Couple Say Near-Death Experiences Give Hope After This Life

KLTV-7 (Tyler, TX) ^ | 11/13/06 | Morgan Palmer

[KarinG1]

James and Darlene Nelson, their experiences -- their brushes with death -- happened decades apart.

James was a very young child, and became very ill.

"I looked [up] and it was just real bright, and you just could tell that it was someone and an image. Somehow you just know this image is God," he recalls.

He says even at that young age, he could communicate with God.

"I was in this wonderful place, and it's impossible to describe how beautiful it was and peaceful, [with] love and joy," he says.

Though he was so young, he says what he saw, heard and felt is impossible to forget, like the view of himself from outside his body.

"I looked through this hole, and I just see myself laying on this little thing in the doctor's office [from above]."

His wife, Darlene, had a similar brush with death decades later. She was diagnosed with cancer. In a hospital room, she started bleeding internally. She felt herself slipping away.

"It is the most wonderful, most peaceful place, there's no way to describe it. You don't talk with your lips. Whatever you think, [God] communicates with you. You know you're talking to God," she explains.

She says medical help arrived just in time, and she was brought back. Only then, for the first time, did she understand exactly what her husband says happened to him.

"How wonderful. It's such a peaceful feeling that I can't tell you how wonderful it was."

And the urge to stay in that heavenly place was overwhelming.

"If I ever do that again, don' t bring me back," says Darlene.

James says God told him he had to come back to his earthly body.

"The Lord said 'I want you to go back.' I have something for you to do. I said 'Oh no, I don't want to leave this place.'"

He says God had a purpose for him and his wife -- to help others. And they want to tell others their belief that the end of life on Earth is not the end at all.

"I want to do all I can to be a witness for the Lord all of my days until I get to go back to that wonderful place. And it is a wonderful place to go to," James says.

Morgan Palmer, Reporting morganpalmer@kltv.com

[Names Ash Housewares]

Are their any democrats there?

I'll skip it.

[Maynerd]

I've had two patient's tell me about their near death experiences both of which were very similar to Darlene's experience. Neither wanted to come back and both were rather ticked off they had been "saved." No pun intended.

[Dallas59]

"The dead praise not the LORD, neither any that go down into silence." Psalms 115:17

As long as we are alive there is hope. After that there is nothing. "A live dog is better than a dead lion." Ecclesiastes 9:4

"Dead people know nothing and receive no reward." 9:5 Ecclesiastes

"Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might," because dead people don't work and they know nothing" Ecclesiastes 9:10

"'All that are in the graves shall hear his voice, and shall come forth' (John 5:28, 29). 'David... is both dead and buried, and his sepulchre is with us unto this day. For David is not ascended into the heavens' (Acts 2:29, 34)."

[beaversmom]

I read this one, back in the 90's, about childrens' near death experiences,

[soupcon]

That the afterlife exists is indisputable.
Accounts of near-death experiences are curious, but by no means vital as proof of the indisputable.

[SmartAZ]

What is the hope part? I missed that.

[Ignatz]

Wow! "Salad bar' theology! Can I play?

"Matthew 27:5, the scripture says of Judas, “and he...went and hanged himself"

[Rembrandt_fan]

I read an article on near-death and supposed out-of-body experiences, and then saw a PBS documentary on the same subject a few weeks later. When a human being has suffered a severe trauma and the brain is oxygen-deprived--usually because the heart has stopped beating--the brain floods with endorphins, giving the traumatized person a sense of wellbeing. Hallucinations in extremis are common, and the bright light these 'near-dead' people talk about is essentially the lights going out, so to speak.

A Christian, I believe in a life after this one, but obviously, clearly, these survivors were not dead in the sense that brain function had ceased entirely and cellular breakdown had started to occur. I've had an eventful life, with a few life-threatening experiences, near-misses and close calls, and afterwards felt lucky to be alive and grateful for what I have. I don't need some kind of anecdotal, testimonial 'proof' to believe in God or 'the other side'; I have faith for that--'Blessed is he who doesn't see and believes.'

Dead is dead, dead is Lazarus three days in the grave and starting to smell, dead is rigor mortis and putrefication. Dead is not when one's heart is jump-started in an emergency room or CPR'd back into consciousness.

[goldstategop]

Its a universal experience. Those who have nearly died have had their personalities and outlook completely transformed. They are no longer afraid of death and seem to have a greater zest for living. Ever since Raymond Moody wrote Life After Life in the 1970s, we have not looked at death in the same light again. Science has done the seemingly impossible: validate the reality of the spiritual and mystical experiences human beings have had throughout history and across time. From a personal point of view, I don't believe this life is all there is and one day we will ALL see our loved ones again.

[goldstategop]

These people nearly died. They can remember being outside their bodies looking at themselves and watching attempts to revive them. They felt drawn towards the light but God or an angel tells them invariably, "its not your time" and they find themselves back inside their bodies. I think the great Flemish painter Hieronymous Bosch must have had a near death experience or knew someone who did, since his famous painting, Ascent To The Empyrean depicts that tunnel of light and heavenly beings waiting that figure into so many people's accounts of a near death experience. Now no one knows what truly lies beyond this life but if its a hallucination of the dying brain or a mere cultural artififact, people would NOT report the same thing across culture. The only difference is that their perception of God is colored by their particular religious beliefs. This does argue there is in fact another world beyond our immediate senses just as God Himself is immanent and beyond all mortal understanding.

[Atlantic Bridge]

From a personal point of view, I don't believe this life is all there is and one day we will ALL see our loved ones again.

Well said. I hope for that too. It is indeed astonishing that the reports from people that nearly died are all the same. Nevertheless there is also some evidence that this impression is caused by a distribution of endomorphines and hypoxia. We will find out the truth when we have to return to our creator.

:-)

[Rembrandt_fan]

You wrote, "...if its a hallucination of the dying brain or a mere cultural artififact, people would NOT report the same thing across culture."

Sure they would. A psychiatrist friend of mine said researchers had electrically stimulated certain geographic portions of the human brain among a wide variety of test subjects--different cultures, different languages, different belief systems--and the response was universal--people 'saw' the same things--in a specific case, they saw paradise, or rather, Paradise, and the hallucination wasn't colored by cultural differences and was virtually identical across the range of test subjects. According to him (a reputable scientist, trained at John Hopkins), we're hard-wired to a certain degree, hence the commonalities among most cultures of the concept of a paradise. My psychiatrist friend is agnostic, I am not, and I am not saying that all visionary experiences, whether William Blake's or Ezekiel's or anyone else's, are always caused by brain chemistry and flashing neurons. I'm simply saying that these near-death experiences, or out-of-body experiences or what have you, are perfectly explicable, without supernatural agency or import, and are an unreliable 'proof' of an afterlife.

There's a neurologist named Dr. V. S. Ramachandran who is doing extensive work in this field. I've read a few of his essays, watched an interview. The subject is fascinating and most definitely not otherworldly.

[KarinG1]

[azhenfud]

Verily, verily, I say unto you, The hour is coming, and now is, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God: and they that hear shall live.

[Psalm 73]

Paul himself, like Isaiah before him, was allowed a glimpse of heaven.
"Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror, then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part, then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known."
I Corinthians 13:12

[buck61]

And Jesus said to the dying thief on the cross, "today", shalt thou be with me in paradise.

[buck61]

I had the experience, however in was not in a near death situation. It was late at night during my end of day prayer.

I was fifteen years of age during my experience and, it has guided my life to this date. I learned enough to tell me there
is life after death. As to when I get there does not concern me.

If we lay in the grave a thousand years and, are called to Resurrection it will seem to be nothing but a nights sleep.
Time has no bearing on the lord.

For those near my age 63, know it was only yesterday we were teenagers.

[never4get]

The person who experienced this near death stated..."I was in this wonderful place, and it's impossible to describe how beautiful it was and peaceful, [with] love and joy,"...

God provides us such beauty. Oh how disappointed he must be with us that we can not care about each other here on earth. I know, I know, there are reasons why but collectively, as a race of people he created, it must sadden him to know end that evil can influence and corrupt the lot of us so easily...even after sending his son as an example to all of us.

[buck61]

Satan once possessed this love but chose to over power God. So God through Satan and a third of his angels into inter darkness which now is this earth.

God knew the hearts of men and expects what we see to this day. That is why he sent his Son to die for us and, through his blood or we saved.

God always required blood for the sacrifice of man's sin and this is only achieved now through the blood of Christ.

I agree with you that it saddens God to see how we now treat one another even after the sacrifice he made.

His word is now given to all the world, and it is up to each individual as to how he or she will except this word.

God have mercy on those who do not choose Christ as their savior.

[chilepepper]

why then the "floating above the body" reoccurance? a good friend of mine who lives out in the country in Chile and doesn't read "Fate Magazine" was in a terrible car wreck and much of what he describes is very similar. He was able to look down upon the scene of the accident and felt extreme pain when his conscious was snapped back into his body...

the "endorphrines" explanation is the scientific materialists trying to protect their paradigm, and absorbing the parts of this world for which they have no "scientific" explanation. of course, their most recent explanation isn't endophrines, rather it is a specific processing center in the brain that goes active.

there is so much of the world that makes a mockery of the materialism so important in the justification of socialism: scientists for example have yet to explain why identical twins separated at birth have such a huge number of similarities in the life experiences, where only a subset of those experiences are due to the active choices made by the twins (which the scientific materialists would argue is preprogrammed in)

[SmartAZ]

"That the afterlife exists is indisputable.
Accounts of near-death experiences are curious, but by no means vital as proof of the indisputable."

The important question is, "What good is it?" Even if there is some sort of afterlife, we are constrained to live this life as if it's the only one we get.