The Confessionals - 754: The NDE Conspiracy

Episode Date: May 6, 2025

Please pray for Tony's wife, Lindsay, as she battles breast cancer. Your prayers make a difference!If you’re able, consider helping the Merkel family with medical expenses by donating to Lindsay’s GoFundMe: https://gofund.me/b8f76890Description:In episode 754: The NDE Conspiracy, Tony is joined by Shaun Tabatt, author of The NDE Conspiracy, for a deep-dive into the strange, murky realm of near-death experiences—and the sinister deceptions hiding behind the light. What begins as a discussion about NDEs quickly spirals into a multi-layered exposé on spiritual hijacking, second-heaven warfare, and false encounters with “beings of light” that mask a demonic agenda. From children recalling past lives to mediums unknowingly channeling familiar spirits, Shaun reveals how the enemy counterfeits heavenly encounters in order to detour souls into New Age delusion.But this isn’t just theory—it’s grounded in documented cases, verified out-of-body perceptions, and firsthand accounts of people who died, met their “spirit guide,” and came back with dark, twisted theology. Tony and Shaun connect dots between NDEs, alien abductions, soul-trapping tech, and biblical portals in the second heaven—suggesting that the real battle for our souls may not start after death, but in the space between. In a realm full of lies that look like light, this episode is a reminder that discernment matters—and that truth still breaks through the counterfeit.Become a member for ad-free listening, extra shows, and exclusive access to our social media app: theconfessionalspodcast.com/joinThe Confessionals Social Network App:Apple Store: https://apple.co/3UxhPrhGoogle Play: https://bit.ly/43mk8kZMy New YouTube ChannelMerkel IRL: @merkelIRLMy First Sermon: Unseen BattlesSasquatch and The Missing Man: merkelfilms.comMerkel Media Apparel: merkmerch.comSPONSORSSIMPLISAFE TODAY: simplisafe.com/confessionalsGHOSTBED: GhostBed.com/tonyCONNECT WITH USWebsite: www.theconfessionalspodcast.comEmail: [e-mail] TabattWebsite | The NDE ConspiracyMAILING ADDRESS:Merkel Media257 N. Calderwood St., #301Alcoa, TN 37701SOCIAL MEDIASubscribe to our YouTube: https://bit.ly/2TlREaIReddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/theconfessionals/Discord: https://discord.gg/KDn4D2uw7hShow Instagram: theconfessionalspodcastTony's Instagram: tonymerkelofficialFacebook: www.facebook.com/TheConfessionalsPodcasTwitter: @TConfessionalsTony's Twitter: @tony_merkelProduced by: @jack_theproducerOUTRO MUSICJoel Thomas - Head In The CloudsYouTube | Apple Music | Spotify

Hey guys, before we get to this week's show, I just want to let you know from the bottom of my heart and from the bottom of my family's heart, we greatly appreciate all the prayers and support being offered up to us right now. This has absolutely been mind-blowing and paradigm shifting, not only the diagnosis of my wife's breast cancer, but the reaction from the audience has been absolutely life-changing. Never in the last eight years have we ever felt this amount of love from every single one of you that we have now. This has been absolutely a blessing for us to experience. So thank you so much for offering up the prayers, emailing us, DMing us, commenting, saying, you are praying. And we simply ask that you continue to pray for Lindsay and complete healing

in her body because we believe that God can heal her from this cancer. Thank you so much from the bottom of our heart for supporting this family through the GoFundMe efforts and offering up prayer for healing. It is absolutely felt and we greatly appreciate it. If you feel led to give through the GoFundMe to help us with the mounting medical bills, the link is in the description of this episode. But if you can't give, it's absolutely fine. Please just give your prayers. Offer up your prayers for 100% complete healing in Lindsay's body so that we can move past. this and continue marching forward towards the calling that God has placed on me and my family's life. With that said, let's get to this week's show.

Merkel. Media's here. This was all circulating around the base that a giant had to kill, but no one was supposed to talk about it. I saw three long, boning fingers, reach up underneath the door, curl up to grab it, and then disappear. When he came over to me, dude, he slithered over to me. And this giant comes out of the cave and they're all frozen.

And he starts running and firing up this giant. Well, the giant moves. He's got a spear in one hand and he's running really fast. And spears Dan holds him up like this. Somebody else, shoot him in the face, shoot him in the face. They basically decapitated. Got person, got farser, got fars him. got spurson when he got about to blow his head off.

I feel something pulling at my leg, and I look over, and there are two small, gray, and they're literally, I'm getting pulled off the bed. I reached my hand into this bush, and I touch air. Couldn't breathe, and I couldn't move, because I know I'm seeing a monster. Welcome to the show, everybody, you're listening to The Confessionals podcast. I'm your host, Tony Merkel. Thanks for being here. If you've a crazy, wild experience, you want to share with me on the show, go ahead and shoot me an email.

My email address is contact at the confessionalspodcast.com. That's contact at the confessionalspodcast.com. Or go to the website, the confessionalspodcast.com, hit the contact section, and you can reach me that way as well. Either works for me, just get a hold of me. If you want more shows on a weekly basis, you can get that through the access of our social media network. Just go to the confessionalspodcast.com slash join or hit the join button in the top right corner. And you can become a member and get access to extra shows on. a social media app exclusively made for members of the Confessionals podcast. It's available in the

app stores. Once you become a member, you'll be able to download and use your credentials to log in and access not only the content, but the entire community we have built there. So go ahead and check it out, the confessionalspodcast.com slash join. All right, today we have Sean Tabett, the author of the brand new book, the NDE conspiracy, NDE standing for near-death experiences. And he and I go in deep today talking about how Satan might be hijacking NDE experiences, manipulating what people see after death, and why it eerily mirrors alien abductions, soul trapping, and demonic possession. Let's get to Sean Tabit right now. Today we have Sean Tabit in the studio. How are you, sir? Oh, I'm great, man. It's good to be here.

Nice to see you again. Again, yes. So when's the first time we got connect? It was after armed media, Right? You reached out? I think we met in person for the first time at Allen's conference last summer. Yeah. Did we meet in person there? I feel like that was the thing that you emailed.

Evan was like, you need to meet Tony and I, I didn't want to like jump into everybody being so excited to talk to you because I go to lots of calls. Oh, you know, because I'm so popular. But with my job, I'm in lots of green rooms. And so, you know, if I feel like it's more advantageous

for you to get to connect with other people there, like I'm not going to be like, hi, I'm Sean, I work in publishing. You should know me. I know. And I was like, because you reached out and you emailed saying, you know, you hadn't had a chance to connect and we were going to do an episode for your show. Right. Right. And you had kept on getting pulled into meetings. And after being around the Destiny Image people, I'm like, oh yeah, they get pulled into meetings. We do. We do. But yeah, I remember you mentioning about Harrison House. And, you know, I don't know who the Who's who in the publishing world.

And I still don't, frankly. But it turns out that destiny image was part of my destiny. Yes. You're part of the family now. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So anybody listening right now, first of all, Sean, you work for Destiny Image.

It's a publishing house. And you just came out with a book, another book through them. But I just signed a contract to write a book with Destiny. image. Congratulations. Thank you, sir. Now the work must begin. But I'm excited about it. I really am. And so for the audience, you know, wondering what it's going to be about, take a while I guess, right? So this first book is going to be about, you know, the journey of the podcast where it started, how it started, and where we're at today and the journey, my personal journey through these stories, because the show has absolutely molded me as a human being in a good way, I feel. So,

But thank you for the warm welcome and you guys bringing me in. It's just, it's been a great experience so far. So you came out with this book, the NDE conspiracy. I'll hold it up for the camera. But this is not your first book. No. Even on the topic. No, it's my fourth book in three years.

I don't necessarily recommend doing that many books in three years, but here we are. Yeah. So the first few books were, were they coming from the podcast, like stories from the podcast? Yeah, Randy Kay is a good friend of mine. And we did a show for about a year and a half called Two Christian Dudes. And that was me, a guy who's done a thousand plus interviews working with Randy, who himself is a near-death experiencer. And us coming at these conversations from our own perspectives and the angles we chose really connected with people. And so it just took off. And that spawned multiple book projects. It launched Randy K. Ministries. His ministry is huge now. His YouTube channel is huge.

And that all started from that little podcast. We just did off the cuff after the interview Randy and I did for his book, Dying to Me, Jesus went viral. And so, so yeah, that's not the complete backstory, but that certainly got these books, made these books come to life. You know what happened? I had Randy on my show once. Do you know what happened before that show started? No, I don't think I've ever heard this story.

There was an oopsie. I was in a hurry and I was rushing around that week and I had several interviews I was doing. And I knew I had Randy coming up and I wasn't very familiar with him. And I prepared for the interview for the wrong book. He's got, I think, three, three books related to his NDE. Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, before we started recording, I said, I said to Ryan who's sitting here, I said how, you know, I'm like a riff king. Like I had to lean into that hard. And I, and I, And I felt terrible. In fact, when I was at NRB, I saw Randy, and I apologized again. He's like, oh, it's not a big deal. But I just felt bad because I was like, man, like, you know, when you bring an author on, you want to have at least a book right. Right.

Right. But so this new book is a lot different from the previous ones because this one is a lot more of your perspective. Right. Of what you've picked up. And I'm very interested in it for many different reasons. In fact, NDE stories has been something. that has been sprinkled throughout the podcast.

Sure. I remember the first time I had an NDE story was a married couple. He was in a car accident, I believe. This was years ago. I think it was episode 200 something. And he, from the car accident, was dead for about 40 plus minutes. And he comes back and he has brain damage. And to this day, as far as I know, he still has brain damage that you can hear it in his

speech. And it wasn't terrible. But I think he felt self-conscious, so he had his wife with him when we recorded so that, you know, she could interpret, I guess. But I could understand everything to saying. But I called it, I think, I think I called it from heaven to hell and back or something like that, to heaven, hell and back. And we can get into that because I know you and I were talking about the beforehand. But he came back with this message of wanting to share with the world, heaven is real. Hell is real. Get your life on track with God. Because when you're, done here, you are going somewhere else. And I thought it was a very encouraging story. In fact, it's one that I tend to send to people when they ask certain questions. And then I had a woman on after I moved here to Tennessee. She was in the news. And I just stumbled across. I think I had the app on my phone news break and it came up on my phone. And it was a Memphis, Tennessee woman. and she had an NDE experience and she was talking about it and was making the news.

So I was like, oh, let me invite her on the show. And talk about a different perspective. Like, she had this experience. And one of the common things I'm sure you've seen it is people talk about how they almost didn't want to leave. Right. Oh, absolutely. Yeah. And they always clarify, I love my family.

I love my kids, but I didn't want to come back. And she was like that. But when she came back, I don't remember tons of her story, but it became very apparent to me that when she came back, she went from being an atheist to being very new age, all-world religion, you know, everything's the right answer, nothing's the wrong answer. And I was just like, for me, I was like,

how do I make sense of two different people who have died, went somewhere, had some kind of interaction, came back with such bizarre differently told stories. And I thought, who can I talk about this to? Good thing I showed up to that. One thing to consider is how close is somebody to their actual experience? And on average, and this is based on research done by Dr. Jeffrey Long at the Near Death Experience Research Foundation, he's surveyed thousands and thousands of NDEs from across the world.

He says on average it takes seven years for somebody to come to terms with what they they saw, what they encountered in the midst of their near-death experience. Wow. I like to say it takes seven years for the human brain to deal with kind of like the download they got on the other side, just this overwhelming, crazy experience. So that's one thing. I think when you, people are consistent over time. Like it's like people have interviewed somebody like closer to their experience and years

later. Like often their memory of the events is just as clear, you know, one year out, you know, as it might be 15 years later. but I feel like when it's a little bit more raw, it's maybe comes across differently when after somebody's been dealing with this for seven years or 10 years and kind of accepted their experience. You know, the people who have the heavenly experiences,

they tend to be more saturated in the love of God and they just want to tell everybody about Jesus and they're very evangelistic versus the people who have the hell experiences tend to be like, I got to get my life in order. Brother, you got to get your life. We all got to get our life in order. And so there's definitely

a ministry bent I see off of either the heaven or the hell experiences. But the gal you described who came back with all this other stuff, that's kind of the premise I try to make in this book, is Satan is intentionally hijacking some of these near-death experiences. So Randy and I have a good friend, Brian Melvin, and he was working at a construction site, and his foreman for the site had gone to Mexico the weekend previously. And his Jeep broke down and overheated. So he He grabs some of the coolers that they use for water in the construction site and filled them with river water in Mexico. And they're out working and it's hot and kind of protocol was you could grab anybody's cooler out of the truck and drink out of it on the site. Well, Brian accidentally grabs this cooler full of river water and he gets cholera and that's how he dies.

But in his near-earth experience, he ends up in this space where he sees what looks like the house that he grew up in as a child. And people are there welcoming him. Brian, welcome. We're so glad you're here. And so it seems like a traditional like welcoming committee that somebody might experience when they're going into heaven. But a ways into it, he sees what looks like his mom. And in that moment, he's like, wait a minute, my mom's not dead. Why would she be here welcoming me into heaven? He would tell you if he'd woken up or been resuscitated in that early part of the experience, he would have thought, man, I went to heaven. I'm good with God. I'm going to go to heaven next time. But when he began to realize something was

fishy. And it seems like there's always some kind of a tell. That's when everything shifted and all those what looked like people or the souls of departed people began to shift in these serpent-like demon creatures and one of them actually takes him into hell. Really? So that was like Randy's in my first like encounter with like overt deception in the midst of an NDE. But on the other hand, I think you have like what you described with that woman you interviewed where people will go to what they think is heaven, they encounter this being of light that just seems like it's all love. And it'll usually be like, everything, I'm in everything, everything's in me, and everybody goes to heaven. And then they'll come back with these weird theological ideas. One of the crazier ones I found that I share in the book,

there is this woman who was undergoing a surgical procedure. She's under anesthesia, and they give her too much anesthesia, and she dies. And she encounters a being of light. And this being tells her that things like cannibalism and rape and murder, those aren't bad. They're just like soul growth and preparation for what's to come kind of a thing. And I don't even think you need half a moral comes to go like, no, that's not pretty evil. And so on the one hand, you have like Brian's experience that's an overt, clearly a twist, a demonic twist and a near-death experience. And then you have these ones where it's all vague and descript. You know, a lot of times when people have a heavenly near-death experience, they'll encounter Jesus or God the Father and sometimes even

the Holy Spirit, but it's clear that it's God and it's obvious and, you know, God's trying to make a connection with those people. He often manifests in those experiences in ways that relate to what they need in those moments or it might, like somebody who's had father woundedness and father trauma will sit in the father's lap kind of a thing. Like, it's very intentional. And then you have the, you know, that vague being of light. Like is that Satan or a demon masquerading like an angel of light or masquerading as God? Because again, I think the tell there is like you described from the woman you interviewed. They come back with these ideas that they don't fit with what we read in scripture. They don't fit with Orthodox historic Christian teaching. So a lot of these experiences,

there's just something a little bit off where you're like, is that, is that really legitimate? So I, with his story, Brian, right? Yeah. So his story is that if he would have come back too soon, right? He wouldn't have got the full picture. And that really makes you wonder how many people, if they, and from what I understand, like there's not really a control over how fast you come back. Right.

But that's fascinating. Now, all right, so based on that, moving into some maybe perspectives that we need to explore. So if somebody, if somebody's having an NDE and they're experiencing something that's kind of like

not fitting the, the theological paradigm of traditional Christian theology. How would somebody make sense of that when it comes to the idea that when we die, shouldn't God

just be in control of the whole thing? How is Satan hijacking? Which I'm not arguing with you on because I think Satan hijacking things and I definitely want to get into the idea of how the NDE mirrors UFO abductions greatly. There is this real hijacking going on. And we talk about a lot of crazy stuff on this show. But how do you grapple with

that concept? I'm sure you've kind of thought about it. Yeah, I mean, I don't have a solid answer. Like, this is kind of a working theory that I'm trying to understand. You know, somehow they're in some kind of a different spiritual dimension or plane. Like, I don't know the mechanics of that, but they're in an ethereal out of this world space, it seems. Ironically, Randy and I I had interviewed a guy who had more of one of these other kinds of experiences. Like, he encountered some beautiful things, but there's a lot of tells in his experience from like, I don't know. But interestingly, so to kind of support the idea that they're in some kind of another plane, he had a friend who, I don't think she was a practicing medium.

I want to say she was some kind of like a Reiki healer or something. And she was, in quotes, praying for him, I guess, be the best. I don't believe she was a Christian at all. but she somehow kind of projected or manifested herself into his experience on the other side when he was in a coma, which is fascinating to me. But in terms of like the mechanics of how it works, how Satan hijacks it, I can't tell you specifically how that works. So I would say that the projection is really interesting because recently I came across a man who has not answered my emails. I'm trying to get him on the show, but he doesn't come from a Christian person. perspective, but he's some kind of scientist, and he's created a way to be able to project

thoughts into people's dreams while they're dreaming. And he actually created a way where, like, you and I are sleeping, and we're both connected to a machine, and he'll send something from the machine to you, and then you'll communicate to what he was sent, and it gets sent over to this person while they're dreaming, and there's just, there's just, like, tapping into the consciousness. And it's just, it's very, it's, I find, mind a very dangerous, dangerous, but interesting, you know. Right. And it's just, it kind of presents the whole idea of the deeper aspects of the spiritual

realm and what that, what it even means and what it looks like. And, you know, not that this is NDE related, but there's this idea of, have you ever heard of this idea called soul trapping? No. No, that's new to me. It's wild. And it's been popping up more and more through people's experiences. And there are people who are talking about when they're in the middle of a, and this might

actually relate. I don't know now that I'm thinking about it. Because a lot of this has to do with people who are experiencing an abduction situation. Sure. And while they're in the middle of that abduction situation, either themselves or they see other people being sometimes like hooked up to some kind of technology. and their perception is that their souls are being sucked out of the body while they're in this experience. And I didn't know how to frame it in my mind for a while until I had a friend here in studio.

And we were talking about dogman, historical dog man, which, by the way, it goes back thousands of years. It's depicted on maps and ancient, you know, world travelers talk about these dog-headed people. but I brought this up with him and he brought up his job and he works for a church where they have so many questions coming in about the Bible they hired him to just study the Bible. And so that's all he does all day long

and he answers people's questions and email. And he just pulled this out of the hat. It was Ezekiel, I think it's Ezekiel 1318. And it talks about how I guess there were women being reprimanded for sewing bracelets that they were attaching to their wrists and hunting for human souls.

And it just kind of opened that that paradigm up and it's like, well, what does that mean? You know, and I still have not had anybody come up to me and say, oh, that's actually, you don't have to worry about that. That's just, you know, let me tell you how to understand it. Just don't start accepting bracelets from random people. Well, the things I think is interesting, like,

obviously you're kind of widely read and experiencing conversations in kind of this fringe space, if you will, sort of between the paranormal and the supernatural. What I've found through the years just being widely read has been helpful. For instance, Randy Kay, and I refer to Randy a lot, he's one of my closest, in terms of near-death experiences, I probably know them best out of all the people that I've met, but I've heard him share his story 50 to 100 times, so I'm very familiar. But, you know, I've read about people who like travel in the spirit and people who are projecting themselves and doing astral travel and people will often describe some kind of a cord

or a gold thread or something that connects to the belly button of their body when they're above it or traveling in the spirit, if you will. Well, interestingly enough, when Randy's spirit left his body, he felt a tugging at his belly button as his soul left his physical body. So there are little things where if you're kind of familiar with the very broad conversations happening in the paranormal and supernatural space. Some of these things just come and you're like, oh, that's really interesting. I feel like you see a lot of circumstances

where people are operating in common grace principles of how God set up the world. It's sort of like, which team are you playing for is kind of the challenge where even interestingly enough, and I share this briefly in the book. I interviewed practicing medium who's written extensively in the near-depth experience space

and I really enjoyed his book. So I had him on the podcast, and I had a disclaimer on the podcast, front of the show. And I would just say, hey, you know, this is this guy. We have completely opposing world views. We are very different. But his book was really helpful. I'd like some of his research. And one of the fun things I got to do in that conversation was ask him about his work as a medium. And I've had a bunch of prophetic training through the years in the charismatic church space I'm a part of. And so he went for it and was let me ask whatever I wanted. And so I was like,

so you describe in the book when a spirit manifests or shows up in the room, you have this like tingle, spidey sense, something that comes on, you know, tell me what that feels like. And we kind of went through a bunch of random stuff. And the thing that I found ironic is a lot of what he described that he was happening in his body or interpreting that he was like sensing or seeing was like step and step with a lot of the prophetic training I've had through the years. And so I thought it was ironic that, you know, working on the prophetic side as a Christian, I'm partnering with the Holy Spirit. And I would say that mediums are partnering with demons or familiar spirits. It's one of the challenges you have in talking with a person like that is in their worldview,

demons aren't real. Or they'll often think demons aren't real. These are just altruistic spirit guides who are helping them. And they believe it's just the souls of a departed lost one that is manifesting through them, you know, to help somebody reconnect with grandma kind of a thing. In their worldview, they don't believe that they're demons. Now, if you talk to like practicing mediums who are, you know, they became believers and they're following Jesus, they'll tell you on this side of their journey, they realize they were partnering with demons and familiar spirit.

spirits, but somebody who's in the midst of that, they may actually think they're being helpful to people to reconnect with their lost loved ones. But if it's, you know, appointed once for a soul to live and then they're in the afterlife from a Christian worldview perspective, that can only be demons and familiar spirits. It can't be the soul of a departed loved one. And even if you ask like, because like if you talk to exorcists and deliverance ministers, the whole ghost conversation and what happens with consciousness and spirits, that comes up a lot. Even like super experience exorcists will tell you they can like maybe account for there could be some circumstance if god allows it that a soul could be trapped between the earth and heaven but that's like a less than

one percent kind of a chance so if that's a thing it should be the exception and not and not the rule versus with how mediums operate it seems like it's the rule because gosh there's spirits popping up all the time pulling them in left and right that's interesting because uh we we often find and what i've been of talking more about recently with like UFO abduction stuff is this idea of hijacking God's creation. Right. And we see that throughout all of scripture, the idea that the enemy will come and mirror and try to hijack what God has already created. And so if if you have these psychics trying to operate in one power and authority, then there is the other side of it as well, which is the prophetic and things like that. That's really interesting. And actually, I just, I, I, I think underneath

the umbrella of the hijacking, I find that really interesting. Satan, Satan hijacking. What would you say? Like an NDE? Or would it be like hijacking just literally somebody's transition? Like, I'm assuming if somebody has an experience that is an NDE experience and they're not, it's not of God. Right. I'm assuming Satan's not the one sending them back. What do you think? I mean, underneath that perspective,

if they're having an experience where they turn into lizard people or whatever, right? Right. Like Joseph Zee would say, you know, the wicked lizard overlords. That's actually part of Brian's experience. Interestingly enough, he went to some kind of a, it sounded like it was a garden or a park that had statues and art pieces. And one of them was this lizard-like being that was part of some native culture somewhere. And it was a being that ushers people into the afterlife.

And it completely mirrored what he saw in his near-death experience, which is just a fascinating aside. But he saw an artistic representation of this, like, lizard-like, serpent-like being walking through a park that had these statues and art pieces, ironically. So, I mean, really what we're paying. a picture of is that the spiritual warfare that the human experiences on this side of life doesn't end here. Right. Potentially. Well, I think in the case of a near-death experience, like somebody's sick in a coma,

near-death, whatever it might be, however it works out, their soul leaves their body, you know, and it crosses the veil somehow into the afterlife. And, you know, whether they have a very, what I would call a traditional heaven or hell near-death experience, you know, that's one thing. And then there's all these kind of other sorts of experiences. I mean, there's no, why couldn't we be spiritually deceived once our spirit leaves our body? Like, I don't know. You know, again, I can't tell you the mechanics of how it works.

But, you know, somehow the person who has one of these off-endees, their spirit has left their body. And then there's in some kind of another state, another dimension. I can't tell you how it works specifically. But they've ended up somewhere where somebody else is controlling the narrative, if you will. maybe, you know, maybe they're just entering into a hellish NDE and that's how it manifests, you know, because a lot of people of hell NDE's, it'll be, you know, fire and brimstone and what looks like prison-like cells or jail cells and people repeatedly being tortured over and over relating to the things they did, uh, in their life on earth. I mean, that's a very typical

story. But, you know, why, why couldn't, you know, they enter into some kind of other circumstance simulation of something, if you will? Um, it's not any. crazier than the more traditional hell NDE's. But I mean, there's enough of these, these stories of people with these other kinds of experiences. There's literally something happening. Now, how they interpret it, that's going to be based on their worldview a lot of times, or even a lot of people, when they have an experience, they're trying to make sense of it, and they'll just start Googling it. And they could end up with, you know, these organizations where they lean more like new agey and secular to try to understand these, or they could

end up talking to Christians who are wrestling with these things. So even that could have a bearing on how they, you know, really wrestle with their experience is the, the group they connect with because they're trying to find people to understand them and help them deal with it and, you know, make sense of, you know, what happened. Why was I sent back kind of a thing? So just like the person who, you know, has lost a loved one and they're looking for encouragement because their grandma passed away or another friend or loved one passed away, it's a 50-50 chance where they're going to end up. I've met people at both, I went to two conferences back to back last summer. one was this more new age leaning near-death experience conference and then the week after I went to Randy Kay's Heaven Conference and I met people at both conferences who told me they were searching on Google and YouTube because they lost somebody looking for conversations about heaven in the afterlife and I met people, they ended up at that more new agey conference and they would tell you about their spirit guy they found now and the medium that helped them and all these things and I met people at Randy's conference who either said, you know, they found a bunch of our two Christian dudes.

episodes and I encouraged them. I even met somebody who said she had initially found more of the new agey near death experience content and then she discovered the videos Randy and I made and she realized watching our videos, she was getting into dark stuff pursuing all that other kind of those interviews and messages. So, you know, whether it's an experience you're trying to deal with it or somebody who's lost a loved one, it's kind of at the, you know, algorithms behest what kind of content they get served and that could lead them into darkness or lead them towards the light and towards Jesus. So oddly people's eternal destinies are at stake, which is funny to think about for podcast interviews and books and NDE content. But you go from grandma passed away to, you know, my spirit

guides an owl name this and I go see my medium all the time. I mean, if you interview exorcist or deliverance ministers, there are so many stories of people who it started out as simply consulting a psychic or a medium. And then they start having all kinds of crazy demonic stuff manifesting in their life over time. You wouldn't think that just talking about near-death experience stories, there's so much in the balance, yet people's eternal destinies are impacted by the types of stories they take in. It's interesting. Again, I don't want to be jumping the gun with the UFO abduction stuff, but I'm seeing the mirroring here because a friend of mine, her name is, she goes by fringe on X, and she talks about how before she started connecting dots that

she was going through abduction scenarios. Right. She was a Calvinist. And then she comes to curse with what she's going through, and she goes through these different stages where I think she goes from, like, goes to atheist. She's like, God ain't real, to this new age. And she becomes this very new agey person. And it was through her communication with her spirit guides that she realized, whatever

they said to her, I think she told me, but I don't remember what they said. Whatever they said to her, she was like, hold on a second, if that's true, then this is all a lie and I should get back in line with the God. And so she went full circle and now I don't think she's Calvinist, but I don't know how you can be. Calvin is going through this stuff.

But I mean, I find an interest in her full circle and it's kind of what you're talking about too. Now, with like, if we want to talk like logistics of this, right. I don't know. And there's a lot of teaching.

on third heaven, second heaven, first heaven. I know Paul talks about being taken up to the third heaven. And outside of that, I don't know if there is an actual biblical defining of what the first and second heaven is. We have years of theological discussions and theologians sharing their thoughts, you know, the first heaven, what that could be, the first heaven is here, or first heaven is the sky above us, second heaven cosmos.

But I hear different perspectives. Everybody lands on third heaven where God resides. Is it possible in your mind, your perspective, that when somebody dies and they're going to appear before God, they have to go from the first heaven here through the second heaven, to get to the third heaven and the hijacking happening

in the second heaven where the spiritual warfare is happening because in my perspective, like Daniel 10, when Daniel starts praying to receive understanding of the vision, Spirit Prince of Persia interferes with the responding angel.

All that whole scene interaction in my mind, from my perspective, happened in the second heaven. This spiritual realm where these things happen. The warfare is happening. That's my perspective. I'm open to be changed.

I might have to steal that. I like that. Well, because there's a lot of times. So somebody is entering into their experience. Their soul leaves their body. They'll have an out-of-body experience where they're typically sort of here on earth momentarily, able to interact with their environment.

Sometimes it's like very brief. Other times people like, didn't even realize I was dead. I tried to pet my dog. I tried to turn the light on and my hands went through everything. Or Jim Woodford's a good friend of mine. He talks about how he went out to look at a field on his, property and got out of his, he had taken some drugs, he overdosed. It's a longer story. But he, and then he's like, man, that must have worked. I felt so much better. And he gets out

of his truck and he turns around and looks back and he's like, there's somebody like passed out over the steering wheel of my truck. I'm going to give that guy a piece of his mind. And he realized, oh, crap, that's me. Like, he didn't even realize he was dead. So people entered in this out-of-body experience. And then they'll tend to either start, you know, being raised up towards the sky seeing a light or a tunnel and that seems to be like a threshold where they would cross over maybe into that second heaven. A lot of people share stories where once they go through the light and the tunnel so they've crossed the veil, so to speak, sometimes they'll come to a place where like Randy saw angels and demons kind of warring over him until he entered

into the next part of his experience. I've had people describe coming to a place where it looks lush and heavenly one direction and stark and brown grass and nasty and there's a pit the other direction. And so people do often describe coming to some kind of a liminal in between space where often there are demonic creatures and angels. And then usually there's a threshold where they'll come to a gate. And it's typically a gate to heaven. And that's where they'll meet their welcoming party. And a lot of times if they're going to be sent back, they're not allowed to go past the gate. or if they are allowed past the gate, sometimes those people will still be the ones that come back.

Otherwise, we wouldn't know their stories. But I think that idea of sort of an in-between, like a second heaven in-between earth and the place where God dwells is very likely, at least with the many accounts I've heard. And I had somebody, Lance, I always do his last name wrong. Walna? Lance Walno?

Yeah. Wallnow, right? I always want to say Waldo. I don't know why. But I know he's been around a long time. Sure. But I just discovered him not too long ago. He likes whiteboards.

Yes, he does. I have a friend that likes whiteboards too, you know, Joseph Z. But Lance, I was on pray.com. And his video just pops up right on the front page. And I watch it. It was about 30 minutes long. And he had this whole, and I can't remember everything he talked about. But he had this whole teaching about first, second, third heaven.

I wish I could find it somewhere else. elves. And he used a whiteboard and he drew it out. And he was talking about how there's and I forget what scripture he was talking about, but like this direct pipeline, Christ to us. And he was drawing it with the heavens. And the way he drew it, it was like, it was like there's this piercing between from the third heaven to the first heaven. It's like this supernatural highway, Jacob's ladder, you know, just boom, right? Right. But it really, it really, it really, really drew in my mind the other side of that wall, right? You have this pipeline, Jagu's ladder, whatever it is.

But there's all this space here that's existing. And I found it really interesting. And I just, I'm sitting here thinking, I'm hearing you talk. I'm like, I wonder if the hijacking is happening in that space. That in between space of the second heaven. Like Rabbi Felix Alperin's another friend of mine. He talks about in his near-death experience being on what kind of look like a glass floor. and he could see demonic creatures below him.

Really? So I think he would probably say he was up in the third heaven in God's presence, yet he could see demonic creatures below him, which is interesting. It's really interesting. Isn't that there's that almost mirrors, and I'm not a scholar on this. I've avoided a lot of revelation my entire legacy. I thought it was just too much for me to understand. Right.

So when it comes to the temple, when they're talking about building the temple, temple and the, what was it? It's like we were just talking about it. I wish Jack was here right now because he would be able to tell me, but unfortunately he had to produce. So he's, he left us alone. But somewhere, and Ryan, if you know what I'm talking about, you can just chime in from across the room. But in the temple, when they built the temple, it was standing, or maybe this was in Revelation, it was standing on, it was like a bowl of water or something, a pool of water standing on the back of like these bowls. And my pastor was talking about this, he'd be the perfect one for this, but he was talking to me, talking to us about how that was like,

like above the water was like the image of heaven. And looking down through the water was almost like a looking glass or something, right? That's what those are my words. It's very much like what Felix described. to him, it looked at a glass floor. Wow. That's incredible. I wish I knew that was coming up so I could look at it more. So I knew exactly what to say because I'm telling everybody listening right now,

there is real connections there. Real connections. That's incredible. I think, too, though, there are so many things at play because we approach the Bible from our modern lens. And then there's understanding the worldview of all the ancient near eastern people and what we read in scripture. and then we're trying to make sense of like what's the structure of heaven and the third heaven,

second. So, you know, there's so many forces coming to play with trying to picture that, picturing that in our head. This is wild. This is going to drive me nuts. I'm going to, Revelation 4, I think, is what I do. I'm just going to let it that, though. So you're going to remember tonight we're trying to go sleep. It's going to drive me nuts. I have a really hard time of letting go things that are blowing my mind and I can't think of it. But even our conversation today, this idea of are people entering into the second heaven in that liminal space between where God is? I've never thought of that before. And I've been studying this stuff for seven years.

So that's new to me. I said, oh, that actually makes sense. Thank you for that. Absolutely. Absolutely. And in fact, you even said before we start recording, you said that every time you do an interview, there's just a new. It takes a new. And it's funny because, you know, when I, I've never intended to start working in this space.

Like, when I grew up, I'm going to talk about, let's like you with what you talk about in your podcast and whatnot. But I remember, let me paint the picture for how I kind of fell into this space. I didn't tell that whole story. So in Christian retail. So I worked in Christian retail back in the 90s and you had a whole slew of heaven books. Heaven is for real and a few others that were super popular. You had one or two where people recanted their stories like they lied effectively. Really?

And that kind of soured the market for Heaven Books for a while because, you know, people were skeptical of them. And then you get into 2008, 2009. John Burke's book, Imagine Heaven comes out, and that reopens the conversation. John's book is sold now just over two million copies in like eight, nine years. I mean, it's one of the most popular NDE books out there. But when I worked at Baker Publishing Group, I get this book proposal from this guy named Randy Kay, and we talk about it in Pub Board. Is this a good book for us? And I was like, man, a business executive who had a near-death experience?

Like, who's going to care about this? Like, is there a market for like, it was super, super skeptical? And then I interviewed John Burke about his book. And I was like, oh, this is like, he's a pastor, but he's like, it was like trained as an engineer and he's rational and thinking very structured about trying to figure this stuff out. And so I feel like John gave me permission almost to go like, all right, like I could, if I was going to research this stuff, I could go about it in a way or where I wouldn't feel like an idiot or something. Like it's, like, it's okay to try to really understand the structure and the mechanics. Because my thing is like,

well, how does that kind of a thing work? And then ironically, you know, I interview Randy Kay about his book, Dyn to Meet Jesus, like a year later, and it goes viral and crazy, and we start podcasting together, and we start seeing all this ridiculous fruit on the podcast. I've done hundreds and hundreds of podcasts by that point, and Randy's done tons of interviews. It's not like we're new to making content, but we would get messages, and we still do today from people who are like, I watched the interview he did with so-and-so, and my prayer life was in the, it was just in shambles, and my prayer life is now on fire, or I've rededicated myself to the Lord, or I've started following Jesus.

I got physically healed watching this interview you did with this random person. And we weren't necessarily talking about healing or saying like, hey, we want to pray for you. Yet the Holy Spirit would move and all this crazy fruit started manifesting. And so that's really what spurred us just continue to move forward. She's like, okay, you know, people are finding hope in this. God's moving. And the longer I've been in this space, I'm like, well, this is like the universal apologetic. Everybody wants to know whether you're a Christian and atheist or anything in between.

Everyone wants to know what happens when they die. And so, like, I just began to see it as this massive missional ministry space to get to play in. And now it feels normal. But, like, seven years ago, I was like, yeah. And it's good to be skeptical because there's good and bad experiences. It's not all great stuff. But, you know, I think God puts us in the places where we're needed, not necessarily the places we wanted to go sometimes. Yeah.

It's a very similar story in the sense that when I started, I didn't have any scope as to what could, this be. And we get people, I, I feel like I've been seeing it more and more recently. People saying, hey, man, you know, two years ago, your show got my life back on track of God. We've had people to say that they've come to the Lord into salvation through the podcast. I've never once preached a salvation message on my show. It's just, I think when people, when they, when they tune in to listen to a conversation and they hear things that they're faced with that makes them really ask of themselves the tough questions. And they're facing things that oftentimes I think people try to hide and they try to hide away from and not really confront

their entire lives. They just go through life trying to avoid the difficult question. And sometimes people find themselves in a place where they, it's a unique place at that point in their life and they hit play on the right episode. And some people would say, oh, that's coincidence. Right. I don't think that's coincidence at all. Absolutely. Well, even like I described earlier, you know, depending on what the algorithm serves it,

you might find something that's going to lead you to Jesus, something that's going to lead you into darkness. Like, you never know what's going to get served up. Yeah. It's wild. So these past life memories, that's something that you've been looking at as well. Yeah. I've got a whole section of the book looking at past life memories.

So in terms of like past life and pre-life memories are pretty big in the near-death experience space because it all, it all deals with continuation of consciousness. Isn't that the same thing? No, no. I'll do the pre-life memory one first because it's short. So I sat in on a keynote at that conference I was at last summer because I was curious. I was like, what the heck are pre-life memories? And there's this guy up there who was like, well, you know, in my early 30s is when

these memories started. And that was about when I started practicing transcendental meditation. And shortly after I began that, I started to have all these pre-life memories. Now, I would go, well, that's easy because that's when you got filled with demons when he started practicing TDM. But he would tell you he has all these memories of being in some liminal in between space, in between lives, his many lives that he's had. And like people actually take that kind of stuff oddly, seriously. And that particular guy, people kind of treat him like a guru. Like to them, they act like it's the same as somebody who's had an earative experience almost.

and so you know that I think that's one of the weird things in this space is because somebody somehow touched the afterlife they're now have special knowledge everybody wants that special knowledge and not to be questioned yeah yeah but so yeah so pre-life memories it's not really a big part of the conversation but the fact that some of those events are having people keynote to have those kinds of experiences they want to share probably means it's a growing part of the space past life memories have been around just in the book I do kind of a dive into near-death experiences and past life experiences and past life. memories throughout ancient history. And just like the NDEs, you also see past life memories documented for thousands and thousands of years. The interesting thing, you have the Department of Perceptual Studies out at the University of Virginia. They have been like formally studying these things for over 50 years. And a lot of their research ironically began in India. And that's where they were able to find people with past life memories initially. I do find it ironic that a lot of the research that's taking place in countries where they believe reincarnation is an actual afterlife destination. So I feel like it taints some of their sample a bit. But the short of it is,

kids between the ages of two and five will start talking to their parents about, you know, well, back when I this and back when all these, like they have all these memories of things that clearly are not part of their life because they're, you know, pre-elementary aged children. The ironic thing is a lot of times they can verify, like these are memories from real people's lives and like things that really happen, that sort of a thing. So the department, the Department of Persexual studies, they've been studying this stuff for 50 years, you know, documented. These are, you know, real memories and all that kind of a stuff. A lot of people point to that is really the best, one of the better cases for reincarnation. But when you have a Christian worldview, you got to go like, well, that's, that's not possible. Like, how can that be a real afterlife destination, if you will? And again, kind of the premise I set up multiple ways throughout the book is, I think, again, this is something that Satan's sort of hijacking to lead people in a weird direction. I think, in this. this case, more towards reincarnation. So these experiences do happen. Kids do remember parts from other people's lives and then it dissipates at age seven or eight. But we're all spiritually open when we're

little kids. In the opening part of the book, I talk about how when I was around three or four, we lived in a haunted farmhouse. And like my mom's car would do weird things in the driveway, the lights would flash, the horn would blur, all this stuff. Only in our driveway, not anywhere else. There was nothing mechanically, electrically wrong with the car. This is before the days of key, and alarms and all that. And so there's that. We had a combo kitchen and dining room. And one of the chairs would move every night from under the dining room table to like

somebody who was sitting and looking out the back window every night consistently, no matter what we did. And we would make sure the chairs were under the table at night. And then I had two encounters where I saw what at the time I thought were ghosts. I mean, I was a little kid. And now I would go, okay, those were demons. And, you know, interestingly enough, the house was not. next to a graveyard, like the property bordered up to the one little graveyard in the small

town we lived in. As I look back on it, I'm like, I'm glad we moved out. Because usually when, like, demons are manifesting and stuff's moving, like, that's an infestation stage where for some reason demonic activity has been attracted to a location. Something evil happened and somebody die there. And I have no idea. That house is now long gone. But I'm glad we moved because usually that's like the initial stage before, you know, somebody will be taken into the latter stages of infestation and, gosh, I'm not remembering the other stages. Anyways, there's four stages. The final one is like full-on possession.

And it's usually taking you up the ladder more to isolate you from like the rest of your family or your group and just get you to give in more and more to the demonic presence. I think in the case of these past life memories, given that they're happening with little kids at that same age range where I was when I could actually see these demons manifesting in the house. You know, I don't know the circumstances in each of those cases, but I wonder if I could research where they live and their family line, like, are they in a place where great evil happened? Is there a curse on their family line? Like, well, is there something that has maybe attracted a familiar spirit to, you know, be planting these memories into the minds of these children?

So it's a real phenomenon. How do we deal with it? Like Randy and I even did an interview with a mom who has a book and her son has all these past life memories or had when he was younger of being a baseball player and like playing against and traveling on trains with like Babe Ruth and other famous players at the time. And, you know, we, we naively just did an interview and that's because it's part of the NDE conversation. And Randy's audience flipped out and was like, you guys are teaching reincarnation. This is awful. And so we're like, Randy can't get away with those kinds of interviews. And so like all, I'll do interviews on my show where it might be something a little sketchier. But I feel like there's, you know, being a non-experiencer, I can have conversations

that an experiencer can't. Like the expectations of the audience are a little different. Yeah. So, but yeah, so past life memories, it's real. They're fascinating. They're often memories of real people's lives. But I think like a lot of these things, there's, there's a demonic component that I feel like it's just trying to lead people towards reincarnation. Because I feel like it's, It's one of the biggest, in terms of stuff that's out there, people point, well, look at that. But again, if reincarnation was a real possible afterlife's destination, then I expect all of us should have past life memories. It shouldn't be this microscopic or microscopic part of society.

People who believe that, they'll be like, well, once you live life two or three times, you kind of get things right. And that's why it stops. I don't know how you prove that. I mean, that's such a crapshoot. I mean, like, how do you, how can you say? two or three times and then you finally get it right when this is all supposed to be so random anyways.

Right. How can you rely on that mathematical equation as to why not everybody has those? I don't buy that at all. All right guys, let's talk about a sponsor today, which is simply safe. I've been talking about it for years, but I absolutely love this system, friends. Here at the office, I'm making tons of decisions on a daily basis, and one of the easiest decisions I make

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your property is covered and ready to take. detect suspicious activity. Visit simplysafe.com slash confessions to claim 50% off a new system with a professional monitoring plan and get your first month free. That's simply safe.com slash confessions. There's no safe like simply safe. All right, and we're back. We had some tech issues. So anybody listening, you probably wouldn't have any clue unless you heard me not really responding to anything you just said to me. But people watching your video went out. So now I referenced earlier in the in the conversation how jack wasn't here uh he's back because apparently we can't do this without jack so he's over here saying job security you know but you know this might be a good time to

just kind of reintroduce people to uh the nDE conspiracy is the book you wrote and at the time of the sound of my voice on this episode it is released because i have strategically uh reserved the day that this is going to be permanently or officially for sale as a day this episode is going out. Right. So today, right now, you can get your copy, the NDE conspiracy. We were having a good conversation. And then the tech stuff happened and your camera went out and we had a, we lost our groove. So we're going to rekindle our chemistry, sir.

So let's get into the shared death experiences. And I also want to hit on before we roll out. to hear your wife's experiences that you mentioned me off air here. But the shared death experiences, I think, is something that we should definitely get into because it's something, I don't know if I've ever really heard much about that. Yeah. And the shared death experiences and deathbed experiences kind of fall into that same space. One of the people I've greatly respected throughout the years is the, well, the seven years I've been reading and researching in this space is Dr. Raymond Moody. He's kind of an eccentric old professor. He's like in his 80s. So he's,

He's fun to talk to, but he was the guy who originally coined the phrase near-death experience in his book Life After Life back in the 70s. And he's written in research extensively in his one of his most recent books from about two years ago, it's all about how these shared death experiences he feels are really the new frontier of research. And really the, from a scientific perspective, a lot of folks are looking to just validate that consciousness continues after we die. Like that's the big conversation versus on my side of the conversation. I want to talk more about heaven and hell and the afterlife and how do you get there. But these shared death experiences, Moody has like seven that he fits under his umbrella. I'm more looking to just fit two or three. These could be like a deathbed experience where somebody's in a hospital room, where some people may even have an open vision seeing what their loved one is experiencing as they're transitioning or dying, like being able to see the angels in the room or whoever it might be. A lot of time in those like hospital room scenarios, people will recount, you know, oh, you know, oh, grandma's here or some other friend or loved one

is they're almost like they're there to usher them into the afterlife, if you all. So they're seeing things, but the people in the room aren't. I share a story in the book. I have an uncle who had a burst appendix when he was like eight years old, and he went to a small town hospital for the surgery, and they give him too much anesthesia and essentially kill him.

And so he has the mentality of like an eight-year-old boy his whole life. He didn't die then. but when he was in his 60s, my mom and some of her siblings were with him. And keep in mind, he's got the mentality of an eight-year-old boy, and he's having these deathbed visions right as he was about to die. He cries out, mama, mama, mama. And my grandmother had passed a few years before he passed away. And so that was always intrigued me because, again, he has a child's mind.

And he just is describing what he's seeing as he's about to transition to the other side. I have another good friend Heidi Barr. She is ironically a near-death experienceer herself. She had a horse riding accident when she was 16 and her horse fell across her lungs and she died instantly. But years later, when her mom went home to be with the Lord, she wasn't with her when she passed. But at that same time, she's sleeping and she had this vivid dream of her mom effectively like saying goodbye and boarding this train to heaven kind of a thing. I'll often see trains in those kinds of dreams or visions. But people are having these sorts of experiences where somehow they're connected in with what's happening.

People even sometimes describe their loved ones like showing up in the room they're in to like say goodbye. Now whether that's a dream state or an open vision, I don't know. The person would have to describe it. But the other part of that too that, you know, I think a lot of people have also heard of is during the out-of-body experience phase of an NDE. And a lot of times these scenarios are also in hospitals. where whether it's, you know, they're in the emergency room or they're in the operating room, well, however it works, they're outside of their body and they can see, you know, the procedure that's happening and the instruments that are being used. And hear what people are saying,

here are their loved ones that are talking about in the waiting room. And when they come back, they're able to recount all of that stuff. And so, I mean, part of the reason Moody thinks that's kind of the frontier of research to prove conclusively that, you know, the spirit continues, consciousness continues, how we want to describe it, is these third party objectify circumstances. And in these shared death experience kind of scenarios, there are things where it's not just the person who's dying, having the encounter. Other people are connected and do that in different ways. You know, I think you're absolutely right with the consciousness continues and the obsession with that. I think that's the big thing. I think people, they really want to know,

does that actually, like, I mean, we believe these things, whatever you believe, and then you die, and there's no, nobody's coming back to tell us, right? And you even see that in movies and TV shows. In fact, I think there was a, on Netflix that TV show, what's it called? It's of my mind. Black Mirror. They have an episode on there where you, I think it's Black Mirror, where they were able to, when you're getting ready to die, you upload your consciousness to like a cloud

and you have this custom designed experience where you don't actually die. Your body dies, but your consciousness just gets shifted and you're in this new experience. Right. And it's really, it's, it's this if obsession. It's like, what, what is it? Even Amazon has a show that I think they've done two seasons called upload, where it's, you can upload your consciousness into a virtual afterlife and you can have your, basically your paid retirement in the afterlife.

Wow. So before you die, you upload yourself and that kills your body effectively. But yeah, so there is definitely, I mean, even think of the stories we're trying to tell around this. Like, people want to make sense of what happens when you die. And people want to live forever. You know, this idea of downloading your consciousness, your brain into some kind of electronic device. I mean, that's been talked about for many years. So with this shared death experience, I guess, you know, one of the most concrete things I can imagine is,

somebody who is not dead, visualizing what's being experienced, right? That's what you were saying, right? Yeah. Well, and I think, too, you have to remember in those circumstances, people are in turmoil, like the idea of a spiritually transformative experience where somebody has what might even be very similar to a near-to-the-experience,

but they're not near-death or dying or sick or anything. Think of the person who has, you know, their mother, their wife, their husband, somebody dying, they're in great emotional spiritual turmoil. So they're also in an interesting spiritual place where, you know, for whatever reason, that seems to have us be opened up more to these sorts of experiences. So, you know, I like, like Randy, ironically prayed that I would have a shared death experience when my wife passed away out.

We didn't have one. But, you know, that, again, it's, it's an interesting circumstance. I mean, it would be, it's, for me, like, looking at when you're, when you're somebody, that wants to know how things work. And you want to know, this is what I believe, but I really want the proof of it. Like, I really want the hard evidence. Right.

Like, I feel like that would be the providing thing. It's just like, listen, man, I saw it. I think would be amazing is if you see something. And then the person who just died comes back and has the same story. It's just like, whoa, all of a sudden, all questions go out the window. Right. Well, I think one of the challenges you face, and it's not a real challenge, when you're trying to make sense of this stuff and other kinds of things that you and I talk about on our podcast, and you're coming at it through a Christian worldview lens. You have some boundaries and some restrictions, you know, for a lot of people researching and writing in these kind of fringe spaces, anything goes.

Versus if you're trying to fit that into a biblical Christian worldview lens, I personally don't find it limiting. I find it helpful to have some structure. We're like, all right, these are the boundaries of truth I have to work with. thin. But it means you and I can't go places other people will go with their ideas and how to make things. I find the boundaries kind of a blessing because I'm like, God created the world. There's an order and a structure. And I'm trying to grasp how this works within the structure he's revealed to us. I find it's helpful. But in terms of, you know, that's playing in the space, if you will, we have different boundaries than say other folks who are playing here.

But the thing is, like, I want to clarify on that. The space we're in, it's not boring. No. Because we haven't figured it out. And it's very complex. You and I were just talking off air before we got the tech stuff worked out about the second heaven and the complexities and some of the things that we discussed and the revelation of like, huh, that's interesting, you know?

It's every time I think I got something figured out, it's just a new curveball. Right. And I'm talking like scripturally. Like, I mean, I think it was First Kings. I want to say it's First Kings. 18, the very last verse, if I remember correctly, I just found this like three days ago. Elijah, it's not talked about a lot. And it's like a curveball moment for me. So we see Marvel movies. We see Captain America running superhuman speed, flash superhuman speed. Well, I believe it's

First Kings 18. It says that the chariots. go ahead and God granted Elijah strength. And I think it even said speed. And he ran ahead of the chariots all the way to, I forget what town. But I looked into it briefly. And I think the mileage was like 10, 15 miles where he literally ran ahead of the chariots. And it was like, it's like, okay, well, am I reading that wrong? No, because literally in that verse it says, God gave him this strength.

And then he ran ahead of the chariots. superhuman speed. And it's like things like that. It's like it's a curve. Those are curveball moments. It's like you see stuff in the movies. You know, it's just the movies. You know the feeling when you go into a movie and it's like so almost like magical. You come under these a spell. You walk out. You're like, oh, man, I feel like I was just in that movie. And as you're walking down that, that dreaded ugly, pale white hallway in a movie theater going out to the parking lot, you're feeling like you're leaving a reality. And you're like, oh, man, that wasn't real. But it is. Like that's the thing. Like the cat's the thing. Like the cast.

to America's speed, according to First Kings, I think 18, that was a situation where God gave a human being superhuman speed. It's incredible to me. So I just think that these curveballs that we get at times are for our benefit and it keeps us digging and trying to understand. So speaking of curve balls, though, your wife had curve balls. What were some of her experiences? A lot of you who at least have followed me, probably have heard of me talk about. I've heard of talk extensively about my wife Lynette's cancer journey before she passed on about a year ago. What was interesting as I look back, like as I've described in this conversation, I never intended to play or do work in this near-death experience space. I wasn't even all that

interested. And I found myself, you know, just completely immersed in this world day in and day out for several years. And then all of a sudden, we were in a circumstance where we got a terminal diagnosis. This is an interesting aside, too. Probably about eight years ago. ago, I had a strange dream. I'm talking about the dream in the book, but this is when we still live back in Illinois. I had this dream where I'm talking to my kids and I realize Lynette's not around. And in the dream, I know she's in heaven and that she's okay. And I'm talking to my kids about getting remarried.

So that's like a backdrop from eight, nine years ago. Never told anybody about the dream. I wrote that in my journal. And then I remember getting that terminal diagnosed me like, oh, wait, I had like a warning dream or a dream about her being in heaven, interestingly, you know, that didn't change the way I prayed. Like, I prayed for healing throughout our whole journey. But it also allowed me to put a foot into my future where,

while I was contending for healing every day, I was also contending for the future I'm living out right now. And I'm like having to wrestle with, you know, did God show me that this was her time to go home to heaven? And so always praying for healing, but praying into my future that I'm in right now, where it allowed me to emerge on the other side of that. I think, you know, a slightly more, not that I'm still grieving and working through stuff, but it was, it was an interesting prayer position to have one foot on one side of the fence and one side on the other. But in terms of what we saw throughout her whole journey, she had lots of questions about heaven and what it's like to die and all kinds of things. And I was able to tell her parts and pieces from all these stories and testimonies I've heard through the years that were I was able to answer all of her questions. And then she had an out of body experience. This is probably about eight months before she died where,

in the morning we were talking and she said in the night before, she couldn't wake me up. And as she described what she experienced, it sounded like she was above my body and like almost like near the ceiling. And no matter what she did, she couldn't get my attention. And logistically, she was in a hospital bed and I was sleeping on the floor in that room. Like she couldn't have really seen me from the hospital bed. So it's fascinating that she said she could see me,

but just couldn't get my attention. And I think it was even that same week, she had what I would best describe as an open vision because I don't think she was sleeping. But what she saw was her welcoming committee in heaven. She saw herself coming up to the gates of heaven. And she encounters her maternal grandparents, her father and her older brother who had died when she was only 18 months old. And I wrestled with this because I was like, why are we having these experience? Like at the time, I was like, you know, the doctors had told her she was going to be dying soon.

And she lived like another eight months. is like, you know, is this what's coming soon? And talking to Randy and a few other friends, like they've told me, they felt like it was God just getting her ready for what she would encounter when she passed. But had I not gone down the rabbit hole of near-death experiences for like three and a half years prior to all of that or four years, whatever it was, like I wouldn't have been able to minister to her in the way that I was. Because my faith in heaven is a real tangible place and eternal destination after meeting so many different experiences and having so many conversations that's off the charts. And so I was in this unique position just to encourage her and minister to her for 19 months.

That had I not spent so much time, you know, just investigating and talking about near to the experiences, you know, I wouldn't have been able to tell her, well, that was an out-a-body experience. And oh, that's your welcoming committee at the gates of heaven. Like, I wouldn't have had the language for it. So, you know, it was a real unexpected blessing to be immersed in this space for an assignment. I don't even know it was on the horizon. Wow. That's deep, man. That's deep.

That's deep. Well, listen, I appreciate you hopping on with me and chit-chatting here about NDE's. I think this is the most depth we've gone into NDE's. Sure. That wasn't through the lens of an experiencer. Yeah. Which I find really fascinating. And I highly encourage me to check out the book, The NDE Conspiracy.

Where can they get that? Available wherever books are sold. Amazon's the easiest place. but Barnes & Noble, books a million, and anywhere books are sold, you'll be able to order it. And when this airs,

May 6th, it's available. So you'll be able to get your copy, you order from Amazon, hopefully two days or less. Wow. There you go. Get your copy. Make this a number one seller.

I'm excited about it. And also because I'm part of the Destiny Image family now. So if you guys check this book out, I'll have high hopes that you check my book out as well. So thank you very much for coming on today. My pleasure. Thanks for the opportunity. Absolutely. That was good.

It was real good.