For well over 30 years now, John Burke has dedicated his life to studying the unusual phenomenon we all know as near-death experiences, or NDEs, which has led him to making a startling discovery concerning one particular aspect they all have in common: Every single one of them, when they occur, regardless of the individual’s religious upbringing or background, encounters the God of the Bible.
Did anyone else just a shiver up the spine after reading that? Could it be that the Bible is…gasp…true? I know that statement just made a whole lot of people uncomfortable. After all, the God of the Bible, Yahweh, holds people accountable for their actions. His Word makes it clear He is the Creator of the whole universe, that He is eternal, all-powerful, all-knowing, which means He is the one who gets to make the rules. And the Bible contains those rules.
As it turns out, we cannot keep those rules perfectly as is demanded of us by God. Which means we’re guilty sinners who deserve His wrath. Thankfully, He sent God the Son to take on human flesh, live a perfect, sinless life, and die on the cross to pay the penalty for sin, for all who would put their faith in Him.
Okay, enough preaching. Back to Burke.
“I interviewed 70 people on every continent, and found that they all encountered the same God; it didn’t matter their culture, ethnicity or religious background. God is the God of all nations,” Burke said in an interview with The Christian Post.
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Burke, who with his wife, Kathy, founded Gateway Church, a multisite church based in Austin, Texas, recounts some of these stories in his book, Imagine the God of Heaven: Near-Death Experiences, God’s Revelation and the Love You’ve Always Wanted, from that of a Hindu engineer who encounters a “brilliant god of lightning” to a nurse in Brownsville who is told by Jesus Himself to spread the message of love and redemption.
These stories, Burke said, are part of his broader argument that NDEs are God’s “new global apologetic,” intended to affirm His existence, the reality of the afterlife and His desire for a relationship with every person.
“They all say, ‘I never wanted to leave His presence and of all the beauty I experienced, all of these great reunions with people I love who’ve gone on before me, nothing could compare to just being in this presence,” Burke explained in the interview.
He clarified that while every individual encounters the God of the Bible during an NDE, he is not suggesting they will end up in Heaven. Burke said he doesn’t believe these people are experiencing an “entrance into eternity” or a “tunnel of death,” rather, they’re encountering “something in between.”
“This can confuse some Christians,” he added. “But I like to remind them that the Apostle Paul was not a believer in Jesus, he was arresting Christians and having them jailed and killed when the same God of brilliant light appeared to him on the Damascus Road in Acts 9. When Paul asks, ‘Who are you, Lord?’ He says, ‘I’m Jesus.’ But Jesus didn’t tell him what to do and He didn’t explain the message of the Gospel to him.
“I believe God is saying to the world, ‘I’m real. Heaven is real. Hell is real. And I love every person from every nation, I want you to be my child through what I did through Jesus, so you can turn your heart back to me and be made right with me,'” he continued.
Burke, a former engineer who was agnostic, began his journey to discover the truth when he was sitting in a hospital room next to his dying father. It was in the middle of processing the loss that was soon to occur, that he began to look for evidence of an afterlife and of God’s existence.
“Over the last 35 years, I’ve just had this insatiable curiosity to figure out, OK, what are these near-death experiences, and how do they sit with what the Bible’s been saying all along?” he remarked.
During the interview, Burke told the folks at the Christian Post that his newest book is the culmination of thirty years of his life’s work, which includes in-depth research, along with sections that address a lot of common misconceptions people have about the authenticity of these kinds of experiences, especially in light of the discrediting of some accounts.
He then revealed that he endured a rather deep and thorough analysis of experiences that were reported by folks from a wide variety of backgrounds, which included some medical professionals such as spine surgeons and anesthesiologists, who he said “have a lot to lose by making up wild crazy stories about going in and seeing Jesus.”
“What I’m trying to show is not the one-offs but the commonalities,” he said.
These near-death experiences, Burke contends, offer not just insights into the afterlife but also profound implications for the current life of a believer.
“As evil increases, God tends to increase His testimony on Earth, and I think He’s doing the same thing today,” Burke said. “What I’m trying to do is show how that aligns with the Scriptures to convince the skeptics but also to help Christians see what God is really like.”
“We all put God in a box to some degree because we’re finite,” he continued during the interview. “And yet the truth is, God is way more mysterious and glorious, beautiful, grand and sovereign, omnipotent, omniscient than we can imagine. But what does that mean? And how does it affect us today? God is also enjoyable, personable, relatable and fun. Yet, Christians don’t often think that. I’m trying to show, ‘This is in the Scriptures, but it’s also what these people experience.’”
Smartly, Burke issued a warning about the dangers of building your theological beliefs solely on NDEs, pointing out the risk of “questionable” accounts as they build a following among individuals in our culture. He made a stark difference between what people report in their own personal interpretation of the event, influenced by their cultural and religious backgrounds.
For instance, Burke recounted the story of Nia, a teenager from Africa, who, following a near-death experience, described encountering a being of light she identified as the goddess Durga, despite the experience closely mirroring the Christian understanding of God.
“I don’t think we shouldn’t get our theology of the afterlife or of God from near-death experiences alone,” he elaborated. “I honestly think that’s very dangerous. The more popular NDEs get, the more you are going to see questionable ones pop up. Even though this person may have had a valid experience and what they’re reporting may be accurate, they come back and they interpret what they saw in their own worldview.”
Burke concluded the interview by stating that he hopes the book will be a solid contribution to an ongoing conversation that invites those who read it, regardless of their background, to be open-minded and explore the very real possibility of life beyond the physical realm we experience on a daily basis.
“The same God hasn’t just shown up in our age of modern medical resuscitation and near-death experiences; this is the same that God has been revealing Himself through the Jewish prophets and through Jesus and put incredible evidence in history,” Burke stated. “The Scriptures need to be the interpretive key to near-death experiences, not the other way around.”