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

Hey everybody, this is Brian. I'm back with another episode of Grief to Growth and today I want to welcome to a special guest. His name is Pastor John Burke. 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. If you haven't, if you don't remember it, or if you're new, go back to August of 2021. And I had a great conversation with Pastor Burke then.

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. 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. 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. He's an international speaker and his message of spiritual enlightenment has spanned 30 different countries. 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. 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. So, pastor Burke, can you expand on the love that we've always wanted and why we feel that way?

Well, first, brian, call me John, I'm more comfortable with that. Ok, fine, yeah. Yeah, our church is very casual. We say come as you are, and so I don't like the titles, but that's all right.

Hey, cool I understand.

So you forgot one thing in the subtitle Near Death Experiences God's Revelation and the Love You've Always Wanted.

Yes, yes.

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. 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. 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.

Yeah, I'd say they are, but we might as well we could go over a little bit for people that might be new.

Yeah, because I mean that's really important. 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. Many come back saying that they experienced something of a life to come that was more real than this life ever was. And there are commonalities and I've traced about 40 commonalities. 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.

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. 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. And it doesn't matter their religious background, their culture. Many times what they would have expected is not what they found, but what they found. They never wanted to leave. It was the love they have always wanted.

Yeah. So why do you think that resonates with us so much, that love that we've always wanted? Do you feel like people are missing that here, or what's the reason for that?

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. 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. There are all these metaphors of relationship that God likens what he wants with humanity too. 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? 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. 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. 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. Do those two and you fulfill all the scriptures, all the commands of scripture wrapped up in those two.

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. So that's another commonality that we have. Re-experience so that's another commonality is time. I kind of think time probably works in two dimensions, or maybe three. 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. 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. Have you had her on your show before?

I have not had her on my show, but I have met her.

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

So we talk about the word God, we use the word God. It's a loaded word for a lot of people, yeah, I know. And this community in the afterlife community, a lot of times some people shy away from it. I've heard some people who've had nearer depth experiences say and I don't know if I want to use that word. So what is your experience with the word God and how should we relate to that?

Yeah, that's a great question. 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. That's it. But the other thing I'm trying to show is he didn't just show up in the age of near depth experiences. 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. 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. 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. So there's all this evidence. 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. This was my creator, this is who made me, and yet that's consistent all around the globe. The being they're describing is consistent, and so that should tell us something Like that's a lot of data. And if it were that alone?

In chapter two of Imagine the God of Heaven, there have been a lot of alternate explanations of near-death experiences. 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. I've heard all these. Or what about the effects of drugs in the hospital and all that. So I go through 10 points of evidence that any alternative theory has to make sense of. 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. Well, yeah, but that doesn't make sense of veretical observations. 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. 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? 96% more, there were some things some of the observations they made were not completely accurate. Only 2% were inaccurate. Well, that's high correlation, right? Like, how do you make sense of that?

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. 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. Third, you have these overlapping commonalities, but they're not all the same. 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.

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. That's very strong testimony. That's what we see with these NDE's. And then you know. 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? And there are other reasons I go into, but those are just some that convince me like no, this is something real. We're getting these observations that again, you know, what's consistently observed is real, but there's something real here.

And I'm really glad that you went through that because I find so many people do not understand what you just talked about. There is evidence, there's vertical evidence, from a lot of these NDE's. 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. So I'm glad you go into that in the book for people that are still skeptical about the whole experience itself. When it comes to people meeting God, what would you say is a general way that people describe God?

Well, some, you know, some, see him as a brilliant light, bright, they consistently say, brighter than the sun, but easy to look at. And they say things like I knew this should just burn my eyes out, but it didn't. In fact, I was mesmerized and in his presence. 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. 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. Right, and yet they are. And like this, this one guy who his name is Ron, dr Ron Smotherman.

He's a neurologist, anda psychiatrist, and it's a wild story. He he was living in San Francisco led a, led a guy stay in his house while he was gone. He was doing lectures around the world. When he came back the guy had a psychotic break and started stabbing him, stabbed him 13 times, once through the neck. That Dr said he absolutely should not have survived.

He shows, showed me the, the scars and on the, as as the 14th was coming for his heart, he said I'm froze. And suddenly appears like instantly before him this, this brilliant light standing there that he knew again was divine. He knew this was God, didn't have any. They don't have any doubt of who this is. They have an honest experience. But he said imagine standing five feet away from the, the, the point of impact of an atomic explosion. He said that was the energy roiling. This light was just roiling with energy, and he. And then he said but, but the energy? What was roiling even more was love. And then he lost it, telling me this, he said. He said I'm, I'm sorry, I was just like, and that's. 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. 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. So he said infinite love, but also, instantly, infinite knowledge, he said. I, it's like I had a picture of a library but the books filled the universe and he wrote them all. And he said power, that was indisputable. 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. 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. We can come back to that. 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. So power, he said, that's indisputable authority. There's another thing he said. 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.

Humor was another one, and this is one I bring out in the whole last section of Imagine the God of Heaven. There are things about God, I think. 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. 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.

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. But just experiencing that joy, he said, put me in ecstasy. 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. I was like beyond anything I've ever experienced on earth. 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. 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. This is what God's been revealing about himself all along. Joy is what he wants, because it's, it's his, it's his main state. Right, that's? Cs Lewis is one of my favorite authors, you know, who was a literary scholar. So joy is the serious business of heaven. Yeah, and it's true.

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. I think it's the same thing. He said he was just so pure, so innocent, and he said but knowledgeable, so not, not innocent, like naive, but just pure. And he said what? What it did is? It stood in stark relief to me and and and. Then he said one other thing. 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. You know, I, I have been proud. He has real reasons to be proud. And yet he was so humble, and and again it brought him to tears Just remembering that. And we don't. 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.

Yeah, Thank you for that. Excuse me, I think, as you were saying, that you know people. 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. Oh, absolutely, what God's actually like.

Absolutely. That's what I mean. That's what I mean People representing God in a certain way. 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?

Well, and again, think about it this way. So the Bible says a lot of things, and it honestly depends on the framework through which I'm reading the whole thing, right?

Yeah, exactly right.

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. We already talked about it. If you love God, throw your heart. And if you love people and yourself, you know, if you don't love yourself, you're not going to love people. So it's a both and it's learning to recognize.

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.

But literally, as he's dying of an opioid overdose, before his head hits the steering wheel, he says God, forgive me. And he and these others. 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. All he required is their heart turning to him, because that's the point love and he can't force love. So so the thing Jesus said is love God, love people. That's the framework through which we've got to also read the Bible and understand what all that means. So doesn't mean the command to not lie is wrong. 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? Well, that's not loving.

So anyway, yeah, that's a really good point. You mentioned the agnostic man. You also mentioned an Indian man who saw the city of God. So that comes back to do. We have to be Christian to experience God in heaven.

Yeah, you're asking the Christian pastor. You're leaving me into the trap.

I don't mean to lead you into a trap.

No, I'm totally, I'm teasing, I'm teasing, but but. But there is something I think. 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. 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. So, for instance, santosh Akarchi was this Indian manufacturing engineer. So again, very smart people who travel the world doing engineering. But he was raised in Hinduism. His dad was a Sanskrit scholar. That was all he knew. The Hindu gods was all he knew.

He dies, he hears Code Blue, his pancreas ruptured. He hears Code Blue. They couldn't revive his heart and they put him on artificial life support for three days. Three days later, when he comes back, he tells what happened. He left his body. He sees his body there.

This brilliant light comes and he knows it's a divine light, he says. And I knew this light had ultimate authority and I had to do whatever it wanted, he said. But I fell in love with this light. That was his first response. And then they go, they travel, and he said it was like through tunnels, and that's another one of the commonalities. But they come to this place where the light stops, parked over what he describes as this giant compound. Now, I've been to India many times and at first I was like, what do you mean compound? It took me a while to figure out what he was saying.

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. And it was square in shape, thousands of miles long. He said when you're there, your eyesight is like telescopic. Well, that's another commonality as well. But he said and there were 12 gates, I counted them and outside the gates were angels.

And that's when I realized I'm looking at the kingdom of heaven. And he said all I wanted was to enter there. He said I realized that's the goal of existence to be there. So he experiences. And if you've ever read Revelation 21 and you look at his words, it's like that's what he's experiencing. And then he's like where am I? 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? 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. He turns and he sees who he describes as God now in the appearance of a giant man on a throne. That's what he describes Interesting.

Okay.

I know I'm not making this up. Yeah, you know, this is just what he told me. 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. Forgive me Because he realizes all the wrongs he had done. 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. She needs your help right now. So see, this is this, is this stretches everybody's categories, right Is that? 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. That's the thing. If you miss that, you miss the, you miss the big picture. But we can also reject him, and that's what Santosh was also seeing. 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. And he asked the Lord. He said when I come back. 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? And the Lord said, and he was thinking about religion, like what religion do I choose? What do I go to, you know? And he was thinking which temple or synagogue or church or do I go to? And the Lord said what I want is relationship, not one day a week, 365 days a year. How honest will you be with me, how real, how sincere, how honest will you be with me? And then he said he said the wages of sin is death. Walk with me and surrender yourself daily to me. And then he sends it back.

Two years later, his daughter is invited to sing in a choir at a church because she was a choral major. 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. I am the gate into the kingdom of heaven. And then John 10 where he says you know, I'm the gate and the sheep will come in and out. And Santosh goes and he starts reading the Bible and he's like that's what I experienced, interesting, wow. Well, if that were one story, you go, eh, one story, but I'm showing just in the first three. I mean throughout. 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.

Yeah.

Okay, she can't speak English, so she told me this through a translator. Okay, and I was like you got to be kidding, I am he who is. Well, when Moses asked God, who am I? To say sent me, you know, when he's delivered the? This is an exodus. God says I am, who is? I am the self-existent one.

Yeah.

Yeah, it's what Jesus said to himself before Abraham was born. 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. Yeah, so I mean, it's not all free everywhere. You know, in fact, another Muslim, a mom from Rwanda that I interviewed. That's in the book and it's a fascinating story, too Awesome story. His mother was a Tutsi, his father was a Hutu during the Rwandan genocide and it, you know it, drove their family apart. 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. And he says who was?

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. 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. You are one of those I died for. Never deny it until everyone. And he's still in Rwanda and he's now an Anglican priest and he's had six attempts on his life. Oh, wow, wow. What would convince someone to do that? Yeah, and I mean you can, you can go watch my, my video interviews with him and he's and and so. So the point is all over the globe there's another, another Indian man who Dr Rajeev Parti. Maybe you know.

Yes, he's been in my program.

Yeah, oh, he has.

Yes.

Yeah. So I don't know if he told you his whole story, but yes, he came. 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.

Yeah.

This is happening all over the globe.

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. 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. 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. So these are, these are some of the people.

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.

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. 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. 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. 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. And you know what, what a lot of Christians don't understand.

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. Go to this Roman centurion. Well, they were auto worshipers, they were the, the pagans, right, they were the outcasts to the Jews. And Peter's like I would never do that. Why would he never do that? 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. It says I now realize that God does not show favoritism. He accepts everyone from all nations, you know. Basically, he said who fear him or seek him and do what is right.

And so, yeah, in in Imagine the God of Heaven, one of my favorite stories, a good friend of mine. 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. She was a nurse in LA names Heidi, and she said hey, I saw you on on that TV show. I don't know who you are, I've never read your book, but that happened to me. 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. I've never told anyone that Thanks, yeah, that's all she said. Wow, and so I was like Heidi, we got to talk and we've become good, good friends since then. But yeah, what's fascinating and her, her story is in Imagine the God of Heaven as well. 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.

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. But her dad, who was, who was actually pretty abusive, had a mantra there is no God, your life is worthless. Jesus Christ is the biggest hoax ever perpetrated on mankind. Oh, wow. And he told his three daughters that every night they're whole growing up years while being abusive. Wow. 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.

In fact she felt like he was there, kind of rocking her to bed. 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. 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. She said she was up 30 feet above the accident watching her sisters freak out. But she felt great and she said my only concern was for my sisters. I knew I was dead but I was great, but I just hated that they had to see me die like this. 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. He's brilliant. But she recognized it and she said I said oh, hey. And she said it was like an instant reconnection. She said I knew this man, I knew him. 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. But that's what I experienced and Jesus gave her a life review.

Remember, she's 16, right. So he gives her a life review and in the life review, first of all, they laughed. 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. But they could tell all this and she said Jesus just loved to laugh and she said he was so fun. 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. She saw him there sitting by her bed comforting her.

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. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but we'll have the light of life. Mm-hmm. And this God of light also appeared to Moses, you know, 3500 years ago, as this Burning bush that wouldn't burn the bush. Yeah, this is this brilliant light that didn't burn, didn't burn the bush, and and and on and on. 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. That's what he's doing. He he's. 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.

Hmm.

That's it, yeah, anybody who wants him.

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. Yeah, but here's the other thing is that he's with us already. He's with everyone already. Yeah, how in different ways, even the person who rejects him. And there are people in the book who he said that to them, it's like in in their life review.

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. He suffered as a kid. He suffered a lot. He was in the hospital. I had bad asthma, he was overweight, he was bullied. He's showing me all and he says why are you showing me these things? 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? And and Jesus looks at me said yes, I was there waiting for you to turn to me. And and Then a really cool thing is at a later point, he's just experiencing a similar kind of like ecstatic joy. 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. And then he he turns to Jesus and Jesus is holding a flask Like a bottle mm-hmm.

This is what is that. And Jesus said I've been collecting your tears, beloved, hmm. And then he pours them into the river, hmm. And Randy instantly knows he's returning all my sorrows for joy.

Wow, yeah. And then I Want to ask you this, because you talked about, you mentioned something about even those who reject him. I think it was. It was a phrase you used If you're familiar with the work of Thomas Talbot. You wrote a book called the inescapable love of God.

No okay.

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. I hear you describing the way, the joy and the love and the laughter. How could anybody possibly reject that?

It's even better than that.

Yeah, so I mean.

Heidi, heidi. So Heidi was a speed freak, right, she rode horses, bareback and just loved speed, mm-hmm. So they're up 30 feet in the air after getting a life review, jesus grabs her hand. I Didn't even, I didn't even tell. 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. Because that was my first reaction Like no way, he takes her hand and they take off.

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. And she said that we were. We were flying like Superman and Lois Lane, mm-hmm, but but being pushed by a wave of light. 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. 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?

mm-hmm.

Well, there are a lot of Christians who like right, right now, or checking out, like no, that's you're, you know.

Right can't be like that. Right, right, but he is like that. You know, jesus. 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. Right, and see what. 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.

Yeah, exactly and he actually Enjoys us enjoying them right. I I love enjoying things with my granddaughters. 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.

Yeah, and that that kind of. That kind of. Come back to the title of the book that was mentioned. He calls it the inescapable love of God. It's like it's so Attractive that no one in the right mind could turn away. I think what people reject is the, the limited view of God that we have, that the God, the heaven. That sounds boring, right? I don't want to go place. I'm going to be sitting on a cloud playing a harp all day, singing, singing songs for 10,000 years.

And that's not it. 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. Now, what does that mean? I've, as an engineer, thought a lot about that and and I think this is what they mean.

So imagine, if this you know, we're living in three dimensions of space. In one dimension of time, we Can't even imagine a fourth dimension of space. In a second dimension of time, five dimensions, right, we can't fathom it, no, you can't. But but, but we can, and we can understand it by analogy. So imagine, this experience is being lived on a flat black and white painting on my wall, and Death means separation. 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. You didn't even know in and out. That's not a dimension You're familiar with at all. 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. That's more real.

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. That's why the more of these people I've interviewed, I've realized they have to use hyperbole. 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. So the city was Like gold, but transparent like glass.

Right.

Well, what does that mean when you hear a manufacturing engineer say, well, it was otherworldly materials. 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. This place is made of light and love. And they say I know that doesn't make any sense, but that's what it was. And I asked them but was it real? Was it like physical and solid? Oh yeah, more than this. Like hugs are like real? Oh yeah, much deeper than this. I mean communication and thought and memory is all this. Oh yeah. But you understand completely. It's thought to thought. Nothing's misunderstood.

Yeah, I think. Well, I know what I saw from one of the notes you sent me I love. What this says is we're going to find it. You said basically that the NDE kind of puts color onto what's kind of black and white, I think in the Bible. And having this conversation with you, I can tell. 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.

Yeah, it's exciting and that's the thing I just wish everyone could know. All the things you long for. 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.

Yeah, I love that quote by CS Lewis. I think it which. I just butchered by the way. Yeah, but it indicates like, yeah, we don't have a longing for something that doesn't exist. So he talks about these things that we long for. That. There's got to be a reason for them.

Yeah, we hunger and there's food, but we want a love that never completely satisfies. We want a peace that it comes and goes. We want a joy. 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. 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?

Right.

And there's something in them knows what home actually is, and it just points them there.

Yeah, it just said that. It reminded me of a woman I interviewed. She had a near-death experience when her husband murdered her. 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. She said it was just too much. I felt like I was going to explode. I didn't know if I could contain all of it. And I've heard several people.

Five people that I've interviewed in the book say that.

Yeah.

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. And he said he heard a chuckle from God and then it starts to go down and he said no, no, don't stop. And then more, but yeah, again, and again.

Yeah, absolutely. 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.

It's Imagine the God of Heaven, and you can just go to imaginethegoddovevennet or johnburckonlinecom Right now. We'll take you to the same place. You can find out more about it.

Again, thanks so much for being here. Thanks for sharing your knowledge and your wisdom and your joy with my audience.

Well, it's not my joy and everyone can have it.

Yeah, thanks a lot. Have a great rest of your day, okay, thank you everybody.