What The Near Death Experience Tells Us About The Love Of God

You know you need something, you're just not sure what. You've been listening, you're doing the work, but there's still this feeling that you're circling the same place, like you're waiting for the thing that finally moves you. Now maybe you've thought about working with me one-on-one. Maybe something's held you back, the timing, the money, or you're just not sure you're ready yet. I get that. And I want you to know there's still a place for you. I built a resource for exactly this moment, guided meditations for when the waves hit and you just need to breathe. Workbooks to help you get out of your head and onto the page, ebooks on what near-death experiences tell us about the people we've lost, and whether they're really gone, a full course for widows and widowers who are ready to find their way back to living, and a full course for the evidence of the afterlife. And all of it is available for pay what you want. Nobody gets turned away because of money. I think these resources are valuable, but I don't want to hold them back because you don't have the money to pay for them. You don't have to wait until you're ready for coaching. The next step might be a lot smaller than you think. To find out, go to grief2growth.com/store. That's grief, the numeral 2, growth.com/store. And check out the resources I've made for you. Hey everybody, this is Brian. I'm back with another episode of Grief 2 Growth. And today I want to welcome a special guest. His name is Pastor John Burke. If you've been with us, if you've been with me for some time, you might remember my conversation with from a couple years ago. If you haven't, if you don't remember it, or if you're new, go back to August of 2021. And I had a great conversation with Pastor Burke then. He's the author of the New York Times bestseller Imagine Heaven. And I want you to, like I said, go back and look at that episode if you haven't heard before. But he's also written works including No Perfect People Allowed, Soul Revolution, and Unshockable Love. And they've reached hearts all around the world. Pastor Burke, together with wife Kathleen, is the spirit behind the Gateway, the Gateway Church in Austin, Texas, which is a spiritual haven for countless numbers of souls. He's an international speaker, and his message of spiritual enlightenment has spanned 30 different countries. Today I'm going to talk to Pastor Burke about his newest work, which is called Imagine the God of Heaven, and the subtitle is God's Revelation and the Love You've Always Wanted. And the subtitle actually leads me into my first question because I thought that was really, really caught my eye when I heard, when I heard that, or my ear when I heard that. So, Pastor Burke, can you, can you expand on the God, the love that we've always wanted and why we always feel, why we feel that way?

Well, first, Brian, call me John.

Okay.

More comfortable with that.

Okay, fine.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Our church is very casual. We say come as you are. And so I don't like the titles, but that's all right. Echo. So you forgot one thing in the subtitle: Near-Death Experiences: God's Revelation and the Love You've Always Wanted.

Yes, yes. So what—

no, it's all right. It's just, it's an important part because as you, as you know, it's, it's, it's my story. Really, from, from Grief to Growth and my father passing away when, you know, 3 decades ago, someone gave him the very first book, very first study on near-death experiences, and I read it and I was an agnostic.. And that set me on a journey because I was an engineer like, like you, so very analytical, skeptical. But to me, this was like, maybe there's actual some evidence that this is real. And, and so I've studied thousands of them now over, over the last 30 years. And this, this new book, Imagine the God of Heaven, is, is taking a look at I, I've got 70 people in this book from all around the world who not only have a near-death experience, and I, you've covered those before, so your audience is probably fairly familiar with them.

Yeah, I'd say they are, but we might as well, we could go over a little bit for people that might be new. Yeah.

Cuz I mean, that's really important is, uh, sure. You know what convinced me and, and what convinced many skeptical, um, cardiologists, oncologists, other doctors is when people die, when they clinically die, their heart stops beating, brainwaves cease, and yet they're resuscitated. Many come back saying that they experienced something of a life to come that was more real than this life ever was. And there are commonalities. And, and I've traced about 40 commonalities. There are probably more, but I traced 40 commonalities in the book Imagine Heaven. That then I was tying to how, how that shows up in the scriptures. In Imagine the God of Heaven, what I'm, what I'm doing is I'm looking at people from all over the globe who not only have that as a commonality, but they have experienced this God of light and love who is more personal than they could have ever imagined, who loves them with quite honestly, a love that hyperbole is all they can do to try to express it. And in this God's presence, they never want to leave. And so in the book Imagine the God of Heaven, what I'm doing is I'm showing through the eyes of these 70 people how this God has been revealing Himself through history, His heart, His characteristics, His great love story that He's been revealing through history, and how that's what these people are confirming. And it doesn't matter their religious background, their culture. Many times what, what they would have expected is not what they found. But what they found, they never wanted to leave. It was the love they have always wanted.

Yeah. So why do you think that that resonates with us so much, that, that love that we've always wanted? Do you feel like people are missing that here? Or what do you— what's the reason for that?

Well, yeah, I mean, and that's actually part of the second part of the book is it's really about God's great love story revealed throughout the scriptures, and that often gets missed. You know, in the Bible, it starts with people in relationship with God, in very close relationship with God, but then throughout the story, there's rejection, there's betrayal, there's divorce, there's reconciliation, there's sacrifice to try to win back the beloved. There are all these metaphors of relationship that God likens what he wants with humanity to. And then the whole thing ends in the book of Revelation with this great wedding, which, which is kind of bizarre if you think like it's That's pretty mysterious. Like, what? But if you miss the meta-narrative of the whole story, I think you miss a lot of why God does the things he does or doesn't. And the main thing is that love can't be bought. It can't be forced or coerced. It can't be manipulated. It has to be free.

Mm-hmm.

And so if God created us for a love relationship, first with himself and then with each other, then what's missing on the planet is the first love. And that's exactly what Moses said, that what God said to Moses, what Jesus reiterated, that love God first, first and greatest commandment. Second is love your neighbor as much as you do yourself. Do those two and you fulfill all the scriptures. All the commands of scripture are wrapped up in those two. And so, yeah, I think part of the story of humanity and human life is that we're here learning about free will and love, and choosing to choose God. And then choosing to let the love of God flow through us to, to others as well. And that's one of the, you know, that's one of the commonalities of near-death experiences, of course, all around the world, in the presence of this God of light, who is love, who knows them so intimately, they often get a life review, right. And in that, in that life review, they, they re-experience. So that's another commonality is time. You know, I, I kind of think time probably works in two dimensions, or maybe three.. It's not our linear one-dimensional timeline. And so they can re-experience their lives in the presence of this God. And he's showing them— they come back with two things. One, God is love. And secondly, what he cares most about is how we treat one another. And that's what he was showing them again and again. Like the ripple effect, like Dr. Mary Neal, who I was just recently with— have you had her on your show before?

I have not had her on my show, but I have met her.

Yeah, sweet, wonderful person. She's a spine surgeon, very analytical person as well. But in, in Jesus' presence, he gives her a life review, and he shows her the ripple effect of every little kind action, and how God used even the things that she thought were bad in her life, he showed her how 20 people, 25, 30 people away, he was— that was still having a ripple effect.

So we talk about the word God, we use the word God, it's a loaded word for a lot of people. Yeah, I know. In this community, in the afterlife community, a lot of times, you know, some people shy away from it. I've heard some people who've had near-death experiences say, and I don't know if I want to use that word. So what is— what's your experience with the word God, and how should we relate to that?

Yeah, it's a great question. I think there's— I think there's been a lot of damage done with misinformation about God. And, and honestly, what I'm— what I'm trying— what I'm trying to do in Imagine the God of Heaven is show One, just like if you really understand who this God is that all these people are encountering, you would want to seek him.

That's it. Yeah.

But the other thing I'm trying to show is he didn't just show up in the age of near-death experiences. So I'm tracing what, what actually convinced me as a skeptical engineer before even before the evidence of near-death experiences, which I think scientifically, you know, there's a scientific principle is that what is consistently observed is real. So if you have millions of people around the globe, and I've personally studied thousands of them, my friend Dr. Jeffrey Long has got a database of 5,000 now that he studied. I mean, there have been many studies, there have been 900 scholarly peer-reviewed articles published on this, like in the Journal of the American Medical Association and The Lancet and Psychiatry. And so there's all this evidence. And then if you look at the fact that close to 50% of them experience who they know is God, and most of them don't shy away from calling him that, they're like, I knew, there was no doubt in my mind, this was my creator, this is who made me. And yet that's consistent all around the globe. The being they're describing is consistent. And so that should tell us something. Like, that's a lot of data. And if it were that alone, you know, in Chapter 2 of Imagine the God of Heaven, you know, there have been a lot of alternate explanations of near-death experiences, right? Maybe it's hypoxia. It's like the brain suffering from oxygen deprivation. Or maybe it's the same thing, you know, like DMT or ayahuasca produces the same, the same things. I've heard, you know, all these, or, well, what about the effects of, of, of drugs in the hospital and all that? So I go through 10 points of evidence that any alternative theory has to, has to make sense of. Because what I find is of all these alternative theories, they're taking one thing and saying, well, see, like DMT. Well, yeah, there's the experience of these wild colors and connectedness to everything. And sometimes maybe you're traveling or a tunnel or something like that. Well, yeah, but that doesn't make sense of veridical observations, right? So when people have near-death experiences and they're out of their bodies, they say many times they're still in the room up above in a spiritual body watching their resuscitation. And there have been studies done where they've come back, and 92% of the many observations that these many patients that were studied made, 92% were completely accurate. Of the things they said were happening in the room while they had no brainwaves.

Right.

96%, you know, 6% more, there were some things, some, some of the observations they made were not completely accurate. Only 2% were inaccurate. Well, that's, that's high correlation.

Right.

Like, how do you make sense of that? Second, blind people see when they have a near-death experience and they come back and they're still blind. And yet they said the same things, they had the same experience, and even talked about things that they shouldn't have known. Like, they saw things in their life review, for instance, that when they came back, they were able to describe, but they couldn't have seen that. You know, third, you have these overlapping commonalities, but they're not all the same. So like I said, there are like 40 commonalities, right? And if it were just a brain-based thing, then everyone would probably have all the same commonalities, but they don't. There are percentages of overlap, which if, you know, if you're, if you're in a court of law and you have 10 eyewitnesses who all say exactly the same thing, that's collusion, that's sketchy. Yeah, because like, they talked, right? But if you have 10 people who say mostly the same things and they overlap, but they're all a bit unique from different perspectives, that's very strong testimony. That's what we see with these NDEs. And then, you know, the other one is, how do you explain people from all different religions seeing the same God? And that that shouldn't happen, because they weren't necessarily experiencing that. And there are other reasons I go into, but those are just some that, that convinced me like, no, this is something real. We're getting, we're getting these observations that, again, you know, what's consistently observed is real. So there's something real here.

And I'm really glad that you went through that, because I find so many people do not understand what you just talked about, that there is there is evidence, there's, there's veridical evidence from a lot of these NDEs. People from all across the world are having similar experiences. Because as the explanations that materialists come up with, like oxygen deprivation or dump of DMT to the brain, they, they don't, they don't explain all of that. So I'm glad you go into that in the book for people that are still skeptical about the whole experience itself.

Yeah.

When it comes to people meeting God, what would you say is a general way that people describe God?

Stay with us. We'll be right back.

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Well, some, you know, some see him as a brilliant light, bright. They consistently say brighter than the sun, but easy to look at. And they say things like, I knew this should just burn my eyes out. But it didn't. In fact, I was mesmerized. And in his presence. So this, I love the way this one, he, you know, that's the other thing about this, Brian, is like, the people that I've interviewed, they're, they're like psychiatrists, you know, doctors, commercial airline pilots, nurses. I mean, these, these are, these are people who have a lot to lose by saying crazy stuff.

Right.

And yet they are. And like this, this one guy who his name is, is Ron, Dr. Ron Smotherman. He's a neurologist and a psychiatrist. And it's a wild story. He, he was living in San Francisco, let a, let a guy stay in his house while he was gone. He was doing lectures around the world. When he came back, the guy had a psychotic break. And started stabbing him, stabbed him 13 times, once through the neck that doctors said he absolutely should not have survived. He showed me the scars. And on the— as the 14th was coming for his heart, he said, time froze. And suddenly appears like instantly before him, this, this brilliant light standing there that he knew again was divine. He knew this was God, didn't have any— they don't have any doubt of who this is. They have an honest experience. But he said, imagine standing 5 feet away from the the point of impact of an atomic explosion. He said that was the energy roiling. This light was just roiling with energy. And then he said, but, but the energy, what was roiling even more was love. And then he lost it, telling me this. He said, he said, I'm, I'm sorry, I was just like, and that's the other thing is that this memory for them is not up here in the brain. It's somewhere in their soul, and they relive it as if it were today, and it just overwhelms their emotions, because the love is so great. And so he said, instantly, he was imprinted with these qualities. And that's what part of what I'm trying to show in Imagine the God of Heaven is the qualities, the heart of God. So he said, infinite love, but also instantly infinite knowledge. He said, it's like I had a picture of a library, but the books filled the universe, and he wrote them all. And he said, power that was indisputable. You know what's fascinating about the power is I had another, a commercial airline pilot, who is flying into, like, like an airborne coming into the City of God, okay, which ironically, we'll have to come back to. I have an Indian man who had never read the Bible taken by this God of Light, and he describes this same City of God. Hmm.

Hmm.

We can come back to that. But, but both of these guys, this commercial airline pilot, and this neurologist-psychologist, said, when I saw that light, it was like the very instant a nuclear explosion goes off. The whiteness of that and the brilliance of that, and yet you could look right into it. So power, he said, that's indisputable. Authority is another thing he said. He said, like, you know, you didn't have any questions. He knew, and he knew the right thing. And you wanted to do whatever he he said. Humor was another one. And this is one I bring out in the whole last section of Imagine the God of Heaven. There are things about God, I think, I think all of us, me included, we put God in a box. And some of us put him in a box where we don't realize how great, how magnificent, how otherworldly and mysterious and in control and sovereign, all those words you want to use, but others put him in a box and we don't imagine how personable, how relatable, how even humorous and fun and funny. And some people like, they can't go there.

Yeah.

And that's what I'm trying to help people do is stretch your box and see that God is that relationship. And so humor was one of the things he said and many of them said, that they had so much fun. Joy was another thing. And this is an interesting one, because he said, the joy was like, you wish you could be that happy. And this is God, that he's that joyful. He said, but just experiencing that joy, he said, put me in ecstasy. Now, here's a wild thing, Brian, and I, you know, I went there, but I had multiple people that I interviewed of these 70 people in Imagine the God of Heaven say things like that. Like, in his presence, I was like beyond anything I've ever experienced on Earth. And I said, you mean even like better than sex? Like, oh yeah. Oh yeah. You name it. There's no high. There's no there's no nothing. Which, you know, some people like, no way. But stretch your categories, you know, look at the, look at the evidence. Because what I'm also showing is I'm showing that this is not new. This is what God's been revealing about himself all along. Joy is what he wants, because it's, it's, it's his, it's his mainstay. Right? That's C.S. Lewis is one of my favorite authors, you know, who was a literary scholar.

Yeah.

Says joy is the serious business of heaven.

Yeah.

And it's true. Another thing that Ron, this guy said is purity. And I asked him to explain it. And I think it's when religious people use the word holy, I think it's the same thing. He said, he was just so pure, so innocent. And he said, but knowledgeable. So not innocent like naive, but just pure. And he said, what it did is it stood in stark relief to me. And then he said one other thing. He said, and humble. And when he said this, he said, you know, I'm a neurologist, psychiatrist. I've written books. I've traveled the world. I have been proud. He has real reasons to be proud. And yet he was so humble. And again, it brought him to tears just remembering it. And we don't— it's hard for us to put all that into one being, right?

Right.

And yet that I— that's what I think is important to do to more accurately, because we'll never fully imagine God.

Yeah. Thank you for that. Excuse me. I think, as you were saying that, you know, people, I think the reason why we have trouble with the word God is because, as you mentioned, we put God in a box. And a lot of us were raised with a God who was less than all of that. And probably the last thing we envisioned, God, or maybe people who misrepresented— oh, absolutely—

what God's actually like.

Absolutely. That's what I mean. That's what I mean. People, people representing God in a certain way. I even to this day, I go back and forth with people who are representing the Bible, for example, a certain way. And so as the Bible says this, and it's like, does it really, you know, Well, and again, think about it this way.

So the Bible says a lot of things, and it honestly depends on the framework through which I'm reading the whole thing, right?

Yeah, exactly right.

So if the framework through which I'm reading the whole thing is what is right and what is wrong, and I'm doing right and you're doing wrong, and that's the framework, and that's what matters most, it's going to be a hammer.

Yes.

But that's actually not the framework Jesus told us to use. We already talked about it. If you love God with all your heart, and if you love people and yourself, you know, if you don't love yourself, you're not going to love people. So it's a both and. It's learning to recognize, you know, this is another cool thing of many of these stories is They say in God's presence, and I have 3 people in the book saying the same thing. And one was an agnostic who literally, I tease him, you beat the thief next to Jesus for last-minute crying out to God because he had never prayed, never thought about God. But literally, as he's dying of an opioid overdose, before his head hits the steering wheel, he says, God, forgive me. And he and these, these others, and the reason I point that out is because this is not what they would have expected, because God was good. Like, he didn't, he didn't require them to have done all the right things. All he required is their heart turning to him, because that's the point.

Love.

And he can't force love. So the thing Jesus said is love God, love people. That's the framework through which we've got to also read the Bible and understand what all that means. So it doesn't mean the command to not lie is wrong. It means it's not loving.

Right.

Right. And but if someone does lie, well, do you just beat them down and tell them how horrible they are and they're worthless people because they did that and treat them like that? Well, that's not loving.

So anyway, yeah, that's, that's a really good point. You, you mentioned the agnostic man. You also mentioned an Indian man who saw the City of God. So that comes back to, do we have to be Christian to, to experience God in heaven?

Yeah, you're asking the Christian pastor. You're leading me into the trap.

I don't mean to lead you into a trap.

No, I'm totally teasing. I'm teasing. But there is something. I think some of us have been burned by Christians who have not understood the the magnitude of the grace of God. And as a result, have led people to believe that God doesn't care about anybody but us. That's not true. And I'm showing that in the very first 3 chapters. It's called God of All Nations. But the other side of it is what these people experience. So for instance, Santosh Akarchi was this Indian manufacturing engineer. So again, very smart people who traveled the world doing engineering, but he was raised in Hinduism. His dad was a Sanskrit scholar. That was all he knew. The Hindu gods was all he knew. He dies. He hears code blue. His pancreas ruptured and he hears code blue. They couldn't revive his heart and they put him on artificial life support for 3 days. 3 days later, when he comes back, he tells what happened. He left his body, he sees his body there, this brilliant light comes, and he knows it's a divine light. He says, and I knew this light had ultimate authority. And I had to do whatever it wanted. He said, but I fell in love with this light. That was his first response. And then they go, they travel. And he said they— it was like through tunnels, right? And, and that's another one of the commonalities. But they come to this place where the light stops, parked over what he describes as this giant compound. Now, I've been to India many times, and, and I— at first I was like, what do you mean compound? It took me a while to figure out what he was saying. But in India, there are compounds, literally, like high-walled areas, gated. And he said it was, it was like that, but these beautiful walls, high walls, inside this beautiful, like, landscape, but mansions and buildings of otherworldly material. And, and it was square in shape. Thousands of miles long and he said when you're there, your eyesight is like telescopic. Well, that's another commonality as well but he said and there were 12 gates, I counted them.

Wow.

And outside the gates were angels and that's when I realized I'm looking at the Kingdom of Heaven and he said all I wanted was to enter there. He said I realized that's the goal of existence to be there.

Mm.

So he experiences, and if you've ever read Revelation 21, and you look at his words, it's like, that's what he's experiencing.

Yeah.

You know, and then he, he's like, where am I? And again, this is an experience more real than he said, more real than anything we've experienced here. And he says, where am I? And he looks and he's up on a, like, a high platform. He looks down to his left, and he describes an abyss. He describes hell. And he's like, I want to go there. I don't want to go there. He turns, and he sees who he describes as, as God now in the appearance of a giant man on a throne. That's what he describes.

Interesting. Okay, I know, I know.

I'm not making this up. Yeah, you know, this is just what he told me. And he looks into his eyes and he gets a life review like he sees all of it, the good and the bad. And he falls to his knees and he says, God, forgive me, forgive me, because he realizes all the wrongs he had done. And then the Lord speaks to him and he says, I was shocked. Because there was such tenderness, such compassion, such mercy in his voice. And he said, I'm going to send you back. And when you go back, I want you to love your family, especially your daughter. She needs your help right now. Hmm. So see, this is— this stretches everybody's categories, right? Is that he's the God who is with us, all of us, and he knows everything intimately about everyone we interact with, and he cares about all of us. That's the thing. If you miss that, you miss the big picture, right? But we can also reject Him, and that's what Santosh was also seeing. And so then he sees right next to this throne what he calls a very narrow door that was open to me, and he could go into the kingdom of heaven. And he asked the Lord, he said, when I come back, and he said because there was such mercy and compassion and love in His voice, I started to relax and I said, when I come back, how do I go through that narrow door? And the Lord said, and he was thinking about religion, like what religion do I choose? What do I go to? You know, and he was thinking which temple or synagogue or church do I go to? And the Lord said, what I want is relationship. Not one day a week, 365 days a year. How honest will you be with me? How real, how sincere, how honest will you be with me? And then he said, he said, the wages of sin is death. Walk with me and surrender yourself daily to me. And then he sends him back. 2 years later, his daughter is invited to sing in a choir at a church because she was a choral major. Santosh goes to hear her sing, and the pastor is speaking on the passage in John 10 where Jesus says, you know, or Matthew 7 where he says, you know, I am the gate. I am the gate into the kingdom of heaven. And then John 10 where he says, You know, I'm the gate and the sheep will come in and out. And Santosh goes and he starts reading the Bible and he's like, that's what I experienced.

Interesting. Wow.

Now, if that were one story, you go, eh, one story. But I'm showing just in the first 3 chapters and throughout, I've got stories from people all over the world. Bibi, who is a Muslim related to the Prophet Muhammad living in Tehran, who in her near-death experience experiences the same, the same almighty giant in a robe and a beard, white hair though, right? That Santosh did, who says to her, "I am he who is," in Farsi. Now, okay, she can't speak English. So she told me this through a translator.

Okay.

And I was like, You got to be kidding. I am he who is. Well, when Moses asked God, who am I to say sent me, you know, when he's to deliver the— this is in Exodus. God says, I am he. I am who is. I am the self-existent one.

Yeah. Yeah.

It's what Jesus said of himself. Before Abraham was born, I am. So she and she also, you know, comes to start following Jesus and then has to leave Tehran because they were going to kill her.

Yeah.

So I mean, it's not all free everywhere, you know. In fact, another Muslim imam from Rwanda that I interviewed that's in the book, and it's a fascinating story too, awesome story. His mother was a Tutsi. His father was a Hutu during the Rwandan genocide. And it, you know, it drove their family apart. He ends up a street kid at 8 years old doing drugs, then dealing drugs. Then he becomes an imam in the mosque. And anyway, long story short, he too, he dies of blood cancer. And he says who was there was a man like he saw in the movie The Passion of the Christ because he got free movie tickets and he went to see The Passion of the Christ and he says he enters and he's in this white robe with a beard but light coming out of him like the sun but I could look at him and he shows me and he sees holes in his hands and he says to him, I died for mankind. You are one of those I died for. Never deny it and tell everyone.

Wow.

And he's still in Rwanda, and he's now an Anglican priest, and he's had 6 attempts on his life.

Oh, wow. Wow.

What would convince someone to do that?

Yeah.

And I mean, you can, you can go watch my, my video interviews with him, and he's And so the point is, all over the globe, there's another Indian man who, Dr. Rajiv Parti, maybe you know.

Yes, he's been on my program. Yeah.

Oh, he has?

Yes. Yeah.

So I don't know if he told you his whole story, but he came back confused too, because it's like, why did these Christian angels bring me to this God of light, who then later when I asked, who are you, Lord, says, I'm Jesus, your Savior.

Yeah.

This is happening all over the globe.

Yeah. And I'm really glad that you're tying this back to the Bible and stuff. Because, and when I asked you the question, you know, I didn't mean to lead you into a trap, but I do for a reason. I moderate a board on Facebook, and just last couple of days, you know, people are telling me, NDEs are not biblical, and these, you know, they're, they're deceptions. And then one guy, I was telling, you know, about this, and he said, well, I said something about a Catholic person, because Catholics are all deceived too.

So these are, these are some of the people that I've got a priest, I've got multiple Catholics who met the same God, and this guy became a priest because of his encounter.

Right. Right.

So, and so Brian, that's the thing that just is so difficult, you know. And that's what I'm trying to show. I'm trying to show, yeah, there's a lot of misinformation out there about God.. And a lot of us, all of us, look, all of us misinterpret. You know, I'm not completely right. I'm not even claiming to be. You know, but if you, but if you look at all the evidence, and that's what I'm trying to put, I'm trying to put the biblical evidence because I've studied it for 3 decades, right? I'm also trying to put, I really think God is showing us in this global age of communication that he's the God of all nations, and he always has been. And you know what a lot of Christians don't understand? Jesus said this a lot. And you know, you even like in Acts chapter 10, you know, God basically reveals to Peter, he's the God of all nations, and he has Peter go to this Roman centurion. Well, they were idol worshippers. They were the pagans, right? They were the outcasts to the Jews. And Peter's like, I would never do that. Why would he never do that? Well, because his culture told him God loves us, not them.

Right, right.

And he says he realizes what God's telling him is, and he says this, it says, I now realize that God does not show favoritism. He accepts everyone from all nations, you know, basically he said who fear him or seek him and do what is right. And so yeah, in Imagine the God of Heaven, one of my favorite stories, a good friend of mine now, when I was on a New York national news show, she emails me afterwards. This is after Imagine Heaven.. And she's a nurse. She was a nurse in LA. Name's Heidi. And she said, hey, I saw you on that TV show. I don't know who you are. I've never read your book, but that happened to me. I was raised in an atheist agnostic Jewish family, but when my horse landed on me and crushed me, I was up in the air with Jesus. I've never told anyone that. Thanks. Yeah, that's all she said.

Wow.

And so I was like, Heidi, we got to talk. And we've become good, good friends since then. But yeah, what's fascinating, and her story is in Imagine the God of Heaven as well. But what's fascinating is her dad had a mantra. And, you know, Brian, a lot of a lot of our animosity toward God and toward people comes from our own hurt, unhealed. And you know that, right? I mean, even, even in grief work, there's a lot of, you know, just the pain of not working through griefs and stuff like that. And then, but her dad, who was who was actually pretty abusive, had a mantra. There is no God. Your life is worthless. Jesus Christ is the biggest hoax ever perpetrated on mankind.

Oh, wow.

And he told his 3 daughters that every night their whole growing up years while being abusive. Wow. Well, she always believed in God and she prayed to him every night and she felt that she felt like she would pray to him and she'd talk to him about all these things happening. And she felt a comfort. In fact, she felt like he was there kind of rocking her to bed. That's what she felt. At 16, after going through her bat mitzvah and being raped by her rabbi, or being sexually molested by a rabbi, I mean, it's a pretty horrific story. But at 16, she's in a horse riding accident and her horse lands on her and crushes her. And she instantly left her body. She said she was up 30 feet above the accident watching her sisters freak out. But she felt great. And she said, my only concern was for my sisters. I knew I was dead. But I was great. But I just hated that they had to see me die like this. And then she sees a light over her shoulder, moves up, and there with her, 30 feet in the air, is Jesus. And he looks like you would think Jesus would look, except he's brilliant. But she recognized him. And she said, I said, oh, hey. And she said, it was like, an instant reconnection. She said, I knew this man. I knew him. And she later said, I can't explain how God can be a light and God can be love and God can be a man. But that's what I experienced. And Jesus gave her a life review. Remember, she's 16, right? So he gives her a life review.. And in the life review, first of all, they laughed, she said, their butts off. Because like one thing that happened was when she was an infant in a crib and her mom, you know, put another infant in there and the infant picked up her little plastic rattle and whacked her on the nose. And Heidi just like gets indignant and starts to cry and all that.. And they just both burst out laughing because they knew she wasn't really hurt. She was just mad, right? But they could tell all this. And she said, Jesus just loved to laugh. And she said he was so fun. But he also showed her in her life review that when she was a young girl, and she was praying to God every night, he was there. She saw him there sitting by her bed, comforting her in her life review.

Wow.

And I think that's what this shows is that, you know, Jesus said, I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life. And this God of light also appeared to Moses, you know, 3,500 years ago, as this the burning bush that wouldn't burn the bush. Yeah, this brilliant light that didn't burn, didn't burn the bush. And on and on, you know, you can trace it through. And what I think this shows us is God has always been about drawing people back to himself. That's what he's doing. He, he's the, the whole purpose of Jesus coming and dying on the cross was to make a way that we don't have to pay for all our wrongs, that God in his justice would be willing and able to both be just and to forgive anybody who wants him. That's it.

Yeah.

Anybody who wants him.

Yeah.

If you want him and you want his love, nothing can keep you away from him because nothing can keep him away from you.

Yeah.

But here's the other thing, is that he's with us already. He's with everyone already.

Yeah.

Now in different ways, even the person who rejects him. And there are people in the book who he said that to them. It's like in their life review, you know, he This one guy who was a medical executive and a CEO, and in Jesus' presence, he's getting this life review, and Jesus is showing him all these times he suffered as a kid. He suffered a lot. He was in the hospital, bad asthma. He was overweight. He was bullied. He's showing me all that, and he says, why are you showing me these things? And then he kind of had an aha, and he said, were you there with me? Even through all that, even before I knew you? And Jesus looks at me and said, yes, I was there waiting for you to turn to me. And then a really cool thing is at a later point, he's just experiencing a similar kind of like ecstatic joy he's by, you know, he's by this river in heaven, this gorgeous place. And he's by this river, and he drinks of this water. And he said, it was just like, like he again said, ecstasy. They say that. And then he turns to Jesus, and Jesus is holding a flask, like a bottle. And he says, what is that? And Jesus said, I've been collecting your tears, beloved. And then he pours them into the river. And Randy instantly knows, he's returning all my sorrows for joy.

Wow. Yeah. And then I want to ask you this, because you talked about, you mentioned something about even those who reject him, I think it was, it was a phrase you used. If you're familiar with the work of Thomas Talbot, He wrote a book called The Inescapable Love of God.

No.

Okay, so he, he argues that if we knew who God was, and if we were in our right minds, having those two conditions, you could not reject God. And the God I hear you describing, the way the joy and the love and the laughter, how could anybody possibly reject that?

It's even better than that.

Yeah.

So I mean, Heidi, Heidi. So Heidi was a speed freak, right? She rode horses bareback and just loved speed.

Hmm.

So they're up 30 feet in the air after getting a life review. Jesus grabs her hand. I didn't even, I didn't even tell— I went ahead and put it in the book. But in the end, because I figure If it's too soon, people won't— they'll check out because they won't believe it. Because that was my first reaction, like, no way. He takes her hand and they take off. And she said at first we— it was like we were going through Earth's atmosphere and then out into like the universe, but they're going faster and faster. And she said we were, we were flying like Superman and Lois Lane. But being pushed by a wave of light. She said it was like we were surfing this wave of light. And I could feel that I was barefoot because I could feel it on my feet. And I reached in and I touched my hand to it. And I look over at Jesus and He's just grinning ear to ear. And He says, isn't this the coolest ever?

Mm-hmm.

Well, there are a lot of Christians who like right now are checking out like, no, that's, you know, God can't be like that.

Right? Right.

But he is like that. You know, Jesus, Jesus's last night on earth said, you know, I'm telling you these things, so that my joy may be in you and your joy may be complete.

Right.

And see what, what I go into in the book that I think many Christians miss is that everything we love, Every wonderful experience, every pleasure, every adventure, all the things we love about life, we only do because he made us with the ability to love them.

Yeah, exactly.

And he actually enjoys us enjoying them, right? I love enjoying things with my granddaughters, you know, right? If I give them a gift, I enjoy playing it with them and seeing them enjoying it.

Right? Yeah.

Well, I'm not better than God.

Yeah. And that kind of, that kind of comes back to the title of the book that was mentioned. He calls it The Inescapable Love of God. It's like, it's so attractive that no one in their right mind could turn away. I think what people reject is the limited view of God that we have, that the God the heaven that sounds boring, right? I don't want to go to a place where I'm going to be sitting on a cloud playing a harp all day, singing, singing songs for 10,000 years.

And that's not it. And, you know, you read the stories of these people and the eyewitnesses of these people all over the world, and you realize, okay, they're either whacked, and there are millions of whacked people. But still, like I said, you know, I put all that evidence, like, it doesn't make sense, right? Unless there's something real here. But what they say is it's more real. Now, what does that mean? I've, as an engineer, I've thought a lot about that, and, and I think this is what they mean. So imagine if this, you know, we're living in 3 dimensions of space and 1 dimension of time. We can't even imagine a 4th dimension of space and a 2nd dimension of time. 5 dimensions, right? We can't fathom it.

No, you can't.

But we can understand it by analogy. So imagine this experience is being lived on a flat black and white painting on my wall. And death means separation. So your soul leaves this 3-dimensional realm. So your soul is peeled off that flat black and white 2-dimensional realm where you only knew up and down and side to side. You didn't even know in and out. That's not a dimension you're familiar with at all. Now you come out and your two-dimensional self is now experiencing three dimensions and color in this room that was all around you, and you're contained within this bigger reality that's more real. Then imagine being pressed back into that flat two-dimensional world and trying to describe three dimensions of color in black and white two-dimensional terms.

Right, right.

That's why the more of these people I've interviewed, I've realized they have to use hyperbole. That's why some of the people in the Bible who have also experienced the same thing, there are a lot of them talking about what they saw or experienced in heaven. And it's always, it was like this, you know, so the city was like gold, but transparent like glass.

Right.

Well, what does that mean? You know, well, when you hear a manufacturing engineer say, well, it was otherworldly materials, and then you hear both a spine surgeon and a commercial airline pilot who'd never read the Bible before talking about how it appears like glass or crystal, but it's actually light and love. Like, this place is made of light and love. And they say, I know that doesn't make any sense, but that's what it was. And I'm— and I asked him, like, but was it real? Was it like physical and solid? Oh yeah, more than this, right? Like hugs are like real? Oh yeah, much deeper than this. I mean, communication and thought and memory is all this? Oh yeah, but you understand completely. It's thought to thought. Nothing's misunderstood.

Yeah, I think, well, I know what I saw from one of the notes you sent me, and I love what this says is, I gotta find it. You said basically that the NDE kind of puts color onto what's kind of black and white, I think, in the Bible. And having this conversation with you, I can tell, and when you talk to people that have had NDEs as much as you have, it becomes infectious. And I can see it, I can feel it coming through you. And so you're, you're making us—

well, it's exciting.

Yeah, it's exciting.

That's, and that's the thing. Like, I just, I just wish everyone could know all the things you long for. They are available. And the reason we long, you know, it's another, another C.S. Lewis quote. You know, if you have a thirst for something that nothing on, on earth can quench, it probably means we were made for something else.

Yeah, I love that quote by C.S.

Lewis, I think, which I just butchered, by the way.

Yeah, but he indicates like, yeah, we don't have a longing for something that doesn't exist. So he talks about these things that we long for, that there's got to be a reason.

There's water. Yeah, we hunger and there's food, but we want a love that never completely satisfies. We want a peace that comes and goes. We want to enjoy, we get little glimpses, and then it's back to mundane, right? And we picture that that's how heaven or God's going to be, but that's not it. It's that it's like these longings, these desires are good, but there's something missing. And that's— it's kind of like that homing device in birds that— how do they fly thousands of miles and hit their target every year?

Right.

Well, it's like something in them knows what home actually is. And it just, it just points them there.

Yeah, you said that reminded me of a woman I interviewed. She had a near-death experience when her husband murdered her. But she's in, she's in heaven. And she's with her sister, and they're laughing. And she's like, it's just too much joy. She said, it was just too much. It felt like, I felt like I was going to explode. I didn't know if I could contain all of it.

And I've heard people that I've interviewed in the book say that. He said, I felt like I was gonna just blow up. One guy I love, he's an Australian lawyer, and he said, I was in God's presence and it was like he was filling me up with love and joy so much I felt like I was gonna burst and I thought, I don't know if I can take anymore. And he said he heard a chuckle from God and then it starts to go down And he said, no, no, don't stop. And then, and then, and then more. But yeah, again and again.

Yeah, absolutely. Well, I, I really appreciate you having this conversation again with me today. And remind people the name of the book and where they can get it and where they can find out more about you.

It's Imagine the God of Heaven. And you can just go you can go to imaginethegodofheaven.net or johnburkonline.com. Right now, we'll take you to the same place. You can find out more about it.

John, again, thanks so much for being here. Thanks for sharing your knowledge and your wisdom and your joy with my audience.

Well, it's not my joy and everyone can have it. Yeah.

Thanks a lot. Have a great rest of your day.

Okay, see you, Brian D Smith.

Hi there, I'm really excited to tell you about my latest ebook. It's 4 lessons that you can learn from the near-death experience without going through all the trouble of dying to learn them. I've been studying NDEs for several years now. I am completely convinced that not only are they 100% real, but that there's some very universal wisdom that we can get from the near-death experience. And I've distilled that down in this book into 4 short lessons. And I've also given you all the reasons why I believe that NDEs are absolutely real. So go to www.grieftogrowth.com/NDElessons to pick it up for free. Www.grief2growth.com/NDElessons. I hope you enjoy it.