{"id":8552,"date":"2023-12-11T10:31:37","date_gmt":"2023-12-11T15:31:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/christnewstoday\/?p=8552"},"modified":"2023-12-11T10:31:37","modified_gmt":"2023-12-11T15:31:37","slug":"pastor-shares-why-he-thinks-claims-of-visiting-heaven-help-prove-the-bible","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/christnewstoday\/2023\/12\/pastor-shares-why-he-thinks-claims-of-visiting-heaven-help-prove-the-bible.html","title":{"rendered":"Pastor Shares Why He Thinks Claims of Visiting Heaven Help Prove the Bible"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure id=\"attachment_8561\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-8561\" style=\"width: 768px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-8561\" src=\"https:\/\/wp-media.beliefnet.com\/sites\/409\/2023\/12\/near-death-experience-credit-shutterstock-scaled.jpg\" alt=\"near-death experience\" width=\"768\" height=\"576\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-8561\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Shutterstock.com<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>John Burke, an author and pastor who\u2019s studied and examined over 1,000 accounts of near-death experiences, believes these reports provide faith-building evidence of God and the Bible. Burke, author of <em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Imagine-God-Heaven-Near-Death-Experiences\/dp\/1496479904\/ref=asc_df_1496479904\/?tag=hyprod-20&amp;linkCode=df0&amp;hvadid=680464580282&amp;hvpos=&amp;hvnetw=g&amp;hvrand=3382121497446278039&amp;hvpone=&amp;hvptwo=&amp;hvqmt=&amp;hvdev=c&amp;hvdvcmdl=&amp;hvlocint=&amp;hvlocphy=9004198&amp;hvtargid=pla-2230430713835&amp;psc=1&amp;mcid=e1ac9629669d3068b2e2fac03178bba0\">Imagine the God of Heaven: Near-Death Experiences, God\u2019s Revelation, and the Love You\u2019ve Always Wanted<\/a>, <\/em>told CBN Digital why he believes these experiences corroborate the Bible and also detailed what a near-death experience entails.<\/p>\n<p>Burke said, \u201cIt\u2019s when someone clinically dies \u2026 their heart stops, they have no brain waves. And yet either modern medicine or miracle brings them back minutes later, sometimes, it\u2019s hours. And when they come back, they talk about experiencing the life to come, and they talk about how it\u2019s more real than anything they\u2019ve ever experienced in this world.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Burke said his latest book looks at numerous interviews with people from all over the world who\u2019ve had these clinical near-death experiences. He said, \u201cThey are seeing and experiencing the God of Scripture. And we\u2019re looking not only at His love story throughout history in the Bible but also his heart and characteristics, the mystery, the majesty of God.\u201d However, Burke knows not everyone believes these heaven visitation stories and explains precisely why he thinks there\u2019s so much skepticism.<\/p>\n<p><iframe title=\"YouTube video player\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/O8b_dIn_cHg?si=--D9UIJzZCywPcmz\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>He said one factor is a failure to understand \u201cthese are testimonies\u201d that shed light on God\u2019s nature. Another is the complexities that come from trying to describe other-worldly experiences using the confines of human language. Burke said, \u201cThe way I like to describe it is: imagine if all of our existence is being lived on a flat black and white painting on the wall of your home. Death means separation.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He continued, \u201cYour soul separates from your body. So, imagine at death, you peel off that two-dimensional black-and-white painting, you come out here into a three-dimensional world of color and then imagine getting pressed back in, and you have to describe three dimensions of color in two-dimensional black and white terms.\u201d He said those who have near-death experiences are seeing \u201cGod\u2019s reality\u201d in an \u201cextra-dimensional\u201d way. What\u2019s perhaps most remarkable, Burke added, is the similarities in these experiences \u2014 happenings he believes back the biblical narrative and provide proof to non-believers.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhen I first heard about this, I was an agnostic,\u201d Burke said. \u201cSo, hearing these experiences as an engineer got me thinking, \u2018Maybe this is evidence,\u2019 and then it got me into the scriptures, and then I started to see the evidence, and I came to faith.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The preacher believes non-Christians can see God through these experiences, but he argued Christians, too, can take away valuable biblical lessons \u2014 including the Lord\u2019s love for humanity \u2014 coming to life.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>John Burke, an author and pastor who\u2019s studied and examined over 1,000 accounts of near-death experiences, believes these reports provide faith-building evidence of God and the Bible. Burke, author of Imagine the God of Heaven: Near-Death Experiences, God\u2019s Revelation, and the Love You\u2019ve Always Wanted, told CBN Digital why he believes these experiences corroborate the&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":657,"featured_media":8561,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fbia_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[8,140,39,52],"tags":[1799,133],"class_list":["post-8552","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bible","category-church","category-miracles","category-prayer","tag-john-burke","tag-near-death-experience"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Pastor Shares Why He Thinks Claims of Visiting Heaven Help Prove the Bible<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"John Burke, an author and pastor who\u2019s studied over 1,000 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