Near death experiences—Can we learn anything from them?

[Derf]

There are three ways to look at near death experiences.

1. They are true experiences of post-life.
   
2. They are false, and from Satan/demons
3. They are false, and from somewhere else (someone’s imagination)

If #1, we should be able to learn something from them. If #2, we also might be able to learn from them, realizing that they are false. If #3, there’s nothing we can learn from them.

 

[Abaxvahl]

There are three ways to look at near death experiences.

1. They are true experiences of post-life.
   
2. They are false, and from Satan/demons
3. They are false, and from somewhere else (someone’s imagination)

If #1, we should be able to learn something from them. If #2, we also might be able to learn from them, realizing that they are false. If #3, there’s nothing we can learn from them.

My position on them is this (considering true one's only): they are true experiences of visions of spiritual things.

No one who has had an NDE has truly died, which is why it is an NDE. It's basically just a vision which often changes the course of someone's life for the better. We can learn the bare sketches of spiritual reality from them, but they are often too shifting and varied to use as a basis for something more definite.

 

[Derf]

There are three ways to look at near death experiences.

1. They are true experiences of post-life.
   
2. They are false, and from Satan/demons
3. They are false, and from somewhere else (someone’s imagination)

If #1, we should be able to learn something from them. If #2, we also might be able to learn from them, realizing that they are false. If #3, there’s nothing we can learn from them.

So let’s say someone has a near-death experience where they saw themselves from above while the doctors worked to revive them. If true, it tells us something about our spiritual beings. If false from demons, it tells us demons can give us information about ourselves or those around us, and we should beware that they don’t deceive us with true information, to later get us to believe false information (appearing as angels of light at first).

 

[Gregory Thompson]

There are three ways to look at near death experiences.

1. They are true experiences of post-life.
   
2. They are false, and from Satan/demons
3. They are false, and from somewhere else (someone’s imagination)

If #1, we should be able to learn something from them. If #2, we also might be able to learn from them, realizing that they are false. If #3, there’s nothing we can learn from them.

Near death experiences are the result of the brain not functioning correctly. Something might have happened, but "being sure" is not the point of these.

 

[Lost4words]

Like i have said before on these fine forums, i had an NDE once.

Luckily i woke up just before i got married!!

 

[Akita Suggagaki]

St Paul was content to say 'I don't know" when lifted to 3rd heaven.
"I know a person in Christ who fourteen years ago was caught up to the third heaven—whether in the body or out of the body I do not know; God knows. And I know that such a person—whether in the body or out of the body I do not know; God knows—was caught up into Paradise and heard things that are not to be told, that no mortal is permitted to repeat."

Some things we do not need to know but can still learn from.

 

[Saint Steven]

There are three ways to look at near death experiences.

1. They are true experiences of post-life.
   
2. They are false, and from Satan/demons
3. They are false, and from somewhere else (someone’s imagination)

If #1, we should be able to learn something from them. If #2, we also might be able to learn from them, realizing that they are false. If #3, there’s nothing we can learn from them.

Great topic, thanks.

It might be difficult to make a blanket statement about NDEs. I have known about them for quite some time. The medical industry takes them seriously. I was trying to find an article about the "visual targets" they place in rooms so that those having an NDE experience might be able to identify having seen them from above. I did find this link. AWARE study initial results are published!

One thing these reports tell me is that our mind is like the contents of a computer hard drive. I like to ask: "If you had a brain transplant, who would you be?" - lol

When our physical body is gone, our mind lives on in our spirit body. So, it is conceivable that our mind could leave our physical body and return. And the experience would be an NDE. Many NDE reports have had the experience of beling sent back to their physical body. Usually something they did not want to do, preferring to stay in the afterlife rather than return here.

 

[Mark Quayle]

To me it is not likely anyone who has, even if it were true that they had "been to Heaven [or] Hell", were put through the full reality of what it will be like. But I am extremely skeptical of such accounts —not doubting the sincerity of the person to whom something happened, but the interpretation they put to it.

Such things have happened to me, perspective-changing things, one was a vision or something, many many years ago, and it still sticks with me but without the urgency that I had at first, concerning the horror of sin and its effects on God's creation —not just a blight but a monstrosity, an open wound, lethal against the very existence of the whole universe, but for the power of God. But it was for me, not a proclamation for the world to hear. It is not my gospel.


A side comment: I like to think, in 2 Corinthians 12:4, "that he was caught away to the paradise, and heard unutterable sayings, that it is not possible for man to speak." that it may well be that there is no way to even be able to say what he heard, or to make them make sense to this temporal economy of existence or to a mere human mind —not quite how some versions give the implication that he would but he was commanded not to. I certainly find myself unable to relate what I saw in any worthy comprehensible way.

 

[Derf]

Great topic, thanks.

It might be difficult to make a blanket statement about NDEs. I have known about them for quite some time. The medical industry takes them seriously. I was trying to find an article about the "visual targets" they place in rooms so that those having an NDE experience might be able to identify having seen them from above. I did find this link. AWARE study initial results are published!

One thing these reports tell me is that our mind is like the contents of a computer hard drive. I like to ask: "If you had a brain transplant, who would you be?" - lol

When our physical body is gone, our mind lives on in our spirit body. So, it is conceivable that our mind could leave our physical body and return. And the experience would be an NDE. Many NDE reports have had the experience of beling sent back to their physical body. Usually something they did not want to do, preferring to stay in the afterlife rather than return here.

The experiences tend to support what you say. But if they are false and coming from demonic sources, what does that say about your view of body and spirit?

 

[Derf]

To me it is not likely anyone who has, even if it were true that they had "been to Heaven [or] Hell", were put through the full reality of what it will be like. But I am extremely skeptical of such accounts —not doubting the sincerity of the person to whom something happened, but the interpretation they put to it.

Such things have happened to me, perspective-changing things, one was a vision or something, many many years ago, and it still sticks with me but without the urgency that I had at first, concerning the horror of sin and its effects on God's creation —not just a blight but a monstrosity, an open wound, lethal against the very existence of the whole universe, but for the power of God. But it was for me, not a proclamation for the world to hear. It is not my gospel.


A side comment: I like to think, in 2 Corinthians 12:4, "that he was caught away to the paradise, and heard unutterable sayings, that it is not possible for man to speak." that it may well be that there is no way to even be able to say what he heard, or to make them make sense to this temporal economy of existence or to a mere human mind —not quite how some versions give the implication that he would but he was commanded not to. I certainly find myself unable to relate what I saw in any worthy comprehensible way.

I think the stories are very intriguing, but if it’s merely a dream, then it doesn’t require actual out-of-body activity, right?

 

[Mark Quayle]

I think the stories are very intriguing, but if it’s merely a dream, then it doesn’t require actual out-of-body activity, right?

I think only God can answer that. The spiritual is quite a different sort of thing from the physical. I have heard ideas that try to apply physical displacement concepts onto the spiritual —can't be here if it was there, the two cannot exist in the same place, etc etc— but I don't think it is that simple. When it is that simple, it is only so because God says so, and that, on a case by case basis.

 

[Derf]

I think only God can answer that. The spiritual is quite a different sort of thing from the physical. I have heard ideas that try to apply physical displacement concepts onto the spiritual —can't be here if it was there, the two cannot exist in the same place, etc etc— but I don't think it is that simple. When it is that simple, it is only so because God says so, and that, on a case by case basis.

And, if it’s a dream, then even if it’s true, we can’t tell the difference between that and something that’s false—which puts us back to where we always have to be: test it with scripture.

 

[Mark Quayle]

And, if it’s a dream, then even if it’s true, we can’t recall tell the difference between that and something that’s false—which puts us back to where we always have to be: test it with scripture.

I agree with that, completely. I object strongly to some of the subjective tests that people put to something, like how to determine the will of God, whole books written on the subject, sounding to me dangerously close to divination.

 

[Der Alte]

I first heard about NDE in 1970 while in an Army officer advance course. One officer mentioned a NDE in Viet Nam in a field hospital. I was skeptical for about 50 years.
In 2009 I was scheduled for a 45 minute laparoscopic abdominal hernia operation. It turned into a 5 hour open surgery where I experienced acute kidney failure, ilius [bowel blockage], atrial fibulation, and sepsis [major bacterial infection]. After the surgery I felt reasonably good.
They put me on a ward. And suddenly I was having extreme difficultly breathing. Between straining to breathe I told my roomie to call the nurse. I couldn't find the call button. Two people in scrubs, I later found out were respiratory techs, came in telling me "Take deep breaths." I was trying to. Then suddenly they were telling me "Breathe Mr. Allen breathe. You have to breathe." I was no longer distressed and comfortable. But I was above them looking down on their backs. I think they were giving me CPR. Just as suddenly I was on my back again frantically trying to breathe. I'm not so skeptical anymore.

 

[Lost4words]

God works in mysterious ways

 

[Original Happy Camper]

When our physical body is gone, our mind lives on in our spirit body.

Then you are saying we are immortal?

1 Timothy 6:15-16
King James Version

15 Which in his times he shall shew, who is the blessed and only Potentate, the King of kings, and Lord of lords;

16 Who only hath immortality, dwelling in the light which no man can approach unto; whom no man hath seen, nor can see: to whom be honour and power everlasting. Amen.

 

[Saint Steven]

The experiences tend to support what you say. But if they are false and coming from demonic sources, what does that say about your view of body and spirit?

They would have to be evaluated against perceived motive, I suppose. The enemy seeks to steal and kill and destroy. Do the experiences do that?

 

[Original Happy Camper]

I first heard about NDE in 1970 while in an Army officer advance course. One officer mentioned a NDE in Viet Nam in a field hospital. I was skeptical for about 50 years.
In 2009 I was scheduled for a 45 minute laparoscopic abdominal hernia operation. It turned into a 5 hour open surgery where I experienced acute kidney failure, ilius [bowel blockage], atrial fibulation, and sepsis [major bacterial infection]. After the surgery I felt reasonably good.
They put me on a ward. And suddenly I was having extreme difficultly breathing. Between straining to breathe I told my roomie to call the nurse. I couldn't find the call button. Two people in scrubs, I later found out were respiratory techs, came in telling me "Take deep breaths." I was trying to. Then suddenly they were telling me "Breathe Mr. Allen breathe. You have to breathe." I was no longer distressed and comfortable. But I was above them looking down on their backs. I think they were giving me CPR. Just as suddenly I was on my back again frantically trying to breathe. I'm not so skeptical anymore.

I had a similar experience 55 years ago, during CPR being performed, I heard everything being said. A state trooper told those to stop with the CPR because I was dead. They did not stop as you can tell I am still here. I ran into the trooper at a bowling alley a year later. I repeated everything said that day to him and told him I pulled his tie to me so he could here me say I was not dead. He was amazed that I repeated every word that was spoken but said the tie thing never happened. My mind played a trick on me, that is what I wanted to do but it did not happen in reality. NDA are dreams IMHO

 

[Saint Steven]

Then you are saying we are immortal?

Not in the sense that God is eternal. We have a beginning.
We are "living" when we enter the afterlife. (Luke 20:38)
By definition, the afterlife is life after death.
There are 29 references to the "realm of the dead" in the NIV Bible.

Saint Steven said: ↑
When our physical body is gone, our mind lives on in our spirit body.

 

[Original Happy Camper]

Not in the sense that God is eternal. We have a beginning.
We are "living" when we enter the afterlife. (Luke 20:38)
By definition, the afterlife is life after death.
There are 29 references to the "realm of the dead" in the NIV Bible.

Saint Steven said: ↑
When our physical body is gone, our mind lives on in our spirit body.

Is this what you are saying

We are born and are alive
We die but our spirit with our minds live on so the only thing that dies is the dust(body) and our mind never dies?
If that is what you are saying then you are immortal from birth.

then how does this fit into your theology
Psalm 115:17
The dead praise not the Lord, neither any that go down into silence.