In this October 2017 class we have looked at Christianity
and the Life to Come and we have examined the modern phenomenon of Near‑Death
Experiences (NDE).
There are biblical citations supporting same:
Chapter 32, Westminster Confession of Faith;
2nd Corinthians 12:2;
The Second Helvetic Confession at Chapter 7 (1575).
We looked at Dr. Raymond Moody's groundbreaking book Life After Life, Mockingbird Press,
1975. We looked at Dr. George
Richey's NDE of 1943 – the one that set off the relatively new review of this
material by the University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA.
We looked at the historical aspects of Socrates through his
people Plato's writings in the Phaedo of the immortality of the soul. In the Phaedo[i], Plato
discusses pretty much the concept that Christians seem to now accept as the
immortality of the soul. Though that
highly technical concept is slightly different as they found in the New
Testament. The New Testament (technically) seems to teach
of a physical resurrection when the dead will rise (get their bodies back – not
sure I want mine back. (smiles)) and
live with the Christ in a resurrected state.
Then we looked at particular NDEs that I picked because they
were NDEs that cannot have been forged and were outside of the possibility of
individuals desiring to achieve some outcome or initiating the NDE on their
own.
For example (here in Georgia) I brought you the very real
NDE of Viola Horton[ii] who had an NDE in 1976 in
Augusta, Georgia and here NDE made it through various publications and was
extensively vetted. I also found all of
her historical data and produced that to the class. She existed; the event was real.
Then we looked at Cecil Willie, an individual in Baton
Rouge, Louisiana who had an NDE from a bleed out in Baton Rouge. He could not have forged his statements. His showed a real and interesting experience
with his deceased relatives and the living Christ. I showed the class the NDE of Inez Dawes in
1925 in Minneapolis, MN. It would be
hard to falsify that NDE almost 100 years ago.
Then we looked at Chris Markey, the lawyer I spoke to from
Chicago, Illinois and his NDE from heart surgery. There were many others: Richard Cole, Dr. Mary
Neal, Martha Sinclair, Charles McKaig, the unassuming postal worker in
Knoxville, Tennessee as made famous by Maurice Rawlings. It would be difficult to forge that event
since Charles McKaig had an NDE (and went to hell) on the stress test in
Dr. Rawlings' office. And on and on
and the list is endless.
As I indicated, when Moody published his book in 1975 he had
studied 150 events. The current
collection (and there are numerous databases) www.nderf.org
[iii]based
(potentially) in New Orleans, LA (actually it is Houma, LA) has a database of 25,000
NDEs of which 5,000 are exceptionals.
Thus current sample size is enormous in comparison to Moody's original
sample size.
So what can we take away from this study? 11 to 13 percent of these individuals have
negative experiences and we're all hopeful that we do not. The vast majority have extremely interesting
experiences and show (if you can believe them) the almost complete certainty
that this is not hypoxia[iv]
or anoxia[v]
and that there are interesting worlds and things to come beyond our
imagination. A great beyond awaits us all.
The reason that hypoxia or anoxia cannot be an explanation
for all of these events is that with 25,000 sample size we have thousands of
veridical (coinciding with reality) statements that are provable in the third
dimension outside of the physical presence of the preparer's deceased or person
who testifies. That is there must be the
existence of consciousness outside the body or (in Occam's razor) these events
must exist because thousands of these individuals in the sample size testify
about third dimensional events in time and space that occur far away from where
they are having a cardiac arrest or dying in a car accident, etc.
Thus, following Occam's razor the most likely event or the
simplest outcome is these events exist otherwise you have to go through the
continuous tortured materialist reduction theory of anoxia and that all that
exists are the material matter and atoms that we define.
And if you chase any particle physicist (God forbid that my
son is now headed in that direction) there's nothing there. The farther you go down into the material
from electrons down to protons to neutrons to quarks, you find that eventually
there is nothing there. Its only
energy. All is energy. And, energy can be neither created nor
destroyed.[vi]
So what is the answer?
Personally, I put my trust in the
Christ (who many many of these individuals encountered). Acts.
16:I. I will leave the conclusions
of this material to the reader.
Conclusions that I think are reasonable:
Life Continues
Christ Exists
Heaven and Hell exist
Life continues without out physical bodies
We get, sometimes, another body
Communication is always by telepathy
Many times our entire lives are reviewed (life review).
People we have known appear in NDEs.
Other belief systems (may) exist
The NDE experiences are not homogeneous
Sometimes atheists go to heaven
There seems to be a purpose or
mission to
our lives
Many are told to “its not your time”.
The Bible is a Guide to a great life.
Hugh C. Wood, Esq.
Atlanta, GA
Viola J. Horton, Augusta, SC. Died in Gallbladder Surgery on May 5,
1971. She listed at Chapter 17 “Who’s
Dead” of Shockey, Peter. Reflections of
Heaven: A Millennial Odyssey of Miracles, Angels And Afterlife. Doubleday. 1999.
If you are interested in reading many of these events
in their “raw” format, 25,000 of them may be found at www.nderf.org.
Hypoxia is a condition in which the body or a region of
the body is deprived of adequate oxygen supply at the tissue level. Hypoxia may
be classified as either generalized, affecting the whole body, or local,
affecting a region of the body.
The First Law of Thermodynamics. Rudolf Clausius
(1850).
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