If God created us for the purpose of communion with Him, then to be separated from Him by our sins is a monumental issue. Looking at it this way, it is life's only issue, all others being mere corollaries. Even if fellowship with God were limited to this earthly life, such a rift in divine-human rapport would be important enough. It would be even more so if our relationship with God continued after death.
This leads us straight to the question of the day—is there life beyond the grave? Everyone, even the most skeptical, has to admit that historical opinion favors an afterlife. Indeed, denying life after death places one solidly in the ranks of the smallest of minorities. But the majority is not always right, so we must today honestly and objectively address the question of eternity. Is there really existence beyond death, or is this just wishful thinking? Do we have any evidence that life continues beyond the grave, or must we accept or reject this on blind faith?
To no one's surprise, belief in an afterlife tends to mirror belief in God. The atheist, convinced that reality consists only of the natural world, smirks at any suggestion of eternal existence. The true agnostic grudgingly admits the possibility of an afterlife, if perchance the existence of God be true. The theist, or believer, embraces a supernatural realm and speaks of life after death as likely or certain. Despite this polarity, I think everyone would agree that, if it were to exist, life after death would be no small matter.
So why do I personally believe in an afterlife? Do I have any reasons beyond my subjective feelings; or is it just my intuition versus yours, a battle of presuppositions and opinions? Admittedly, there is much about my belief in an afterlife that is purely subjective. But there is more! I cannot offer definitive proof, but I do not come into this argument empty-handed. In fact, I will submit five pieces of evidence that clearly point in the direction of eternal life. Taken together, they make a formidable case in favor of life after death, one not easily rebutted by the skeptic and unbeliever.
My first reason for believing in life after death is the testimony of those who have met death itself and lived to tell about it. These near-death experiences, or NDEs, first received popular acclaim in 1975 when Raymond Moody summarized 150 firsthand accounts in his book Life After Life. Two decades later Michael Sabam, a Florida cardiologist, took a more scientific and less subjective look at near-death testimonies. He was skeptical when he began his research. "I suppose," he later recalled, "if someone had asked me what I thought of death, I would have said that with death you are dead and that is the end of it." But during his investigation he changed his mind, coming to believe these stories to be actual glimpses into the life hereafter.
Dr. Sabam's work is just one of several reports on near-death experiences that have been published since Moody's bestseller. Some authors have penned their own personal testimonies of an NDE. Others have sought to analyze and compare the experiences of others. To be honest, some of the testimonials are far too subjective, a bit too fanciful, and much too commercial to convince me of their legitimacy. On the other hand, many contain features that are hard to dismiss as hearsay. They are inexplicable, unless the explanation is that they are real and true. Consider, for example, the following:
1. An Air Force veteran hospitalized after a heart attack suffered a cardiac arrest in the ICU and was successfully resuscitated on the third defibrillation attempt. He later recalled that during his resuscitation he had floated out of his body and observed the whole ordeal from a vantage point at the foot of his bed. He described in detail how the defibrillator was charged and used by the medical team, even noticing the movement of two voltage needles as it was charging. Although he had no prior medical knowledge, his description during an interview twenty years later—when defibrillators no longer had voltage needles—fit to a tee those used in 1973, the year of his heart attack and arrest.
2. Another man, after a successful resuscitation, reported that he left his body and traveled out of the room, observing his wife, his eldest son, and his daughter entering the hospital. Security footage confirmed that the three had indeed entered at that very moment, unaware that the loved one they had come to visit had just suffered a cardiac arrest.
3. A little girl named Katie was resuscitated at a swimming pool. She later claimed to have visited her home during the resuscitation and to have observed her parents and two siblings. She accurately described the actions of all four at the very moment of her arrest—her father in front of the television, her mother cooking in the kitchen, her brother playing with a G.I. Joe and a jeep, and her sister busy with her Barbie doll. She even related to them what clothes they were wearing and what food her mother was cooking.
4. An eleven year old boy was successfully revived then described in detail the actions of the medical personnel from a vantage point above the events. When compared with the actual medical record, the child's testimony read like an eyewitness report.
5. After being defibrillated, a man described his resuscitation in detail. He related floating to the ceiling and watching his body jump about a foot off the bed as he was jolted by the current. He even described the tops of the heads of the doctors and nurses in the operating room, details he could not have ascertained while prone on the table, even if he had been awake and alert.
In addition to seeing earthly details, many NDE patients describe entering another world, most often a realm of light, where they are greeted by a Being of unconditional love. After a brief but exhaustive review of their lives, they are told to return, reluctantly obliging. In almost every case, these individuals are transformed by the NDE. They are more compassionate than before; they no longer fear death.
In each case above and numerous others described elsewhere, interviewers found no hint of deception, bias, or exaggeration. Almost every investigator came to the conclusion that these NDEs were actual events. Most became convinced that life after death is real. Among them was Raymond Moody, the pioneer in the field:
Everyone is going to have to look at this and make up his own mind in his own way. All I can do is speak for myself and my many colleagues in medicine who have looked into this, and we're all convinced that the patients do get a glimpse of the beyond.
So what, you may ask, is my interpretation of the data? In my twenty-seven years as a physician, I have witnessed and participated in hundreds of resuscitation attempts. I have seen patients over and over again in ventricular fibrillation. I know that such patients have no heartbeat and no level of consciousness whatsoever. I know it is impossible for a human body during a cardiopulmonary arrest to be cognizant of anything. For these reasons, the only way I can explain NDEs is to acknowledge that something outside the body is doing the observing. How else could an unconscious patient give details of his defibrillation, including the charging of the machine? How else could these patients relate events coinciding with their demise—events ranging in distance from the resuscitation room to places miles away—unless there was a separation of body and soul? Could there be a natural explanation? Possibly, but thus far nothing definitive has been offered in rebuttal. There is not one theory that can credibly account for the phenomenon. The explanations proposed by skeptics are not persuasive and often outlandish. I have concluded, therefore, that Moody is right. I believe what we are hearing from these near-death patients is evidence in favor of our continued existence.
Patrick Glynn, a Harvard-educated scientist and a former atheist, gives a whole chapter to near-death experiences in his wonderful book God: The Evidence. He ends that chapter with these words:
I suppose it is possible that some alternative explanation could be found for people to perceive things out of body that they could not have physically seen—how I don't know. I suppose it could be merely accidental that people who claim to have died and return come back with elaborate narratives and messages about ethics and life that are by and large more coherent than what one often hears in church on Sunday—even while being perfectly in line with those values. All this, one could argue, is merely the result of some accident of evolution that structured the brain to respond in a certain way to the circumstance of death. Could it be accidental? I suppose. But it would be a very strange accident indeed.
In my next post, I will relate those four additional pieces of evidence that compel me to believe in life after death.
-If God Is "I AM", then Who Am I? (Days 23-24)
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