Posted on 06/10/2006 9:45:53 PM PDT by churchillbuff
Despite lifelong beliefs that have been ingrained in my faith since childhood, I have to admit that like almost everyone else I have from time to time wondered if my existence will simply come to an end on the day I draw my last breath.
There is, after all, no way to prove one way or the other that human life continues in another realm after the body ceases to function. Nobody has come back to testify about it, with one notable exception of course, and those who reject his divinity also tend to doubt what he had to say about life after death. And the late Madalyn Murray O’Hair, the infamous atheist, hasn’t weighed in on the subject lately either.
Some would insist such doubts are implanted by the devil himself. Others counter there is no scientific basis for belief in a hereafter in the first place.
But just about every time I entertain such doubts, something comes along to reinforce my long-held belief in the hereafter. It’s often the experience of a dying saint getting their first glimpse, as an old gospel song puts it, of what’s over on the other side.
I’m told the Rev. Dr. Hollis Pistole appeared to have one such experience at his passing a little over a month ago. According to the story, Dr. Pistole, after a long battle with debilitating illness, raised up and put his arms out just before he drew his last breath. Apparently he received that glimpse of what awaited him.
My wife’s father had a similar experience, opening his eyes and reaching heavenward just before his passing.
I also recently went over my mom’s notes made at the time of my dad’s death more than half a century ago. “Under me? Under me? Thank you, Jesus,” he said.
A whole category of what have been termed near-death experiences have been catalogued by those looking for insight into what happens at the end of life. A common phenomenon is a light-at-the-end-of-a-tunnel vision. Many claim to have seen friends or relatives but were unable to reunite with them when they were suddenly jerked back into life.
My Uncle Melvin had such an experience, claiming to have seen his brother and another loved one at the time he was suffering a severe heart attack from which he recovered.
It is impossible to figure out the working of the subconscious, thus rendering any attempt at concrete conclusions problematic. Are any or all of these phenomena merely the gyrations of an active brain or might they be an indication of a link between this world and one to come?
Belief in life after death has been part of human experience as long as mankind has pondered its existence. It has been reinforced by the most sacred writings of most of the world’s major religions, including Christianity, which bases its entire concept on the idea of God personally demonstrating life after physical death through the manifestation we call Jesus.
In this life, of course, our existence is tied to our physical body. But to define human life according to our physical limitations is an obvious understatement of our role in the universe. Human interaction is limited by our physical senses. But the true self that has developed over the course of our lifetimes would seem to go far beyond the senses.
And certainly there can be no doubt that the rationality of human beings and their capability to build on their life experiences place them in a category entirely separate from other living creatures.
Is there life after death? The question defies physical proof, to be sure. But there would seem to be glimpses enough into the future to show that our existence has only just begun.
And anyway, by preparing for eternity, I think I’m building a pretty good life here as well.
Jim Bailey’s column appears on Sunday. He can be reached by e-mail at jameshenrybailey@earthlink.net.
Amen ... from Johnson City
Well, guess I better throw this factoid in:
Up in that forest, in the woods, when I first met God face to face -- it was after I had lost the only solid rock person in the world I knew loved me unconditionally and would protect me against anything, be there for my protection, my grandmother McCoy, born at the foot of the Unakas (what is now the Cherokee National Forest), in Greene County, TN.
I was heartbroken, and in a time of my life where I felt so alone, so scared.
I ran up into the woods and cried a very long time, then asked Him why he would take somebody so important and needed, if He was really a God who cared and loved us humans (I was young).
I'll never be able to find words to describe what happened next, when that conversion came there in those woods, where I was all alone. And I make a living producing words, so that will give you some idea what a powerful and moving experience that was for me.
Granny is buried in Greene County, in a cemetary my/her ancestors from the Revolutionary War down are buried in one beautiful place in the mountains. She is buried where Davy Crocket fished/hunted/lived, at the same time my ancestors were doing the same. My family homestead is now the home of the Church and cemetary, a gift from my ancestors.
A lovely story . . . . God is so full of love, and He promises not to give us more than we can bear. Thank you and God bless you.
Sharon
"I'll never be able to find words to describe what happened next, when that conversion came there in those woods, where I was all alone. And I make a living producing words, so that will give you some idea what a powerful and moving experience that was for me."
I had a similar spiritual experience when I was still but a child. It was at a time when I was in the depths of despair, that God spoke to me. So I know exactly what you are talking about. The experience marked a profound turning point in my life. It was when my belief in God, turn into an experience of God. I moved from the realm of belief, to the realm of knowledge.
The world says, seeing is believing.
The truth says, believing is seeing.
My recollection of the article is that the author was saying that some old-earth Christians who have become convinced that evolution theory is factual argue that death entered the world prior to Adam's fall because prehistoric animals ate prehistoric plants for uncountable eons before Adam, and also because Adam and Eve themselves ate plants before the fall. I don't think that the author believes that himself, in fact his article argues strongly against that idea. I certainly don't either.
Amen, m'Lady ... home is gonna be so very sweeeet with all the wonderful people to meet first-hand.
.
Thanks so much for the testimony colorcountry and for everyone that has shared with us;
Last night on "It's A Miracle" on the Pax channel they had a story on about how a Dad & his daughter had a really close relationship & he was dying, before he died they agreed he would flash the lights to let her know he was on the other side. (Sorry the phone rang & I missed a lot of what happened...so maybe someone else saw it & can fill in the missing details).
After he passed the daughter shared this story with the other relatives that was there. So later the aunt (I think) saw the living room light flicker...but the daughter missed it.
Next they went to a store & the lights flickered...the daughter missed it again.
Anyway the next I saw (still on the phone here)was her walking down the hallway when the light came on & she had a electrician come out to check the switch...and him saying it was impossible that the light came on because it wasn't wired up to the electric yet. Which proved to her that her Dad was behind the light being on.
Which leads me to share what happened when my Father-In-Law "went home".
He too had been in the hospital with cancer & they sent him home to die. For the next month or so the family members were taking turns caring for him.
On the day he "went home" he'd had a accident & messed himself...as they were cleaning him up...he said "At least that won't be happening again"!
And he apologized over & over for being such a burden for everyone, and how he was so sorry at how hard everyone had to work to help him.
A few hours later as he was eating a bowl of ice cream he looked up toward the ceiling & just "went home"! He had such a look of awe on his face & a slight smile...like he was amazed at the sights he was seeing.
The rest of the family was called in to be with him for awhile before the funeral home picked up the body. After his body was picked up and on the way to the funeral home...the women folk decided they would get all the medical supplies(H2O tanks & ect) gathered together so they could be picked up the next day. They were all at the point of exhaustion from caring for Dad 24/7, but wanted to finish these last few chores before they rested.
Well the light went out in his room. Someone said that Dad wanted them to get some rest so he put out the light.
Some of the men folk that were scoffers of anything supernatural said nonsense...the light bulb just burned out...but the light bulb was fine...next they said well the circuit breaker just kicked off & that's all that was wrong...so they went downstairs to fix it...it was fine. So they decided it had to be a loose wire somewhere, but everything tested out fine.
Since everyone was exhausted they said "well they'd just wait and fix it the next day as it could be a major problem in the house".
Well the next day the light worked fine. There had never been a time before he died, nor a time since he died that the light failed to work...just those few hours right after his death.
Over the years we've often talked about Dad just wanting to give his caretakers a rest on that night.
The story last night on TV jogged my memory about this incident, and I wanted to share with you all.
Come on the rest of you folks...share your experience's with us. :)
I want to be cremated, have my ashes put in a douchebag, and run though, ONE MORE TIME.
Your synapses and neurons just shut down and you go to sleep.
BUMP
And why just the King James Version? Did I miss the time when God came down and announced that the KJV was the only Bible?
Let's see - written in Aramaic, translated into Greek, then translated into Latin and then translated into English in 1661. Of course there were no mistranslations anywhere during this process.
And of course the books that the Protestants decided to toss out (the Apocrypha) are immaterial.
Thanks colorcountry...great story!
I believe there are miracles that happen around us everyday, but most are to busy with their lives to pay heed.
I'm sure glad you listened to the message that came to you.
I love all of us sharing...thanks :)
Way of Life Literature - Electronic KJV Defense Library
There is also a Yahoo Group that you can join which sends out an e-mail once a week or so, that discusses a particular Bible verse and its corruption in the modern translations. You can join the group here. Read, then pray. God will reveal the truth to you http://groups.yahoo.com/group/KingJamesBible1611/
Here is an example: .
In His service, S4T.
My brother was hospitalized with heart problems. He was in Intensive Care. At 3am he swore 4 people walked in and one man spoke and the others just smiled. They told him not to be scared because he would be crossing to the other side soon, and they would be there to help him.
They turned and walked out and immediately a nurse walked in. He asked who the people were and she was dumbfounded. She said no one had been in his room it was 3 in the morning.
He told us about the incident the next day. Five days later he crossed over in his sleep. He had a smile on his face.
Thanks so much for sharing about your brother auggy;
In view of what I got to see (beautiful, indescribable lights) when I was close to death Post #44 and when searching for other stories that had the electric problem...I found this one that kinda goes along with what your brother saw.
Examples of Deathbed Visions
Although DBVs can be found in the literature and lore of all ages, they were rarely mentioned in the scientific literature until the late 1920's when they were studied by Sir William Barrett, a physics professor at the Royal College of Science in Dublin.
He would never have considered examining such a topic had it not been for an experience told to him by his wife, an obstetrical surgeon. On the night of January 12, 1924, she arrived home from the hospital eager to tell her husband about a case she had had that day.
She had been called into the operating room to deliver the child of a woman named Doris (her last name was withheld from the written report). Although the child was born healthy, Doris was dying from a hemorrhage. As the doctors waited helplessly next to the dying woman, she began to see things.
As Lady Barrett tells it:
Suddenly she looked eagerly towards part of the room, a radiant smile illuminating her whole countenance.
"Oh, lovely, lovely," she said.
I asked, "What is lovely?"
"What I see," she replied in low, intense tones.
"What do you see?"
"Lovely brightness - wonderful beings."
It is difficult to describe the sense of reality conveyed by her intense absorption in the vision. Then - seeming to focus her attention more intently on one place for a moment - she exclaimed, almost with a kind of joyous cry:
"Why, it's Father! Oh, he's so glad I'm coming; he is so glad. It would be perfect if only W. (her husband) would come too."
Her baby was brought for her to see. She looked at it with interest, and then said:
"Do you think I ought to stay for baby's sake?"
Then, turning toward the vision again, she said:
"I can't - I can't stay; if you could see what I do, you would know I can't stay."
Although the story thus far was compelling, skeptics could still argue that it was nothing more than a hallucination due to lack of blood or triggered by fear of death. Indeed Sir William Barrett may have made that very point to his wife. Then he heard the rest of the story.
It seems that the sister of Doris, Vida, had died only three weeks earlier. Since Doris was in such delicate condition, the death of her beloved sister was kept a secret from her. That is why the final part of her deathbed vision was so amazing to Barrett.
She spoke to her father, saying:
"I am coming," turning at the same time to look at me, saying, "Oh, he is so near."
On looking at the same place again, she said with a rather puzzled expression:
"He has Vida with him," turning again to me saying, "Vida is with him."
Then she said, "You do want me, Dad; I am coming."
Could all this have merely been wish fulfillment expressed in the form of a hallucination? Barrett considered such an explanation, but he rejected it because among the apparitions of the dead was someone whom Doris had not expected to see.
Her sister, Vida, had died three weeks before. This explains why Doris was a bit surprised when she saw her sister.
This story was so inspirational to Barrett that he undertook a systematic study of deathbed visions. His was the first scientific study to conclude that the mind of the dying patient is often clear and rational. He also reported a number of cases in which medical personnel or relatives present shared the dying patient's vision.
The work of Sir William Barrett did not contribute to the theory that these visions were a form of wish fulfillment. In fact the deathbed vision often did not portray the type of afterlife the dying expected.
For example, Barrett reported several children who were disappointed to see angels with no wings. In one such case he described a dying girl who sat up suddenly in her bed and said, "Angels, I see angels." Then the girl was puzzled. "Why aren't they wearing wings?"
If deathbed visions were simply a fantasy of the mind, says Barrett, why did this little girl see something different from her expectations?
From here:http://www.near-death.com/deathbed.html
I thought some of you might enjoy reading Betty Malz's testimony. I've listened to her before & she's awesome:
At 5:00 on a July morning in 1959, twenty-seven-year-old Betty Malz was pronounced dead. A sheet was pulled over her head. Her mother and husband were notified, her father, prompted by the Lord, was already on his way to the hospital.
In My Glimpse of Eternity, Betty describes what she saw, felt, and heard on the other side of the dividing wall that we call "death," then how she returned to her body more than twenty minutes later-to the stunned amazement of her grieving family and the hospital personnel.
Her story is good news for all of us haunted by our own mortality. Yet it is even more than that. For this is the story of how God dealt with a proud, materialistic woman who had to die to learn how to live.
Here's a bit of what happened to her.
Betty Malz
In July of 1959, in Terre Haute, Indiana, when Betty Malz was twenty-seven years old, she was pronounced dead and a sheet was pulled over her head. In her book, My Glimpse of Eternity, Betty describes her experience on the other side and how she returned to her body to the stunned amazement of her grieving father and hospital personnel. Her book is the story of how God dealt with a proud, materialistic, controlling woman who had to die to learn how to live. The following is an excerpt from her book describing her NDE.
The transition was serene and peaceful. I was walking up a beautiful green hill. It was steep, but my leg motion was effortless and a deep ecstasy flooded my body. Despite three incisions in my body from the operations, I stood erect without pain, enjoying my tallness, free from inhibitions about it. I looked down.
I seemed to be barefoot, but the complete outer shape of my body was a blur and colorless. Yet I was walking on grass, the most vivid shade of green I had ever seen. Each blade was perhaps one inch long, the texture like fine velvet; every blade was vibrant and moving. As the bottoms of my feet touched the grass, something alive in the grass was transmitted up through my whole body with each step I took.
"Can this be death?" I wondered. If so, I certainly had nothing to fear. There was no darkness, no uncertainty, only a change in location and a total sense of well-being."
All around me was a magnificent deep blue sky, unobscured by clouds. Looking about, I realized that there was no road or path. Yet I seemed to know where to go.
Then I realized I was not walking alone. To the left, and a little behind me, strode a tall, masculine-looking figure in a robe. I wondered if he were an angel and tried to see if he had wings. But he was facing me and I could not see his back. I sensed, however, that he could go anywhere he wanted and very quickly.
We did not speak to each other. Somehow it didn't seem necessary, for we were both going in the same direction. Then I became aware that he was not a stranger. He knew me and I felt a strange kinship with him. Where had we met? Had we always known each other? It seemed we had. Where were we now going?
As we walked together I saw no sun - but light was everywhere. Off to the left there were multicolored flowers blooming. Also trees, shrubs. On the right was a low stone wall.
My emotion was a combination of feelings: youth, serenity, fulfillment, health, awareness, tranquility. I felt I had everything I ever wanted to have. I was everything I had ever intended to be. I was arriving at where I had always dreamed of being.
The wall to my right was higher now and made of many-colored, multi-tiered stones. A light from the other side of the wall shone through a long row of amber-colored gems several feet above my head. "Topaz," I thought to myself.
Just as we crested the top of the hill, I heard my father's voice calling, "Jesus, Jesus, Jesus." His voice was a long distance away. I thought about turning back to find him. I did not because I knew my destination was ahead. We walked along in silence save for the whisper of a gentle breeze ruffling the white, sheer garments of the angel.
We came upon a magnificent, silver structure. It was like a palace except there were no towers. As we walked toward it, I heard voices. They were melodious, harmonious, blending in chorus and I heard the word, "Jesus." There were more than four parts to their harmony. I not only heard the singing and felt the singing but I joined the singing. I have always had a girl's body, but a low boy's voice. Suddenly I realized I was singing the way I had always wanted to ... in high, clear and sweet tones.
After a while the music softened, then the unseen voices picked up a new chorus. The voices not only burst forth in more than four parts, but they were in different languages. I was awed by the richness and perfect blending of the words - and I could understand them! I do not know why this was possible except that I was part of a universal experience.
While the angel and I walked together I sensed we could go wherever we willed ourselves to go and be there instantly. Communication between us was through the projection of thoughts. The words sung in all the different languages were understandable, but I don't know how or why. We all seemed to be on some universal wave length.
I thought at the time, "I will never forget the melody and these words." But later I could only recall two: "Jesus" and "redeemed."
The angel stepped forward and put the palm of his hand upon a gate which I had not noticed before. About twelve feet high, the gate was a solid sheet of pearl, with no handles and some lovely scroll work at the top of its Gothic structure. The pearl was translucent so that I could almost, but not quite, see inside. The atmosphere inside was somehow filtered through. My feeling was of ecstatic joy and anticipation at the thought of going inside.
When the angel stepped forward, pressing his palm on the gate, an opening appeared in the center of the pearl panel and slowly widened and deepened as though the translucent material was dissolving. Inside I saw what appeared to be a street of golden color with an overlay of glass or water. The yellow light that appeared was dazzling. There is no way to describe it. I saw no figure, yet I was conscious of a person. Suddenly I knew that the light was Jesus, the person was Jesus.
I did not have to move. The light was all about me. There seemed to be some heat in it as if I were standing in sunlight; my body began to glow. Every part of me was absorbing the light. I felt bathed by the rays of a powerful, penetrating, loving energy.
The angel looked at me and communicated the thought: "Would you like to go in and join them?"
I longed with all my being to go inside, yet I hesitated. Did I have a choice? Then I remembered my father's voice. Perhaps I should go and find him.
"I would like to stay and sing a little longer, then go back down the hill!" I finally answered. I started to say something more. But it was too late.
The gates slowly melted into one sheet of pearl again and we began walking back down the same beautiful hill. This time the jeweled wall was on my left and the angel walked on my right.
Then I saw the sun coming up over the wall. This surprised me since it was already very light and there seemed to be no passing of time. It was a lovely sunrise. The topaz and other stones glowed brilliantly. I remember noticing that the wall now made a deep shadow on my side.
Walking down the hill I looked into Terre Haute as the worlds of spirit and time and space began to fuse back together. Ahead of me were many church steeples glistening in the morning sun. I was suddenly aware of God's love for all his churches. It was a sudden bit of knowledge, as if I were being told this on the inside by the Holy Spirit. At that moment I loved all his churches too; and as my prejudices dissolved, I loved all his people.
Then I saw the tops of trees, then the hospital. My eyes seemed to bore through the walls of the hospital like laser beams, down the hall of the third floor to room 336. I saw a figure on the bed with a sheet pulled over it.
After my descent I slowed down and stopped. The sun's rays were in my eyes. There were dust particles in the light which suddenly changed to wavy letters about two inches high flashing before me like a ticker-tape message. The letters seemed composed of translucent ivory, only fluid - moving through the rays of the sun.
I was back in my hospital bed now and the letters stretched all the way from the window, past my bed and on into the room. They read:
"I am the resurrection and the life; he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live."
The words were so alive that they pulsated. I knew that I had to touch those living words. I reached up and out and pushed the sheet off my face. At that instant the Word of God literally became life to me.
http://www.near-death.com/forum/nde/000/85.html
Place marker ... thanks to so many of you
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