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Sept. 20, 2023

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

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

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Imagine engaging in a spellbinding exchange about near-death experiences and their profound resemblance across cultures and religions. Pastor John Burke, renowned for his years of research and insight into this riveting topic, shares his perception of these experiences, emphasizing the sense of divine love individuals often encounter - a love he believes mirrors God's "first love."

In this episode, we journey through compelling evidence supporting near-death experiences, discussing unique phenomena like the ability of blind people to see and veridical observations. We dare to question the possibility of these experiences being merely biological, given that people from all walks of life report the same universal encounters with God. Pastor Burke offers his enlightening viewpoint on God's image as seen by many - a brilliant light, brighter than the sun, but gentle to the gaze.

The peak of our conversation arrives as we share captivating personal accounts of near-death experiences, including those of a neurologist and psychiatrist, and a Hindu manufacturing engineer. The description of their encounters with an overwhelming energy of love and infinite knowledge is nothing short of awe-inspiring. 

We conclude our discussion with insights from his latest book, 'Imagine The God Of Heaven,' where we contemplate God's omnipresence, the healing power of emotional wounds, and God's omnipresent grace and mercy. 

Tune in to this mesmerizing conversation and let us unravel the multidimensional aspects of God's love and mercy together.

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I've been studying Near Death Experiences for many years now. I am 100% convinced they are real. In this short, free ebook, I not only explain why I believe NDEs are real, I share some of the universal secrets brought back by people who have had them.

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Chapters

00:56 - Near Death Experiences and God's Love

12:11 - Near-Death Experiences and Meeting God

17:55 - Revealing the Qualities of God

26:27 - Experiencing God's Love and Mercy

40:18 - God's Love and Presence for All

50:29 - God's Love and Near-Death Experiences

58:50 - Discussion on 'Imagine the God' Book

Transcript
WEBVTT

00:00:01.745 --> 00:00:02.930
Hey everybody, this is Brian.

00:00:02.930 --> 00:00:08.349
I'm back with another episode of Grief to Growth and today I want to welcome to a special guest.

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His name is Pastor John Burke.

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If you've been with us, if you've been with me for some time, you might remember my conversation with him from a couple of years ago.

00:00:16.463 --> 00:00:21.829
If you haven't, if you don't remember it, or if you're new, go back to August of 2021.

00:00:21.829 --> 00:00:24.649
And I had a great conversation with Pastor Burke then.

00:00:25.280 --> 00:00:32.584
He's the author of the New York Times Best Seller, imagine Heaven, and I want you to, like I said, go back and look at that episode if you haven't heard before.

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But he's also written works including no Perfect People Allowed Soul Revolution and Unshockable Love, and they've reached hearts all around the world.

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Pastor Burke, together with White Catholic, is a spirit behind the Gateway Church in Austin, texas, which is a spiritual haven for countless numbers of souls.

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He's an international speaker and his message of spiritual enlightenment has spanned 30 different countries.

00:00:57.646 --> 00:01:06.605
Today I'm going to talk to Pastor Burke about his newest work, which is called Imagine the God of Heaven, and the subtitle is God's Revelation and the Love You've Always Wanted.

00:01:06.605 --> 00:01:14.287
And the subtitle actually leads me into my first question, because I thought that was really caught my eye when I heard that, or my ear when I heard that.

00:01:14.287 --> 00:01:23.168
So, pastor Burke, can you expand on the love that we've always wanted and why we feel that way?

00:01:24.680 --> 00:01:28.204
Well, first, brian, call me John, I'm more comfortable with that.

00:01:28.204 --> 00:01:30.603
Ok, fine, yeah.

00:01:30.603 --> 00:01:33.887
Yeah, our church is very casual.

00:01:33.887 --> 00:01:37.688
We say come as you are, and so I don't like the titles, but that's all right.

00:01:37.948 --> 00:01:38.888
Hey, cool I understand.

00:01:39.960 --> 00:01:45.743
So you forgot one thing in the subtitle Near Death Experiences God's Revelation and the Love You've Always Wanted.

00:01:45.765 --> 00:01:46.447
Yes, yes.

00:01:47.603 --> 00:02:17.649
So no, it's all right, it's just an important part because, as you know, it's my story really, from grief to growth and my father passing away when three decades ago, someone gave him the very first book, very first study on near death experiences and I read it and I was an agnostic and that set me on a journey, because I was an engineer like you, so very analytical, skeptical.

00:02:17.649 --> 00:02:34.586
But to me this was like maybe there's actual, some evidence that this is real, and so I've studied thousands of them now over the last 30 years and this new book, imagine the God of Heaven is taking a look at.

00:02:34.586 --> 00:02:48.248
I've got 70 people in this book from all around the world who not only have a near death experience, and you've covered those before, so your audience is probably fairly familiar with them.

00:02:49.050 --> 00:02:52.704
Yeah, I'd say they are, but we might as well we could go over a little bit for people that might be new.

00:02:53.560 --> 00:02:55.187
Yeah, because I mean that's really important.

00:02:55.187 --> 00:03:14.424
It is what convinced me and what convinced many skeptical cardiologists, oncologists, other doctors is when people die, when they clinically die, their heart stops beating, brain waves cease and yet they're resuscitated.

00:03:14.424 --> 00:03:21.447
Many come back saying that they experienced something of a life to come that was more real than this life ever was.

00:03:21.447 --> 00:03:27.830
And there are commonalities and I've traced about 40 commonalities.

00:03:27.830 --> 00:03:36.609
There are probably more, but I traced 40 commonalities in the book Imagine Heaven that then I was tying to how that shows up in the scriptures.

00:03:37.881 --> 00:04:08.229
In Imagine the God of Heaven, what I'm doing is I'm looking at people from all over the globe who not only have that as a commonality but they have experienced this God of light and love who is more personal than they could have ever imagined, who loves them with, quite honestly, a love that hyperbole is all they can do to try to express it, and in this God's presence they never want to leave.

00:04:08.229 --> 00:04:30.048
And so in the book Imagine the God of Heaven, what I'm doing is I'm showing, through the eyes of these 70 people, how this God has been revealing himself through history, his heart, his characteristics, his great love story that he's been revealing through history, and how that's what these people are confirming.

00:04:30.048 --> 00:04:33.142
And it doesn't matter their religious background, their culture.

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Many times what they would have expected is not what they found, but what they found.

00:04:40.129 --> 00:04:42.408
They never wanted to leave.

00:04:42.408 --> 00:04:44.425
It was the love they have always wanted.

00:04:46.060 --> 00:04:46.341
Yeah.

00:04:46.341 --> 00:04:50.807
So why do you think that resonates with us so much, that love that we've always wanted?

00:04:50.807 --> 00:04:54.704
Do you feel like people are missing that here, or what's the reason for that?

00:04:56.009 --> 00:05:11.605
Well, yeah, I mean and that's actually part of the second part of the book is it's really about God's great love story, revealed throughout the scriptures, and that often gets missed.

00:05:11.605 --> 00:05:32.528
And in the Bible it starts with people in relationship with God, in very close relationship with God, but then throughout the story there's rejection, there's betrayal, there's divorce, there's reconciliation, there's sacrifice to try to win back the beloved.

00:05:32.528 --> 00:05:39.930
There are all these metaphors of relationship that God likens what he wants with humanity too.

00:05:39.930 --> 00:05:49.545
And then the whole thing ends in the book of Revelation with this great wedding, which is kind of bizarre if you think it's pretty mysterious, like what?

00:05:49.545 --> 00:05:59.721
But if you miss the meta narrative of the whole story, I think you miss a lot of why God does the things he does or doesn't.

00:05:59.721 --> 00:06:10.783
And the main thing is that love can't be bought, it can't be forced or coerced, it can't be manipulated, it has to be free.

00:06:10.783 --> 00:06:36.064
And so if God created us for a love relationship first with himself and then with each other, then what's missing on the planet is the first love, and that's exactly what God said to Moses, what Jesus reiterated that love God first, first and greatest commandment second is love your neighbor as much as you do yourself.

00:06:36.064 --> 00:06:43.846
Do those two and you fulfill all the scriptures, all the commands of scripture wrapped up in those two.

00:06:45.440 --> 00:07:28.132
And so, yeah, I think part of the story of humanity and human life is that we're here learning about free will and love and choosing to choose God and then choosing to let the love of God flow through us to others as well, and that's one of the commonalities of near-death experiences, of course, all around the world, in the presence of this God of light, who is love, who knows them so intimately, they often get a life review and in that life review they re-experience.

00:07:28.132 --> 00:07:30.079
So that's another commonality that we have.

00:07:30.079 --> 00:07:32.788
Re-experience so that's another commonality is time.

00:07:32.788 --> 00:07:38.442
I kind of think time probably works in two dimensions, or maybe three.

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It's not our linear, one-dimensional timeline and so they can re-experience their lives in the presence of this God and he's showing them.

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They come back with two things One, god is love and secondly, what he cares most about is how we treat one another, and that's what he was showing them again and again, like the ripple effect, like Dr Mary Neal, who I was just recently with.

00:08:05.247 --> 00:08:07.526
Have you had her on your show before?

00:08:08.000 --> 00:08:09.687
I have not had her on my show, but I have met her.

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Yeah, sweet, wonderful person.

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She's a spine surgeon, very analytical person as well, but in Jesus' presence he gives her a life review and he shows her the ripple effect of every little kind action and how God used even the things that she thought were bad in her life.

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He showed her how 20 people, 25, 30 people away that was still having a ripple effect.

00:08:45.107 --> 00:08:48.996
So we talk about the word God, we use the word God.

00:08:48.996 --> 00:08:51.953
It's a loaded word for a lot of people, yeah, I know.

00:08:51.953 --> 00:08:58.496
And this community in the afterlife community, a lot of times some people shy away from it.

00:08:58.496 --> 00:09:03.436
I've heard some people who've had nearer depth experiences say and I don't know if I want to use that word.

00:09:03.436 --> 00:09:07.274
So what is your experience with the word God and how should we relate to that?

00:09:09.729 --> 00:09:10.711
Yeah, that's a great question.

00:09:10.711 --> 00:09:40.647
I think there's been a lot of damage done with misinformation about God and, honestly, what I'm trying to do and imagine the God of Heaven is show one, just like if you really understand who this God is, that all these people are encountering, you would want to seek Him.

00:09:40.647 --> 00:09:42.452
That's it.

00:09:42.452 --> 00:09:48.854
But the other thing I'm trying to show is he didn't just show up in the age of near depth experiences.

00:09:48.854 --> 00:10:09.750
So I'm tracing what actually convinced me as a skeptical engineer even before the evidence of near depth experiences, which I think scientifically, a scientific principle is that what is consistently observed is real.

00:10:09.750 --> 00:10:24.929
So if you have millions of people around the globe and I personally studied thousands of them my friend Dr Jeffrey Long has got a database of 5,000 now that he's studied I mean, there have been many studies.

00:10:24.929 --> 00:10:34.754
There have been 900 scholarly peer review articles published on this, like in the Journal of the American Medical Association and the Lancet and Psychiatry.

00:10:34.754 --> 00:10:38.409
So there's all this evidence.

00:10:38.409 --> 00:10:54.230
And then if you look at the fact that close to 50% of them experience who they know is God and most of them don't shy away from calling them that they're like I knew, there was no doubt in my mind.

00:10:54.230 --> 00:11:02.433
This was my creator, this is who made me, and yet that's consistent all around the globe.

00:11:02.433 --> 00:11:12.370
The being they're describing is consistent, and so that should tell us something Like that's a lot of data.

00:11:12.370 --> 00:11:15.890
And if it were that alone?

00:11:16.692 --> 00:11:23.413
In chapter two of Imagine the God of Heaven, there have been a lot of alternate explanations of near-death experiences.

00:11:23.413 --> 00:11:35.153
Right, maybe it's hypoxia, like the brain suffering from oxygen deprivation, or maybe it's the same thing, like DMT, or ayahuasca produces the same things.

00:11:35.153 --> 00:11:37.008
I've heard all these.

00:11:37.008 --> 00:11:41.817
Or what about the effects of drugs in the hospital and all that.

00:11:41.817 --> 00:11:49.778
So I go through 10 points of evidence that any alternative theory has to make sense of.

00:11:49.778 --> 00:12:12.576
Because what I find is, of all these alternative theories, they're taking one thing and saying, well, see, like DMT, well, yeah, there's the experience of these wild colors and connectedness to everything, and sometimes maybe you're traveling or a tunnel or something like that.

00:12:12.576 --> 00:12:19.136
Well, yeah, but that doesn't make sense of veretical observations.

00:12:19.136 --> 00:12:30.235
So when people have near-death experiences and they're out of their bodies, they say many times they're still in the room up above in a spiritual body watching their resuscitation.

00:12:30.235 --> 00:12:48.034
And there have been studies done where they've come back and 92% of the many observations that these many patients that were studied made, 92% were completely accurate of the things they said were happening in the room while they had no brainwaves Right?

00:12:48.034 --> 00:12:56.057
96% more, there were some things some of the observations they made were not completely accurate.

00:12:56.057 --> 00:12:58.793
Only 2% were inaccurate.

00:12:58.793 --> 00:13:02.625
Well, that's high correlation, right?

00:13:02.625 --> 00:13:03.849
Like, how do you make sense of that?

00:13:05.566 --> 00:13:23.058
Second, blind people see when they have a near-death experience and they come back and they're still blind and yet they said the same things, they had the same experience and even talked about things that they shouldn't have known.

00:13:23.058 --> 00:13:35.426
Like, they saw things in their life review, for instance, that when they came back they were able to describe, but they couldn't have seen that, you know.

00:13:35.426 --> 00:13:41.878
Third, you have these overlapping commonalities, but they're not all the same.

00:13:41.878 --> 00:13:54.570
So, like I said, there are like 40 commonalities, right, and if it were just a brain-based thing, then everyone would probably have all the same commonalities, but they don't.

00:13:55.784 --> 00:14:18.133
There are percentages of overlap which, if you're in a court of law and you have 10 eyewitnesses who all say exactly the same thing, that's collusion, that's sketchy, because, like they talked, right, you have 10 people who say mostly the same things and they overlap, but they're all a bit unique from different perspectives.

00:14:18.133 --> 00:14:19.529
That's very strong testimony.

00:14:19.529 --> 00:14:21.169
That's what we see with these NDE's.

00:14:21.169 --> 00:14:22.546
And then you know.

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The other one is how do you explain people from all different religions seeing the same God and that shouldn't happen, because they weren't necessarily experiencing that?

00:14:36.476 --> 00:14:44.190
And there are other reasons I go into, but those are just some that convince me like no, this is something real.

00:14:44.190 --> 00:14:54.288
We're getting these observations that again, you know, what's consistently observed is real, but there's something real here.

00:14:55.504 --> 00:15:01.510
And I'm really glad that you went through that because I find so many people do not understand what you just talked about.

00:15:01.510 --> 00:15:06.837
There is evidence, there's vertical evidence, from a lot of these NDE's.

00:15:06.837 --> 00:15:21.297
People from all across the world are having similar experiences, because the explanations that materialists come up with, like oxygen deprivation or dump of DMT of the brain, they don't explain all of that.

00:15:21.297 --> 00:15:27.129
So I'm glad you go into that in the book for people that are still skeptical about the whole experience itself.

00:15:27.129 --> 00:15:35.909
When it comes to people meeting God, what would you say is a general way that people describe God?

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Well, some, you know, some, see him as a brilliant light, bright, they consistently say, brighter than the sun, but easy to look at.

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And they say things like I knew this should just burn my eyes out, but it didn't.

00:16:00.124 --> 00:16:05.715
In fact, I was mesmerized and in his presence.

00:16:05.715 --> 00:16:14.080
So this I love the way this one, he, you know, that's the other thing about this Brian is like the people that I've interviewed.

00:16:14.080 --> 00:16:28.788
They're, they're like psychiatrists, you know, doctors, commercial airline pilots, nurses, I mean, these, these are, these are people who have a lot to lose by saying crazy stuff.

00:16:28.788 --> 00:16:31.053
Right, and yet they are.

00:16:31.053 --> 00:16:39.297
And like this, this one guy who his name is Ron, dr Ron Smotherman.

00:16:39.317 --> 00:16:43.326
He's a neurologist, anda psychiatrist, and it's a wild story.

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He he was living in San Francisco led a, led a guy stay in his house while he was gone.

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He was doing lectures around the world.

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When he came back the guy had a psychotic break and started stabbing him, stabbed him 13 times, once through the neck.

00:17:02.059 --> 00:17:05.988
That Dr said he absolutely should not have survived.

00:17:06.028 --> 00:17:19.640
He shows, showed me the, the scars and on the, as as the 14th was coming for his heart, he said I'm froze.

00:17:19.640 --> 00:17:32.163
And suddenly appears like instantly before him this, this brilliant light standing there that he knew again was divine.

00:17:32.163 --> 00:17:34.087
He knew this was God, didn't have any.

00:17:34.087 --> 00:17:38.502
They don't have any doubt of who this is.

00:17:38.502 --> 00:17:40.549
They have an honest experience.

00:17:40.549 --> 00:17:50.271
But he said imagine standing five feet away from the, the, the point of impact of an atomic explosion.

00:17:50.271 --> 00:17:53.721
He said that was the energy roiling.

00:17:53.721 --> 00:17:57.393
This light was just roiling with energy, and he.

00:17:57.393 --> 00:17:59.740
And then he said but, but the energy?

00:17:59.740 --> 00:18:02.243
What was roiling even more was love.

00:18:02.243 --> 00:18:07.053
And then he lost it, telling me this, he said.

00:18:07.053 --> 00:18:11.308
He said I'm, I'm sorry, I was just like, and that's.

00:18:11.308 --> 00:18:24.929
The other thing is that this memory for them is not up here in the brain, it's, it's somewhere in their soul and they relive it as if it were today and it just overwhelms their emotions because the love is so great.

00:18:24.929 --> 00:18:38.926
And so he said instantly, he was imprinted with, with these qualities and and that's what part of what I'm trying to show and imagine the God of heaven is the qualities, the heart of God.

00:18:38.926 --> 00:18:44.345
So he said infinite love, but also, instantly, infinite knowledge, he said.

00:18:44.345 --> 00:18:50.664
I, it's like I had a picture of a library but the books filled the universe and he wrote them all.

00:18:50.664 --> 00:18:55.195
And he said power, that was indisputable.

00:18:55.195 --> 00:19:13.700
You know what's fascinating about the power is I had another, a commercial airline pilot, who is flying into, like an airborne coming into the city of God okay, which, ironically, we'll have to come back to.

00:19:13.700 --> 00:19:22.821
I have an Indian man who had never read the Bible, taken by this God of light and he describes this same city of God.

00:19:22.821 --> 00:19:25.487
We can come back to that.

00:19:25.487 --> 00:19:46.124
But but both of these guys, this commercial airline pilot and this neurologist psychologist, said when I saw that light, it was like the very instant a nuclear explosion goes off, the whiteness of that and the brilliance of that, and yet you could look right into it.

00:19:46.124 --> 00:19:50.958
So power, he said, that's indisputable authority.

00:19:50.958 --> 00:19:52.923
There's another thing he said.

00:19:52.923 --> 00:20:02.028
He said, like you know, you didn't have any questions, he knew and he knew the right thing and you wanted to do whatever he said.

00:20:03.652 --> 00:20:10.214
Humor was another one, and this is one I bring out in the whole last section of Imagine the God of Heaven.

00:20:10.214 --> 00:20:12.923
There are things about God, I think.

00:20:12.923 --> 00:20:31.109
I think all of us, me included, we put God in a box and and, and some of us put him in a box where we we don't realize how great, how magnificent, how, how otherworldly and mysterious and in control and sovereign, all those words you want to use.

00:20:31.109 --> 00:21:00.768
But others put him in a box and we don't imagine how personable, how relatable, how even humorous and fun and funny, and some people, like they, can't go there, and that's what I'm trying to help people do stretch your box and see that God is the, that relationship, and so humor was one of the things he said, and many of them said that they had so much fun.

00:21:02.330 --> 00:21:14.961
Joy was another thing, and and and this is an interesting one because he said the joy was like you wish you could be that happy, and this is God, that he's that joyful, he said.

00:21:14.961 --> 00:21:19.413
But just experiencing that joy, he said, put me in ecstasy.

00:21:19.413 --> 00:21:35.451
Now here's a wild thing, brian and I, you know, I went there, but I had multiple people that I interviewed of these 70 people, and imagine the God of heaven Say things like that, like in his presence.

00:21:35.451 --> 00:21:41.786
I was like beyond anything I've ever experienced on earth.

00:21:41.786 --> 00:21:55.903
And I, and I said, you mean even like better than sex, like oh yeah, oh yeah, you name it, there's no high, there's no, there's no nothing, which you know some people like no way.

00:21:55.903 --> 00:22:04.874
But stretch your categories, you know, look at the, look at the evidence, because what I'm also showing is I'm showing that this is not new.

00:22:04.874 --> 00:22:07.842
This is what God's been revealing about himself all along.

00:22:07.842 --> 00:22:14.531
Joy is what he wants, because it's, it's his, it's his main state.

00:22:14.531 --> 00:22:17.281
Right, that's?

00:22:17.281 --> 00:22:21.653
Cs Lewis is one of my favorite authors, you know, who was a literary scholar.

00:22:21.653 --> 00:22:25.424
So joy is the serious business of heaven.

00:22:25.424 --> 00:22:27.308
Yeah, and it's true.

00:22:28.090 --> 00:22:40.506
Another thing that Ron, this guy, said is purity, and I asked him to explain it, and I think it's when, when, when religious people use the word holy, I think.

00:22:40.506 --> 00:22:41.647
I think it's the same thing.

00:22:41.647 --> 00:22:54.920
He said he was just so pure, so innocent, and he said but knowledgeable, so not, not innocent, like naive, but just pure.

00:22:54.920 --> 00:22:55.741
And he said what?

00:22:55.741 --> 00:22:56.604
What it did is?

00:22:56.604 --> 00:23:02.138
It stood in stark relief to me and and and.

00:23:02.138 --> 00:23:03.260
Then he said one other thing.

00:23:03.260 --> 00:23:13.876
He said, and humble, and when he said this, he said you know, you know, I'm a, I'm a neurologist, psychiatrist, I've written books, I've traveled the world.

00:23:13.876 --> 00:23:19.929
You know, I, I have been proud.

00:23:19.929 --> 00:23:23.414
He has real reasons to be proud.

00:23:23.414 --> 00:23:29.003
And yet he was so humble, and and again it brought him to tears Just remembering that.

00:23:29.003 --> 00:23:31.167
And we don't.

00:23:31.167 --> 00:23:45.588
It's hard for us to put all that into one being right, right, and yet that's what I think is important to do to more accurately, because we'll never fully imagine God.

00:23:46.309 --> 00:23:47.794
Yeah, Thank you for that.

00:23:47.794 --> 00:23:51.651
Excuse me, I think, as you were saying, that you know people.

00:23:51.651 --> 00:24:10.563
I think the reason why we have trouble with the word God is because, as you mentioned, we put God in a box and a lot of us were raised with a God who was less than all of that and probably the last thing we envisioned God is, or maybe people who misrepresented.

00:24:10.563 --> 00:24:12.509
Oh, absolutely, what God's actually like.

00:24:12.829 --> 00:24:13.290
Absolutely.

00:24:13.290 --> 00:24:13.913
That's what I mean.

00:24:13.913 --> 00:24:17.351
That's what I mean People representing God in a certain way.

00:24:17.351 --> 00:24:27.494
I, even to this day, I go back and forth with people who are representing the Bible, for example, a certain way, and so, as the Bible says this and it's like does it really, you know?

00:24:28.565 --> 00:24:30.492
Well, and again, think about it this way.

00:24:30.492 --> 00:24:40.739
So the Bible says a lot of things, and it honestly depends on the framework through which I'm reading the whole thing, right?

00:24:41.145 --> 00:24:42.130
Yeah, exactly right.

00:24:42.744 --> 00:25:02.973
So if the framework through which I'm reading the whole thing is what is right and what is wrong, and I'm doing right and you're doing wrong, and that's the framework, that's what matters most, it's going to be a hammer, yes, but that's actually not the framework Jesus told us to use.

00:25:02.973 --> 00:25:04.508
We already talked about it.

00:25:04.508 --> 00:25:08.231
If you love God, throw your heart.

00:25:08.231 --> 00:25:14.090
And if you love people and yourself, you know, if you don't love yourself, you're not going to love people.

00:25:14.090 --> 00:25:18.011
So it's a both and it's learning to recognize.

00:25:18.031 --> 00:25:42.636
You know, this is another cool thing of many of these stories is, they say, in God's presence and I have three people in the book saying the same thing, and one was an agnostic who literally I tease him, you beat the thief next to Jesus for last minute, crying out to God because he had never prayed, never thought about God.

00:25:42.696 --> 00:25:48.807
But literally, as he's dying of an opioid overdose, before his head hits the steering wheel, he says God, forgive me.

00:25:48.807 --> 00:25:54.794
And he and these others.

00:25:54.794 --> 00:26:08.214
And the reason I point that out is because this is not what they would have expected, because God was good, like he didn't require him to have done all the right things.

00:26:08.214 --> 00:26:16.614
All he required is their heart turning to him, because that's the point love and he can't force love.

00:26:16.614 --> 00:26:21.878
So so the thing Jesus said is love God, love people.

00:26:21.878 --> 00:26:27.997
That's the framework through which we've got to also read the Bible and understand what all that means.

00:26:27.997 --> 00:26:33.336
So doesn't mean the command to not lie is wrong.

00:26:33.336 --> 00:26:48.375
It means it's not loving, right, right, but if someone does lie, would you just beat them down and tell them how horrible they are and they're worthless people because they did that and treat them like that?

00:26:48.375 --> 00:26:50.309
Well, that's not loving.

00:26:51.424 --> 00:26:54.954
So anyway, yeah, that's a really good point.

00:26:54.954 --> 00:26:57.471
You mentioned the agnostic man.

00:26:57.471 --> 00:27:00.693
You also mentioned an Indian man who saw the city of God.

00:27:00.693 --> 00:27:03.630
So that comes back to do.

00:27:03.630 --> 00:27:06.656
We have to be Christian to experience God in heaven.

00:27:09.289 --> 00:27:11.315
Yeah, you're asking the Christian pastor.

00:27:11.315 --> 00:27:14.029
You're leaving me into the trap.

00:27:15.907 --> 00:27:17.192
I don't mean to lead you into a trap.

00:27:17.625 --> 00:27:20.987
No, I'm totally, I'm teasing, I'm teasing, but but.

00:27:20.987 --> 00:27:22.411
But there is something I think.

00:27:22.411 --> 00:27:43.950
So I think some of us have been burned by Christians who have not understood the, the magnitude of the grace of God and and, as a result, have have led people to believe that that God doesn't care about anybody but us.

00:27:43.950 --> 00:27:57.236
That's not true and I'm showing that in the very first three chapters it's called God of all nations, but the the other side of it is what these people experience.

00:27:57.236 --> 00:28:03.978
So, for instance, santosh Akarchi was this Indian manufacturing engineer.

00:28:03.978 --> 00:28:07.732
So again, very smart people who travel the world doing engineering.

00:28:07.732 --> 00:28:09.356
But he was raised in Hinduism.

00:28:09.356 --> 00:28:11.550
His dad was a Sanskrit scholar.

00:28:11.550 --> 00:28:12.554
That was all he knew.

00:28:12.554 --> 00:28:13.949
The Hindu gods was all he knew.

00:28:15.204 --> 00:28:19.251
He dies, he hears Code Blue, his pancreas ruptured.

00:28:19.251 --> 00:28:21.949
He hears Code Blue.

00:28:21.949 --> 00:28:26.433
They couldn't revive his heart and they put him on artificial life support for three days.

00:28:26.433 --> 00:28:31.275
Three days later, when he comes back, he tells what happened.

00:28:31.275 --> 00:28:32.930
He left his body.

00:28:32.930 --> 00:28:34.590
He sees his body there.

00:28:35.184 --> 00:28:41.086
This brilliant light comes and he knows it's a divine light, he says.

00:28:41.086 --> 00:28:47.826
And I knew this light had ultimate authority and I had to do whatever it wanted, he said.

00:28:47.826 --> 00:28:50.374
But I fell in love with this light.

00:28:50.374 --> 00:28:52.528
That was his first response.

00:28:52.528 --> 00:29:00.632
And then they go, they travel, and he said it was like through tunnels, and that's another one of the commonalities.

00:29:00.632 --> 00:29:10.910
But they come to this place where the light stops, parked over what he describes as this giant compound.

00:29:10.910 --> 00:29:18.798
Now, I've been to India many times and at first I was like, what do you mean compound?

00:29:18.798 --> 00:29:20.750
It took me a while to figure out what he was saying.

00:29:20.865 --> 00:29:41.954
But in India there are compounds, literally like high walled areas, gated, and he said it was like that, but these beautiful walls, high walls inside this beautiful landscape, but mansions and buildings of otherworldly material.

00:29:41.954 --> 00:29:47.135
And it was square in shape, thousands of miles long.

00:29:47.135 --> 00:29:50.944
He said when you're there, your eyesight is like telescopic.

00:29:50.944 --> 00:29:53.792
Well, that's another commonality as well.

00:29:53.792 --> 00:30:02.772
But he said and there were 12 gates, I counted them and outside the gates were angels.

00:30:03.025 --> 00:30:05.772
And that's when I realized I'm looking at the kingdom of heaven.

00:30:05.772 --> 00:30:09.134
And he said all I wanted was to enter there.

00:30:09.134 --> 00:30:12.953
He said I realized that's the goal of existence to be there.

00:30:12.953 --> 00:30:16.421
So he experiences.

00:30:16.421 --> 00:30:23.550
And if you've ever read Revelation 21 and you look at his words, it's like that's what he's experiencing.

00:30:23.550 --> 00:30:30.855
And then he's like where am I?

00:30:30.855 --> 00:30:39.451
And again, this is an experience more real than he said, more real than anything we've experienced here and he says where am I?

00:30:39.451 --> 00:30:53.869
And he looks and he's up on a high platform and he looks down to his left and he describes an abyss, he describes hell and he's like I want to go there, I don't want to go there.

00:30:53.869 --> 00:31:06.440
He turns and he sees who he describes as God now in the appearance of a giant man on a throne.

00:31:06.440 --> 00:31:10.009
That's what he describes Interesting.

00:31:10.109 --> 00:31:10.411
Okay.

00:31:10.490 --> 00:31:12.955
I know I'm not making this up.

00:31:12.955 --> 00:31:15.469
Yeah, you know, this is just what he told me.

00:31:15.469 --> 00:31:26.073
And he looks into his eyes and he gets a life review, like he sees all of it, the good and the bad, and he falls to his knees and he says God, forgive me.

00:31:26.073 --> 00:31:29.992
Forgive me Because he realizes all the wrongs he had done.

00:31:29.992 --> 00:31:48.135
And then the Lord speaks to him and he says I was shocked because there was such tenderness, such compassion, such mercy in his voice and he said I'm going to send you back and when you go back, I want you to love your family, especially your daughter.

00:31:48.135 --> 00:31:49.409
She needs your help right now.

00:31:49.409 --> 00:31:56.205
So see, this is this, is this stretches everybody's categories, right Is that?

00:31:56.205 --> 00:32:04.914
He's the God who is with us, all of us, and he knows everything intimately about everyone we interact with and he cares about all of us.

00:32:04.914 --> 00:32:06.417
That's the thing.

00:32:06.417 --> 00:32:09.192
If you miss that, you miss the, you miss the big picture.

00:32:09.192 --> 00:32:14.511
But we can also reject him, and that's what Santosh was also seeing.

00:32:14.511 --> 00:32:25.871
And so then he sees, right next to this throne, what he calls a very narrow door that was open to me and he could go into the kingdom of heaven.

00:32:25.871 --> 00:32:28.949
And he asked the Lord.

00:32:28.949 --> 00:32:31.013
He said when I come back.

00:32:31.013 --> 00:32:38.398
And he said because there was such mercy and compassion and love in his voice, I started to relax and I said when I come back, how do I go through that narrow door?

00:32:38.398 --> 00:32:44.996
And the Lord said, and he was thinking about religion, like what religion do I choose?

00:32:44.996 --> 00:32:46.705
What do I go to, you know?

00:32:46.705 --> 00:32:50.454
And he was thinking which temple or synagogue or church or do I go to?

00:32:50.454 --> 00:33:00.719
And the Lord said what I want is relationship, not one day a week, 365 days a year.

00:33:00.719 --> 00:33:07.453
How honest will you be with me, how real, how sincere, how honest will you be with me?

00:33:07.453 --> 00:33:11.750
And then he said he said the wages of sin is death.

00:33:11.750 --> 00:33:19.029
Walk with me and surrender yourself daily to me.

00:33:19.029 --> 00:33:20.866
And then he sends it back.

00:33:23.285 --> 00:33:30.509
Two years later, his daughter is invited to sing in a choir at a church because she was a choral major.

00:33:30.509 --> 00:33:45.178
Santosh goes to hear her sing and the pastor is speaking on the passage in John 10 where Jesus says you know, or Matthew seven where he says you know, I am the gate.

00:33:45.178 --> 00:33:47.590
I am the gate into the kingdom of heaven.

00:33:47.590 --> 00:33:51.815
And then John 10 where he says you know, I'm the gate and the sheep will come in and out.

00:33:51.815 --> 00:33:58.576
And Santosh goes and he starts reading the Bible and he's like that's what I experienced, interesting, wow.

00:33:58.576 --> 00:34:05.990
Well, if that were one story, you go, eh, one story, but I'm showing just in the first three.

00:34:05.990 --> 00:34:06.751
I mean throughout.

00:34:06.751 --> 00:34:33.215
I've got stories from people all over the world Bebe, who is a Muslim related to the Prophet Muhammad living in Tehran, who, in her near death experience, experiences the same, the same almighty giant in a robe and a beard, white hair, though right, and Santosh did who says to her I am he who is in Farsi.

00:34:34.057 --> 00:34:34.298
Yeah.

00:34:34.646 --> 00:34:38.851
Okay, she can't speak English, so she told me this through a translator.

00:34:38.851 --> 00:34:43.235
Okay, and I was like you got to be kidding, I am he who is.

00:34:43.235 --> 00:34:46.635
Well, when Moses asked God, who am I?

00:34:46.635 --> 00:34:49.105
To say sent me, you know, when he's delivered the?

00:34:49.105 --> 00:34:50.929
This is an exodus.

00:34:50.929 --> 00:34:53.916
God says I am, who is?

00:34:53.916 --> 00:34:56.208
I am the self-existent one.

00:34:56.690 --> 00:34:56.971
Yeah.

00:34:57.833 --> 00:35:00.710
Yeah, it's what Jesus said to himself before Abraham was born.

00:35:00.710 --> 00:35:15.813
I am so she, and she also, you know, come, comes to start following Jesus and then gets past to leave Tehran because they were going to kill her.

00:35:15.813 --> 00:35:19.632
Yeah, so I mean, it's not all free everywhere.

00:35:19.632 --> 00:35:27.257
You know, in fact, another Muslim, a mom from Rwanda that I interviewed.

00:35:27.257 --> 00:35:33.373
That's in the book and it's a fascinating story, too Awesome story.

00:35:33.373 --> 00:35:43.393
His mother was a Tutsi, his father was a Hutu during the Rwandan genocide and it, you know it, drove their family apart.

00:35:43.393 --> 00:35:58.773
He ends up a street kid at eight years old, doing drugs, then dealing drugs, then he becomes an Imam in the mosque and anyway, long story short, he too, he dies of blood cancer.

00:35:58.773 --> 00:36:03.429
And he says who was?

00:36:03.510 --> 00:36:11.893
There was a man like he saw in the movie the Passion of the Christ, because he got free movie tickets and he went to see the Passion of the Christ.

00:36:11.893 --> 00:36:28.632
And he says he enters and he's in this white robe with a beard, but light coming out of him like the sun, but I could look at him and he shows me and he sees holes in his hands and he says to him I died for mankind.

00:36:28.632 --> 00:36:30.530
You are one of those I died for.

00:36:30.530 --> 00:36:33.407
Never deny it until everyone.

00:36:33.407 --> 00:36:42.876
And he's still in Rwanda and he's now an Anglican priest and he's had six attempts on his life.

00:36:42.876 --> 00:36:44.539
Oh, wow, wow.

00:36:44.539 --> 00:36:46.918
What would convince someone to do that?

00:36:46.918 --> 00:36:53.045
Yeah, and I mean you can, you can go watch my, my video interviews with him and he's and and so.

00:36:53.045 --> 00:37:02.396
So the point is all over the globe there's another, another Indian man who Dr Rajeev Parti.

00:37:02.396 --> 00:37:03.077
Maybe you know.

00:37:04.027 --> 00:37:05.048
Yes, he's been in my program.

00:37:05.248 --> 00:37:06.291
Yeah, oh, he has.

00:37:06.472 --> 00:37:06.672
Yes.

00:37:07.233 --> 00:37:07.434
Yeah.

00:37:07.434 --> 00:37:10.869
So I don't know if he told you his whole story, but yes, he came.

00:37:10.869 --> 00:37:20.969
He came back confused too, because it's like why did these Christian angels bring me to this God of light who then later, when I ask who are you, Lord Says I'm Jesus, your savior.

00:37:22.373 --> 00:37:22.594
Yeah.

00:37:24.208 --> 00:37:26.114
This is happening all over the globe.

00:37:26.375 --> 00:37:38.068
Yeah, and I'm really glad that you're tying this back to to the Bible and stuff, because and when I asked you the question, you know I didn't mean to to to lead you into a trap, but I do for a reason.

00:37:38.068 --> 00:37:48.275
I I I moderated a board on Facebook and just last couple of days, you know, people are telling me NDE's are not biblical and these, you know they're, they're deceptions.

00:37:48.275 --> 00:37:55.353
And then one guy I was telling you know about this and he said, well, I said something about a Catholic person because, well, catholics are all deceived too.

00:37:55.353 --> 00:37:57.731
So these are, these are some of the people.

00:37:58.344 --> 00:38:07.838
I've got a priest, I've got multiple Catholics who met the same God and this guy became a priest because of his encounter Right.

00:38:09.045 --> 00:38:15.099
So and and so, brian, that's the thing that just is so difficult, you know, and that's what I'm trying to show.

00:38:15.099 --> 00:38:24.173
I'm trying to show, yeah, there's a lot of misinformation out there about God and a lot of us, all of us, look, all of us misinterpret.

00:38:24.173 --> 00:38:38.213
You know, I'm not completely right, I'm not even claiming to be, you know, but if you, but if you look at all the evidence and that's what I'm trying to put, I'm trying to put the biblical evidence, because I've studied it for three decades, right.

00:38:38.213 --> 00:38:48.693
I'm also trying to put I really think God is showing us in this global age of communication that he's the God of all nations and he always has been.

00:38:48.693 --> 00:38:53.514
And you know what, what a lot of Christians don't understand.

00:38:54.125 --> 00:39:12.447
Jesus said this a lot, and you know, you even like in Acts chapter Acts, chapter 10, you know, god basically reveals to Peter he's the God of all nations and he has Peter.

00:39:12.447 --> 00:39:15.137
Go to this Roman centurion.

00:39:15.137 --> 00:39:20.248
Well, they were auto worshipers, they were the, the pagans, right, they were the outcasts to the Jews.

00:39:20.248 --> 00:39:22.213
And Peter's like I would never do that.

00:39:22.213 --> 00:39:23.436
Why would he never do that?

00:39:23.436 --> 00:39:34.938
Well, because his culture told him God loves us, not them, right, right, and he says he realizes what God's telling him is, and he says this.

00:39:34.938 --> 00:39:40.134
It says I now realize that God does not show favoritism.

00:39:40.134 --> 00:39:45.157
He accepts everyone from all nations, you know.

00:39:45.157 --> 00:39:48.628
Basically, he said who fear him or seek him and do what is right.

00:39:51.164 --> 00:39:56.885
And so, yeah, in in Imagine the God of Heaven, one of my favorite stories, a good friend of mine.

00:39:56.885 --> 00:40:08.074
Now when, when I was on a New York national news show, she emails me afterwards this is after Imagine Heaven and she's a nurse.

00:40:08.074 --> 00:40:15.556
She was a nurse in LA names Heidi, and she said hey, I saw you on on that TV show.

00:40:15.556 --> 00:40:18.909
I don't know who you are, I've never read your book, but that happened to me.

00:40:18.909 --> 00:40:30.717
I was raised in an atheist, agnostic Jewish family, but when I, when my horse landed on me and crushed me, I was up in the air with Jesus.

00:40:30.717 --> 00:40:36.235
I've never told anyone that Thanks, yeah, that's all she said.

00:40:36.235 --> 00:40:42.833
Wow, and so I was like Heidi, we got to talk and we've become good, good friends since then.

00:40:42.833 --> 00:40:49.458
But yeah, what's fascinating and her, her story is in Imagine the God of Heaven as well.

00:40:49.458 --> 00:41:06.152
But what's fascinating is her dad had a mantra and you know, brian, a lot, of, a lot of our animosity toward God and toward people comes from our own hurt, unhealed.

00:41:07.760 --> 00:41:18.452
And you know that right I mean even even in grief work there's a lot of you know just the pain of not working through griefs and stuff like that.

00:41:18.452 --> 00:41:31.730
But her dad, who was, who was actually pretty abusive, had a mantra there is no God, your life is worthless.

00:41:31.730 --> 00:41:35.945
Jesus Christ is the biggest hoax ever perpetrated on mankind.

00:41:35.945 --> 00:41:36.527
Oh, wow.

00:41:36.527 --> 00:41:42.708
And he told his three daughters that every night they're whole growing up years while being abusive.

00:41:42.708 --> 00:41:44.434
Wow.

00:41:44.434 --> 00:41:57.449
Well, she always believed in God and she prayed to him every night and she felt that she felt like she would pray to him and she'd talk to him about all these things happening and she felt the comfort.

00:41:58.065 --> 00:42:01.134
In fact she felt like he was there, kind of rocking her to bed.

00:42:01.134 --> 00:42:19.496
That's what she felt At 16, after after going through her bat mitzvah and being raped by her rabbi or being sexually molested by a rabbi, you know, I mean, you know it's a pretty horrific story.

00:42:19.496 --> 00:42:33.313
But at 16, her she's in a horse riding accident and her horse lands on her and crushes her and she instantly left her body.

00:42:33.313 --> 00:42:38.101
She said she was up 30 feet above the accident watching her sisters freak out.

00:42:38.101 --> 00:42:43.293
But she felt great and she said my only concern was for my sisters.

00:42:43.293 --> 00:42:49.313
I knew I was dead but I was great, but I just hated that they had to see me die like this.

00:42:49.313 --> 00:42:59.590
And then she sees a light over her shoulder, moves up and there with her 30 feet in the air, is Jesus and he looks like you would think Jesus would look, except he's.

00:42:59.590 --> 00:43:01.293
He's brilliant.

00:43:01.293 --> 00:43:07.494
But she recognized it and she said I said oh, hey.

00:43:07.494 --> 00:43:12.255
And she said it was like an instant reconnection.

00:43:12.255 --> 00:43:15.588
She said I knew this man, I knew him.

00:43:15.588 --> 00:43:25.809
And she later said I can't explain how God can be a light and God can be love and God can be a man.

00:43:25.809 --> 00:43:31.112
But that's what I experienced and Jesus gave her a life review.

00:43:31.764 --> 00:43:32.829
Remember, she's 16, right.

00:43:32.829 --> 00:43:39.771
So he gives her a life review and in the life review, first of all, they laughed.

00:43:39.771 --> 00:44:06.972
She said their butts off Because, like, one thing that happened was when she was an infant in a crib and her mom, you know, put another infant in there and the infant picked up her little plastic rattle and whacked her on the nose and Heidi, just like gets indignant and starts to cry and all that and they just both burst out laughing because they knew she wouldn't really hurt, she was just mad, right.

00:44:06.972 --> 00:44:16.496
But they could tell all this and she said Jesus just loved to laugh and she said he was so fun.

00:44:16.496 --> 00:44:25.932
But he also showed her in her life review that when she was a young girl and she was praying to God every night he was there.

00:44:25.932 --> 00:44:30.893
She saw him there sitting by her bed comforting her.

00:44:31.918 --> 00:44:40.630
In her life review, wow, and and I think that's what this shows is that, you know, jesus said I am the light of the world.

00:44:40.630 --> 00:44:45.269
Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but we'll have the light of life.

00:44:45.269 --> 00:44:46.112
Mm-hmm.

00:44:46.112 --> 00:44:57.476
And this God of light also appeared to Moses, you know, 3500 years ago, as this Burning bush that wouldn't burn the bush.

00:44:57.476 --> 00:45:04.755
Yeah, this is this brilliant light that didn't burn, didn't burn the bush, and and and on and on.

00:45:04.755 --> 00:45:16.878
You know, you can, you can trace it through, and what I think this shows us is God has always been about Drawing people back to himself.

00:45:16.878 --> 00:45:19.114
That's what he's doing.

00:45:19.114 --> 00:45:20.719
He he's.

00:45:20.719 --> 00:45:44.436
The whole purpose of Jesus coming and Dying on the cross was to make a way that we don't have to pay for all our wrongs, that God in his justice, justice, would be willing and able to both be just and to forgive Anybody who wants him.

00:45:45.371 --> 00:45:46.514
Hmm.

00:45:46.534 --> 00:45:48.701
That's it, yeah, anybody who wants him.

00:45:49.110 --> 00:45:55.463
Yeah if you want him and you want his love, nothing can keep you away from him, because nothing can keep him away from you.

00:45:55.463 --> 00:45:59.349
Yeah, but here's the other thing is that he's with us already.

00:45:59.349 --> 00:46:02.137
He's with everyone already.

00:46:02.137 --> 00:46:06.614
Yeah, how in different ways, even the person who rejects him.

00:46:06.614 --> 00:46:12.534
And there are people in the book who he said that to them, it's like in in their life review.

00:46:12.635 --> 00:46:24.364
You know, he was one guy who was a medical executive and a CEO and In Jesus presence he's getting this life review and Jesus is showing him all these times.

00:46:24.364 --> 00:46:26.510
He suffered as a kid.

00:46:26.510 --> 00:46:27.311
He suffered a lot.

00:46:27.311 --> 00:46:28.114
He was in the hospital.

00:46:28.114 --> 00:46:30.922
I had bad asthma, he was overweight, he was bullied.

00:46:30.922 --> 00:46:34.960
He's showing me all and he says why are you showing me these things?

00:46:34.960 --> 00:46:44.423
And then he kind of had an aha and he said were you there with me Even through all that, even before I knew you?

00:46:44.423 --> 00:46:51.519
And and Jesus looks at me said yes, I was there waiting for you to turn to me.

00:46:51.519 --> 00:47:03.474
And and Then a really cool thing is at a later point, he's just experiencing a similar kind of like ecstatic joy.

00:47:03.474 --> 00:47:18.677
He's by you know, he's by this river in heaven, this gorgeous place, and he's by this river and he drinks of this water and he said it was just like, like he again said ecstasy, you think they say that mm-hmm.

00:47:18.677 --> 00:47:24.954
And then he he turns to Jesus and Jesus is holding a flask Like a bottle mm-hmm.

00:47:25.434 --> 00:47:26.456
This is what is that.

00:47:26.456 --> 00:47:31.150
And Jesus said I've been collecting your tears, beloved, hmm.

00:47:31.150 --> 00:47:34.798
And then he pours them into the river, hmm.

00:47:34.798 --> 00:47:40.860
And Randy instantly knows he's returning all my sorrows for joy.

00:47:42.331 --> 00:47:43.896
Wow, yeah.

00:47:43.896 --> 00:47:51.039
And then I Want to ask you this, because you talked about, you mentioned something about even those who reject him.

00:47:51.039 --> 00:47:51.500
I think it was.

00:47:51.500 --> 00:47:55.576
It was a phrase you used If you're familiar with the work of Thomas Talbot.

00:47:55.576 --> 00:47:58.003
You wrote a book called the inescapable love of God.

00:47:59.371 --> 00:48:00.492
No okay.

00:48:00.512 --> 00:48:13.144
So he and he argues that if we knew who God was and if we were in our right minds, having those two conditions, you could not reject God and the God.

00:48:13.144 --> 00:48:17.630
I hear you describing the way, the joy and the love and the laughter.

00:48:17.630 --> 00:48:21.590
How could anybody possibly reject that?

00:48:23.534 --> 00:48:24.898
It's even better than that.

00:48:25.179 --> 00:48:26.322
Yeah, so I mean.

00:48:26.342 --> 00:48:26.945
Heidi, heidi.

00:48:26.945 --> 00:48:33.909
So Heidi was a speed freak, right, she rode horses, bareback and just loved speed, mm-hmm.

00:48:33.909 --> 00:48:41.028
So they're up 30 feet in the air after getting a life review, jesus grabs her hand.

00:48:41.028 --> 00:48:43.981
I Didn't even, I didn't even tell.

00:48:43.981 --> 00:48:51.601
I went ahead and put it in the book, but in the end, because I figure if it's too soon, people won't they'll check out because they won't believe it.

00:48:51.601 --> 00:48:57.543
Because that was my first reaction Like no way, he takes her hand and they take off.

00:48:57.563 --> 00:49:08.697
And she said at first we it was like we were going through Earth's atmosphere and then out into like the universe, but they're going faster and faster.

00:49:08.697 --> 00:49:09.701
And she said that we were.

00:49:09.701 --> 00:49:16.869
We were flying like Superman and Lois Lane, mm-hmm, but but being pushed by a wave of light.

00:49:16.869 --> 00:49:23.739
She said it was like we were surfing this wave of light and I could feel that I was barefoot Because I could feel it on my feet.

00:49:23.739 --> 00:49:30.762
And I reached in and I touched my hand to it and I look over Jesus and he's just grinning ear to ear and he says isn't this the coolest ever?

00:49:31.351 --> 00:49:31.954
mm-hmm.

00:49:33.371 --> 00:49:38.782
Well, there are a lot of Christians who like right, right now, or checking out, like no, that's you're, you know.

00:49:40.050 --> 00:49:41.373
Right can't be like that.

00:49:41.373 --> 00:49:44.603
Right, right, but he is like that.

00:49:44.603 --> 00:49:46.554
You know, jesus.

00:49:46.554 --> 00:49:57.081
Jesus, his last night on earth said you know, I'm telling you these things so that my joy may be in you and your joy may be complete.

00:49:57.081 --> 00:49:58.985
Right, and see what.

00:49:58.985 --> 00:50:17.902
What I go into in the book that I think many Christians miss is that Everything we love, every wonderful experience, every pleasure, every adventure, all the things we love about life, we only do because he made us with the ability to love him.

00:50:19.190 --> 00:50:25.438
Yeah, exactly and he actually Enjoys us enjoying them right.

00:50:25.438 --> 00:50:28.949
I I love enjoying things with my granddaughters.

00:50:28.949 --> 00:50:39.443
You know right, if I give him a gift, I Enjoyed playing it with them and seeing them enjoying it right, yeah well, I'm not better than God.

00:50:40.811 --> 00:50:41.833
Yeah, and that that kind of.

00:50:41.833 --> 00:50:42.496
That kind of.

00:50:42.496 --> 00:50:44.702
Come back to the title of the book that was mentioned.

00:50:44.702 --> 00:50:46.775
He calls it the inescapable love of God.

00:50:46.775 --> 00:50:53.369
It's like it's so Attractive that no one in the right mind could turn away.

00:50:53.369 --> 00:51:00.534
I think what people reject is the, the limited view of God that we have, that the God, the heaven.

00:51:00.534 --> 00:51:01.804
That sounds boring, right?

00:51:01.804 --> 00:51:02.750
I don't want to go place.

00:51:02.750 --> 00:51:07.021
I'm going to be sitting on a cloud playing a harp all day, singing, singing songs for 10,000 years.

00:51:07.650 --> 00:51:08.431
And that's not it.

00:51:08.431 --> 00:51:33.059
And and, and you know you, you read the stories of these people and the eye witnesses of these people All over the world and you realize, okay, they're either whacked and there are millions of whacked people, but still, like I said, you know, I put all that evidence like it doesn't make sense, right, unless there's something real here, but what they say is it's more real.

00:51:33.059 --> 00:51:36.215
Now, what does that mean?

00:51:36.215 --> 00:51:41.289
I've, as an engineer, thought a lot about that and and I think this is what they mean.

00:51:41.429 --> 00:51:46.505
So imagine, if this you know, we're living in three dimensions of space.

00:51:46.505 --> 00:51:52.336
In one dimension of time, we Can't even imagine a fourth dimension of space.

00:51:52.336 --> 00:51:58.514
In a second dimension of time, five dimensions, right, we can't fathom it, no, you can't.

00:51:58.514 --> 00:52:02.563
But but, but we can, and we can understand it by analogy.

00:52:02.563 --> 00:52:10.617
So imagine, this experience is being lived on a flat black and white painting on my wall, and Death means separation.

00:52:10.617 --> 00:52:20.195
So your soul leaves this three dimensional realm, so your soul is peeled off that flat, black and white two dimensional realm when you only knew up and down and side to side.

00:52:20.195 --> 00:52:21.920
You didn't even know in and out.

00:52:21.920 --> 00:52:24.251
That's not a dimension You're familiar with at all.

00:52:24.251 --> 00:52:36.242
Mm-hmm, now you come out and your two dimensional self is now experiencing three dimensions and color in this room that was all around you and you're contained within this bigger reality.

00:52:36.242 --> 00:52:37.873
That's more real.

00:52:39.090 --> 00:52:49.411
Then imagine being pressed back into that flat two dimensional world and trying to describe three dimensions of color In black and white, two dimensional terms, right, right.

00:52:49.411 --> 00:52:55.304
That's why the more of these people I've interviewed, I've realized they have to use hyperbole.

00:52:55.304 --> 00:53:09.094
That's why some of the people in in the bible who have also experienced the same thing yeah, there are a lot of them talking about what they saw or experienced in heaven, and it's always it was like this Mm-hmm, you know.

00:53:09.094 --> 00:53:16.016
So the city was Like gold, but transparent like glass.

00:53:16.954 --> 00:53:17.195
Right.

00:53:18.722 --> 00:53:25.949
Well, what does that mean when you hear a manufacturing engineer say, well, it was otherworldly materials.

00:53:25.949 --> 00:53:44.563
And then you hear both a spine surgeon and a commercial airline pilot who'd never read the Bible before, talking about how it appears like glass or crystal, but it's actually light and love.

00:53:44.563 --> 00:53:48.547
This place is made of light and love.

00:53:48.547 --> 00:53:52.929
And they say I know that doesn't make any sense, but that's what it was.

00:53:52.929 --> 00:53:55.628
And I asked them but was it real?

00:53:55.628 --> 00:53:57.166
Was it like physical and solid?

00:53:57.166 --> 00:53:59.246
Oh yeah, more than this.

00:53:59.246 --> 00:54:02.108
Like hugs are like real?

00:54:02.108 --> 00:54:03.925
Oh yeah, much deeper than this.

00:54:03.925 --> 00:54:07.670
I mean communication and thought and memory is all this.

00:54:07.670 --> 00:54:08.262
Oh yeah.

00:54:08.262 --> 00:54:09.748
But you understand completely.

00:54:09.748 --> 00:54:10.764
It's thought to thought.

00:54:10.764 --> 00:54:12.623
Nothing's misunderstood.

00:54:15.063 --> 00:54:15.784
Yeah, I think.

00:54:15.784 --> 00:54:19.240
Well, I know what I saw from one of the notes you sent me I love.

00:54:19.240 --> 00:54:24.052
What this says is we're going to find it.

00:54:24.052 --> 00:54:30.804
You said basically that the NDE kind of puts color onto what's kind of black and white, I think in the Bible.

00:54:30.804 --> 00:54:34.108
And having this conversation with you, I can tell.

00:54:34.108 --> 00:54:44.690
And when you talk to people that haven't had NDE as much as you have, it becomes infectious and I can see it, I can feel it coming through you and so you're making us Well, it's exciting.

00:54:44.940 --> 00:54:51.045
Yeah, it's exciting and that's the thing I just wish everyone could know.

00:54:51.045 --> 00:54:53.931
All the things you long for.

00:54:53.931 --> 00:55:10.831
They are available and the reason we long it's another CS Lewis quote if you have a thirst for something that nothing on earth can quench, it probably means we were made for something else.

00:55:12.902 --> 00:55:14.608
Yeah, I love that quote by CS Lewis.

00:55:14.608 --> 00:55:15.309
I think it which.

00:55:15.309 --> 00:55:16.454
I just butchered by the way.

00:55:16.454 --> 00:55:20.590
Yeah, but it indicates like, yeah, we don't have a longing for something that doesn't exist.

00:55:20.590 --> 00:55:22.724
So he talks about these things that we long for.

00:55:22.724 --> 00:55:22.965
That.

00:55:22.965 --> 00:55:25.570
There's got to be a reason for them.

00:55:26.599 --> 00:55:32.570
Yeah, we hunger and there's food, but we want a love that never completely satisfies.

00:55:32.570 --> 00:55:34.786
We want a peace that it comes and goes.

00:55:34.786 --> 00:55:35.429
We want a joy.

00:55:35.429 --> 00:55:43.811
We get low glimpses and then back to mundane and we picture that that's how heaven or God's going to be, but that's not it.

00:55:43.811 --> 00:56:00.344
It's that it's like these longings, these desires are good, but there's something missing, and it's kind of like that homing device in birds that how do they fly thousands of miles and hit their target every year?

00:56:00.887 --> 00:56:01.068
Right.

00:56:01.699 --> 00:56:05.826
And there's something in them knows what home actually is, and it just points them there.

00:56:06.681 --> 00:56:07.626
Yeah, it just said that.

00:56:07.626 --> 00:56:09.106
It reminded me of a woman I interviewed.

00:56:09.106 --> 00:56:11.710
She had a near-death experience when her husband murdered her.

00:56:11.710 --> 00:56:17.286
But she's in heaven and she's with her sister and they're laughing and she's like it's just too much joy.

00:56:17.286 --> 00:56:19.065
She said it was just too much.

00:56:19.065 --> 00:56:21.166
I felt like I was going to explode.

00:56:21.166 --> 00:56:23.269
I didn't know if I could contain all of it.

00:56:23.269 --> 00:56:24.820
And I've heard several people.

00:56:24.860 --> 00:56:26.686
Five people that I've interviewed in the book say that.

00:56:27.027 --> 00:56:27.188
Yeah.

00:56:27.860 --> 00:56:46.731
I felt like I was going to just blow up One guy I love that he's an Australian lawyer and he said I was in God's presence and it was like he was filling me up with love and joy so much I felt like I was going to burst and I thought I don't know if I can take anymore.

00:56:46.731 --> 00:56:55.927
And he said he heard a chuckle from God and then it starts to go down and he said no, no, don't stop.

00:56:55.927 --> 00:57:01.431
And then more, but yeah, again, and again.

00:57:02.099 --> 00:57:03.164
Yeah, absolutely.

00:57:03.164 --> 00:57:13.601
Well, I really appreciate you having this conversation again with me today and remind people the name of the book and where they can get it and where they can find out more about you.

00:57:15.059 --> 00:57:26.400
It's Imagine the God of Heaven, and you can just go to imaginethegoddovevennet or johnburckonlinecom Right now.

00:57:26.400 --> 00:57:27.746
We'll take you to the same place.

00:57:27.746 --> 00:57:30.128
You can find out more about it.

00:57:31.041 --> 00:57:32.365
Again, thanks so much for being here.

00:57:32.365 --> 00:57:37.269
Thanks for sharing your knowledge and your wisdom and your joy with my audience.

00:57:38.340 --> 00:57:42.887
Well, it's not my joy and everyone can have it.

00:57:43.367 --> 00:57:44.309
Yeah, thanks a lot.

00:57:44.309 --> 00:58:06.043
Have a great rest of your day, okay, thank you everybody.