Verifiable Near Death Experiences (NDEs) can be good evidence to suggest life after death is true, but not everyone agrees. By NDE I mean the person is usually in a hospital hooked up to the usual heart & brain monitors & for a period of time they show flatlined responses. During this period of time they may have experiences of one kind or another.
Some say NDEs are just due to oxygen deprivation of the brain, but that’s not true in these particular stories. In the time these people are ‘near death’, they hear or see things they couldn’t see or overhear. Sometimes what was said took place a good distance away from the hospital room like in a waiting room, chapel or even their home. Other times they see things they couldn’t see from the hospital bed. They know specifically what people said or know visual details about the operation in the room next door or maybe what was lying on top of the hospital roof. When they revive, these details can be checked out proving their experiences weren’t just hallucinations due to oxygen deprivation.
Prof. Gary Habermas likes to collect stories of NDEs that can be verified. Here are 2 videos on the subject that are well worth watching. The first video is a short ~15 min interview of Gary Habermas. The second video is a longer ~1 hr. lecture.
Habermas has written 2 books as well with Prof. J.P. Moreland that cover NDEs, although I have yet to read either one. The first was Immortality: The Other Side of Death. It was later revised & published as Beyond Death: Exploring the Evidence for Immortality. Amazon does not offer Kindle versions. They do carry print copies, but affordability varies as does availability. Some day I hope to read Beyond Death.
Marshall Clayton says
Amen! I don’t like to hear people say they doubt these kinds of experiences. In my mind, I can’t argue what I can’t prove about what people say.
I’ve talked to a lot of people that shared their ( out of body ) experiences ; how can I say what happened or didn’t.
I talk to a man once that had a heart attack. He said he seen his dad and granddad in a very bright light; telling him to go back. They were motioning with their hands.
When we woke up, he remembered that!
How can I say of certainty what is real and what is not?
I’ll leave those things up to God the Father an each individual to iron out!
Matt says
Yes, these verifiable experiences are interesting not so much for proving the people met God or Jesus. We can’t evaluate that directly, but we can for the stuff that they know that they should not be able to know, we can. Serial numbers of equipment not visible from the bed, stuff on the roof of the hospital or in the room next door can be checked. Details of conversations too far away to be overheard, but overhead anyway can be double checked with those in the conversation. They all show people flat lined, dead, no brainwaves, no heartbeat, having experiences that are not hallucinations. It does prove we can live on somehow after the doctors think we are dead. I do admit it doesn’t prove God exists or Jesus is God, but there are other ways to answer those questions.