Are people who have near death experiences false prophets

[Francis Drake]

NDE Stories | NDE Stories

These are all people who have widely shared their ndes most don't line up with the Bible, are they false prophets?

I have previously read some of these accounts on your link, some have written books giving far more details.
Some of the accounts are clearly those of unbelievers, who most likely meet angels of Satan in that halfway house between earthly life and bodily death. As such, they are simply deceived unregenerate people relating the story as they see it.
That does not make them false prophets, in fact they are no worse than any other unbeliever who gives his opinion on spiritual matters.

Your obsession with NDE and false prophets is completely unprofitable, there being no need whatsoever to link the two.

As I said previously, false prophet can be anyone who sets out to get people following him, and that particularly includes Christian pastors teachers etc.
The world is full of false prophet new age type leaders, but they are the blind leading the blind. Any sensible Christian should be able to recognise and avoid such people with ease. These deceivers are just unbelievers who reject God's revelations in their hearts, so why worry if their fellow unregenerates flood after them.

The biggest problem we face is that Christians are far more inclined to put their complete trust in fellow Christians, just because he has the title of pastor teacher or prophet. These men often have ambitions of greatness which is the entire opposite of the humility that serving God calls for.
It is laziness on the part of individual believers that lets them be taken captive by their leaders. They abdicate personal responsibility of seeking God for themselves, which makes them easy prey for eager "false prophet" leaders.

In short, NDE is no more relevant that any other testimony, its up to you to test whether its spiritually true or false.

When it comes to false prophets, the biggest danger by far is within the church where ambitious leaders regularly take lazy Christians into captivity.

 

[jayem]

I am convinced that the NDE is the natural response of some people to temporary oxygen starvation. Outside of the "tunnel of light" the stories told are quite culturally and religiously conditioned. There is no need to invoke the supernatural here.

Exactly. NDEs result from activation of certain neural pathways in a physiologically stressed brain. The out-of-body experience, which is often reported as part of NDEs, has been reproduced by stimulating the right superior temporal gyrus. There should be little doubt that NDEs/OBEs are completely natural phenomena.

http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa070010

 

[Albion]

Exactly. NDEs result from activation of certain neural pathways in a physiologically stressed brain. The out-of-body experience, which is often reported as part of NDEs, has been reproduced by stimulating the right superior temporal gyrus. There should be little doubt that NDEs/OBEs are completely natural phenomena.

http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa070010

How then do we explain some of the experiences related by people who have had NDEs and which cannot be explained by their past experiences or the kind of brain stimuli you referred to?

 

[FireDragon76]

Exactly. NDEs result from activation of certain neural pathways in a physiologically stressed brain. The out-of-body experience, which is often reported as part of NDEs, has been reproduced by stimulating the right superior temporal gyrus. There should be little doubt that NDEs/OBEs are completely natural phenomena.

http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa070010

I can see how the phenomenon of NDE's would be threatening to people heavily invested in materialistic explanations of reality.

How then do we explain some of the experiences related by people who have had NDEs and which cannot be explained by their past experiences or the kind of brain stimuli you referred to?

The details are simply denied. The case of Pam Reynolds is a good example. There was all sorts of hand-waving by skeptics to explain away the details of her experience, even though she vividly described a procedure that was happening to her while her brain was being drained of blood.

 

[Francis Drake]

Exactly. NDEs result from activation of certain neural pathways in a physiologically stressed brain. The out-of-body experience, which is often reported as part of NDEs, has been reproduced by stimulating the right superior temporal gyrus. There should be little doubt that NDEs/OBEs are completely natural phenomena.

http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa070010

No.
In ignorance, doctors invariably take that exact stance as they deal with emergency patients who have had NDEs.
All that changed with one doctor when he had a heart attack and NDE happened to them. Following that, he became convinced and started to document NDEs.

Apart from that, all the scientific denials cannot explain how someone in NDE find themselves not merely floating over their body at the ceiling level, but over the roof of the hospital, or over other rooms of the hospital. These are proven by what they report afterwards.
It also doesn't explain how they meet and converse with angels or relatives who died before they were born. Again proven by information they could not have known otherwise.

 

[jayem]

How then do we explain some of the experiences related by people who have had NDEs and which cannot be explained by their past experiences or the kind of brain stimuli you referred to?

The stimulation experiments show that the neural pathways which produce the OBE sensation already exist in the brain. Like all neural functions, there is individual variation. Not all cardiac arrest survivors report these sensations. But in some patients, the physiologic abnormalities which occur during cardiac arrest--such as hypoxia, hypercapnia (excess CO2,) hypotension, and acidosis, among others, activate these pathways.

 

[Albion]

I don't deny that some NDEs may be explained that way, but others cannot.

 

[jayem]

No.
In ignorance, doctors invariably take that exact stance as they deal with emergency patients who have had NDEs.
All that changed with one doctor when he had a heart attack and NDE happened to them. Following that, he became convinced and started to document NDEs.

Apart from that, all the scientific denials cannot explain how someone in NDE find themselves not merely floating over their body at the ceiling level, but over the roof of the hospital, or over other rooms of the hospital. These are proven by what they report afterwards.
It also doesn't explain how they meet and converse with angels or relatives who died before they were born. Again proven by information they could not have known otherwise.

The OP claimed that people reporting NDEs become less religious. I'm not aware of any published, reliable, peer-reviewed, statistical data on the subject. But you're entitled to believe what you like.

 

[jayem]

I don't deny that some NDEs may be explained that way, but others cannot.

How would you distinguish a natural, physiologic NDE from a supernatural one?

 

[Albion]

I'm not saying that any are for certain supernatural. I believe that I described them as inexplicable.

As others have mentioned, some experiences simply cannot be attributed to brain activity, stimuli, etc. A number of researchers over the years have documented such cases. For example, a woman is traveling cross country and has a terrible car accident. She is taken to a hospital in a city she has never visited before. During surgery, she apparently dies but later recovers to describe floating above the bed, but that's not all. She also describes touring the hospital, hearing hospital workers saying things in rooms far from the one where she was bodily, and so on. It's all verified as accurate. No brain wave activity or stimuli can explain that. There MAY be some explanation, but no one has come up with it yet, to my knowledge.

 

[jayem]

Anecdotes and personal testimony--while they may be interesting--are the least robust types of evidence. Without in-depth assessment of their verification, they are essentially hearsay. It comes close to the level of alien abduction claims. Skepticism is not only justified, it's imperative.

But even so, inexplicable does not mean supernatural. History shows that clearly. Human beings have always concocted supernatural reasons for what wasn't understood. Centuries ago, people who had an abrupt change in personality, heard voices, behaved oddly, and talked incoherently were thought to be demon-possessed. And were often beaten to drive out the evil spirits. But now we know that schizophrenia is a physical illness--a malfunction of how neurons in the brain communicate. We still don't have all the details, but we know that drugs which modulate neurotransmitters can make the voices go away. Beating the devil out of someone doesn't help. In the entire history of knowledge, a supernatural explanation has never been valid for anything. So, by simple inductive reasoning, why should anyone consider a supernatural causation for all those things we still don't understand? Just like the most learned men 500 years ago had no clue about synaptic transmission and neuronal circuitry, we have no idea of all we may learn in 5 centuries to come. Why would we be still be invoking supernatural forces and entities? That's the thinking of the Middle Ages.

 

[SolomonVII]

What is apparent about humans is that we have evolved to believe in the transcendant. We have evolved to seek meaning in the events that describe our lives. "God", or the transcendant, or that which goes beyond our life by any other word, are not products of our wild imaginations and our fantasies, but, like hearts and lungs, and axons and endocrine systems, the 'supernatural' is based in our very genes.
We ignore the transcendant in our lives at our own peril. Those who deny the transcendant as delusional and childish fantasies either end up finding meaning in the rubble of the Christian meaning system that has crumbled before them, or in some form of totalitarianism or nihilism.
When the power is cut off to the electrical grid, light going out is usually a pretty instantaneous event. Maybe for some reason after the power is cut off to the humans physiological system, the lights go on.
No matter. All explanations are tangential to the experience anyway. What is important is the phenomena itself, and how it is experienced by the subject as he enters into his death.
By all accounts it is an extraordinary experience, like a lot of mystical religious experiences are. It can be life altering, productive of a whole new consciousness about being, and imbued with meaning that had not been present before the experience.

The question that the conversation centres on is if accounts of the NDE are false, not in the sense of whether they can be explained away, but in the sense that they lead the person (and those who listen to his accounts) away from God.

For the most part, I think it can be surmised that the opposite is the case. People who have these kinds of experienced become much more interested in the transcendant, and the unknowns that very much envelop all of us in their grip, even the most wise and knowledgeable among us.

 

[Albion]

Anecdotes and personal testimony--while they may be interesting--are the least robust types of evidence. Without in-depth assessment of their verification, they are essentially hearsay.

Then don't just assume that all these NDEs are anecdotal, unverified, hearsay. Don't presume that the kinds of incidents I referred to were not adequately researched and verified by qualified people.

 

[Bumble Bee]

MOD HAT ON
This thread has been moved from The Kitchen Sink to Christianity and World Religion.
MOD HAT OFF​

 

[Mountainmanbob]

What about the ones who do contradict the bible, are they false prophets

Of course they are.
Contradict the Bible (instant read tag).
M-Bob

 

[Francis Drake]

Of course they are.
Contradict the Bible (instant read tag).
M-Bob

But Bob, what about all those on CF who contradict the bible, are we/they all false prophets?

Given that with maybe 20 people arguing the bible on any given thread, if only 1 is right, then 19 are likely to be wrong.
Do the 19 pushing biblical error on one CF thread make them all false prophets?
Should we stone them?
More important, is there a stoning section on CF for heretics, if not, should we start one?

 

[DennisTate]

I'm concerned near death experiences are deceptions used by the devil to turn people into false prophets here are the reasons why

1. Ndes themselves contradict the Bible
2. The ones who have ndes usually become less religious
3. They also gain psychic powers

I went through about five years at least of asking that same question myself......
but eventually I came to the conclusion that the existence of the Life Review part of an NDE
was a critical one to determine if it was from Messiah Yeshua - Jesus.

Douay-Rheims Catholic Bible, Baruch Chapter 6
6] "For my angel is with you: And I myself will demand an account of your souls."

Heb 9:27

"And as it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment:"

Take a look at the Life Review of near death experiencer Howard Storm Ph. D. and take a look at how he personally reacted to his out of body experience.

Reverend Howard Storm's Near-Death Experience

If there is a Life Review with Messiah Yeshua - Jesus then this scripture can be fulfilled......


Jhn 16:25

These things have I spoken unto you in proverbs: but the time cometh, when I shall no more speak unto you in proverbs, but I shall shew you plainly of the Father.

 

[Uber Genius]

I'm concerned near death experiences are deceptions used by the devil to turn people into false prophets here are the reasons why

1. Ndes themselves contradict the Bible
2. The ones who have ndes usually become less religious
3. They also gain psychic powers

Strange conclusions.

Point 1 can only be asserted eisogetically.
Point 2 is falsified by a cursory investigation on youtube.
Point 3 is overstated as many become pastors and dedicate their lives to Christ after spending their lives before the NDE as atheists.

However to protect from counterfeits we study the scriptures, and we study doctrine, and practice listening to the HS. We are called to judge ideas and especially spiritual truth claims. I don't accept as true something just because they had an NDE. But a kingdom divided against itself can not stand. If you search atheist dies and goes to hell, you will find all are converted to disciples of Jesus.

Let your knowledge of scripture and the voice of the HS be your foundation not anyone's claim of otherworldly visitation. Mormons, Jehovah's Witnesses, and others have fallen prey to arguments based on the authority of angelic visitations that contradicted the Bible. The individuals were duped because of their desire for personal glory

 

[Noxot]

one thing about NDE's is that it can be emulated by drinking ayahuasca. some people have claimed that it gives you a life review which usually make dramatic impacts on the character and life of a person. a sudden conversion or spiritual experience can do the same thing to a person.

NDE's are prone to misinterpretations just like God and his bible are. also I think that sometimes deceiving spirits might play a role in some NDEs.

my first guess is that some of the visions of hell and punishment people have might be more to do with a persons close association of their perception of God being negative and due to we being near the kinds of spirits that we accept as true and valid. I believe saint jerome had one such deceptive vision and it changed his outlook on God (or at least fueled his already bad perceptions).

other times even visions of hell are good, just that we should realize that spirits do it to themselves and that it's not exactly God forcing it on them and punishing them even though the spirits probably tend to think that God seeks to do such things since they have an extremely warped vision of God. even the outer layers of the bible can at times show such hellish visions which is one reason a living spiritual faith in God is required for the "life everlasting" that Jesus promised to us.


1. Ndes themselves contradict the Bible

I don't think they do. I think they contradict certain peoples perception of what the bible says.

2. The ones who have ndes usually become less religious

I have heard the opposite unless you mean more spiritual and less religious which I would agree with due to scientific evidence and my own close encounter with God which made me higher in openness ( a personality trait)... which is something that psychedelic mushrooms are also known for doing. anyways, in general conservatives would tend to use the term "religious" while liberals are more likely to go by the term "spiritual". conservatives are known for being low in openness and high in orderliness. liberals are known for being high in openness and low in orderliness. you could say that orderliness is a trait having to do with all the religious stuff that is associated with religion... the rituals and the literal reading of the bible and what not. this error of orderliness is especially true when it comes to the babes of the faith.

3. They also gain psychic powers

I would say that they might notice the spiritual world more and might be able to be more influenced by it than they used to. I also in my own spiritual development have started to notice this strange other world of spirit/minds more and more and how it is intimately linked with this world we exist in as creatures.

 

[Noxot]

I am convinced that the NDE is the natural response of some people to temporary oxygen starvation. Outside of the "tunnel of light" the stories told are quite culturally and religiously conditioned. There is no need to invoke the supernatural here.

why can't it be both physical and spirit just like the bible has physical words that form sentences and yet have a, if you believe the NT, "spirit" to them. spirit is not real like object reality is "real". it's realer because object reality exist as a symbolic expression and creative experience for the more fundamental invisible reality of spirit/soul.

I guess some concepts just don't stick to some peoples modern views of what reality is. I think that it's obvious that just because dreams might occur due to your physical environment and biological makeup, that it does not disprove the depth of life that God can sometimes reveal to us through some medium or experience.

so then the natural world is like an instrument of Gods or a container that God can fill himself with. we humans are said to be his temple and his hands and ect. so does that mean nothing or is it describing how God works in reality?

Jesus said that no man has seen God at anytime. what does that mean? the natural man can not know the things of God, because they are spiritual. does that also mean nothing then? does it have no implication for how the world is? there is another kind of world that we are in and it is not visible.

I dunno, maybe i'm too classical a christian. except that my own experiences are too weird to accept a plain modern materialistic conception of reality and I certainly can't separate the real spiritual world that I experience daily as something far away or as what some call "supernatural" which sometimes basically means "nonexistent".