I closed my previous post with a quotation from Jesus in which he states that Scripture is sufficient for salvation if people are willing to believe God, and that even someone returning from the dead (he clearly means primarily himself, but it applies equally to the rich man or any NDE experiencer) will not convince evil men.
That said, the human heart is often inclined to accept what a human neighbour says more readily than the inspired word of God. Spiritualism is one example that, for a time a century ago, was (like the Beatles in the 1960s) “more popular than Jesus.” NAR and similar prophets are another instance, building mega-churches on their personal claims to new divine revelation, fascinating ordinary believers across the internet and, sad to say, dominating today’s worship music. And, I would suggest, NDEs are another, because if one’s incredulity is once overcome, a personal testimony from “the other side” seems to bear more weight than studying the small print of an ancient book.
Let me suggest how this works to skew theology, potentially. The confirmation of details of an emergency room (or of the hidden equipment labels, or the floor above), when repeated in hundreds or thousands of cases, seems to confirm that these people are having real, supernatural, experiences. The overwhelming and life-changing nature of the heavenly, or hellish, visions, for all their inconsistency (Jesus with blue eyes, or brown eyes, or no face, or legs like bronze, or mistaken for Krishna) lends weight to the assumption that they have seen something of real spiritual significance.
I’ll leave aside the somewhat unexpected life-results that serious researchers report, such as a dominant tendency for NDE witnesses to leave “organised religion” rather than to seek the fellowship of the body of Christ eagerly, or the acquisition of rather occultic-sounding abilities such as clairvoyance or disturbing electrical equipment in a good many cases.
Instead, I’ll question why the Jesus of the testimonies often seems to contradict what his Spirit says in Scripture. For example, John Burke’s book is primarily an attempt to pull together the mass of evidence into an apologetic for Christianity, that is to draw general conclusions. He cites several examples of people who see hell, or both heaven and hell, who ask Jesus why some people go to hell given his manifestly “unconditional love.” It appears that Jesus is a Dutch Arminian, for he quickly replies that people have free will, and only become damned through their free choice to reject Christ, which he cannot and will not overrule, out of love for human liberty. They choose to go to hell (unlike the unlucky NDE folk who end up there and may suffer PTSD as a result).
Now, in that ancient book this morning, and specifically Ephesians ch.1, I read a lot about the election and predestination of the saints in Christ, from before the foundation of the world. I could have read in John the passages in which Jesus distinguishes his sheep as already his own, because they respond to his voice when he calls. Or I could have read Paul’s teaching on original sin and the bondage of the will through Adam’s fall, requiring the sovereign grace of God to liberate it and permit saving faith (“and that not from yourselves – it is a gift of God”). But I didn’t read anything about my free-will being the arbiter of salvation.
Now to a free-will libertarian like J. P. Moreland, a keen student of NDEs, these testimonies are unproblematic, because they match his theology. But I have been studying biblical theology for sixty years, and do not find libertarian free-will of that kind anywhere in the Bible. For what it’s worth, neither do I find it in the Baptist Confession of Faith that one of the elders of my own church signed off, with thirty-eight other godly men, in 1689.
But regardless of the rightness or wrongness of what I believe, here’s the rub. Am I, or any other non-Arminian believer, supposed to overturn the doctrine I gleaned from Scripture, in favour of the direct teaching given by Jesus in an NDE? And if not, because after all Paul forbids us to alter the gospel even if he or and angel from heaven tells us to, then what am I to conclude about the validity of the NDE itself as a testimony to Jesus?
Similarly, Burke (and others I have heard) say that one of the most consistent features of NDEs is the admonition of the “figure-of-light, ” often after an instantaneous “life review,” for the recipients to return to earth and spend their lives giving unconditional love to others. And one cannot deny that to love one’s neighbour as oneself is more important than all burnt offerings and sacrifices (Mark 12:33). But I have to wonder why the Jesus of NDEs stresses the second commandment so much, when on earth he always places the first commandment, to love Yahweh your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength, in prime position. In fact, that emphasis in the reply of the man in Mark 12 gains Jesus’s approbation that he is “not far” from the kingdom of God. A careful reading of the following context shows that what he still lacks is the recognition of Jesus as Yahweh, without which, it seems, his love for the law is insufficient.
John Burke’s purpose being apologetics, he carefully glosses his testimonies with explanations of repentance, judgement, faith and so on. But the truth seems to be that these are more often than not missing from the actual experiences, which is understandable in cases where the recipient is already a believer. But for an atheist, or a Hindu, or a Buddhist to hear simply that God is unconditional love, and so they must try to be too, from henceforth, is really no different from New Age “peace and love” or old fashioned liberal religion-without-dogma.
Now of course, all us Bible-believers might, like the Bible itself, be wrong that the sole path to eternal life is repentance, faith in the crucified and risen Christ, and baptism into his name. Maybe John Lennon was right that “All you need is love,” (“and no religion, too”). But if we reject that conclusion, then we must surely be very cautious in how we deal with the phenomenon of NDEs, for to take them at face value is likely to make human testimony (from the grave, at that) the supreme authority in faith and practice – or at best, an authority competing with, and so diluting, the word of God.
So like UAPs, ghosts and premonitions, I judge it safest to remain agnostic and leave them for now in the category of “anomaly.” Except for my own NDE, of course, which I’m glad to say gave me no theological issues.
