The Light of the World, The Light of the Life, The Logos of the Deity

The Logos

Jesus Christ is the Logos of the Deity in human form. This Logos, spoken to us by the Messiah, gives us an introduction to the Logic of the Father Deity: His Rationale, His Reasoning, the Way He Thinks: His Logic. It soon becomes apparent that the Logic of the Deity is completely opposite to Human Logic. As we become doers of this Divine Rationale, we prove its efficacy and everything begins to change for us: our thinking, our attitudes, our actions and ultimately our abilities.

Some NDE After Thoughts

NDEs are now fascinating the world of those who have an open mind to consider what these experiences might be telling us. What I personally find utterly amazing is that some people don’t even want to hear these stories. It seems they either fear discussing death itself or fear the concept of life after death, or fear they might have to make room for a God in their thinking and they choose to reject this thought and make no further investigation. Not even some church pastors are willing to look into them while other pastors take a view that these experiences are not of God.

A friend of mine is in possession of a private email from a seminary professor who absolutely confirms this attitude. He has several doctorates in different lines of theology, and says that during all those years of attending lectures, he never heard a single one on what happens after death, nor can he even remember one being advertised in one of the universities! Pastors and ministers are therefore, on the whole, ignorant in these matters and don’t know what to say when members of their congregations come to tell them about the NDE they experienced.

In beginning to review NDEs, I think we need to look critically at what we have AND, what we don’t have with NDEs. While both the experiences and after-effects are truly astonishing, we tend to focus in on the positive experiences which many people are willing to talk about. One doctor, Dr Maurice Rawlings, an eminent cardiologist and doctor to President Eisenhower and the then Joint Chiefs of Staff, has said, it is his view that there are probably as many hellish experiences as there are heavenly, but since the hellish ones are probably embarrassing to the experiencer, these stories are not brought to light for us to hear about. Dr Rawlings, as I understand it, often sat with a notebook at the bedside of ICU patients recovering from heart attacks who had seemingly died before recovery. Rawlings stated that a number of them reported fear and unpleasant NDEs on first recovery, but when questioned later, they appeared to have forgotten the negative NDEs. He surmised this might be a protection mechanism to block or blot out certain unpleasant and fearful memories that could make readjusting to normal life difficult. There are however, some hellish experiences which transition into heavenly ones, and these experiencers are willing to talk about both the positive and negative aspects.

If what Dr Maurice Rawlings says is true, it opens up to us the prospect that there might be as many negative experiences as positive ones, or even the possibility that the negative ones might out-number the positive ones. We simply don’t know, but we have to consider this as a real possibility. If this were true, it would put quite a different slant on some people’s conclusions about what they think happens when we die. I say think happens because none of us know what really happens. All we know is what happened to these who died and returned. We know nothing about those who die and don’t return.

Before going too much further, some perspective is required. The figures given below are very much ball-park since we don’t/can’t have accurate numbers. Nevertheless, they serve to give some sort of perspective which I think is necessary to contemplate. Some of the figures are taken from Dr Thomas Fleischmann’s observations. (View his video under Near Death Experiences on this web site.)
1. Only about 10% of people who have NDEs actually experience the Light and beautiful surroundings. In other words, there are some 90% of “NDErs” who don’t experience the Light. They generally have Out of Body Experiences, (OBEs)
2. Only about 15% of resuscitated people report NDEs. That means 85% of resuscitated people don’t have NDEs or don’t report them. We have to ask, why do only 15% have NDEs? Why did the other 85% of resuscitated ones not have NDEs? And what if the actual number of unreported negative experiences is much higher? These questions must be asked and thought about if we are to have a more correct perspective of NDE events.
3. Only about 10% of all those who received resuscitation procedures returned to life. That leaves 90% who received resuscitation procedures but did not survive.
4. Finally, what about all those who die before receiving any resuscitation procedure? We can’t know the figures for these yet we must ask what might have been their experience. We have no way of knowing what, if anything, these un-resuscitated people experienced as they transitioned through death. To assume that they had a similar experience as the reported NDEs could be utterly wrong.

All these thoughts are worth pondering because nearly all of the NDErs for whom there are records, indicate they were either sent back because it was not their time and they had more work to do, or they chose to come back after being influenced by something back on earth, all of these choices essentially out of their control. The sending back of those who had more to do, seems to imply that they had come up short in the Light’s estimation of things. If they had stayed (if that were even possible), what might then have been their consequence? Might they have been judged for not completing their work and what might have been their judgement then? Would we dare surmise that those not having NDEs were already doing the work they were meant to be doing and didn’t need an NDE to tell them they still had work to do? We simply don’t know, and we must not assume that the experiences of those who didn’t come back from resuscitation, are the same as resuscitated returnees who had NDEs. Without thinking about these possibilities, we could get a totally wrong perspective as to the full significance of NDEs. We have to open our minds to the possibilities of these other situations. And since we can’t know those other situations, we then have to wonder what the purpose of NDEs might actually be.

It could even be fallacious for NDEers themselves to assume that what happened to them in their NDE is going to happen again when they actually die. Matthew Dovel’s second NDE is a good example of that. Such a second experience, it seems, might very well depend on what the NDEr did in response to the work they were given to do at their first NDE. We cannot know what the next encounter will be like.

My final question is, why do we seem to be having such numbers of NDEs at this time, especially if they have been happening for centuries? Many doctors have said that the increase in NDEs in the last few decades is due to our better resuscitation techniques, but is this really true? There have been cases where some have been taken to the morgue or set aside to be taken to the morgue and yet returned. Dr Rodonaia was nearly three days in the morgue. The doctors can not claim any resuscitation for these. There was no resuscitation back in Plato’s day, yet Er in about 380 BC, came alive 10 days (assumed correct) after dying.
Logically, there is much more at work here than man’s resuscitation techniques. We have no choice but to look further afield for the increase in numbers of NDEs. We know that mankind is ever quick these days to look to itself for an explanation of the changes taking place, never considering the possibility of the existence, in this “scientific” era, of an Almighty God and that He might actually be enacting a plan. If we accept that there is an all powerful God, as the vast majority of NDErs who enter the Light attest and we realise that our resuscitation techniques might have little or no effect, then surely we must accept that all these NDEs are in the Almighty’s hand. Why then are there more NDEs these days? It is highly probable that we seem to be having many more NDEs these days, simply because many more are relating their stories when they realise they won’t be sent to a mental institution for verbalising their experience and they can find support to stand up to the criticism of their relatives or others who scoff. Of course, I also acknowledge the possibility that the God Himself could also be upping the frequency of NDEs in these days to teach us something about what we have moved away from for all these centuries, and to bring us back to Him. We simply don’t know. To put it down to better resuscitation techniques gives mankind far more credit than it deserves. All these situations continue to raise the questions: what do these NDEs really teach us, by whom do they come and for what purpose?

In analysing present day NDEs, we are now faced with a number of other growing problems.
The first problem is our tendency to limit what is being told us in these experiences to the limits of the individual stories themselves. I’m not sure I have expressed that very well. Put another way, do NDErs themselves ever consider the differences between their NDE and someone else’s or do they assume that what they had is the sum total of all that matters. If so, this is very short-sighted and short-sighted of us if we view these in the same way.

Our second problem relates to interpretation. When the stories are told, can we differentiate between actual experience and interpretation of these events post the experience. Often these interpretations are made on the basis of the pre-NDE personal experience, beliefs and knowledge. I have heard one NDE account in which the woman was, in my view, hell-bent on justifying her experience in terms of her pre-NDE Bahai belief system. This was so apparent from her story.

The third problem relates to truth. As NDEs continue to occur, we have to wonder if everyone reporting them is telling the truth? In this age when truth is handled loosely, we have to be careful. We have already seen an attempt to fraudulently cash-in on the money to be made by selling an NDE story.

As time progresses, all these problems become even more likely and therefore significant. All the issues mentioned so far must be weighed, if at all possible, before we can have a clear understanding of what NDEs are telling us. This must lead us in a search for truth and where it might be found, but where do we start to look. The NDEs themselves give us some clues. We can conclude:–
1. there is consciousness after physical death
2. there is an Almighty God, i.e. there is a god above all other gods.
3. the being of light is separate from this Almighty God but, it seems, one with Him
4. the being of light exudes, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness yet others tell us the source of all this is ultimately the Almighty.
5. there is an afterlife which is either paradise like or hellish in nature
6. some have described walls with gates made of pearl like substance, others describing roads and buildings seemingly made of gold
7. The scenery is alive and filled with colours unknown on earth.

In essence, the experience is ineffable.
All this begs the question, what is it that these ones are sent back to do. While I have no doubt that the answer lies in the words of the Christ, Himself, when He walked this earth 2000 years ago, many will want to disagree because they think it is the imposition of a religion. It is not.

One other writer has said, After lengthy consideration over many years, I have concluded that each NDE was planned ingeniously by God as a learning experience for that particular returnee. I agree with this totally but also think that it has benefits for the non-experiencer when we look at these experiences as a whole.

Wisdom is a tree of Life to all who take hold of her; and blessed are they that hold her fast.
(Proverbs 3:18)