seen the whole thing, the good and the bad, and he realizes, I deserve this. I chose this. But he says to the Lord, you know, Lord, if you give me a chance, I will serve you. I'll tell everybody. And boom, he's back. Now, some people will go like, you know, well, Lazarus asked that and he said like, no. I don't know what to make of that, right? You know, I don't know. I know Paul and I know I know he, you know, he still has a business as a master plumber and yet just on the side he has, he has led so many people to faith in Jesus because he came back and he told his girlfriend, he said, I don't know what you're going to do, but I'm going to find the God who just saved me. Wow. Now she's his wife and they have the

largest Hispanic church in Austin does it on the side. That's amazing. But he's, He does it because it's real and he knows not, he doesn't want anybody to go where he was headed. But it was the love of God that motivates him. That's the transformative part of it. The transformative part was how wonderful God is. And here's another commonality of the hellish experience. He said, the worst part of it is this pulling away from God. Like you know you're pulling away from the very source of love and life and light and

everything good. You don't, we don't realize that here, but there you realize it and it's just this hopelessness. Just we're not separated from here. Do you feel? Yeah. It's kind of like human being, like being, experiencing seasons. You know, it's like the summertime, the sun's shining on us, and then it feels like the sun gets a little bit further. We get a little cold, we get winter coming. We kind of experience that separation from like everything dies, right? And is that like our seasons and nature sort of a little bit of a, trying to. to get the human being to think about. Oh, I think God sowed clues everywhere into life.

Okay. Like everything's sort of a hidden, like what's to come? Yeah, I think there, I think these near-death experiences help us see so many, help us see so many truths of the scriptures in a more vivid light. Yeah. In brighter color instead of black and white, but also helps answer a lot of questions.

And you get more questions. I think that's the reason We're always more questions. We started this because I mean I think that I was the kid in church that asked the ex too many questions, right? Yeah, me too. That's why I left. Exactly.

No, it really was. I was like, hey, nobody can answer my questions. This isn't real. I'm gone. And I just went partying. But it sounds like there is like a whole framework of in between sort of like an area in between obviously you have beings showing up that are light beings trying to deceive you to go the wrong direction after you're kind of passed or passing.

You have that tunnel protection you were talking about. There seems to be a little bit of a, and what we've learned on our show is there are no easy answers. It seems like there's a little bit more of a complicated, I think we think as Christians, it's just one of, it's just we die and are boom or boom, you know, one of two places. It seems like you're describing,

or people are describing, there of well look i mean and this is one of the things that i think turns people off many times yeah of christians is because we we sometimes assume that and i do believe that god has given us truth his truth in scripture and all we need to know him and love him and follow him yeah i don't think we need we don't need near-death experiences for that but we also don't need science but science is a elucidated a lot. Yeah. Like we used to think we were the center of the universe and the sun went around us, right?

Yeah. And we found out, no, that's not true. And I think there are things that scripture says that these other things that God allows to be revealed can elucidate, can make clearer. And I think sometimes Christians make it like, well, because we have the truth that, the scriptures therefore we have all truth yeah and that's not what the bible says Deuteronomy 29 29 yeah the revealed things belong to us and our sons and daughters so that we can you know we can know God and follow them but the mysterion right the mysteries of God belong to God yeah and so they're mysteries that's what's the glory of God to conceal

thing and the and he and and I believe you know he's revealing more and more and more and more letting us experience and and but we have to you know we have to be wise too so if you could draw a map of this part of the stories hell yeah like if you that would create because i mean like there's like the hebrew cosmology that's like there's shale and then there's the abyss and then there's tartarus they seem to like the ancients seem to have levels of this stuff they had it more on robust understanding like the prison under the prison is where you know it's where the bad angels end up you know from from gen six but i mean yeah or like peter and Peter.

Well, that's the whole thing, right. He's preaching to that they're in chains and they're in Tartarus, which is like below the prison. So that, that, see, here's the problem. I had a conversation

with the Uber driver on the way over here, and now I'm like, wait, did I tell you guys that? They tell the Uber driver. I love it. You're telling everybody. That's why I,

see, that's the beginning of episode. I assumed you're having these conversations with everyone. What do you do? That's a loaded question, you know? We had an awesome conversation. That's awesome. But yeah.

Did I tell you about the, Jewish woman who, no, okay, that was the overdrive. So this Jewish woman that is in the hell chapter in Imagine Heaven, she dies. She's looking, it was a car crash. She has two young kids in the car. She's out above the snowy accident. She's looking and she said, there was Jesus with me. And he looked like, he looked like you think it was Jesus, but I knew he was Jesus.

and he held my hand and I felt an acceptance and a love from him. I never wanted to leave like I was home. This was all I needed. But he led her to this place where she saw beans that were people or angels. She didn't know how to describe it that were chained in darkness. And then she sees people in agony. and he made her go there by herself. And then she comes back.

And then she said, I knew I had a choice whether to stay or go back to my body. And I knew he wanted me to go back because if I stayed, I would be one of those suffering people. So she chooses to go back. But the bizarre thing is then she said, but I don't know what to make of that, because I don't believe in Jesus.

Now, I have another Jewish friend who... How do you not? Did we talk about Heidi in the first episode? I don't think so. Oh, her story's so cool. We need to get to it when we talk about God. But the main thing is she too is there with Jesus. But she recognizes that he's the God she had always prayed to, even though she didn't know.

But there's only one God. Yeah. She's like Orthodox or traditional Judaism, right? So they're rejected Christ. It's a little more confusing than that. So her father was an atheist, but they were Jewish. Okay. And her father told her every night, there is no God. Your life is worthless. Jesus Christ is the biggest hoax ever perpetrated on mankind. But he was also abusive. And so she always believed in God and prayed to God every night and felt. like even like as a little girl six and eight she's being abused stuff and she would she would pray and felt like the lord was there with her kind of giving her peace and helping her go to sleep

yeah and then she sees him but he's jesus yeah and in her life review he shows her when she's that little girl praying and she sees he's by her bed so she's she saw it all is real so we're jumping but yeah back to hell well i'm just trying to piece together like a visual here so you have well let me give you a couple more data points so others also talk about um like so there's the falling in the darkness there's kind of the the earth plane where there's this battle going on or this this this domination introducing the new best skin ever ultra slim precision concealer from sephora collection It's full coverage with a matte finish and perfect for any look, whether you're building it up for a full glam moment or targeting correction for a more natural vibe.

At only $12, it's great for affordable touchups on the go. Get this new must-have concealer at Sephora or at Sephora.com today. But then others talk about like the pit and they even call it that and fire. It looked like a fire. So we talked about Santosh's story in the first episode, I think. Is he the narrow gate? Yeah. So he is a Hindu manufacturing engineer, never read the Bible.

He thought when you die, maybe you come back as another life form. So that's not what happened. As a cow, a lot of, yeah, right? It's not what happened. He said this divine, brilliant light comes. I fell in love with this light because I knew it was protecting me for me, loved me, takes him. He describes the holy city of God. God, but then he sees what he called, he looks down and he sees, and I don't know this gets into,

where are these places locally, like geographically? Because I'm not sure spatial dimensions work the same way on the other side. But he sees a vision of, or the place of an abyss. He called it an abyss of darkness that I would fall into if I fell there. and there's no getting out and at the bottom a lake of fire. Again, a Hindu man who's never read the Bible. Yeah. Okay.

And then he, you know, we go into more of it on that first episode. But he then sees who he later determined was Jesus on his throne who showed all the gates of the city. The 12 gates he saw were closed to him, but one narrow gate open. So basically what God does is sends him back with a parable. Right. It was very Jesus-like. Very Jesus-like. And as he seeks, he finds.

And that's what I found so fascinating with so many of these stories, is when they come back seeking, they find. Wow. Do you think John had a near-death experience? I think Paul did. Paul? Yeah. I think Paul did.

So remember Paul, in Acts chapter 14, he's in Listra, which is a Greek Roman city. Yeah. And it says they, the mob turns on him and stoned him to death and dragged him out of the city and left him for dead. Okay. And then the believers as they're rallied around him. Now, stop there and think, they knew how to stone people to death back. You know?

Yeah. And so, okay, he's good. He's dead. They drag him out and leave him. And then it says he gets back up after the believers rally around him. They're praying for him, I'm sure. He gets back up and goes back in the city and keeps going. Yeah.

Okay. That's not like a, that's a miraculous comeback. It's like a resurrection. Right. Right. Well, it's, I believe, a near-death experience. Because in 2nd Corinthians 12, Paul's talking about himself and he says 14 years ago, right, is he talking about 14 years ago in Listra?

Could be. I don't know. But he says 14 years ago, whether in my body or out of my body, I don't know. Why didn't he know? Because we're still ourselves. We still have a body. We have a spiritual body. And Paul talks a lot about that, right?

And he says, I was taken up to the third heaven. I was taken up to paradise. I saw and heard things inexpressible. And things no one is allowed to tell. Which also near-death experiencers say some things they experience there, they know when they come back was veiled. They're not allowed to tell. So all these things. So they still remember them, but they just can't talk about it.

They remember that there they knew. That's interesting. So they don't know, they still don't know it, but they know that they knew. They can't explain. So it's like they have a memory, but they don't know what it is. It's fascinating. Some of the ones who went through intense suffering on earth. Yeah.

There understood it perfectly, saw how it all fit, had all the answers. But when they came back, it was veiled. So you're saying near-death experiences could have shaped some of the biblical writings. Well, maybe. Because some of the stuff, you were like, how do they know this? How do they write this down? Well, we also know that people are taking to heaven. You have Elijah.

You've got Isaiah. Isaiah, Elijah. And then this is, you know, this is a lot of people will quote one-off scriptures to me. Like, you know, no one has seen the father. No one has seen the father, right? And so these near-death experiencers, they're liars. They claim they've seen the Father on his throne and all that. Well, wait a second.

When Jesus said that, he knew Isaiah and Isaiah 6, where Isaiah says, I was taken up and I saw the Almighty on his throne. Yeah. Right? Or Daniel, chapter 7 and Daniel chapter 12, where he sees God on his throne and then the son of man. You know, so he knew all these things. Yeah, yeah. You know, I don't know are those near-death experiences. are those translations, are those visions?

Dreams, visions, yeah. I don't know. But what they're describing is correlating with what I'm finding is commonly reported among near-death experiencers. Let's talk about, I want to talk about correlation real quick, because we've got these descriptions of hell and you've got a void.

You have this a hellscape on Earth where people are chasing vices and they're unable to be satiated. We have outer darkness. abyss, pit, lake of fire, places where, and perhaps the hellscapers where people were being victimized by either other people or beings. Yeah, it sounds like if you get convicted in Kentucky, like you commit a crime, but you have to serve your, you know, time in Folsom prison, you got to get on train, go across, and you have to get there. You have to travel someplace. Sounds like these people are moving to and from, going somewhere.

I think it's a vast world apart from God. So I'll give you one other that's pretty freaky that I haven't figured out yet and I don't know what to make of it. It's just a working theory right now. But like Yen, Mickelson was a Buddhist who committed suicide. But as she is, she had heard about God. She had heard about Jesus. But her parents had always told him, well, Jesus is the American God. we worship our ancestors and our she's from Laos and um she but she was here in the states

and she became very depressed and just as like wanted to end her life and before she did she um she was like you know god people tell me you're real but i don't even know if you're real and even if you are i would rather i'd rather go to hell than experience this hell on earth okay so then she is committing suicide and And she experiences leaving her body and like a cage coming up and down around her. And she starts to realize, oh, my gosh, it's all real. I was wrong. And she's panicked trying to reverse it, trying to get back.

And she does, basically. And she's able to call her therapist who then sends 911. And on the way to the hospital, she has a conversation with God. And she says, I'm so sorry. You know, like I don't want to go there. I was wrong. It's not like that's way worse. But she then has another death experience.

And she finds herself then dropping and she knew now I'm going there. Now here's the weird thing. She said, I was going through the layers of the earth. And it was like I could see them. And she said, I learned this in school. Like these are the And but it's But she's falling at a rapid pace

In this darkness But she also is aware She's going through the layers of the earth And then comes to this place That is she described as a pit Of darkness But she also saw flames and fire But it didn't like the darkness

And that was always something that confused me Like honestly Even as a pastor there are so many things that I would have said as well that's metaphor that's not literal right you know that's not like I like I would have said hell is not fire and darkness it can't you can't have the same so in our in our reality we don't know what it is but it's a metaphor until I heard so many near death experiences say yeah no it's both so then I've had several people talk about the falling through the earth even Sebastian Junger you know the war correspondent he was on joe rogan talking about his near-death experience and he gets sucked down through the mattress and he's dropping in this darkness like straight down yeah so you're like okay is is the reason it's described as both this fire and darkness that again it is like a fifth dimensional experience that that is here in the realm of the earth but not

limited physically to our three dimensions. In our dimensions. Yeah. And does that make sense of what it says that Satan was cast to the earth? And when Jesus says the ruler of this world is coming right before his crucifixion, right? So, you know, walk in the light before, before it's all dark, right? And he conquered, you know, he conquered the ruler of this world. But so all that makes me wonder, right, is like, and I think that's part of the Hebrew

mindset, right? The first heavens were the stars in the sky. Yeah. You know, in like the Old Testament, New Testament mindset. The third heaven, like Paul talked about that he went to is like, where God reigns, the holy city of God. It's what we would technically call heaven. But the second heavens is the spiritual realm all around the earth or of the earth.

And beyond. I mean, they. Which I was going to say also, I think I told you guys, I started to realize that I think these tunnels, these portals that open up, you know, when people leave their body and then they travel to this place. that we would call heaven. Third heaven. Third heaven. Beauty, exquisite beauty, the city of God, this, you know, all that. I started to realize that I think they are protection.

Because some in, even in that journey in that tunnel, then were actually first shown a heavenly vision, but then exited out of it into a hellish vision. and some even see and hear those saying, come, you know, come with us. Don't go there. Come with us. Right. So I don't know.

Yeah. You know, it's, but I mean, there have been, there have been so many testimonies of it. And what's so amazing to me is how many come back and like I said, they become followers of Jesus. Yeah. Because usually they cry out to him. and he rescues them. Well, I think that's sort of what we learn on the show is like the Bible is more alive, not more allegorical or more metaphor.

It's actually like a truth beyond a truth. Like there's a way to read stories like Eden. Like there could have been an actual tree of life, but it could have existed in one of these spaces that you're talking about. Well, there are trees of life. Yeah. That grow by the river, that people who've had near-death experiences have seen.

And it's fascinating. I mean, there are so many like tendrils of connection and correlation. Yeah. So for instance, it's a weird tangent, but I've interviewed many people who actually were able to go into that river of life, right? And they found all these new properties like so they could breathe underwater. They didn't need to breathe, but they were thinking they had to breathe, but they didn't have to breathe. Okay. We don't have to breathe, right? Yeah. God's light is the life that fills everything.

And so you get all these new experiences. But they also said, and this is like Rebecca Springer, she was 1890s near death experience, but she wrote the same things. And she's writing, going into this river and she comes out and she's like, what? Your brother-in-law, Frank, who's showing her around. He's like, what was that? And he said, she said that. It's like divine. And he said, yes, it is. And it's washing away the last effects of your earth life and preparing you for your new life.

So Mickey Robbins. Now, here's what's interesting. So, so, and they talk about, so it's like these healing properties and that they're, even though on the other side, so in heaven, our bodies, our physical bodies are healed. So like Don Piper, who's a pastor I interviewed, he sees his grandfather coming, his grandfather hugs him and he looks at his hands and he was a lumberjack. So he didn't have a bunch of digits on his fingers, but now he does. Yeah.

Right. So, but interestingly, it appears the soul still needs some healing. And they experienced this in that river of life, but growing next to the river of life are these, I mean, these trees of life. And it says in Revelation 21, the leaves of the trees are for the healing of the nations. So it's all there. Yeah.

So like the trees are fed by the river that is of the spirit of God. And there's still some kind of soul healing that takes place on the other side. Well, I love it because I think that, you know, a lot of modern Christians read the story of Eden as like an allegorical story. that every, there's a creation story in every single culture. And so Christians are kind of dumb or stupid to read it literally. But it seems as though, or Eden is like an overlap of heaven and earth. So all the sort of the supernatural construction and the elements that you're talking about could

have been present there, which makes it sound like a fantasy novel. But it isn't a fantasy. This whole thing sounds like a fantasy. I'm not kidding. I mean, I, but from an earth, like just a typical, modern caveman human brain, we read the Eden story as fantasy. It doesn't exist.

It's not true. But what you're saying says there could have been overlap between these dimensional gates where it feels like what they're describing is actually a place. You can go there. You can't eat from the tree of knowledge. You can't eat from the tree of life. Not anymore.

You couldn't after a certain point. But the Adam and Eve could. They could. Yeah. It existed. It's a place. It was somewhere. And so when when that wall closed, right?

Yeah. We're back here. There's a separation. Yeah. So heaven and earth are separated for a time. Yeah. Right. But they're going to be reunited.

Right. But it's like the circles overlap and there's just this area in the middle, right? Like Eden is in that sort of that. So I think, I think so many of our fantasies, our novels, our, our, And I mean, Lord of the Rings. C.S. Lewis. Yeah.

J.R. Tolkien thought this. C.S. Lewis thought this. Great literary Christians have thought this too, that they're all pointing somewhere more real. Yeah. But like Luke was saying, so there's like, there is beings that sort of try to trick you.

There is maybe some people that are like stuck in chains. There's like an outer darkness. You go down and maybe you get, you kind of trapped in, do these people have long periods of time? in these spaces where they can then cry out to God? Or is it like an instant? And then once they're dead, they're,

I mean, obviously you can't interview them because they don't come back, but are there? So here's where near-death experiencers don't agree. Okay. And tie goes to Jesus in my book. Well, so, and again, you know, that can sound like, oh, yeah, well, because you're a Christian pastor. No, actually, that's, that's why I,

was trying to make a case in imagine the God of heaven or why this God has not just started to show up and all these things have not just started to show up in our modern medical resuscitation day. It's been there all along and he's been telling us this all long and there are good evidential reasons to believe it's true. So with your question was about can they get out? is that right? Yeah, like how long are they allowed to sort of be in this in-between space? Like, it seems like they are in an in-between space.

Oh, oh, near-death experiencers. Or in hell? Or in hell? Yeah, like, well, I don't know that hell is an in-between place. Well, it seems like they're on the outer skirts of it kind of like looking at it and about to experience it fully, but then they don't. Well, I don't know. I mean, Rajiv Partee was a guy I interviewed.

And I mean, this is no slouch guy. So first of all, he grew up in India, so he's Hindu, not Christian. But he's a chief anesthesiologist of the Bakersfield Heart Hospital. He's a smart guy, right? And he didn't believe in near-death experiences at all. He had brought people back who were talking all this stuff. And he'd give him a shot of howl, or the antipsychotic drug just getting like, they're crazy. Yeah.

And then he had one. So his star, he started. in a hellish place. He had become an opioid addict and he and he was he had also become kind of verbally abusive to his kid. His father had been abusive to him. So there's all this stuff. And he's in this hellish place right away and he's being tortured. By these evil creatures. And I mean, it's like it's like everything you would imagine was not real, but he's describing it. And then he starts, he's, he said he called it repenting he told me i started crying out to god god forgive me he realized

i that's another thing they realized i deserve this and he starts crying out repenting god forgive me god forgive me and he's rescued from it now bizarrely he too later he encounters this god of light who gives him a life review love unconditional he comes back seeking him he's asking who Who are you? And he said, the first time he said, I thought maybe this was Jesus. And later, he has another encounter with the same God of light. And he asks, who are you, Lord? And he said, out of the light steps, Jesus.

Looks like Jesus. And he says to him, I am Jesus your Savior. And he drops to his knees and says, namaste. And he actually got baptized. Wow. I mean, again, you know, what I like to point out is these are not people who need to make up crazy wild stories to make a dollar. They have money, they have prestige, they are risking their careers to talk about this crazy stuff. It doesn't align with their religious background.

It doesn't make any sense. I'll say it bust their paradigm too because you're looking to encounter Krishna or one of these Hindu gods. That's your faith. And they're not there. And so what does that actually profit you as a, you have to throw away everything to that point that you believe? It doesn't make any sense. And what I like to remind people is we're not saying, oh, see, the Christian God is the right God, you guys are wrong, we're right. That's not it.

It's that God is the God of all people. He's a God of all people. And what he did through Jesus was make a way to remove every barrier between every human and himself. accept our pride. See, and I think that's so important because he gives us free will because God is love and he created us in love for love. And you can't love without free will. Yeah.

It's impossible. And so he has to give us the ability to say, I don't want you. I got this. And that is what hell is. Hell, I do not believe hell is like, well, you did all these things wrong, therefore you're are going to be punished in all these ways. Yeah. No, it is punishment without a doubt,

but it's not punishment for all the sins we've done. That punishment was paid for by Jesus on the cross. It's actually the consequences of saying to God, who is light and love and life and every good thing we've ever experienced, I don't need you. I got this. I don't want it. So where does God stay out?

There's only one place. And he created it. Who give people who don't want him what they think they want. So that's hell. And that's why it's a free-for-all. Separation. My will be done. That's the problem.

Well, that's Crowley is. It's angels, Nephilim, humans, all these creatures that have said, I don't want God's will. I want my will. And now it's a battle of will. Well, that's what I mean, Officer Crowley, which is the modern father of Satan. Modern Satanism, his whole thing was do what thou wilt. It's do what you want.

Right. Yeah. And that essentially is the worship of Satan. It's the- Burger King too. Have it your way. Yeah, we've had people describe on the show many times. We'll probably cut that.

Burger King will never be your sponsor. Well, it's interesting because we've had many people, you know, explain on the show that like Satanists don't actually believe in Satan. They just believe that they are like free to do whatever they want and be as debached as possible. I don't know. That's the deception. quote me on that, but what, okay, so I had a question about, what do you think? Do you think these people that are near-death experience, do you believe that they are still somewhat alive or

they are dead, but there's a moment and then does God heal the body? Because some of these stories you're describing frozen lake, car accidents, the body's dead, you know, stone to death in the New Testament? Like, he's dead. Oh, yeah. But then does God heal the person give him a second chance? Is it like, we're going to wipe away the physical consequences of what you just went through? So this is where I have changed my view of there is life and there's death. Yeah. And it's very interesting because one of the commonalities of near-death experiencers, about 30% talk about coming in this journey into the afterlife to a border or a boundary and it's represented different ways but very clearly they knew if I cross over that I cannot go back to earth.

Wanted no return. And then sometimes God even tells them that. Like you can come on, you can cross over here and come on with us to heaven or you can go back. But once you cross over, you can't go back. Yeah. So that's why I think they still are able to cry out to God. and make a temporal decision and he rescues them because they haven't crossed over into either

eternal life or eternal death but i my theory is once you cross over then your choices even choice when we say the word choice it implies one-dimensional linear time yeah right because if i if i make a choice and then i move on to the next moment i can't go back and change that choice so if it's a bad choice, my only hope is forgiveness or redemption. Yeah. Right. But if all choices and moments are happening simultaneously in an eternal now, then, and by the way, this is the story of scripture, right? Lucifer, you know, the highest angel that is a cherubim.

Yeah. Right? Yeah. He wants to rise above God or to be like. God. So it's the same, that's the same sin of pride, like not your will God, my will, and he is cast out of heaven, to the realm of the earth, interestingly. So that choice, there's, there's no grace or second chance because all that implies time, which is why I think God now creates a time capsule called Earth, a place that for a time temporarily, he shrinks down the experience of the good

and he shrinks down, he limits the experience of the bad. You know, I think the question like, if God is so loving and all powerful, how could he allow so much evil and suffering? What if he's not? Yeah. What if this is actually a very muted one one thousandth? Yeah. so that we who now live in the knowledge of both good and evil for a short time can experience my will be done versus gods will be done and we can see both we have a taste of heaven and a taste of hell and we can choose yeah this is a near-death experience well it's something last time this whole thing is well it's uh it's an experience of both the yeah that's what it says i mean right when we were cast out of eden it was that we tasted of the tree of both the knowledge of good,

but we already had good. We just got deceived in thinking there was something we didn't have. But good was all we needed, but now we know not good. John, you said something last time that stuck with me was that like, if you had to distill it all, you'd say that this life is a contest of loyalty. At the end of it's our loyalty to either God or to ourselves, right? And I just want to clear something up because I know people are going to listen to this and be like, oh, so we can live however we want,

and then we get a second shot when we die. But it sounds the way I understand what you're saying, and I want to ask you this, but it's like is this, this life is our choice, right? It is like, when we die, the NDE people, they get a shot to come back, right? But because they, you know, so Ecclesiastes 12 talks about,

and this is, you know, this is Solomon, right? And all his wisdom or someone like him. and says, pursue God while you still can't, while you're young, don't wait until the silver cord is cut. Yeah. And then the body goes back to ashes and the soul goes before God. Right.

Well, interestingly, I've interviewed near-death experiencers who said something similar. So Penny Whiprode, who I interviewed, So she is there and she died of anaphylactic shock. Her heart stopped. This is in a hospital. Right. You know, so that's the thing to note is like many of these are, they're documented.

Hospital records. No heartbeat, 45 minutes, hour and 45 minutes. I mean, that's a long time. It's a long time. Yeah. And we can go into that. But like, if this is in the brain, where are those memories being stored when you have flat EEG, right? So, but Penny's there with her grandmother.

So she sees her grandmother. And she remembers her grandmother dead. Now, Penny was a Christian, but she also struggled a lot, right? Like, she wasn't even sure there was a heaven. She's like, that feels kind of fantastical. She's a nurse. And her grandmother's there, and she recognizes her, and she goes, like, I thought you were dead. and she says, oh, no, no, no, dear, there's no death.

You're either alive on earth or you're super alive here. And she says, you know this. And she said, no, I don't. She said, yeah, you learned it in school. He said, you know, and basically she quoted the first law of thermodynamics. Energy is neither created nor destroyed. It just changes form. And she said, that's God's law borrowed by.

man and then so then Penny says to her so I'm dead and she said no you're in a special situation she said you are you are alive here but you're still tied to your body on earth if you choose to go on the silver cord will be cut and you will go on but you still could go back so that's that's very interesting very interesting and yeah i mean even in cases of having jesus meet you know even when we say a near-death experience is either in heaven or hell well i i interviewed an australian professor who he's he's in this space and jesus is there with the angels and he's getting a life review and all all that and and he says is this heaven And Jesus says, no, we've come out to meet you.

This is the place that all souls must journey on their way. And we've come out to meet you and to make sure everything is okay. And so here's another interesting thing is he decides he does want to go back because he had a daughter who was disabled and he thought she's going to need me. Yeah. And Jesus respected that. And he said to the angel, go check the vessel. This is very fascinating. Check the vessel.

Go check the vessel. And Dr. Perry watches the angel kind of go down. And he had out a heart attack and he was now in an ambulance and then come back and he said, it's okay. And so then he re-inhabits. So there was some sort of checking to make sure that it's possible? So there's a, this is a fascinating, you know, question mark in my head is that I think, I think God created all of this with laws, obviously. Sure.

But there are laws that we haven't even discovered or don't understand and even spiritual laws and even laws of how he works through his angelic host. Oh, yeah. And they are working with him and with us. and he plays by his own rules most of the time, which is a bizarre thing. Well, I think that's what we come across, and Luke and I have to stay in the bizarre space because if some of these stories are true,

like it's easy to very Christian to say, none of these stories are true because of this one verse, and I can't put anything else into the bucket. But like we hear really bizarre ghost haunting stories. A minute ago you're talking about crossing over, and it does feel a lot like the stories they are emailed into us or even more bizarre stuff like old ghost ships or haunted railroads. How does that work?

I don't know. What do you think? There seems to be like you said, the spiritual laws, it feels like almost a glitch in the matrix where something kind of gets... You're going way back now. This is back a little farther. But something is like...

I did a whole message once on the Matrix. but it's like something gets popped out and it's like stuck sort of you know like the spiritual mechanics might even have some kind of every once in a while like a soul is sort of stuck in a loop almost it sounds like because these are like trauma loops

usually they're murdered or there's some tragedy and it's almost like they have a moment to and people will say you know we helped it cross over as the language and I don't know I don't know. I mean, but that. And I don't know either. That on those, I don't know. Makes Christians frustrated. They get mad about that. So, if there's, if there's one thing, and I,

there's one thing I've had to live with is tension. Yeah. And, you know, it's funny because I always ask the Lord, like, why did you have me become an engineer? Like, if this is really what you wanted me to do, like, why don't, why not go to Bible college or something, you know? And it's like, and he's reminded me of things like my thermodynamics class where I remember like sitting there all night long trying to understand how do these things all fit together and then all of a sudden it pops and it's like oh I see it yeah and I think that there's there's so much like that I mean shoot look at quantum mechanics right right the things we're discovering about light and quantum mechanics and the brain I just interviewed a neurologist yeah um

Oh my gosh. So a lot of these things, it's like we've got to hold it in tension sometimes. Yeah. Until either it makes sense. But it doesn't mean you just go both feet and jump in. Yeah. I think you can know things that are true that God is revealed in scripture through Jesus, right? Sure.

Sure. And you don't have to go against those to then ask questions and wonder and let there be a little tension. And I think that's sometimes Christians, it's like an all or nothing, but they're not comfortable in the tension. That's kind of what I was asking. I want to ask on that because I think this is, what I, what I, people may try to take from this is like, I can, I don't have to follow Jesus here because when, I die, I'll get a chance then. No, I don't think that's true. Well, that's what I want to say, because I think we, we're, you're talking about a subset of people that have this and they come back. So they get this option sort of, but here's what I do think is true.

And I don't know. I don't know if everybody has this kind of liminal experience. Yeah. In death before they cross over that border or boundary into eternity. Okay. I don't know. Um, I do.

think that's what scripture is talking about when it says no one has been to heaven and come back except Jesus well then then people go like well then these near death experiences are all liars no I think that's talking about full experience of eternity yeah like into the city of God like you are well and even then but see even then people have been into the city of God they're It's not like fully experiencing it in their full body. But I don't think it's, we think of, we think of things in very spatial terms. Right. Right.

But think about this. If I live in Austin, we're in Nashville, if with a thought I could be in Austin, how far away is Austin? Plain ride. It's not a plane ride. It's a thought. Well, I mean, right now it is. But it's no distance at all, you see. So if movement and travel and things work differently on the other side, distance,

spatial things. So I think they spatially see these places and they're real and they're testifying that they're real and it's what you see in the Bible. But temporally they're still tied to Earth. And so their choices have not been eternalized. That's what I think. And I take that because Jesus taught and he said, you know, in the parable of, I don't if it was a parable. You know, theologians think it wasn't a parable of Lazarus and the rich,

the rich man in Lazarus. Yeah. And, you know, in that, you know, one's in hell and one's in heaven, or in Abraham's bosom. Right. Yeah. And he says there's a great divide so that you can't go to them and they can't go to you. Right. So when some near-death experience or say, I think they can get out. Yeah. That's an interpretation. Now, maybe it's an interpretation in that what they understood is that these people had chosen this and they still have a free will. And theoretically, they could choose and God is always like this. Because they're still tied to their body.

But, well, no, I'm talking about they're now seeing people in hell. Okay. Yeah. Because I've had some near-death experiencers who have seen. people in hell. And some have said, there is no getting out. And some have said, if they wanted to, they could. Here's the problem.

It's like, I think at a certain point, there's no even awareness of the ability. In other words, we devolve. We either evolve or we devolve on the other side. So there. We either become more and more of who God intended, and it's amazing. That's the, you know, spiritual body plus, but or we devolve. So you remember Howard Storm who got dragged, you know, deceived into hell?

Well, those people who mauled him, he didn't think they were demons. He said they were my kindred spirits. So they're atheists. Well, he said, I realized that. that they on earth had lived for themselves just like I had lived for myself. And so he said, if I stayed, I was going to become one of them.

They were just, you know, basically victimizing him for fun. It was the only fun they had. I mean, I think I'm trying to speak to like, you know, obviously engineering background, the skeptics. I mean, we can see there are fundamentally deep, more complex spiritual laws, right? And I think the ancients knew that. Like just some of the effigy mounds,

the way they would bury people, and they would go back to these mounds, and they would do sort of this ancient witchcraft. I think they were trying to hack some of these spiritual laws. I mean, you look like the Egyptians and some of the stuff they did, and there's like the Book of the Dead, and they knew all this. Somebody hacked into the code and tried to rewrite,

or they had knowledge of it. And now we're in a modern era where we don't even necessarily understand that Jesus had to become a human being, that is a spiritual law. That God needed to become a human to save humans. That was the rule. That was the reason he became a human. And we kind of reverse engineer a little bit. But I think on our show, we've learned, like, that was necessary. So there's a spiritual law of like how a human being can say, you know what I mean? Like God has to be fully in our, sort of in our dimension, in our space to rescue us and I think that that's the miracle that we miss. Yeah, we just think it's a sin

situation. But there, there seems to be a code. There seems to be a law. There seems to be a framework. And we uncover little bits and pieces. I'm sure you, you're constantly dealing with that. But are you describing the code is much bigger, the more expansive and harder to understand and it's not a one story, one-off sort of, oh, when you die, it's boom or bump. You know, like very simple like explanations for all these things well yeah I don't think there's very simple explanations I mean but that's how generally Christians that's the mindset well let's go we try to I think we the mysteries you talked about the top it's like trying to distill that down to something that's like binary is probably very hard yeah well everything is either a demon

you know what I mean like it's just there's like one simple answer for everything and you either dead or you're alive. There's no in between. There's no like moment. There's no like calling out to God and like you're falling into it into the abyss. Well, here's what I know from near death experiences is God is pursuing people to the very last moment. I don't know where that is or when that is. But you're 45 minutes dead on table though. Like how long does it go? I don't know. this is a good segue though because I think like so weird

we were talking about like hell hellish experiences and then Howard Storm to what Heidi to these different people who call upon God and he

shows up so you wrote a whole book on on how people describe and experience God and we talked about it with the Hindu guys that they're like

hey there's not my Hindu gods this is a different this is something different yeah can And you're an analytical guy, what can you give us data point wise about what people say and how they describe God to be? Because it's talking about Jesus coming through,

which is people that don't believe in Jesus, Jewish people, Hindu people. They experience Jesus, which has to be this massive paradigm, Buddhist, paradigm, mous. Yes. Yeah, so I mean, that's the wild, and this is why I'm doing this. Yeah.

You know, we passed the leadership of the church we started. Right. Now your global baby. Well, because I believe that God is raising these testimonies up. Think about this couldn't have happened even seven years ago, maybe five years ago. Right. Right. Definitely not 40 years ago when there's no internet.

You couldn't connect with them. You couldn't find any of these people that wrote a book, like you found when your dad was passing away. Right. Right. Yeah. And that was very limited research, right? Right. And so, but, you know, in this, for the second book, imagine the God of Heaven.

I was able to interview 70 people from every continent, except Antarctica, no penguins. Some Russian scientists. Yeah. But people from every religious background, and they are testifying about the same God. So, Beebe in Tehran has had a heart attack. she's she's there she's chi so she's waiting for the prophet ali to come and judge her that's what they believe happens at death and and she's terrified because she thinks you know i'm going to go to hell and this man majestic called him like a like a royal person beard and a robe but glowing of light

and a sceptor comes and says i am and that's it and boom, she's back in her body. Moses. But with a peace and a joy she's never had before. And she starts out on this search. Like, who was this God? She knew it was God who said, I am. And so, so yeah, she discovers this is the same God who appeared as a brilliant light that never burned the bush on Mount Sinai.

Yeah. And said, I am. Moses says, what is your name? What should I call you? Jesus said, I am the light of the world. whoever follows me will never walk in darkness have the light of life you know he even said before you know Abraham long to see my day uh and he said and you know they get all mad like you think you're better in Abraham or you know and he says before Abraham was born I am he's he's doing a

clear callback you know to Mount to Mount Sinai so you got Beebe in Tehran another Muslim in Rwanda he was in a mom. So a leader. Like a high-ranking guy. He used to, he, he would debate Christians. That's, that's what he loved to do. His, his name is Sweetique. He's a great guy. Fascinating story. But long story short, he gets blood cancer. His, so his mother, his mother was a Hutu and his father was a Tutsi, and it was in the genocide in Rwanda. So it broke their family up. His mother was also worship the goddess Beko. It's kind of like Wiccan witchcraft.

African witchcraft. Father was a Muslim mom, a sheikh. So they're doing everything they can to heal their son and none of it worked. And the mother in desperation as he's as Swardik's about to die goes to the Anglican church and said, I heard sometimes

people are healed in the name of Jesus. Will you pray for my son? And they said, if you'll pray in the name of Jesus, we will too. And they fasted and prayed. And Swardique starts off in what he called a slaughterhouse. That's how he described it. Is it like a butchery, he said, where they, were they, and these three demonic looking, or I don't even know if they're demonic. They might have been just demented people. I don't know, but they come in like with axes and chopping off. They're going to, they're just going to tear them up to pieces and into the room comes this man of light white robe and a beard and the light shoots right

through Swedeek and he sees into him with everything and those three are gone and he holds out his hands like this to him and he has a little smile almost like a little smile on his face but serious too and he sees the holes in his wrists like right here and Swadik had accidentally seen the passion of the Christ when he got three, yeah, accidentally, accidentally, when he got three free movie tickets. So they're in Kirogali. And so he said, so I knew who this was because I saw the holes. And he, and Jesus says to him, I died for mankind. You are among those I died for. Never deny it and tell it to everyone. And Swadeek then sits up. and a sheet falls off of him

and all of a sudden everybody is yelling and screaming and running and he's like, what's going on? Yeah. He was at his own burial. So he seized the grave right there. They were doing the Muslim burial ceremony and he sits out.

How long has he been dead? He'd been dead overnight. Oh, so wild. So today he's an Anglican priest and he has had seven attes. attempts on his life. I bet. Even his father tried to kill him.

Isn't that crazy? So, you know, and these are not just stories. Like, I know these people. Yeah, yeah. You know, and they're still at it. So people, so people, people encounter Jesus. He has the marks of crucifixion. He appears as just full of light and what other attributes people describe.

Because we've heard stories from our last episode and now in this one, it's like, you know it sounds like almost like sometimes you get the picture of of god in revelation which is like hair like wool and eyes like fire and white robes and then sometimes sometimes you get Jesus and well and I think that's true so he doesn't always appear the same and you know that's that's the New Testament right right so he appears in his resurrection body The road to Mayas. And he appears to the disciples and he says like, I'm not a ghost. Touch me.

Yeah. Hey, give me some food. And he eats fish with him. And he hugs him. So, but then he goes right through the wall. Right. Right. So, and or he rises up in his body and the clouds and he's gone.

He disappears. And then on the road to Amas, like you said, they don't recognize him. But didn't our hearts burn. Yeah. But they don't recognize him until he chooses. and then all of a sudden, oh, we did recognize it. So there is the John Revelation 1 glorified Jesus with the eyes of fire. Yeah, yeah, hair like wool.

And so the hair that's white like wool and the robe, it's the light. The light is so brilliant. It looks like hair like white wool. And sometimes Jesus appears like that. So to Santosh, that's what he saw. But sometimes, so like with Heidi, so this is trippy. So Heidi said, you know, he just looked like a normal Jewish guy. Yeah.

And she said, and he wasn't perfect. And I said, what do you mean? He said, well, his nose was a little crooked. And I said, what? The carpenter's son. Yeah. Well, you know, I don't know, or broken. He's a boxer. He's still, well, he got pretty, go read how he was brutalized. Exactly. And he, for some reason, still has the scars. I think they are the, because I think they're the marks of his love. I think that's why he keeps him. But so here's the fascinating thing. She texted me not too long ago. You know, they've done new research on the shroud of Turin. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, yeah. So I wrote that off a long time ago. Yeah. So I looked into that, you know, and they had carbon-dated it, and it was 15th century. Yeah.

Well, those were the pieces that they had reattached. Well, now what they've discovered is, you know, it was in a fire in the church in Toren, and the nuns probably sewed 15th century cloth back into it, and that's what they carbon-dated. Now they've taken other pieces and carbon-dated it either side, 100 years of the first century. Sure. Right? Oh, yeah. So when Jesus was alive.

Now, the wild thing is, you know, we still don't know the technology. that made the image from the inside out very thin. We don't have that technology today. We can't replicate it. But it's three-dimensional information that's in the cloth. Right. So they fed that into AI and shown what that person in that barrel cloth looked like. Yeah.

And he had like 300 marks on his body, like where he'd been tortured. Yeah. But she sends me that picture. the AI rendition. Maybe we can find it in the edit. But she sends me that, I'll send it to you. She sends me that picture.

And this is Heidi. And she says, there he is. Notice the nose. Wow. And check it out. Because it's a little offset. Yeah.

I love that. That's wow. So is there a different understanding of like the traditional trinitarian view of God based on the sightings or like God the Father and God the Son. So I think the wilder thing is you have people like a Heidi who again grew up Jewish with an atheist dad and an agnostic mom. Yeah.

Yeah. was told Jesus is a hoax, yet in her near-death experience, as a 16-year-old girl, it's Jesus there with her, right? But then, and this is the thing about God, you guys. It's like, God is so much better

than we can possibly imagine. So much grander, so much bigger, so much more beautiful and, like, wow, just, you can't, there are no words, but he's also so much more relatable. and personable, fun? Yeah.

Not a word we'd use, right? Yeah. But that's what Heidi experienced. So Jesus then, he gives her a life review, so he shows her a life review. And then he grabs her hand and he gets this huge grin on his face. This is what Heidi told me. And he said, she said, we took off. It's like we just started flying like super fast.

first across earth and then out and then she could see earth kind of disappearing behind her and she said it was like we were like Superman and Lois Lane and we are laughing and it was the funnest thing and it but we were surfing a wave of light. She said I looked down and I was barefoot and Jesus is barefoot and it was like a wave but it was a wave of light of all these colors and I reached down and I could feel it in my hands. Oh. And he says to her, her, isn't this the greatest? Isn't this so cool? Yeah. And I said to her, he said, isn't this so cool? And she said, yeah. He's getting, dude, getting pitted and barreled with Jesus. Well, he knows, he knows how to relate to us. She's a 16 year old who loved riding horseback, love speed. Yeah.

But he takes her. So she called it like we were coming toward this light that looked like this infinite light and we crossed into it and she said now so she said things that sometimes Christians and I at first are like yeah I don't know wait but again they're trying to describe things that are hard to understand right so she said we crossed it and it was like everything became one thing and that one thing was God now you could interpret that so some come back and interpret like see you know like kind of pantheistic right i'm god your god everything's god that's not what he said so she said and suddenly what she said is that i had the understanding that god is the source of everything and he is everywhere but he's also beyond it so he's he's theologians call it

imminent he's in everything scripture says that for for in him we live and move and have our being. Yeah. And all things are sustained by the, by the powerful word of God. So he's, he's sustaining everything. But then she finds herself sitting on the father's lap.

Hmm. Which when I first heard that, I'll be honest, I was like, probably not. Yeah. You know, like that's,

that's just kind of. Yeah. So many of these, honestly, the first time, because I'm still skeptical, I was like, I don't think so.

Yeah, I don't know, yeah. But when I hear three, four, five, saying a similar thing, even like sitting on God's lap. And she said it was like he was embracing me.

And I asked, okay, so where was Jesus? And she said, well, he was still there, but he was separate, but they were one. Yeah. And she said, I don't know, I don't know how to explain it. And that's a kind of thing. And so then Jesus, when he puts her back in her body. Well, Jesus is still human, right? At that moment.

Partly human, or at least. Appears that way. He appeared in his human. I think he's still as human. Well, he is. Yeah. I mean, that's the 3.0. That's the body 3.0.

Yeah. So he is. He is forever. Intertwined himself with humanity, with his creation. That makes perfect sense to me. And that's kind of why I asked the question. But that's biblical. Well, I mean, it's a father-son-related.

relationship and I think that because we can't view anything four dimensionally or five dimension and when we read these stories like it's like I take only begotten son to be a very spiritual description of the father's son relationship that and they're communicating with each other one back and forth so I mean that's what the show's done to me is help me understand those complex things which we can't fully understand but more than I did right when I was like wait a minute where it doesn't make sense or it sounds like contradiction. Yeah, how can he... It doesn't have to be contradictions. How can Jesus say, not my will, but yours be done? That doesn't make any sense. If he's all encompassed... Unless the whole universe is predicated on a relationship.

So that relationship is actually what we were created for. Exactly. And it's why we value love so much. Yeah. And because there is at the center of the universe, relationship. Exactly. Yeah. And that's exactly what near-death experiences, like Heidi, who knew nothing about, she didn't believe in Jesus at the time. She does now. And when Jesus put her back in her body, he left, but he also put his presence with her. Holy Spirit, that's who she decided

later as she started to learn. So after that, she goes to Israel and she like, she just wanted to learn her roots, but also Jesus roots. Yeah. And just fascinating. So, yeah, people experience the triune nature of God. But like, so Dean Braxton, another guy, he. But the relationship as well.

He had sepsis. He has hospital records dead an hour and 45 minutes. Yeah. And he talked about with me about, this the experience of you'd be speaking to Jesus but you also knew you were speaking to the Father and the Spirit and and he would say things like when well this is actually Randy who is a CEO who also had the same kind of experience and he said he started to realize when Jesus was with me speaking audibly verbally it was the son but when he was

speaking to me directly into my being, it was the spirit. And then he goes before the father who was like, I mean, power beyond you can imagine, but also love beyond you can imagine. So the father is not separate. They're not separate. And that's what Dean Braxton said. He said, we think, you know, father, son and spirit, one, two, three, but they're just one. They don't even think that way there.

That's what he said. They don't even think that. But again, so by analogy, so I put this analogy in Imagine the God of Heaven that helps me. It's always back to Flatland, man. You know, Edwin Abbott is just brilliant genius. It's helped me so much. So I use that a lot. But imagine if, you know, we create a two-dimensional flat world, right?

if I put my three fingers into their world, they're going to see me as three round slices in their flat two-dimensional world. But what if I say to them, well, I'm not actually three separate round slices. I'm actually one being. But three round slices can never in two dimensions be one. They have to remain three

because they don't have a third dimension to stack up into one unified. being. So what if in higher dimensional reality or beyond our dimensional reality, the father, son's spirit stack up into one unified being? We've talked about that with the flatline, like putting your finger into a piece of paper. And what you would see was just that ring of your finger. You wouldn't see the entirety of the, a slice. It's just a slice, right? And that's, we've talked about that in context of like UFOs and all kinds of different things that we would maybe try to understand as multi-dimensional, or interdimensional, whatever may be. And I think that's

such an interesting analogy if you have what would appear in our reality as three separate things are actually a single thing, just from like a mathematical or like a dimensional understanding of that, them being the same thing. But appearing, I mean, I think it's such a, it's like we can break your brain on these things. Well, near-death experiences, I think, confirm the reality of the triune nature of God. You know, Trinity, the words not in Scripture, but the description, the revelation of God is Father, Son, and Spirit, and Scripture. And they confirm it, even if they didn't know it or believe it. Well, I think all we can understand as a human being is like, we're all a son or a daughter. We all come like a pure genetic version of our father, right? So it's like they can be

one in pure genetics. It doesn't have to, you know what I'm saying? Like everything, here's like sort of a little blip of what we're supposed to figure out like you said the relationship how do you understand relationship if you can't come from something i mean obviously there's not perfect families down here you know some people don't know their parents they don't know where they came from but ultimately that's the that's the design of human beings to experience that relationship and then most men you know are frustrated because of the relationship with what their father right it always seems to be like a little blips and echoes of what we're supposed to figure out down here. What do you think the nature is of other beings to God and Jesus in heaven, to the

father and the son? Other beings like angelic beings or other creatures, creations. Other things around that relationship. And is there some sort of jealousy, some sort of confusion between what, what are we? Who are we in the story? Like we're not the only character. Did I, when in our first podcast, Did I give you my theory of even why Earth? I don't think so. I can't remember for that. Okay, so it's just a theory. Is it flat around?

Just kidding. Just kidding. So my theory is that, you know, it says that it was, this is God's plan before the creation of the world. Yeah. Right? So even before, what does before mean when you're outside of time? time, I don't know. But given that, and what we talked about of how angels are also created

beings who apparently have a free will, right? So they could love and worship God as well. So, and I don't know, was it was like this the first try or is it all one grand plan? Kind of tend to think it's all one grand plan. But so these eternal beings, some of them chose not God. And God, And God in his love gave them what they thought they wanted. So he creates a place where he will stay out. Ultimately, that would be hell, where he would completely stay out. But he then also creates earth and the realm of earth. And he allows these fallen beings to rule for a time, have their way.

and he creates humanity maybe in a eternal capsule called Eden surrounded by all the rest of it. I don't know. Yeah. I mean, there are questions I still have.

Sure. But with the choice, with giving us good and all the good, because that's all God can give is good, but also the forbidden fruit of the knowledge of good and evil,

when we choose to experience the knowledge of good and evil, Eden becomes one with this realm of time and space, this temporal realm that Satan is allowed to govern for a time, right? And so here's the kicker. I think that's why God assigns angels to minister to and watch over us. So it says angels are ministering spirits to watch over humanity, right? And we have guardian angels, it seems like. Jesus said their angel is always before my father in heaven.

I think we talked to the other podcasts in near-death experiencers talk about guardian angels, scribe angels, recording our lives, warrior angels, their cherubim, their seraphim. they're all kinds of creatures that we don't know of and haven't seen yet that near death experiencers talk about. But I think what he is doing on earth is allowing the angels who are still innocent. So they still have a free will and still could make an eternal decision to rebel, but they are guarding and ministering to us and learning. And it says, I think it's in Hebrews, even angels is talking about grace and how what God was doing through Jesus, why that was necessary for salvation, for forgiveness, and even angels long to look into these things.

So is what he is doing. And he's having angels apparently record our lives. So like when Howard Storm comes out of the hell, she's rescued by Jesus out of the hellish place, Jesus says, says to the angels, show him his life. They have the book of our lives that plays out as this life review. So I think that's what God is doing. Not only is he teaching us why Jesus was necessary, but also why choosing relationship with God and following God's will as opposed to my will. It's what Jesus taught us to do. You know, your will be. be done on earth because it's not as it is in heaven how i have to be willing right and i think

these innocent angels are learning without having to experience evil the the the lessons of both good and evil so that god is making eternal eternally free loving creatures both human and angelic that will never rebel again. In the new heaven and new earth. Right. Humans are like a, like a redemptive movie they get to watch and learn from, but they don't have to experience.

They're not in, you know, they didn't make that. I think that's true. Yeah. I don't know, but it's my theory. But it's interesting,

like a human choosing God with this dimensional gate between us. Veil. Has to be sort of an inspiration to them. Why would a human being choose God? They don't even know what it is. They don't even know. And why, why doesn't Jesus, like in these near-death experiences?

So this is what held me up for so long. If it's really God, why didn't he just say, hey, I'm God, I'm Jesus, I did this, pray this, do this. Yeah. But he doesn't. But he didn't with Saul. You know, the Apostle Paul who wrote most of the New Testament was arresting and killing Christians. When this brilliant God of light appears to him on the Damascus Road, Acts 9, right? Yeah.

And he says, who are you Lord? So he knows this is God. Yeah. And he says, I'm Jesus who you're persecuting. But he doesn't, Jesus doesn't tell him what to do. He doesn't explain the gospel. None of that. Why not?

Right there. Yeah. And we sometimes think that. But, you know, what I started to realize is, well, if that's what God wanted to do, he could do it. Not limited. Right. But he's always chosen.

So instead he says to Ananias, you go tell Paul what needs to happen, how he needs to be baptized in the name of Jesus. So that's the way God works. He works life by life by life to redeem people. So you believe angels watching humans work out their free will directly inspires their understanding of free will. Theoretically. Because it's like these guys look at the weird way that they're working out their free will.

Do you think that changed though? Well, no, I would, my understanding would be, I would think so, and I asked this question of you, but do you think that that paradigm shifted after the work of the cross? Like, do you think that there's a, you see the final victory at the cross of Christ? And that would essentially quell any further rebellions

from angels, because they kind of know here's, end game happened here. Like, you know, because at what point would you be like? Well, again, you have to, so the difficult thing is we can only talk about these things in our time. Well, in our timeline, yes, It's a linear timeline, right? And so one of the most telling things, a guy I just interviewed recently, had a reunion

with his brother who died 30 years ago in heaven. And he goes, I've missed you so much these last 30 years. And his brother who was in heaven goes, I thought I just came here yesterday. So it's like time even is like, what? Yeah. Well, I mean, we've actually had discussions, I think, which are fascinating. One, in a couple of our conferences with Timothy Albarino, which just talks about like the asleep in Christ, like when you just fall asleep.

And there's a hypothesis that we kind of sussed out, just chatting in front of a conference not recorded, was what if death is like a time event? In that sense, like we plot on, but like when we die, we arrive in heaven if we believe, but we arrived at the same time as all of our ancestors who believe they arrived just then as well. And maybe everybody who came after us,

I believe they arrived at the same time. So in that sense, time, the way we think about it, doesn't work that way. And he thinks he's been there for a day and it's been 30 years here. But he would have said, I just got here yesterday. And you're here now. It's a mindbender.

You know, Peter, Jesus' disciple said that in second, Peter 3.8. He said to the Lord, a day is like a thousand years and a thousand years like a day. And near death experiencers, the way they've described, they've said to me, there is no time. But then others have said, no, there was time, but there was all the time you ever needed. And then others have said,

I experienced the past, present, and future all at the same time, all in one moment. Yeah. But again, I can't even, it's like, right? We talked about this is like dimensional time, right? So the cube. What other, are there any other stories about, about this, though, about this, this aspect of like folks talking about, unless you want to go to Nate's cube thing? Oh, I do. So, so. Yeah, I mean, I, I, I, I mean, I, I've noodled on this, like from what near-death experiencers say. So, you know, we experience time linearly in one direction, one-dimensional time. But if you even had a second dimension of time, the way it would feel is that at every point on our timeline, there would be another infinite directional timeline.

You could stay in that moment forever before experiencing another moment. So that would be like two-dimensional time. If you wrap that actually into, think, picture more, I picture more of a globe. So imagine our timeline is the, is like the equator. And then second-dimensional time are the longitudinal timelines. Yeah. And then there's a point, the North Pole, that is a third-dimensional point in time from which you would experience all points in time simultaneously.

well that would be the alpha and the omega the beginning and the end in one third dimensional point in time and all created beings are inside of that yeah and the relationship in some dimension and the bigger question is god god has created time even in all dimensions so what does it mean that he's outside of that i don't know no constraint there's no constraint within i mean do you think that people then do people have indies and then experience like different points in time at the same time so yeah so like greg rickert was a guy i interviewed who um so he i don't think i even had him in the book when i when i was doing the that analogy i think it's the second book but he said he was he was there

with jesus he has a life review all that um and then he is experiencing the throne of God, he's experiencing heaven. And this angel that was kind of showing him around, he said, showed me this two-dimensional time portal. And he, he says, look, and he looks into this. And I can't even conceptualize what he was trying to describe to me, so I'm not doing a great job. But he said it was like, he looked into it and he was back in ancient Egypt.

watching this battle take place and he saw the pyramids and that's how he knew it was Egypt and it's like chariots and horses and all that and he's watching and he knew I can I can't go there but I can view it I can experience it but the viewing in heaven is complete and so he said what was weird is I could zoom in on one person and it was like I was experiencing everything they were experiencing. But I still knew I was separate here. So then, so it gets freakier. So then the angel shows him another point in time.

And he sees this young couple. And there's this like, and the guy has kind of funky hair and he notices her and she's really pretty. And then there's this blue orb of light like by her. stomach and he asked what is that and the angel said that's her that's her child yet to be born two years after that so here's the wild part so two years after that he's at a party um with his family and some friends of the family come and there's this little two year old girl who keeps coming up to him

is just enamored with him and the mom says to him I don't know why she's so enamored with you she really likes you and he looks at her and he realizes oh my gosh that's the woman I thought was

pretty and this must be her husband he doesn't have a funky haircut anymore and this must be that little girl that he had seen you know in that time portal do you think that's like when the Bible talks about like the host of heaven watching, watching or cheering us on,

like those of the believers, do you think that that's, I don't know. I mean, that happens in, yeah, the Hebrews 12. Yeah, that happens in real time now.

Like folks are like, I don't know. And this is, you know, so this is where, and again, you know, it's why,

it's why I try to make a case for the scriptures. So people understand the Bible is not just another book. Yeah. It's not. Yeah. And, you know, I'd love to spend some time going into some of that because we can get so confused.

And this is where near-death experiencers disagree. Yeah. Right. So some seem to indicate that people in heaven are not really disconnected from us or they don't feel disconnected from us like we feel their disconnection and that they can know what's going on here. Yeah. But they're not just sitting around doing nothing. Like they're busy. They're in the zone.

They're surfing. They're loving life. I hope that's true. Me too, actually. But some say no, they can't. And so I don't know. I mean, again, to me, I don't know the answer. They don't always agree, at least on their interpretation.

Again, what I'm trying to point out is these commonalities that they consistently report on is what the scriptures have been showing us. about the reality of the world to come, the afterlife, heaven, hell, God, Jesus, the city of God and revelation, the city of God and revela, all of it. And it's real life, you know? That's the thing I think people miss.

It is what near-death experiencers say, I was more alive. Yeah. The experiences are more real, and they're expanded in experience. Yeah, it's like we have a, have like a natural inclination to it's a downgrade of some time or it's a ghost grade it goes one of the two ethereal yeah less tangible yeah i was gonna ask you do you think that like when folks you talk about

folks that have died they don't realize they're dead do you think it's because we're restored to essentially our first estate and this is how we're meant to be that's a great you know i have never thought of that but i think that's a great point because that's always confused me like what do you mean you didn't know because a lot of them Dr. Mary Neal is spine surgeon, you know, and she's, I mean, she's trapped under a waterfall for 30 minutes. Right. She knew she was dying. But when I ask her, like, did you realize you were dead?

And she said, well, I didn't feel dead. I felt conscious and then more conscious. I felt alive and then more alive. So I never knew. But that is exactly how people describe. beings in like haunted houses. What do you mean? They don't know why they're,

it's almost like they're not there to scare and terrify the people that are still alive. They're almost confused. They don't know what they're doing. It's like they're sort of trapped. I don't think the ghosts know they're dead. I don't think that they're stuck in that sort of suspension.

I think my point was like we get reset, or we reset to Adam. Or we reset to pre-fall. where this is our, this is our actual, like, first estate. Like, that's why you don't know you're dead. Because you feel more alive. You're like, but you're still alive, though. I mean, like, from your perspective, you just almost like, like, I had an out of body experience.

It wasn't that I was, I didn't know I was having an out of body experience, but I was, I was clearly having one, you know. It's like your. What was the? It was a back street boy show, Nicknate. That would make me a football concussion. And I was like, it was a football concussion. I was sort of out of my body for about two hours.

Really? Yeah, it's a long time. It was really weird. Well, I don't know how long it was, actually. But you were concussed out, you were out for two hours. No, no, no. I had the concussion and then I couldn't. It was like I was in a whole other world.

It was like someone gave me a rolodex of all my dreams. I could just, I could go through them. I could remember every dream I ever had. Like dream dream like recurring dreams like naked at school or forgot that there's a show the next day It was like I was in a different part of my brain and it was like all stored there and I was like going like old yearbooks like what is this? What am I doing? And I couldn't remember. I couldn't remember any of the plays. I had to come out of the game because I couldn't remember like people's names. I didn't really know what was going on. So you were back conscious. I was conscious but I was like but you're still in this other realm? Then no what happened is I had a concussion and then I was everything went black. Then I was like came to for like it was like a couple seconds and I was like oh man and then I went back to the huddle Bride to like they were like looking at me like are you okay and I'm like I don't know and then like the play started and I didn't I couldn't remember where to go I couldn't remember what my job was I got to go you know all those guard slash kicker yeah yeah that's a tough

so you got to like block this guy but I couldn't remember so I came out I'm like I can't remember the coach was like pissed because he's like what are you doing what's what's happening right then I see what's happening right then I see I'm like block this guy's I can't remember it's like what's happening right then I I sat on the bench and then I floated out of myself. And I went somewhere else. But I was clearly about 10, 15 feet above myself. It was seeing the field, seeing the, watching myself sit there. But you're still sitting there. Yes.

I was a freshman in high school. Were you also aware of sitting there? Or were you completely disconnected from your body? No, no, no. I was disconnected. So I was like watching myself. So you got bumped into the astral. Yeah, I got bumped into the astral. old Rydell helmets weren't very good. They're not a lot of protection. But it's the closest thing I can

understand to that feeling you're describing. It was like, I didn't know I was, I knew I was out of my body, but he didn't know. Right. So you, and looking back on it, I have this just like, still frame old crappy 1995 JPEG in my head of me like seeing myself sit on the bench in the field. Like a 15 foot view, like almost like I'm up on a ladder looking down. Yeah. That's what I can see still. It's about the memory. And it was vivid? Yeah. Well, hard to say. Yeah. Just the, it was, it was also Halloween. So it was like one of the weirdest experiences. It was also Halloween. Yeah. And, uh, just throw it. Yeah. Just throw it out there. But just 15 years old, too dumb to really know like what was going on. No experience. Never felt anything like that before.

But there's no one like saying, hey, you're having an out of body experiences. Well, so here, so, you know, when Moody originally called it a near-death experience, and I don't actually like that term because most of the people I study are after-death experiences. Well, they, at least our version of clinical death. Yeah. No brainwaves. That's what I'm saying. 45 minutes, you're dead.

Yeah. There are no place to store memories. Yeah. Right. But many people like yourself at the point of death or great trauma sometimes do have. similar experiences. Yeah. And that's why he called it near death.

Because sometimes it's like someone coming into a car accident and they're screeching, they're about to hit and they leave their body. And it's even before the impact. Wow. So sometimes, and so I have. Wow. That's the whole, did we talk about, uh, Penfield, Wilder Penfield, the neurosurgeon back in the 50s.

So he did this wild. He was trying to cure epileptic patients. And he did the surgery where they would open the brains of epileptic patients. And he's trying to shock across different neural networks to heal it. And you can do this with them awake because the brain has no nerves in it. So you just numb around where. and pretty weird, right? But he pretty much mapped the brain that way.

So he was able, he was a materialist. So he thought the conscious is the brain. There's no soul. Until he starts doing this and he's zapping across places and all of a sudden like, the right arm would go up and the person would say, you made my right arm go up. I didn't do that. Penfield's like, who's the you saying,

I did that, not you, right? Like, so it actually changed his mind that there is a dualism of a body and soul. But he zapped a place where the patient would sometimes say, I'm leaving my body now. And they would like be going up out of their body. And then he would stop and they'd come back down into it. Now, skeptics like Dr. Michael Sherman, use that to say, so see, we know these near-death experiences are all in the brain. It's just, that's proof.

It's just all in the brain. Let's not proof. Because I've got 10 points that it being in the brain does not explain at all. Verifiable observations, blind people, seeing and seeing things that they would have nothing in their brain about. Reading stickers on top of the ceiling. Yeah, so all that. But, however, it might be that there is a trigger point in the brain that releases the soul. So that at the point of trauma, you know, that what do you, whether you call it the silver cord or the, you know, whatever, I don't know, that it triggers us.

So at trauma or at bodily death or at clinical death, it triggers our soul leaving. And that might be what DMT, ayahuasca, other gateway drugs may be truly doing that. They may be releasing the soul or astral projection or, you know. I was going to say that. John, we talked to like an ex-witch who basically said that she could ask us a project button. It was a biological function. She could actually biohiked figure out there's a way to do this to eject your spirit from your body. and she practiced it like a skill.

Right. To the point where she could do it. She could literally astral project herself out of her body. And it was just something that was in that way biological. Like she, that's the way she described it as a biological function. It might be a real spiritual experience. 100%.

I don't know for sure. Like Howard Storm, the guy who, he became a pastor, but he told me, you know, I mean, he was in the 70s in academia. So he said, I did LSD, I did ayahuasca. I did all these gateway drugs. And he said, my near-death experience was so much more real and vivid than any of those.

That's why I'm inclined to think of that there's, we're body, soul, and spirit. And that when you're talking about the astral, even talking about that experiment of the brain, like there's, maybe there's a biological way to separate spirit. but it sounds much different. The ask projection thing and what exists in witchcraft and the occult sounds very much different than what I'm hearing and I would surmise as like a soul experience

which is what an NDE sounds like. And I think that could be... I think that's true. And I think there might be though a spiritual aspect to it. What I tell people is just remember you're going into the second heaven. It's ruled by evil.

Psychedelics. That's, we've had a number of episodes. Yeah, you meet these very nice kind spirit beings who they want to guide you. Then you just test them. That's what scripture says. Test every spirit and say, were you sent by Jesus? Do you call Jesus your master? And just see what happens.

Who do you serve? You'll know. That's how you can know. You know, I think we talked about this in the last episode too, but like people who have near-death experiences, is suddenly can astral project as well. They have this ability all of a sudden, like they've been popped out of certain,

their shoulder got popped out a joint. Now they can pop it out and pop it back in the, almost with their spirit. It's really strange when you hear those things. It's like, I think sometimes they have, they come back with what we would call spiritual gifts, kind of like the, you know. The X man.

Well, I mean, so weird. You know, they come back with like, prophetic gifts or they can they can see something that's about to happen before it happens or yeah intuitive intuitive gifts healing gifts you know and so they they don't another interesting thing is many times also when they come back there are deceased spirits are they deceased spirits or are they demonic I don't know I know the answer but they want to channel through them Interesting. It's like they get marked maybe in that realm.

There's like they have a mark where people where these spirits are now like, hey, this. Or is it like, yeah, I think your elbow popped out maybe a good, or your shoulder popped out maybe a good one. It's like the veil is thinner. Yeah. Or the trigger is easier.

You know, I don't know. These are all questions I pondered sometimes. But it seems also. But they have, they have, when they tell them so some don't discern and they start going down

the road of mediumship it does not lead them to Jesus it leads them away but others but others tell them no and then they leave them alone

I mean that's how every experience is you know you wake up find your dad's guitar and you're in the closet and all of a sudden you're like playing it next thing you know you're in a band next you know you're like

you know like the human experience is one of it's just a slippery slope it's a slippery slope and all of a sudden you're like but i i think before you know it you're a rock and roll but it seems though there's also other spiritual laws where people will do especially when you interview some of the satanic ritual abuse stuff they do certain physical acts to unlock a spiritual gift that is used for evil right but they'll do certain types of sacrifices or ceremonies where there's blood involved and or horrific like torture, you know, and then they unlock something in some kid. They teach, you know, these kids

how to do these horrible things. And they know the rules. They know like, well, if we do, if we subject them to this kind of torture or abuse, this will happen. They'll get this gift. So it's so demented. It is, but it, it, I think we've looked

at the spiritual realm from 50 different views. Whether someone has a run in with a creature that's, you know, that seems to have these abilities. Where does it come from? What does it do? How do these Christians absolve that? How do we make sense of that?

Well, and that's why I say, you know, I don't know how to unless what the test scripture gives us, which is ask them where they come from. But some of those things are coming from the second heaven. So you'd be like all the like, there's many different beings and characters and entities in the second heaven that can come sort of tinker with us. So that's the other thing is the angelic apparently can take many forms as well.

Yeah. But what are they? Have you guys discovered that too? Well, what is an angel? Well, that's true. I mean, so angel is a, it's like saying Kleenex. Yeah. Well, like, there are lots of brands of Kleenex, right?

So Angel just means messenger. What do near death experiences say when angels look like what they are, how many types there are. I mean, I have on my to-do list to go deep into this. So I haven't gone deep into this, but just from my limited, so like Jim Woodford, the commercial airline pilot, I think we had talked about him. Yeah.

He had, well, first of all, you know, he had never prayed a day in his life. So he was like self-made miller. Millionaire commercial airline pilot. He's like, I don't need God. Yeah. As he's dying, he realizes, I've never thanked God for the things I thought or my own making. He realized this wasn't all my doing.

And so I think God's pursuing us to the last minute. And he cries out, forgive me, Lord. Because he said, you know when you're dying. He first sees where he was headed. So he sees what he calls us, it's like barren, but it's kind of rolling off darker and darker into this crevasse of like a deep abyss of, he said it was almost like charcoal like stone. And he looks, he was curious and he looks down into it and he sees like must have been thousands of miles away, but like a, like a, look almost like a campfire in the distance like a fire in the distance and then he hears a door open up and he sees this so he want to talk about i would never have believed that angels are like this

or demons are like this if i hadn't heard so many of them yeah i just would have thought that you're you know you've been watching to me late night hollywood but it's changed my mind to think that may behind some of these things we see that that's trying to terrorize us are real beings. I don't know. But he sees this creature that the way he described it reminded me of a ballrog. You know what I'm talking about in the Lord of the Rings? You know, it's like this creature coming out of the fire. It's huge.

It's massive. And it's on fire. And that's kind of like what he described. and it and it like smells him or something and comes bolting up. Wow. However deep that was. And it is and he just drops his knees and he's saying, God save me, help me, help me. And the creature says, Jim, I'm here for you.

We're here for you. Come, Jim. It's your time. And he was freaked out. He's like, it knew my name. It's like it had ownership of him Yeah Right so it was trying to claim what

What was its own But when he cries out then to God These three angels come and basically Knock it Battle it back in Like a real spiritual warfare It's a spiritual battle that he described Again he wasn't a believer

He didn't you know he hadn't read the Bible or anything So then he sees these three angels So one he described as 10 feet another like 12 feet another like 15 feet which again I would never have thought that except you would not believe how many near-death experiencers has this have described them somewhere between 10 and 15 feet yeah I don't know why big guys big guys and the the the one and so then he said they had like these incredibly violet eyes as they as they came up to him And he said they were like luminescent.

These very tall white robes. And he said these kind of like spikes coming off their shoulders that he realized it almost made like a halo of light. But he realized that that was probably their wings and that the light that was coming off of them kind of collided to make that halo effect. Interesting. Interesting. And the violet eyes, I've not heard from anyone else. So sometimes they describe other kinds of eyes, but he described these violet eyes. The 10-foot one was his guardian that he said he was.

So later the guardian told him he was the 2,031st human he had guarded. Wow. Wow. Wow. That's interesting. That's wow. That's cool. Which will also throw a curveball if you ever do the math.

Yeah. Right. So generations. Yeah. I think it's interesting over this conversation of like how often human beings think that sort of the collective knowledge of these things doesn't bore its way into our brains over time. You know, like the life review is like, The Ghost of Christmas Pass, the Scrooge story where he gets to go back and see or it's a wonderful life.

Oh, I totally wonder if Dickens didn't have a near-death experience because it's so. Yeah. Or it's a wonderful life too. Yeah. Or like the field of dreams where you're not allowed to go back a certain point and it's heaven and hell. It's like this place where the ghosts can come back and relive their life. And so many of these stories that have just been like, I mean, obviously that's an 80s movie, but I think they lifted that story from other stories. other stories that human beings have sort of created a framework of the afterlife and the rules and understanding the spiritual realm. And we don't really come up with anything original. We just sort of lift from, you know, our overlap with heaven. And it is real. And I think it bores itself

into how the halos of like cartoons with angels with halos. Where does that come from? Probably some near-death experience and some cartoonist just, you know, like that stuff doesn't just kind of come out of the brain somewhere. It's based on something, I think. John, you just made our Christmas reel. So this year, just look out for blurry creatures.

We'll talk about Dickens and the wonderful life being probably had an NDE. I mean, the reason, he also describes this middle 12 foot angel as a scribe angel. Yeah. And I said, why? He said,

well, because he had like, he's running sick down. Writing stuff. And then the third, the largest. that he said was clearly in charge was a warrior. And interestingly, like, almost like the Roman leather, you know, with the things on the arms and the leather.

I mean, why? I have no idea, right? But enough have described things like that that have made me go, okay, well, maybe there's something to it. So all these, there is a whole hierarchy of God's cruiser. creations. Yeah. You know, and I mean, Paul tells us that in Ephesians chapter six. Well, clearly we, if they're guarding us, there's protections. There's, there's a need to keep things going. It's like, you know, a lot of people have jobs now. They have security guards around them so they can do their job. We're here to do something and we need help and we need protection from something,

which is one of my last questions for you. So in this space, it seems like, there's beings that are trying to get you from going from first heaven to third heaven. And they're trying to almost, even in that, like, okay, you died, you got to go, you got to walk down the street and go in this building, right? But on the way, there's stuff that's going to pop out of the alleyway and try to, like, take you down. It seems like you're not always. Okay, but it seems like there's some sort of even. Not always. Beings are trying to like.

Well, so many of the near-death experiencers knew that, that. this welcoming committee, if they came basically to the Earth realm, that they were there to welcome and love and guide them and protect them. Exactly. And every time I would ask, so Dr. Neal was one of them. So the welcoming committee was right there by the riverbank. Yeah. And she said, and to protect me.

Another woman to protect me. Another guy to protect me. And I would always ask, protect you from what? And they would always say, I don't know. I just intuitively knew they were there. to protect me. So I do think, yeah, there is a battle going on. And you know, like Daniel... For souls, like in the limbo and the in between. Well, it's not just, I think it's not just battle for souls. I think it's also battle for purpose. So think about it. Like Daniel

chapter 10, it's kind of like we get a little window cut into the spiritual world right there. So Daniel's praying and fasting and asking God for... for things and this angel appears to him and says to him, but three weeks later. And he says to him, from the first day you started to pray and fast, I was sent, but I've been detained by the prince of Persia for three weeks. Okay. So the delay to the answer was the battle going on. Now, interestingly, you know, Persia's modern day Iran, right? And the Prince of Persia then would be some kind of hierarchical authority over the realm of Persia. Yeah.

Right? Yeah. And then he says after he tells Daniel his message, he says, now I'm going back to fight against the Prince of Persia and then the Prince of Greece will come. Michael, your Archangel is the only one who's supporting me to fight them. Yeah. That's kind of like, what? Yeah.

So some have told me, near death experiences have told me, we don't realize how much God is doing to protect us all the time. Yeah, right. And that, and it's an interesting thing to realize that God is an empower. He's not a controller. Satan's a controller. Evil is a controller. God is a giver of opportunity and free will and empowerment.

So he creates angelic beings and tariff him and cheref him and councils if you want to go there and humans. And he empowers us to work alongside him if we're willing. My last question, John, would be this. like with all of this for almost 40 years, as also as a former pastor as a Christian, where does this land for you? Like you don't want to create theology out of this, right? Because these are people's experiences,

but what does this do to your biblical theology, if you will? What is the compilation of these stories, experiences, interviews, the understanding of people's near-death experiences? What is, how has that impacted? your theology. Because I think the danger with things like this and anything in the blurry spaces, you can't make that your theology, but it does inform you about theology, right? Yeah. I think it can bring light and color to the truths that God has given us. You know, for me, it has in a lot of ways.

Like the things that Scripture says, even let's take the simplest thing, God is love. All right. Well, honestly, that lands pretty flat. Right. Right? In this world because he is love. And I believe he is the source of all the love we've ever experienced for a child, from a spouse, from a grandparent or parent.

But it's all filtered through a broken humanity. And so we don't know what that really means. Well, when you hear the way near-death experiencers describe being in God's presence and complete, like there's no one who's knowing you better. No one who's been through every high and every low knows all your sins and faults and everything and is crazy about you enough to take a bullet literally and unconditionally loves you and wants to do life with you and want you to enjoy life with him. I mean, that kind of love, words can't explain. And so when you hear it again and again and again from these people's

experience, God loves you takes on a whole new depth of meaning. And it changes the way you live because you realize he is the relationship I've always wanted. And all other relationships just go deeper and better in that experience. I love it. I don't think that there's anything wrong with it. And I don't think you can understand, like the story you just told before that, of Prince of Persia,

without some sort of context. I think a lot of pastors just glint, they just hop over those and keep going to the stuff that we can understand. But there's a really important lesson to understand Daniel and this prayer and this thing being held up and what he's doing in the spiritual realm.

Why do we fast? maybe fasting is allowing us to get back to those spiritual laws, right? That we don't, some of them we have to discover. So we just, we, we, we, I think if we don't have context, we will put 90% of the Bible over here and just focus on the 10% that we can sort of get. And I think that creates a lot of Christians in our realm who walk away from their faith. Right. Because there's no, there's no answers. Okay.

What are these things? What's going on? Why is God doing X, Y, Z? and we say, well, let's just talk about the gospel. We're not willing to wrestle with it long enough to make sense of it. Yeah, these stories will set those, give you so much context. And like you said, it will let it with meaning context and help you go, okay, this is how it could be possible. And I think the biggest so what of all this.

And, you know, honestly, I'm not as interested in near-death experiences as I'm interested in what they point to. Yeah. Because what they point to is that this life is not the one to try to hold on to. You know, it's Hebrews 11. Don't live for this life. Live this life in light of the life to come. I mean, this life has purpose and meaning. It does.

And in fact, every moment has purpose and meaning. Yeah. Because it's just the first chapter of the rest of the book. Well, it seems to extend perfectly. You know, you would, you know, you hop out of the car, get in a new one. You literally are in the next car before you even. even know you're out of it. Exactly. And so then you get the life review. So everything you do now does echo and it means and it's important. And so live like eternity is today because it is.

You almost quote a gladiator there. I did. Are we doing life? Echoes and eternity. Shadows and dust. But it's true. It's like it's happening like eternity is happening right now whether you accept it or you don't. So like what you do is important. Yeah. The little things you do. And there's just so much more I appreciate. Thank you for coming in and and dropping all this on it. I know you've had this conversation a billion times. That's fun. Try to have a new one. We need a trilogy, John.

We didn't even, we got to like 20% of our notes. Oh, I know. I know. We didn't. We got a lot to get to. Well, and you just brought up. I mean, everything you said, I've got like five shoots going off. You know, like even just the life of heaven.

And what you start to realize of the way we live our lives does have an impact on how we enter into the life to come. Yeah. And that's a whole. you know, we probably next time. The trilogy, we'll have to get you back here.

But yeah, thanks, John. The return of the king. The final book. Tell our fans and listeners and where they can interact with you and support you. We have a podcast now.

Let's go. Imagine Heaven podcast with John Burke. Yeah. And then imagine heaven and imagine the God of Heaven are books you can get anywhere. Yeah. So appreciate it.

So it's so fascinating. It's helpful. especially for the ADD kind of brains that that sort of catalog all the weird and the strange and don't know where to file at all. But I think you can draw lines to all these stories. You know, you can draw lines to the weirdest of the weird. And still, it can still kind of

excite and set the gospel on fire in a good way. Oh, totally. Yeah. Awesome. Many blurry creatures out there. Thanks, John. Thank you.