THE REST OF THE STORY
Mike Cunningham
January 18, 2015

A number of years ago a tearful Christian coworker shared her concerns with me about her unemployed non-Christian husband. She was making herself sick worrying about the health and also eternal destiny of the man. He had severe cardiac problems and several months previously during open-heart bypass surgery went into cardiac arrest and the surgeon pronounced him as being “clinically-dead.”

Her husband had experienced what is known as being a near-death experience.(NDE) He thought that it was wonderful. He knows what heaven is like and he can’t wait to go there. To make matters worse he was slowly but surely drinking himself to death.In other words, he was slowly committing suicide. The man ignored his doctor’s warnings and brushed aside his wife’s plea’s for him to get help. He told her that he didn’t want help and he didn’t need Christ. He already knew that he was going to heaven when he died. That’s the one thing he was absolutely certain of.

He was a likeable drunk and wasn’t abusive towards her or their two teen-age children. In fact, they loved him dearly. She was unsuccessful in the numerous attempts she made throughout the 18-years of their marriage to gently lead her husband to Christ, but got nowhere. She finally persuaded him to meet with me. When he answered the doorbell and opened the front door, this poor mistaken soul was enthusiastically grinning from ear to ear and actually looking forward to dying and going to heaven-“the sooner the better,” he said. I told my co-worker that in my opinion he was demonically deceived and that we should pray fervently for him. I also suggested that she attend one of my“Trusting God Bible Studies” where we learn and help one another to trust God to give us the desire and strength to endure this divinely ordained ordeal in a manner that’s pleasing to Him. She and I and the rest of the group continued to pray for him until the day that he died about six-months later. Only God knows where that man is today.

On the Sunday before last Christmas I posted a sermon on my blog called “Back From Eternity.” Judging from the feedback I received, most folks found it to be very interesting and thought provoking. In that sermon I cited instances of people who experienced “clinical death” and later were revived. They told incredible stories of what they experienced the moment they died and left this world and went to the “other side” of life. These are known as “near-death experiences.” (NDE)

When they were revived each of these people testified to the authenticity of what it was like to be on the “other side” of life and then come back to life in this world. I must say that the vast majority of these accounts were of people who believed they either saw or visited heaven.

In today’s sermon I will elaborate on DNE’s due to the seriousness of this issue. In other words, I want to tell you folks about the rest of the stories. For instance,

John MacArthur says that, an unprecedented fascination with the after-life has arisen. People have been talking about near-death experiences since Dr. Elizabeth Kubler-Ross’s 1970 book, “On Death And Dying,” rose to the top of the charts. Kubler-Ross recounted tales from several people who, it seemed, had literally been brought back from the dead-mostly resuscitated by surgeons in operating rooms or by paramedics at accident scenes. Many had fascinating tales to tell about what they supposedly had seen and experienced on the “Other Side.”Kubler-Ross said her research into this phenomenon altered her own views of the afterlife. She began her research holding to a skeptical rationalism, believing that only oblivion followed death. But studying people’s near-death experiences made her a believer in the supernatural, she said.

Another leading authority on near-death experiences for the past two decades has been Raymond A Moody. His 1975 book, “Life After Life” was a runaway best -seller.He followed it with a sequel, “Reflections on Life After Life” two years later; “The Life Beyond” was published in 1989, “Coming Back” in 1990: and his latest is “Reunion’s: Visionary Encounters with Departed Loved Ones, (1993).

One might be tempted to think these are positive trends in the wake of so much rationalistic unbelief. But, sadly, such is not entirely the case. Accepting the reality of supernatural things is not the same as believing the truth about them. And when an unbelieving mind embraces the reality of the supernatural realm, the result can often be catastrophic. Both Elisabeth Kubler-Ross and Dr. Raymond Moody are living proof of this principal. Both began their research on near-death experiences as purely rationalistic scientists, convinced that there must be some perfectly reasonable natural explanation for strange sensations reported by dying people. Both abandoned their skepticism for something potentially worse.

Kubler-Ross and Moody have veered off into the world of the occult. After her study of others’ near-death experiences, Kubler-Ross reported that she had a rather remarkable near-death out-of-the body experience of her own where she traveled the speed of light. She began experimenting with séances to contact the dead. She finally joined a bizarre religious cult led by Jay Barham, a man who claimed to be able to make spirits materialize in order to have sex with the living. Now Kubler-Ross is a leading guru in the New Age movement.

Raymond Moody’s forays into supernaturalism have also taken a sinister turn. His recent books smacks of classic occult necromancy. He advocates crystal ball gazing, “scrying,” as it is known. He instructs people how to build “apparition chambers,” special rooms with mirrors, in which he says it is possible to commune with the ghosts of ones departed loved ones. He has such a room in his own house and claims to have conversed with his own dead grandmother.

Obviously, evangelical Christians who accept the Bible as the Word of God must view this current fascination with the realm beyond death as something of a mixed blessing.As encouraged as we may be by evidence that an unbelieving rationalism has not utterly conquered faith, we must be deeply disturbed by any trend that seems to draw people into occultism, New Age philosophies, and superstition. And those are undeniably the roads traveled by most people caught up in the current angels-and-the-afterlife fad. Because of their mounting popularity, we must look thoughtfully at them as we begin to seek the truth about heaven. (1)

To the best of everyone’s knowledge, neither the dead man’s widow that I worked with, nor their children or doctor or anyone else believe that the poor deceived soul read any books about the afterlife or NDE’s, but he sure knew a lot about them. So much so, that he bet his life on them!

Now I would like to quote from another insightful book written by award winning journalist, David Kuperlian who suggests that his readers: Come back in time with me to 1975, and picture this scene: South Carolina resident Dannion Brinkley, a former Marine and Vietnam vet, is talking on the phone when a bolt of lightning runs down and strikes him in the neck, sending thousands of volts of electricity down his spine, through the bottoms of his feet into the nails in his shoes, which weld themselves to the nails of the floor.

For the next twenty-eight minutes, Brinkley has what is known as an NDE-“near-death experience”-which includes, he later says, a view of his entire life, a meeting with a celestial being, and 117 visions of events that would supposedly happen before 2004.

Moreover, Brinkley says, he has been “sent back” with a specific mission-to help other people facing death.

Incredibly, fourteen years later, during open heart surgery, Brinkley “dies” again and once more experiences the same NDE. The “man who died twice” and lived to tell about it subsequently writes two books, “Saved By The Light” and “Peace In The Light.”

In 1992, another near-death celebrity, Betty Eadie, writes “Embraced By The Light, which becomes a national best seller.

And Dr. Raymond Moody writes the all-time most influential book on the subject, “Life After Life.”

When we consider the incredible stories of people claiming to have “died’-that is, who had an NDE and came back to tell the world how the afterlife is so fantastic they really didn’t want to come back-a couple of questions loom large:

1. Did they actually die
2. If they didn’t actually die, and therefore didn’t experience the true afterlife, what then did they experience? A hallucination or delusion born out of the distress of life-threatening trauma and its accompanying mental, emotional, and physiological turmoil? The result of chemical shock, the effects of anesthesia, seizure, brain-oxygen deprivation, or neurological shutdown? Or could it be something else, perhaps even some sort of spiritual deception or demonic visitation?

In the news business, we constantly report cases of people pronounced dead who “wake up” a day later in the morgue, in their casket at the funeral home, sometimes even as they’re being buried! It happens all the time. And as Tal Brook, president of the Berkley, California-based Spiritual Counterfeits Project, explains, “Death” isn’t quite as cut-and-dried as we might think:

It appears from examining the results of our machine-diagnosed clinical death that we really do have a hit-or-miss situation. A subject is declared clinically dead before he has been found to be alive again after all. Did he die? … The most acceptable criterion for genuine and complete death occurs when the categories of “cardiac arrest,” “respiratory cessation,” “flat EEG,” and “complete loss of vital signs” are satisfied and this condition remains permanent through rigor mortis and physical decay. When the body begins to smell from decay, one can be assured that it is dead, especially if it has been ice-cold for days and has gone through rigor mortis.

However, adds Brooke, the only historical records of people recovering form this form of death are in the Bible: “Lazarus was stone cold and decaying for four days before he was brought back to live out the appointed remainder of his life. Death, apart from some really astounding miracle such as the case of Lazarus, is irreversible; that has to be the definition.

If “near-death experiences” are only that-“near-death,” what, then is actually going on during an NDE?

For a potent clue, consider this interview Brinkley did with nighttime radio talk host Art Bell, during which he told millions of listeners there is no hell. “If anybody was going to hell, I would have been going,” he said. “I can promise you that, pal. And if I didn’t go, the odds [that many others will} are slim to none.”

What happened to him, Brinkley added, is gonna happen to you too’:

Everybody that’s listening! This is not just one guy from South Carolina … This is how you leave this world, too. Not only did I see and feel everything I went through; I literally became every person that I had ever encountered in my life, and I got to feel the direct result the anger, frustration, humiliation, pain-literally horror-that I had inflicted on thousands of people, you know, in lots of different countries…. that tells me there’s justice, and there’s fairness, and there’s righteousness and there is a day of judgment. But guess who judges you! It’s you who looks at you….

People think that there’s a God, or a devil, or they’re gonna be judged by a force outside of themselves. They’re making a mistake. (End of Quote)

Kupelian continues by first quoting Scripture:

“And no marvel; for Satan himself is transformed into an angel of light.” 2 Corinthians 11:14

Okay, time for a little reality. Sorry to bust the velvety New Age bubble. First of all, these NDE folks have “not” died. Forget about “clinically dead” “legally dead,” and other meaningless-“really dead” means you stay dead, unless a supernatural miracle occurs. So, if you flat lined on the operating table but were successfully resuscitated, you were not “dead”-period. As Miracle Max said famously in the “Princess Bride” (and you’ll have to imagine Billy Crystal’s voice here), “There’s a big difference between “mostly dead” and “all dead. Mostly dead is “slightly alive!”

Since none of these people who “died and went to the other side and came back to tell us all about it” were ever really “all dead,” what, then, did they experience?

In a world full to overflowing illusions, deceptions, and counterfeits-counterfeit love, counterfeit sincerity, counterfeit religious experiences-is it unreasonable to conclude that maybe these people are being treated to nothing more than a very elaborate sales pitch for death by the great salesman for death himself?

After all, as scripture affirms, even “Satan himself” sometimes appears as an “angel of light.”

How many people do you suppose have committed suicide after reading such books as those referenced here or listening to the wondrous testimony of those singing praises of death? How many people, unhappy with their lives, have taken the easy way out, crossing irrevocably the line between this life and whatever lies beyond it, in the belief they will find inexpressible joy and relief-all based on delicious NDE tales of those who have returned?

Returned, yes-but from where?

We’ve all seen, especially since 9/11, how a powerful delusion of a glorious afterlife can entice some people to give up their lives. How many radical Muslims have committed mass murder in the vain belief it would purchase them a one-way ticket to a sensual paradise filled with earthly delights?

Is it any wonder, then, that primes with stories of universal peace and light awaiting us whenever we check out of this life-no matter what sort of life we have lived–death has become strangely attractive for many people, including many in the right-to-die and euthanasia crowd, which is powerfully influenced in turn by New Age spiritually and sensational tales of people returning from the land of the dead?

So attractive, says Brooke, that this view of the afterlife is the crowning glory of a new religion on its way. “In the ‘scientific supernatural’ near death experiences,” he says, “we also see the makings of a spiritual module waiting to be plugged into any world religion.” It seems to span world religions by using the afterlife as its bridge Thus it is the new inclusive faith that judges no one and admits all universalism. It is the sort of great deception that the pages of the Bible have warned about for 2,000 years. It looks good, but it is lethal.”

So, please, let’s not give too much credence to wild tales of a universal New Age afterlife that seductively make death sound so attractive that we almost can’t wait to send the old and infirm there before their time-or to leap there ourselves in hopes of shedding the difficulties of this life for something better. We might just find we’ve jumped foolishly from the frying pan into the fire.” (2)

In closing I must say, that, it’s been my prayer filled hope that today’s sermon has been helpful to each of you folks and that I have given you a lot of food for thought. It’s very helpful to me whenever, in one-way or another, you share your thoughts with me, and the rest of the readers of my blog. I appreciate it very much!

Lord willing, next week….

(1) The Glory of Heaven, © 1996 by John MacArthur, published by Crossway, 1300 Crescent Street, Wheaton, Illinois, 60187, Pages 14-15.
(2) How Evil Works, © 2010 by David Kupelian, published by Simon & Shuster, Inc. 1230 Avenue of the Americans, New York, N. Y. 10020, Pages 130-136.