Ep 222 | Former Agnostic: There IS Life After Death | John Burke | The Glenn Beck Podcast

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Have you ever wondered what happens after you die?

I mean, do you float out of your body towards a great light?

Do you feel happy, afraid, or nothing at all?

For most of us, life after death is a mystery and maybe a collection of hopes or fears.

But it's not a mystery to my next guest.

He has spent years studying what are known as near-death experiences, or in the business, we we call them NDEs.

He's examined thousands of stories and talked to the people who have technically, clinically died, but then brought back thanks to either modern medicine or a miracle.

Surprisingly, when they come back, they all tell a very similar story.

They tell about the afterlife.

And all of these stories, my next guest says, points to the truth of goodness of a living God.

Welcome to the podcast, pastor and best-selling author, John Burke.

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Tocal benefits.

If you think you've heard the best part, we haven't even begun with John Burke.

The name of the book again is Imagine the God of Heaven, more in just a second.

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Hi, John.

How are you?

Hey, Glenn.

I'm great.

How are you?

I'm great.

Well, I mean, it's still being under investigation right now, so I can't talk much about it, but I think I'm pretty good.

I am so excited for people who don't know you.

May we start kind of at the beginning of your journey

and then just kind of take where you are now.

But

when your father died,

you were agnostic or would you say you were atheist?

I would say agnostic.

I mean, I...

Agnostic.

Yeah,

I studied engineering.

I worked as an engineer.

I've always had a very analytical mind.

You know, I want to know

how do the pieces fit together?

How do you know it's true?

Yeah, I was very inquisitive.

So I think early on, I just had a lot of questions and very few answers.

And I just thought,

you know, Jesus is probably probably a legend, God.

I don't know.

Who knows?

You can't know.

That's kind of where I'd landed.

And then my dad was dying of cancer.

And this is decades ago.

Someone gave him the very first research on near-death experiences.

And

this is people who have clinically died.

So they have no heartbeat, no brain waves in many cases

for minutes to hours.

And yet, modern medicine resuscitates them.

And this, of course, has been happening more, more and more.

And modern medicine are, in some cases, miracle.

I mean, hours, you know, it's probably not modern medicine.

Yeah.

But they come back.

They come back and they come back talking about being more alive than they've ever been before in a place more real than this place,

more beauty than we've ever imagined.

And and many times in the presence of a God of light and love,

whose presence they never wanted to leave.

So I see this on my dad's bookstand, you know,

beside his bed, and I start flipping through it.

And I'm like, whoa, what is this?

And I couldn't put it down.

I read the whole thing in one night.

And my thought was,

wow, okay, this could be the evidence that

I've been wanting.

Looking for.

I've been looking looking for.

And so it didn't lead me to faith or, you know, say, okay, there's definitely a God or heaven or hell or anything like that.

I just, it opened my mind.

And so I started seeking.

So I started reading the Bible.

I started asking my questions in other places, started finding other answers.

And I did come to faith.

And eventually I left my career in engineering and I went into ministry really to share the amazing things that I was finding.

I was like,

why didn't anybody tell me this?

You know?

And so over the last 35 years, just really because of my inquisitive nature, I have studied and collected and systematized

probably close to 1,500 cases of near-death experience and personally interviewed many of them now.

And

what I was always trying to understand is, okay, how do these then fit with what God has revealed throughout history and recorded in the Bible?

That's always been my curiosity.

So I finally wrote a book.

I'm sorry to interrupt.

And that's, you're saying, how do you square this with heaven, hell, judgment

and all of that?

Because some people are not necessarily, you know.

following Jesus or, you know, whatever, and they have positive experiences, right?

Well, and that was a big question mark that,

you know, it took me 35 years to write the book for a reason.

Yeah.

You know, because I had a lot of questions myself.

Now, I saw, I saw a lot of alignment.

It was, in fact, it was amazing.

In the book I wrote in 2015 called Imagine Heaven, I basically showed how 40 of these commonalities that people all around the globe talk about.

So, you know,

anyone,

I don't really believe.

I mean, I'm skeptical still.

I'm like, well, maybe.

But when you have five, 10, 15 saying exactly the same thing, and they're from different parts of the globe, or they're spine surgeons, they're CEOs,

they're, you know, medical doctors and other lawyers,

commercial airline pilots.

I mean, these are the people I've interviewed.

Like, what do they have have to gain making up crazy stories

about having this heavenly experience and seeing?

In today's world, you have probably more to lose by telling, at least in America, to tell those kinds of stories.

People just think you're a whack job.

So, what did you find when you're looking through all of these stories?

What are the things they all have in common?

Well,

I'll tell you,

let me tell you a couple of them by telling you what convinced me.

So in chapter two of this new book I wrote, Imagine the God of Heaven, I talk about science, skeptics, and near-death experiences.

And I go through the 10 points of evidence that convince not only me, but convince many medical doctors that these are...

real.

They're grounded in reality.

In other words, it's not just

you know, anoxia, oxygen deprivation.

It's not just endorphins or other chemicals flooding the brain to ease our passing.

It can't be explained by something happening in the brain, first of all, because there are no brain waves in many cases.

But one of them, that is a commonality, is when people come back,

they...

can make observations that can be verified.

Okay, so when people die, they say they leave their body

but they still have a body they have a spiritual body now actually the apostle paul talked about this um and and by the way i think the apostle paul might have had a near-death experience

you know in um

in acts chapter 14

He talks about how in Lystra, a mob turned on him, stoned him to death, dragged him out of the city, and left him for dead.

And yet, as his friends gathered around him, he gets back up and he goes back into the city, which I wouldn't do if someone had just stoned me to death.

He was a pretty courageous dude, you know?

But in 2 Corinthians 12, he says of himself, 14 years ago, whether I was in my body or out of my body, I don't know.

Only God knows.

Now, why would he say that?

Well, because we still are ourselves.

When we die,

many people don't don't realize they're dead because we're still ourselves we're more ourselves and we still have a body that's like our own but it's a spiritual body and paul said i was taken up into heaven and saw and heard things inexpressible

now

this spiritual body people say they're above their physical body and many times watching their resuscitation or watching what's happening in the er

when they come back into their body, they can report things that they saw while they had no brain waves.

So

I'll give you an example.

One medical doctor, a cardiologist I interviewed, Dr.

Pem Van Lommel, he's actually Dutch.

He was attending in the ER in Holland when a man was brought in from a park with no heartbeat, no brain waves.

They didn't know how long he'd been dead.

So they're going to shock his heart.

They need to intubate him.

And the nurse saw dentures in his mouth, took the dentures out, put it in the lower drawer of the crash cart, and they shocked him, got his heart started again, but he never came to in the ER.

So they move him to another room.

A week later, he comes out of coma and he's bothered.

Where are my dentures?

You lost my dentures.

And then he sees a nurse in the hallway and he says, hey, get that nurse.

That nurse knows where my dentures are.

And they get the nurse and then he goes on to explain that he was there up above his body.

He described all the personnel in the ER, what they did, what they said, and that that nurse was the one that took the dentures and put them in the lower drawer of that

cart with all the bottles on it.

And that's exactly where they found them.

And it's exactly what happened.

Now, there have actually, that's, you know, that's a one-off story, but there are many of these.

And then in the books, I put these as examples, but also like tell the one with the red dot, with the red sticker.

Yeah, yeah.

So Mary in London, and this is in the 90s when they, you know, they still had ceiling fans in the hospitals.

She dies giving birth to her child.

She's up above, and then as is common as well, she starts to travel.

She leaves the room.

She travels.

In her case, it was through a tunnel.

Sometimes it's not through a tunnel.

And comes into the presence of this God of light who she knew was God, even though she had left the Catholic Church long time ago.

She knew this was God without a doubt and felt this unbelievable unconditional love.

She called it like the love of a mother times a thousand.

And she has a conversation.

And another commonality is a life review.

We can talk more about that because that's

what I'm saying.

Because I want to get into that.

Yeah, but he says to her

and and again the communication so it's interesting because the communication is thought to thought or just heart to heart it's it's not audible sometimes it is but but usually it's just pure

and and and we have on the other side they say not just five senses more like 50 senses Which interestingly is what Paul said as well.

In 1 Corinthians 15, Paul said, our bodies are buried in natural body, but they're raised a spiritual body.

They're They're buried in weakness, but they're raised in dunamas, in power.

And they talk about that eyesight that's like telescopic communication, it's pure thought, all these things.

So

he says to her, you need to go back.

Your son is going to live and he needs you.

She argues with him.

And, you know, Glenn, this is one of the things I love about

about this is that I can't tell you how many near-death experiencers I've interviewed have told me they argued with God,

which

you'd think,

what are you thinking?

But what they say is, even though he's power inexpressible, I mean, this is light brighter than the sun thousands of times.

Yet, not hard to look at, mesmerizing, but they feel so comfortable, so known,

so

personally understood in his presence.

She's like, this is the greatest thing I've ever experienced.

I don't want to go back.

No, please don't send me back.

I want to be with you.

And he says, You need to go back for your son.

Well, she does come back.

And as she's coming into the ER,

she sees on the top of a ceiling fan, on the ceiling side, a red sticker.

When she comes to, she's trying to tell the doctors and nurses this incredible experience she had with God and all this, and they think she's psychotic.

And that's commonly what happens.

And it's why many shut up after that,

because this is a, this is a sacred experience.

This is, how do you describe an experience more

real than what we've experienced?

Correct.

Right?

Correct.

And I have an analogy for that, but, but what happened is.

Well, hang on just a second.

But yes, go ahead.

Yeah.

I want you to finish that story.

She finally tells a nurse, here's where you walk.

Here's what you did.

Here's what you said.

And the nurse was like shocked.

And she said, look, I can prove it to you.

Mary said this go get a ladder and look on the top side of the ceiling fan and you'll find a red sticker and here's what it says and the nurse did with the help of an orderly and sure enough it checked out now again those

those verifiable observations have been studied so i'm not the only one who has studied these near-death experiences do you know there have been 900 scholarly articles written dr pim van lommel the the dutch cardiologist, wrote up his in The Lancet, Europe's most prestigious medical journal.

Dr.

Jeffrey Long, who I know and have interviewed, who's studied as many as I have, wrote,

actually, he didn't write the articles.

Dr.

Sabum, another cardiologist, who set out to disprove near-death experiences, and after five years of research, writes an article in the Journal of the American Medical Association saying, no, they're grounded in reality because of these verifiable observations.

Dr.

Janice Holden did a study of about 100 near-death experience patients who had had cardiac arrests,

compared them to a control group who had had cardiac arrests but had not had it claimed to have a near-death experience.

Found that of their many observations that each one might make, right, each one might make five or ten observations, 92% were completely accurate.

So in other words, they're telling exactly what, and this is what Dr.

Sabem said.

He said, these patients could tell me what I did

in resuscitation of a heart attack that I could have used the tape to teach other physicians how to do,

you know, resuscitation.

He said they couldn't possibly have known that.

So Dr.

Holden compares it to

a control group asking them, you had a heart attack, what do you think happened in the ER to resuscitate you?

It was guesswork, like 20%

accurate.

So that's the first thing that really,

those are some commonalities, but it's also the thing that convinced me or began to convince me when I was a skeptical engineer.

The second thing,

and with this one, I'll tell you more of the commonalities through one of the people

I report on.

When people blind from birth have a near-death experience, they can see.

When they come back and are resuscitated, they still can't see.

Yet they report the same things that cited near-death experiencers report.

And some of the things they report, they could not possibly have

known or made up.

So I'll give you an example, Vicki.

And I report in the new book, both books, I think I report on three,

six total blind people who've had these near-death experiences.

Vicki was 22, she dies in a car accident.

She's there in the hospital and she's above her body, but she doesn't know.

She's like trying to adjust what's this new sense.

And so, for instance, one of the commonalities is how they see colors beyond our color spectrum.

And,

but Vicki didn't have words for it.

She just said

there were all these different brightnesses.

That's how she had to describe it.

She realizes that's her body because, first of all, she feels wonderful,

but it's chaos in the ER.

And then she notices the body on the table has very long hair and a ring with orange blossoms.

And that was her wedding ring.

And she goes, I don't know what you guys are so upset about.

I feel great.

And she said, I know where I'm going.

You know, she believed in Jesus.

She said, I know where I'm going.

And boom, she shoots out.

So her spiritual body or her soul shoots out of the hospital.

She can see all around.

And then she entered

what I think was a tunnel because that is a commonality, though not always.

Sometimes it's just, they just keep going.

But she said, I entered this place where suddenly

there was no color.

Well, that would be black, right?

And it's this dark tunnel that she goes through and she sees light at the end.

And when she comes out, she comes out into this bright, beautiful world, not unlike Earth, you know, grass and trees and flowers and this beautiful garden.

There are mountains in the distance, the rivers.

It's unbelievable beauty like Earth, but experienced in new dimensions of time and space.

And she says, and now this is one of the keys.

She said, the light in this world was not like the light on earth.

Now, she would have only felt the light on earth shining on her, right?

Correct.

But she said, this light was love

and life

and light all together.

And it was shining out of everything.

It was shining out of the grass and out of the trees and out of the birds and even out of this group of people who were coming to welcome her.

And she saw in the group her grandmother and her two friends who had died at age nine and seven that she'd grown grown up with in a children's home for the blind, Debbie and Diane.

She said, but they looked in their prime and they were healthy.

And they too had this light.

She could recognize them fully, but there was this light coming out of everything that was love.

Okay, so stop a second and think about this.

A person blind from birth would have only heard on earth that light shines on things,

not out of things.

And yet, the Jewish prophet Isaiah, who wrote in 780 BC,

and John, one of Jesus' disciples, who writes in Revelation 21, both, there is no sun or moon in heaven, because the glory of God is its light.

And the lamb, which is Jesus, is its lamp, and the nations will walk in that light.

That's exactly.

This gave me goosebumps to hear you say this because I had an experience in my life where I had

a dream.

And, you know, sometimes you have dreams and then other times you have something that you're like, that wasn't a dream.

I don't know what that was.

But I had this dream and it was at a, yeah, it was a pivot point in my life.

I was really struggling with some things in my past and I didn't want to face them.

And I had this dream where all of a sudden I was in this very black and white, almost sepia colored world.

And it was like I was in the middle of nowhere and it was all broken like cornfields that were all just dead and, you know, brown and

dirty snow everywhere.

And I stood on this road and I

did a 360 scan and right behind me was this horrible black storm.

And I just remember thinking, well, I'm not going that way.

And

so I'm just looking around wondering where I'm going to go.

And a voice behind me said, where are you going?

And I said, well, I don't know.

I'm not going that way.

And I turned around and he was behind me.

And

he said, oh, that storm?

That's nothing.

And he was this old kind of like had like almost like nicotine, you know, kind of that yellowy beard.

And he was just dirty and everything was dirty and gray and brown.

And

I said, that'll kill me.

And he said, no, it's, it's nothing.

And I grabbed his hand and all of a sudden we were flying and we flew over the storm.

And what I saw was

technicolor.

It was, it was unlike colors I had ever seen before.

And it was so warm and so

just, you just felt the love.

And I said,

The first thing I said to myself, kind of, I said, it's so warm here.

And he said, this is on the other side.

And I turned to look at him and I only saw him for a flash of a second.

I saw his beard, which was all yellow and dark, and I saw his hand.

And the only way I can describe it is it was made of light.

It was like his beard was like a fiber optic.

Everything was made of light.

And I woke up.

And to hear that description is like exactly what I saw.

Yeah, I mean, amazing.

I

probably God gave you a vivid dream for a purpose.

And I mean, he did.

It changed my life.

And there is a storm.

There is a dark storm.

Yeah.

Right.

And yet it's nothing.

It's nothing to him.

We can

fly up.

So here's something fascinating because Vicki

something that ties into what you just said.

So this girl blind from birth, blind when she came back,

sees this welcoming committee, her grandmother, Debbie and Diane, they too have light, this light that is love.

Of course, if this is the glory of God, one, God is love and God is light,

and

he's the light that gives life to everything.

Of course, this is not new, this God of light.

You know, the

same

God who appeared to Moses on Mount Sinai in a bush that wouldn't burn up.

It was a brilliant light, right?

Jesus is transfigured on the mountain and his face turned brighter than the sun.

And he says, I am the light of the world.

Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but have the light of life, right?

So, you know, and Jesus said in Matthew 13,

talking about the future, then the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their father forever.

And he also says in luke 16 use your worldly wealth to make friends so that when it is gone they will welcome welcome you into eternal homes

so this welcoming committee and these people who have the light and love of god coming out of them or shining through them are experiencing that it's all it's all in the bible but this is exactly what near-death experiencers say and how and why

would they say that because and why would a blind person say that?

Because most Christians don't know that in heaven there's no sun or moon, and that I didn't know this.

In fact, part of why it took me a long time is I was like, oh, this sounds really weird, bizarre, new agey stuff.

This isn't biblical.

I can't talk about this.

And then the more I studied, you know, I became a pastor.

And so, you know, I went to seminary and I studied and studied and studied.

And

along the way, the Lord was like, look, right there.

That's what these people are saying.

That's what this is.

So then Vicki

turns because she sees a light brighter than any and turns, and there's Jesus.

But he's a man of light.

And she runs to him and she said, he hugged me, but the hug was like deeper than anything you could experience on earth.

But here's the thing she said.

She said, I could feel his beard, and there were lights in his beard.

That's what this blind girl said.

Yes.

He just said.

Is that why?

Yeah.

It's crazy.

And she describes Jesus, you know, the way you would picture him.

And,

you know, she was asked, like, well, how did you picture him before?

And she said, well, you don't understand.

I was blind from birth.

I had no pictures.

People blind from birth don't have mental images.

So even if she had heard things about Jesus, she didn't form a mental image.

That sense was not even part of her world.

So it wouldn't be part of her memories either.

And yet, you know, she experiences him, describes him that way.

And he says to her, you're going to love it here.

It all fits together.

And they have a conversation.

And then he gives her a life review, which is another commonality all around the world.

When people are in God's presence, they experience a life review.

And, you know, what's fascinating, Glenn, is these,

and you have to understand that time works differently on the other side.

And near-death experiencers have said to me, there was no time.

Or others have said, well, there was time, but there was all the time you needed.

Or it wasn't time like we experience time.

It was like all time at the same time.

They said it's really hard to put into words.

But here's what's interesting: is that

2 Peter 3:8, Peter, one of Jesus' disciples, said to the Lord, a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years is like a day.

And I've had neurologists who've had near-death experiences say almost the same thing.

Like, I don't know if it was seconds or hours or days.

But because time works, and in in Imagine the God of Heaven, I go into,

you know, how if time were experienced even in not just one dimension like we do, but two dimensions or three dimensions, it would give the sense of what they say.

And so they watch kind of as a panoramic replay of their lives happens before them.

But the emphasis is on relationship.

And they experienced not only what they were thinking and feeling in every interaction, but they also often experienced what the other person was thinking and feeling

and how their little acts of kindness affected that person and even rippled through humanity, 20, 30 people beyond, or how their meaning was.

So you felt that.

They felt that they understood why that little thing mattered.

Wow.

They come back all over the globe saying

two things about this life review.

One, God is love.

They say that.

Even if they didn't know God.

And two, what matters most to God is how we treat one another, how we love one another,

and that that has the most profound impact on humanity.

Now,

again, if you think about it, nothing new.

Moses said that.

Jesus said the first greatest commandment, love God with all you've got.

Second is like it, love your neighbor as yourself.

Do these two.

That's the whole Bible.

That sums up all the commands.

And then in Matthew 25, remember Jesus said,

you know,

one day before the king of the universe, you know,

he'll say, basically,

when you served, when you fed, when you visited in the hospital, when you visited in prison, when you did these things to the least of these people, you did it to me.

And near-death experiencers say that.

They say as they're watching their life review,

if they did something, Vicki did something mean to a little girl at one point.

You know, she got jealous and angry and ripped off her necklace and all that.

And

she said she could feel Jesus' disappointment in that, but she always felt his unconditional love at the same time.

And so they come back realizing, and it changes them because they realize, you know, all the things we tend to live for to try to prove ourselves to the world or power or status or this or that, it just doesn't matter.

Doesn't matter.

But what we do with our gifts and our time and our talents to use them to love God and love our fellow human, well, that not only does it matter, but but it has a bigger impact than you could ever imagine.

This is just fascinating.

When they go through their life review,

are they shown?

I mean, is it,

you know, is it just a series of their whole life, how it happens in time and everything?

I don't know, but they see the good and the bad.

Is it a judgment in a way from them themselves seeing it, not from somebody accusing, but seeing it knowing the truth now?

Yes.

And that's the fascinating thing that confused me for a long time, Glenn, honestly.

Because like I said, I went from being an engineer to being a pastor.

And

early on, and again, I've studied these for 35 years.

And I'd say early on, you know, about 10, 15 years into

the study of near-death experiences, many researchers were saying, well, look, this clearly has, this is not the God of Jesus because, you know, the God of the Bible is this punishing, vindictive God.

And the God of near-death experiences is this unconditional love.

And what these people commonly say is, God was not judging me.

God was loving me and supporting me.

And I was judging myself.

And I knew, I knew my right, and I knew my wrong.

So here's the fascinating thing.

One,

later

I found a couple of things that made sense of this.

First of all, you know, many people know John 3, 16.

God so loved the world, he gave his only begotten son that whoever would believe in him would have eternal life.

Not many know the next verse.

For God did not send his son into the world to condemn the world.

but that the world through him might be saved or rescued or put in right relationship with God.

Correct.

And so it's not surprising that in the presence of God, people from every nation feel loved because he loves them.

He created them to be his child.

But the other thing Jesus said

to the Pharisees at one point, he said, by your own words will you be condemned.

By your own words will you be acquitted

and this is exactly what this is showing is that we can hide from the truth we can rationalize and justify and pretend uh in this life but you can't in that one you just see the truth for it's unvarnished

so john i've i've often thought that

Because I see God as our loving father and I've learned how to be a better father by reading the scriptures and seeing how he treats us.

And it's always, please don't do that.

Please don't do that.

It's so much easier if you don't do that.

And he's always there to forgive us.

And

I've thought about the concept of hell and

redemption.

And I know because I have been redeemed and I needed it really badly.

And it changed my world.

I mean, he saved me, literally and figuratively, saved my body and my soul.

And

so I've often thought

that

if you have full recollection of your life and you can see and you know the truth, okay, you're standing there at the judgment seat, you know the truth, unless you've worked.

redemption and the atonement, unless you know how to apply that to yourself and accept the full forgiveness, you're in hell because he's not judging you.

You are.

He's just saying to you, just forgive, forgive.

I love you.

I love you.

But you can't forgive yourself because you haven't worked the atonement.

You haven't worked the redemption that he gave you.

It's a personal thing.

Does that sound reasonable to you?

Yes.

And that's what I'm trying to show.

So in Imagine Heaven, I was writing about the commonalities and how they align in the Bible with the afterlife, with heaven, with hell, and generally with the concept of God.

But

after interviewing so many of them, I found so many of them said, you know, of all the beauty that's to come, and I mean, you think earth is spectacular now, you know, of all the adventure, of all the great reunions with loved ones, they would say nothing compared to just being in in the presence of God.

He is the love you've always wanted.

And so, I wrote this new book to show I interviewed 70 people

from every continent on the planet.

So, this is not just a North American Christian thing.

God is the God.

Tell me about Bibi and Said.

Tell me about Bibi and Said, because I think this is this shows.

Yeah, so, so, um,

yeah it's a wild wild story so i had a um a family in our church from tehran uh iranian family um who had had come to faith in jesus and the father had literally tried to kill them and so they escaped and got refuge in austin where i where my church is and they started coming to our church and

This

Saeed is their pastor.

And when he was visiting Austin, he came to visit them and asked if he could meet with me.

And I'm like, sure.

And so we go to lunch and he brings his mother, Beebe,

who only speaks Farsi.

And I was like, why did you bring your mother?

And I didn't know.

Now, here's the crazy thing is he didn't know

that I had written a book on near-death experiences.

He didn't know I was a New York Times best-selling author on this.

He just knew I was a pastor of the church of these people that he used to pastor.

And

so we're at lunch and

he said, my mom is related to the Prophet Muhammad.

And he was telling me how he came to faith in Jesus while in Tehran.

And I said, well, is she a believer in Jesus or is she still Muslim?

And he said, well, I'll let her tell you.

So she starts to tell me this story.

He's translating.

In Farsi?

In Farsi.

So I'm sitting in a restaurant hearing this with him translating.

She was so distraught over first Said and then his sister also became followers of Jesus, actually because of a vision when Saeed

was very conflicted because he was Hezbollah.

He literally was...

had been trained as a teenager Hezbollah.

And he started dating an Iranian girl who was

a Christian.

And she said, look, if we're going to keep dating, I want you to talk to my pastor.

And the pastor basically tried to explain God's grace through Jesus.

We can all be forgiven, you know, just turned to him.

And he left and he was so angry.

He decided he's going to kill that pastor.

This is what he told me.

Oh, my gosh.

But he had to walk home and it took him an hour to walk home.

And on the walk, he started to become distraught inside.

He was like this pastor saying, God loves us, but, you know,

they're infidels because they believe this Father, Son, Holy Spirit,

and God can be a man and that can't be possible and it's wrong.

And he's just, and finally he said, God,

I want to know the truth.

I will follow you.

Just show me the truth.

And that night,

three times he wakes up with a vision of a man standing with his arms out like this you know as if on a cross

and he comes to faith he leads his sister to faith in jesus his mom is so distraught that she has failed islam um

and by the way they lived in a gated community next door to ahminajab's uh

council oh my gosh oh my gosh so they were very well-to-do they're right there yeah They're right there.

And she has a heart attack.

And she thinks she's going to be judged by the Prophet Ali.

That's

their belief that that's what's going to happen.

And of course, she's failed.

And she's waiting for this.

And that's not what happened.

She said,

this

man of light,

large, comes and says one thing, I am he who is.

That's how Saeed translated it to me.

I am he who is.

And boom, she's back in her body, but with a peace and a joy she's never felt before.

And she's super confused.

Like, who is this God?

And she starts seeking.

And the next year, she has a whole other revelation and realizes that

this was the same God who said

in the burning bush to Moses, I am who I am.

It's basically the same thing, translated, I am he who is.

And that is Jesus, and she also becomes a follower of Jesus.

But here's the crazy thing, Glenn.

I've got 70 stories like that.

Santosh, one of my favorites, he was a manufacturing engineer, grew up in India.

He thought, when I die, there's either nothing or I'll come back as another life form.

But he said, that's not what happened.

He hears code blue, his heart stops, brainwaves cease.

He's there up above his body.

And he said, this brilliant divine light came to me.

And he said, this light was brighter than anything you can imagine.

I knew it would burn my retina in an instant,

but I could look as mesmerizing.

And I fell in love with this light because I knew this light was for me.

So this light takes him, and I'll have to shorten the story, but it's all, it's all in the book, Imagine the God of Heaven.

It's fascinating.

Basically,

he's looking out over this giant,

he called it a giant compound,

thousands of miles long, but he said, your eyesight's telescopic there.

And he said, very high, thick, gorgeous walls.

Now, I've been to India many times because we helped build a hospital

for impoverished people over there.

And there are compounds everywhere.

There are these walled, gated compounds everywhere.

But he describes it thousands of miles long, square-shaped.

And he said, inside these beautiful grounds and buildings of otherworldly building material and people everywhere.

And he longed to be inside.

He said, this is the goal of humanity.

I knew it is to live there, to be there.

And he wanted to get in.

And he started looking for a way in and he said, and there were gates, 12 of them.

I counted them.

And he said, then I looked at the gate closest to me and I saw

angels guarding them.

And he said, then I knew I'm looking at the kingdom of heaven.

Now, he perfectly described exactly what John described.

Jesus' disciple in Revelation 21, when he said he was taken up in the spirit to a very high mountain and describes this same holy city of God.

And by the way, John even says

what it said on the foundations.

So if he's up on a very high mountain, how in the world did he read from far away the names on the foundation stones?

Well, again, what near-death experiencers say, your eyesight's like telescopic there.

Right.

And Santosh describes this same exact holy city, yet he had never read the Bible.

He then sees a vision of hell.

He describes the same thing.

It was this abyss of darkness and hopeless.

And he knew

you fall there, you never get out.

And he doesn't want to go there.

He wants to go in the city, but he can't find a way in.

And he turns and looks, and there is

who he said is God on a throne, but in the form of a man,

but a huge man, like Bibi saw.

They both describe him the same way.

And he looks into his eyes and he says his eyes were like lightning.

So this, and Santosh said to me afterwards, he said, I believe that was the risen Jesus,

God

appearing in the form we can understand.

And so

he sees his entire life, he sees all his sins, and he falls to his knees and says, Lord, forgive me, please forgive me, please.

Because he knew, again,

I deserve the abyss.

But he didn't want to go there.

And he's looking for another way.

And Glenn, it's the craziest story because the Lord starts to speak to him.

And he says, Santosh, I'm going to send you back.

And when I send you back, you must love your family, especially your daughter.

She needs you right now.

Now,

think about this.

Here's a guy.

He doesn't know the Lord, but the Lord knows him and his daughter and loves them and cares about them.

And Santosh then, you know, he was expecting judgment and instead he felt this love and mercy and compassion in the Lord's voice.

So

he looks to the right and he sees what he described as this very narrow gate right next to this throne that was open to him.

And he could go in, but he knew he couldn't go in without his permission.

And so he gets bold and he says, Lord,

if I come back, I want to go through that narrow gate into your kingdom.

How do I go through that narrow gate?

Anyway,

I'll shorten it, but when he comes back,

he is seeking God.

And he said,

this was not like the gods I had grown up knowing.

Who is this God of power, but who is loving and personal and compassionate and knew me so well, but cared about me and didn't hold my sins against me.

And he's seeking every day, he's praying,

he's asking the Lord to guide him.

And his daughter then

is invited because she was a choral major in college.

She's invited with a friend to sing in a choir

at church.

Santosh goes to hear his daughter and he walks into this church and he feels the same love

of that God of light.

And the message that day is on the narrow gate and how Jesus is the gate through whom you can enter the kingdom of God.

He goes home and he told me, I started reading the Bible, everything I experienced was in this book.

And he came to faith in Jesus.

And that's fantastic.

I've been friends with him for a couple years now.

He actually went through those gates two months ago.

Oh,

so he got fantastic.

And he went through.

But, but, so, so, Glenn,

Australians,

Chinese people,

people in the Middle East,

in Canada.

It doesn't matter where they come from.

It doesn't matter their religious background.

Even some who didn't believe in God at all, they're reporting the same God who revealed himself throughout history.

And that's what I'm trying to show.

So

I think your work is really important now because there is a lack of faith.

And those with faith

sometimes

believe it,

but they disempower it.

You know, they look at their life and they're like, yeah, yeah, well, that's, you know, that's God.

And, you know, people ask me all the time, Glenn, what are we going to do?

What are we going to do?

And I'm like, well,

we can't do anything, but we can, what we can do.

God knows this isn't a surprise.

He's got it all taken care of.

We have to do what we have to do, but trust in him.

And

so many Christians just dismiss that.

They're like, yeah, yeah, I know I've got to pray and read the Bible, but what are we going to do?

No, that's the first thing that you should be doing.

And then working on yourself to forgive others and to be kind and not get wrapped up into this world.

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You know, when you're in a self-defense situation, when it's either you or them, I'd like to, as kind of in the spirit of this podcast, introduce my foe to Jesus.

But I don't always want to introduce somebody to Jesus.

That's a huge responsibility, and we will be held accountable.

Also, you'll be

held accountable with the rule of law here in America, and it's going to wreck your life for about two years.

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So I think what you're doing is so important because people are being beaten down.

But there's also another part of your book where you start to go into prophecy

and showing us how it's being fulfilled.

Let's just talk about

the regathering of Israel that you talk about in your book.

Yeah, and the reason is, you know,

I've had Christians especially really misunderstand.

And I think, like you said, I think it's misunderstanding the grace of God, really.

Because they've said, well, why would a Hindu or a Muslim or others, why would they see Jesus or why would they see God?

Why doesn't he, why aren't they in hell?

And sometimes I feel of his.

Well, sometimes I feel like we're more concerned about getting people to hell than we are to heaven.

You know, like, just don't worry.

God's going to sort it all out.

But, but here's the other thing that's important.

And this is what I'm trying to trace through.

Well, let me say, first of all,

I do not believe believe near-death experiences

are crossing over into either eternal life or eternal death.

There's something in between.

And that's very important because that confused me for a long time.

So you're saying that you feel they're going to the waiting room.

They're going to

the lobby.

It's like this.

Imagine if I visited Buckingham Palace, okay?

And I get to see the place, describe describe it.

Well, that doesn't mean, you know, the royal family is adopting me to move in forever.

I just get to see it.

And I think God is allowing, I believe these are testimonies of the reality of hell and heaven and this God of grace who revealed himself through Jesus to the entire globe for such a time as this.

Glenn, there's no other time I could have interviewed people on every continent,

right?

And to report about it.

And so God is showing all the nations what he's been saying all along.

Genesis chapter 12, he raises up Abraham and Sarah.

He says, I'm going to bless you to bless all nations.

That's always been God's,

you know, God's not a respecter of persons.

He doesn't love some nationalities more than others.

He meant us all to be his children.

500 times through the Old Testament prophets, God is speaking to all the nations.

Go try to find another God

who is addressing all nations.

There aren't.

They're more tribal.

They're more local deities, right?

So this has always been the God of all nations.

Jesus comes and claims that he lays down his life.

for all nations.

And he tells his disciples, go tell all the nations there's forgiveness offered in my name.

In other words, what I have done is cleared the way that God can be just

in taking back anyone who wants my forgiveness and relationship.

In other words, he has removed every barrier between every person and himself except one, our pride.

So he does not take away our free will.

And if in our pride we say, No, I'm good.

I don't need God.

I don't need forgiveness.

I'm good.

At the end of the day, I think

it grieves him.

And I've got stories in the book in Imagine the God of Heaven of the grief God shows some of these people that he feels because it's like a mom or dad losing their child, you know?

Yes, yes.

It's a horrible heroin addiction and they just won't come out.

But

that is what hell is.

Their choice.

23% of people who have come forward reporting near-death experiences have reported hellish experiences, at least.

It might be more than that, because

many don't talk about them because these hellish experiences are just as real as the heavenly ones.

And what they say is, yeah, just what C.S.

Lewis said when he said he believed hell was locked from the inside.

In other words,

it's the human creature, the free will will creature locking God out.

Yes.

Not

yes, yes.

Yeah.

Yes.

I think we go back with everything that we are, just as your people are explaining, with our free will.

And, you know, when the Lord says, come to me like a child,

I've always interpreted that as, well, a child is innocent and everything else.

But the most important thing about children is they always ask the same same question to the point of driving you out of your mind.

Why?

So coming to the Lord as a child, you are open to his

understanding.

You're coming to him and saying, I don't understand all this.

This is what I thought it was, but is that right?

And coming to him and surrendering your will to him and say, you are the truth.

I'll accept.

And I think there's a lot of people that will cross over and they'll,

be very surprised because it's not exactly how they understood it.

It won't be

like I understand it.

And if you're not open, if you're like, nope, that's not right, you're going to lock yourself away.

And that's that'll let you do it.

That's what I'm trying to do in Imagine the God of Heaven is, you know, we all put God in a box because we're finite,

you know, and God is not limited by our finiteness.

And so, so God is far more mysterious.

You know,

if God is not mysterious to you, you don't have the right God.

Right.

Right.

Beautiful.

We don't often think of beautiful, glorious, powerful, sovereign, omniscient, omnipotent, all those big words.

But what do those mean?

I'm trying to show what those mean through the eyes of these people who have experienced it.

And you start to triangulate and you go, oh my gosh, why don't I trust him?

But on the other side side of the box,

God is far more relatable, personable,

enjoyable.

You ever use that word?

Fun, funny,

joyful.

And many, many Christians, like, they don't think of God that way.

And so kind of like you said, yeah, they give mental, you know, yeah, I believe in God, but they don't live like it.

They don't trust him.

They don't think he's got much to offer them,

And so really,

they're just living for retirement, not for the life to come.

And so

I'm trying to help people see that, know what the scriptures teach, God is far

better than you can possibly get your little mind to wrap around.

And when you start to picture and really imagine God accurately, you start to go, oh my gosh.

I mean, why?

Everything I desire, everything I love about this life, every good thing comes from God,

and that's where I'm going.

And He is sovereign.

I don't have anything to worry about.

And as a result, I'm free to use my time and my talents and my gifts to love and serve.

I don't have to prove anything to anybody.

You know, there's just an incredible peace, an incredible joy that's available.

And even through the sufferings of life.

You know, I interviewed this one guy,

Dr.

Mark Medano,

and he is now a plastic surgeon who treats berm victims.

Because at age 16, they had a house fire that burned down their house.

And he got his two older brothers out, but his younger brother and his mom were trapped.

And he passed out and got burned over 65% of his body trying to save them.

And he couldn't save them.

They died.

But in the hospital on the way, he kept coding.

His heart kept crashing.

And he was in such pain.

He was like, God, just take my life.

This is, he was, you know, I mean, burned.

There's nothing worse, right?

And at one point, he did crash.

And he told me

he was there

with his mom and his brother in the presence of Jesus.

And he said,

it wasn't literally like this, but it felt like we were just all snuggled up on the couch, like when we would watch TV together.

And it was just so wonderful there with Jesus.

And he saw

how God's plan worked.

And here's what he said to me.

He said, I thought to myself, yes.

Of course.

It makes so much sense.

Like it all, it couldn't be any other way.

It has to be this way.

It makes so much sense.

And then, and Jesus said to him, you're, because this is another commonality, he says,

your time isn't fulfilled on earth.

You still have things to accomplish.

I'm going to send you back.

And he said,

it's going to be difficult, but we're going to do it together.

So

Mark comes back and you want to talk about suffering and difficult.

You know, he's a 16-year-old burn victim, right?

He had, you know, he was disfigured.

He had lost his mom and his sister.

His dad is so, you know, depressed, he becomes an alcoholic.

Mark had to go through 38 reconstructive surgeries, the pain and the suffering of all that.

He then becomes an alcoholic in college just to escape the PTSD from the experience.

And as a result, he ends up in recovery.

And in recovery, he comes back to the Lord.

And

through the strength and the discipline he learned and just taking it day by day, right?

Depending on the Lord, one day at a time, he found the motivation

to become a doctor.

And he becomes a plastic surgeon who could then help other burn victims like himself.

It's unbelievable.

It's unbelievable, you know, but but it teaches us so much, Glenn.

And this is what I'm trying to show, that these people bring us back nuggets of wisdom that it's in the Bible, yes, but sometimes we don't take it to heart because maybe it goes in the head, but it doesn't sink into the heart.

And when you hear through the words of these people who have suffered

to say, you know what, I still don't like the suffering.

I don't think God's doing it to me.

This world is broken.

This is an evil, broken world.

Look, Jesus would not have taught us to pray, God, your will be done on earth like it is in heaven, if God's will were being done on earth.

It's not.

And so a lot of the pain and a lot of the suffering, It comes from a world that God has truly given us free will, but we choose to use it in ways that he, just like you said, is like, don't do that, please.

You know, just going to multiply pain.

Johanna, I have to tell you, this has been,

go ahead.

Go ahead.

Well, you hear these people

talking about,

you know, how God is ultimately in control and he does have a plan.

And we can't see it all right now.

But when we walk faithfully with him,

you know, and that's, that's the really cool thing.

Like Santosh, that Hindu, you know, who saw God in the narrow door,

you know, he, he, he, he was asking, what, what do I have to do?

What do I have to do?

And I, and I find God doesn't, he doesn't tell us.

But sometimes he speaks in parables, even to these near-death experiencers, which who does that remind you of, right?

And

he says to Santosh, you know,

What I want is relationship.

I want to see how honest you'll be with me, not one day a week.

Because Santosh was thinking,

what church, what synagogue?

What church do I go to?

What do I do?

What religious thing do I do once a week to appease you?

And he said, that's not what I want.

I want, he said, I want honesty.

I want to see how honest you'll be with me, not one day a week, but 365 days, 24-7,

walk with me.

That's what he said.

And Santosh didn't know what he said.

John, it has been a truly fascinating hour.

I wish we could, I wish I had another hour with you, but I'd love to invite you back again because I just think

this was an hour of joy and of truth.

And I so appreciate it.

The name of the book is Imagine the God of Heaven.

The author is John Burke.

God bless you, John.

Thanks, Glenn.

Just a reminder, I'd love you to rate and subscribe to the podcast and pass this on to a friend so it can be discovered by other people.