A Glimpse of Heaven?

“THAT was the most beautiful instant in the whole world when I came out of that body! . . . All I saw was extremely pleasant! I can’t imagine anything in the world or out of the world that could anywhere compare. Even the most beautiful moments of life would not compare to what I was experiencing.”​—A 54-year-old heart-operation patient.

“What I recall while I was in the operating room was it seems like I was just floating up near the ceiling. . . . It was sort of a funny feeling because I was up there and this body was below. . . . I could see them operating on my back. . . . Then I remember Dr. D saying, ‘There’s the disk. There it is.’ At that point, I came down closer to see what was going to happen.”​—A 42-year-old Missouri woman describing her own operation as she “saw” it.

“During this vision that I had, I couldn’t see myself but I was standing on something high because down below me there was just the most beautiful, greenest pasture. . . . It was just like a bright sunshiny day. . . . The whole outline of it looked like a putting green on a well-kept golf course.”​—“Seen” by a 55-year-old textile-mill laborer during cardiac arrest.

What do these three experiences have in common? They are what are now termed near-death experiences (NDE) of people who came close to dying. Hundreds of these cases have been documented by doctors and scientists. Many of these near-death patients had what have been called out-of-body experiences. They speak of seeing a bright light or of being in a region of great scenic beauty, and in some cases of seeing Jesus or God.

In his book Recollections of Death, Dr. Michael Sabom states: “Many of these people, victims of cardiac arrest and other life-threatening crises, recalled a series of extraordinary events that ‘took place’ while they were unconscious and near death. Some considered this experience to be a privileged glimpse of another realm of existence.”

Maybe you are wondering if these experiences are proof of life after death, as some of these patients have assumed. Certainly these near-death experiences raise questions that demand an answer. For example, Did these people really have a “glimpse of another realm of existence” that follows death? Were they able to describe scenes in their operations because they were existing as an invisible soul or spirit? Do you have an imperishable soul that will survive your death? Is there another conscious existence after death? The following series of articles will examine the evidence related to these questions.