Wow!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I so thank you for this!!!!!!!
You might rather like this other discussion:
Friends of yours watch Heaven Is For Real and ask you about it?
I read through most of this thread and watched some of (and portions of some of) the videos and I think where someone stands on these types of occurrences; depends on whether they are Biblical cessationist or not.
Cessationism is the doctrine that what would be defined as Biblical miracles ended with the completion of the canon of Scripture and therefore the next and only "Biblical event" humanity will experience is the second coming.
I am a cessationist and so no; I don't believe Colton "went to heaven", nor do I believe my experience was a bonafide "vision" as the Scripture would define.
Now the question becomes (because there is certain consistency to people's experiences) are these things "real"?
To answer that question, I think we need to make distinctions between what is psychologically valid to the participants experience, as opposed to what's "really happening".
This being said; we have to delineate the difference between this sort of phenomena and what was Scripturally miraculous as it applied to the record we have from the penning of the canon. The miracles that happened in the Scripture were proposed for the reason of writing the Scripture. They were the evidence presented by God to the world that the people who were saying these things were telling the truth and were indeed messengers sent by God. And this is why those who question these modern events, have a valid point about: "What do we now add this to the Bible?"
In terms of psychology, people can have experiences that are real to them, but not really happening. I watched a documentary once on "alien abductions" and an experiment the researches did with volunteers and electromagnetic energy.
The researches got their idea from seismologists; because these scientists noticed that just before and after earthquakes there was an uptick in people seeing "ghosts", "aliens", "angels" "demons" "Jesus", "Buddha", "jinn" etc. What ever the belief system of the individual was. There was a notable statistical increase in the sightings of such things. So the researchers came to the conclusion that this had something to do with electromagnetic energy; which is released by the earth's crust when there is quake activity.
So they took a bunch of volunteers who'd stated they'd never had any sort of supernatural encounter and put a helmet on them that was wired with electrodes and conducted an experiment to see if they could duplicate these "visions" or "visitations" in the laboratory. They were successful. The participants were frightened, felt unable to move, felt a presence with them, and saw humanoid looking forms. The participants were able to speak and explain to the researchers who they could hear speaking to them what they were seeing and experiencing and were able to tell the experimenters to stop the experiment if they became too frightened.
This same phenomena can be experienced by people having complex partial seizures of the occipital lobe. My son has epilepsy and he's had a couple of these types of events. The seizure is experienced in the same manner as the subjects of this electromagnetic experiment encountered. My son sometimes describes these as "waking dreams" where he sees "grey people". Now the context this can happen in may be colored by his imagination, if this happens while he's actually in REM sleep and not exactly awake. Other times it has happened when he was fully awake, conscious and could describe it as the event unfolded. It's happened at home and has happened at school. The counselor thought he was hallucinating when it happened. They are not hallucinations as happens with Schizophrenia though, because they are infrequent, short lived and internally consistent.
So this phenomena can have a variety of reasons for its manifestation.
Now electromagnetic energy also manifests itself as little balls of light. These can be seen and recorded on camera. They come out of the ground in places where the earth's crust is thinner and magma underneath is closer to the surface, which obviously is in places where known fault lines are. When there are shifts and frictions in the fault lines, this energy is released and these balls of light tend to be more noticeable in certain places even though an earthquake may not be "felt" on the surface. They can travel through walls and can cause humans (and probably animals) to hallucinate.
These electromagnetic energy balls being energy sources are attracted to other energy sources. They operate sort of like lightening in that if you get too close within the path of the concentration of the electromagnetic energy felid you will get "zapped".
This almost happened to me one night in my living room. It was like 3 AM. I'd taken some tylenol because I had a headache, shut off the light in the kitchen and was headed back to bed when this ball of light came through the wall in an arc toward me. I wasn't afraid of it because I knew what it was. I ducked and it flew past my left ear. It made the hair on the back of my neck stand up. I was like "Woah God, that was weird!" I eventually shook off the creepy feeling and went back to bed.
So translate this in to near death experiences. Most of these NDE's are recorded as having happened in hospitals and often where people have been "de-fibbed'. Now obviously if the doctor or medic sends an electronic pulse through the heart, it travels through the body and affects the brain. Now the brain may be functioning up to 3 minutes after the heart stops beating. "Death" is not an instantaneous event, "medically speaking" it does happen in "stages". Medical science has never brought back someone who has no brain waves. (i.e. brain dead) even if machines are keeping the body alive. This is often the case for people who are "brain dead" who are "kept alive" temporarily on request of the family for transplant purposes.
Now as per my experience, there is nothing in the medical record that I'd found that stated I'd been "de-fibbed". That doesn't mean I wasn't "de-fibbed". It's possible that I was and it wasn't recorded? So thus in my case, I think my experience was probably more a dream than an event caused by electronic energy passing through my brain. Now it is also possible that my experience was the result of a seizure. I did have a traumatic brain injury, although at this point I am not reported as having epilepsy.
So, all that being said; let's consider the psychological impact of all this.
From the stand point of psychology; dreams (especially recurring ones) are often understood as as subconscious way of trying to cope with, or make sense of psychological stress. This is why dreams play a major role in PTSD.
Dose this mean dreams are not valid or have no meaning to the dreamer? No it doesn't. Yet on the same token, it doesn't mean the dream "comes from God" either.
Now I commonly dream about Biblical things. I've dreamt about the end of the world. I've dreamt about wars (I"m a veteran though, so I'm not sure if that "counts". LOL) I commonly pray in my sleep. I hear Christian music in my sleep. One of the people I see most frequently in my dreams is Jesus. (Jesus and my son.) Sometimes I dream about my parents (who are both deceased). Now someone might read this and think - "Oh how wonderfully spiritual that your dreams are of such consistent content - they must be Divinely imparted!" Yet, I don't believe they are.
Why is that?
Primarily because they aren't Biblically consistent. Sometimes they are, but even when that's the case; I still don't believe they are Divinely imparted. (Over the past 30 years, one of my most consistently recurring dreams containing Jesus is sexual in nature. Now how many Christians would ever admit to that sort of dream? In 30 years, I think I've only ever met one other; yet I would hypothesis that this sort of thing is probably not that uncommon. People just don't talk about it. And I've never encountered anyone who'd say such type dream is Divinely imparted. So if you want to know the basic reason, I don't take a lot of stock in dreams being "Divinely imparted" that's why.)
On the flip side of this, I don't think my "less than Biblical dreams" are demonic either. I've come to understand they represent psychological conflict in me that's connected to my past life experiences and attempts to make "spiritual sense" out of my life. The wacky things that sometimes happen in my dreams don't shock me anymore. I chalk them up to something else the subconscious is trying to sort through and pray about straightening my conscious thoughts to be ordered and fixed on things that are rightly divided.
I've always been the kind of person who liked to put my mind to mysteries I don't understand. Can I solve the puzzle. So I do tend to be analytical when looking at controversial subjects; as well as psychologically heavy subjects like what makes someone a serial killer or a pedophile etc. Sometimes consistencies researches have found in some of these realms have helped me answer theological questions related to sin, wrath and retribution.
So, for I guess what ever I've discovered is worth to you; there's my "two cents".
LOL
