Free Republic

After reading about the lady in Florida that was dead for 45min, I was wondering about near-death experiences. There have been a lot of these experiences written about here in our country, but I was wondering if anyone has info on near-death experiences in other countries. Specifically, is there anything recorded about those individuals that are not Christian and have experienced near-death?

"I was transformed when I met Jesus. I had been to the most beautiful place imaginable with Jesus, and I wanted everyone on earth to experience it too." -Samaa Habib After a young Muslim woman named Samaa Habib came to Christ, she endured intense persecution from her family and the surrounding community, but even greater torment lay ahead when her thriving fellowship of Muslim converts to Christianity was bombed. Samaa was closest to one of the bombs that detonated. She was thrown 10 feet and her body slammed against an opposite wall. Her hair burned off, along with much of...

BOCA RATON, Fla. (KABC) -- Doctors and nurses at Boca Raton Regional Hospital are calling a mother's recovery a miracle. On Sept. 23, Ruby Graupera-Cassimiro, 40, had her daughter, Taily, during a routine cesarean section, but there were complications. "Suddenly, I got called overhead. They said, 'Dr. Fleischer straight to the OR,' and I rushed up, and as soon as I got there she was already intubated, and most of the team had already arrived assessing the situation," obstetrician Dr. Michael Fleischer said. Graupera-Cassimiro's heart stopped for 45 minutes after amniotic fluid entered her bloodstream and heart and created...

"First hint of 'life after death' in biggest ever scientific study", headlines The Telegraph, going on to say: "Southampton University scientists have found evidence that awareness can continue for at least several minutes after clinical death which was previously thought impossible". Does this prove that there is life after death and that God exists? Of course not, but it shows without a shadow of a doubt that there are many phenomena and events that science doesn't explain about the nature of consciousness and of the mind in general. Someone's answer to that migtht be that science will one day...

Researchers conducting the largest ever study into near-death experiences have discovered that awareness may continue even after the brain has shut down, revealing more about what happens when we die. Scientists at the University of Southampton studied more than 2,000 people who suffered cardiac arrests at 15 hospitals across Britain, Austria and the United States. Around 40% of patients who survived described "awareness" during the time before their hearts were restarted, when they were clinically dead. One 57-year-old man, a social worker from Southampton, described the noise of the machines and what the medical staff were doing during this time....

A recent piece I wrote on hell was inspired, in part, by the story of 23 Minutes in Hell, an account from a gentleman named Bill Wiese of a nighttime experience in which, he believed, he was permitted to experience hell for a short period of time in order to return to the land of the living and tell everyone that hell is for real. MY own post was not a careful exegetical treatment of the issue of damnation, but a description of a personal struggle between the vision of the afterlife I have inherited from my evangelical upbringing and...

"Heaven Is for Real," the movie based on the near-death experience of a young boy who believes he visited heaven and met Jesus, is generating divided opinions among Christians on whether it presents a biblical message on heaven as it hits theaters Easter weekend. The movie is based on the best-selling 2010 book Heaven Is for Real: A Little Boy's Astounding Story of His Trip to Heaven and Back, where pastor Todd Burpo reports on the near-death experience of his then 4-year-old son, Colton, who shares of meeting Jesus in heaven as well as a number of his deceased relatives...

I’m not one of those twelve million readers who bought the book “Heaven is For Real” and torpedoed it to the New York Times’ Bestseller List. But I did check it out from the library and enjoyed both the story and the accounts of heaven. “Heaven is for real” is, in fact, only one among the many testimonies of near death experiences I’ve heard about from both Christians and non-Christians. With some suspect exceptions, most of the descriptions of heaven are fascinating and inspire me to work hard to aim for the ultimate prize. But that’s just the good news.On...

The wooing of religious moviegoers — a delicate operation, as the “Noah” backlash attests — has been ramping up lately, with major players like Ridley Scott and Ben Kingsley mining the Bible for box office gold. But if there’s such a thing as a safe bet in this genre, it’s “Heaven Is for Real,” a Christian sermon that even the most doctrinaire believer can applaud.

An Oklahoma woman says she's a firm believer in God after meeting him during the nine minutes she died in 2009. Crystal McVea is a 36-year-old married school teacher and mother of four who didn't quite believe in God for most of her life. At the age of three, McVea started to be sexually abused by her drug and alcohol-addicted step father and that abuse continued by him and others until the age of 12. Those experiences made her second guess from a young age whether or not God existed, and if he did, whether he loved her. 'I saw...

The "near-death experience" reported by cardiac arrest survivors worldwide may be grounded in science, according to research at the University of Michigan Health System. Whether and how the dying brain is capable of generating conscious activity has been vigorously debated. But in this week's PNAS Early Edition, a U-M study shows shortly after clinical death, in which the heart stops beating and blood stops flowing to the brain, rats display brain activity patterns characteristic of conscious perception. "This study, performed in animals, is the first dealing with what happens to the neurophysiological state of the dying brain," says lead study...

A surge of electrical activity in the brain could be responsible for the vivid experiences described by near-death survivors, scientists report. A study carried out on dying rats found high levels of brainwaves at the point of the animals' demise. US researchers said that in humans this could give rise to a heightened state of consciousness

It seems almost everyone has a story of how they almost drowned, almost drove off a cliff, or narrowly dodged a bullet. What is your story of the closest you came to dying?

Last Friday night (March 22), March Madness was in its televised glory. And Taylor Swift was singing and strumming at Time Warner Cable Arena. Despite such competition, Christ Episcopal Church managed to draw 1,100 people. The attraction: A doctor describing his time in heaven. Not just any doctor. Sitting on stage, answering questions from the Rev. Chip Edens, the church’s rector, was Dr. Eben Alexander. He’s a Charlotte native who wrote “Proof of Heaven: A Neurosurgeon’s Journey into the Afterlife.” His book is such a mega-seller that he has talked to Oprah – and Universal Pictures won a bidding war...

Dr Eben Alexander, a Harvard-educated neurosurgeon, fell into a coma for seven days in 2008 after contracting meningitis. During his illness Dr Alexander says that the part of his brain which controls human thought and emotion "shut down" and that he then experienced "something so profound that it gave me a scientific reason to believe in consciousness after death." In an essay for American magazine Newsweek, which he wrote to promote his book Proof of Heaven, Dr Alexander says he was met by a beautiful blue-eyed woman in a "place of clouds, big fluffy pink-white ones" and "shimmering beings".

Mary C. Neal, a Wyoming surgeon, has a more spiritual view of life after a near-death experience following an accident while kayaking in 1999. (Family photo, Credit) JACKSON, WYO. — The way Mary C. Neal sees it, she has essentially lived two different lives: one before her “accident,” as she describes it, and one after.“I would say that I have been profoundly changed in all aspects of my life,” said Neal, a respected orthopedic spinal surgeon in western Wyoming. “The details of my life, before and after, are similar. But the essence of my life — who I am,...

Atheist Professor’s Near-Death Experience in Hell Left Him Changed by Mark Ellis, FaithIssues, Godreports In some near-death experiences, people report they were drawn toward “the light.” But in this horrifying near-death experience for an atheist art professor, he was drawn into the darkness of hell, which dramatically altered the course of his life. “I was a double atheist,” says Howard Storm, who became a tenured art professor at Northern Kentucky University by age 27. “I was a know-it-all college professor, and universities are some of the most closed-minded places there are,” he notes. On the last day of a three-week...

Abingdon resident Michael Solano describes his "spiritual awakening" after suffering a stroke while nearly choking to death at a crab cake eating contest in Timonium. Abingdon resident Michael Solano says he no longer fears death after a harrowing experience that nearly cost him his life. “I can tell anybody who's willing to listen what it’s like to die,” he said. “I’m very respectful of death. I’m not trying to want it or have it bestowed upon me, but when it happens, I’m not going to be afraid.”

DURHAM, N.C.—Eben Alexander was your typical neurosurgeon. A firm believer of scientific reductionism, he thought that all thoughts originate from the brain. But this changed in 2008 when he encountered a case of near-death experience (NDE). As much as it was the complete opposite of his previous views, he couldn’t dismiss or avoid the case—it was none other than his own experience, and he had to face it and search for an explanation. Having contracted acute bacterial meningitis, which damages the neocortex—the part of the brain that is thought to involve complex cognitive functions like conscious thought—Alexander went into a...

Bruce Greyson thinks that research has only scratched the surface of the near-death experience phenomenon, and that there is a great prospect for future studies. (Stephanie Lam/The Epoch Times) DURHAM, N.C.—Grandma was just resuscitated. She wakes up and tells you a bizarre story of coming out of her body and going to heaven. Has she developed psychosis? Was her brain damaged from the lack of oxygen? After over 30 years of research, scientists have concluded that this is not the case. Instead, they think that this phenomenon is something today’s science is yet to understand, and that it is an...