• Welcome to Religious Forums, a friendly forum to discuss all religions in a friendly surrounding.

    Your voice is missing! You will need to register to get access to the following site features:
    • Reply to discussions and create your own threads.
    • Our modern chat room. No add-ons or extensions required, just login and start chatting!
    • Access to private conversations with other members.

    We hope to see you as a part of our community soon!

NDE, visions of God or lies from satan?

ComaToast

Zealous dogma prolongs pain and the path of fools
Hi everyone!

I am almost literally, obsessed with this topic. I can't help it! It's practically all I think about in my spare time, all I research and meditate on. Obviously it's extremely important to me lol, and now that I have found your wondeful site I finally found the place to discuss it with the right mix of people. Thank you for that guys!!! Whoop whoop you all rock no matter what you believe ❤

Here is the question:

Are people's near death experiences true visions of the afterlife or are they a deception from satan?

Feel free to skip the rest of this post and answer if you like

To me, there is no more important question to be asked/answered.

A little back story. (Or a lot sorry guys)- I was once a devout christian. 10 years ago if you told me that I would not be a christian today, I would have genuinely laughed at you. I was a true believer, sincere and as pure of heart as a person can be. But I had this nagging splinter in my spiritual mind. Every time I heard the doctrine of hell preached, I think I literally raised a shield over my heart unconsciously. Once that became a conscious phenomenon, I decided I had to do something about it. Namely, study, pray, and search.

I found The Restitution of All Things by Andrew Jukes. What a balm that book was to my soul!!! I devoured it. I discovered early christian philosophies, and Origen. That was all new to me.

At that time it turned out that it was only a matter of misinterpretation! Fire and brimstone are cleansing and purifying. Jesus is the jubilee of jubilees! So many other things I have since forgotten. But it was BEAUTIFUL!!!!

I remember the day, the first day I believed that NO ONE goes to hell forever. Very clearly I remember it! I got into my car, drove around, and every single person I saw made me weep with joy! I was a weeping lunatic lol. Looking at everyone, saying I will see you in heaven! And you and you and YOU and you and you.... Lol. It was a magically beautiful moment.

So naturally, being brimming over with joy at this good news I brought it to the elders, and my brother, who at the time was in school getting his bachelors degree. He was actively studying greek and hebrew and fully immersed in it.

These people who I fully trusted, were able to systematically shut me down. I wasn't studying greek and hebrew. I wasn't going to school or had not graduated from school, with the qualifications to make keen observations. By and large, the answer I remember, when I pressed them in my exuberant passion, was "His ways are not our ways and His thoughts are not our thoughts". That's when I was doing well lol. When I was really making them work for it.

I think one day, and it wasn't a fully conscious decision, I said "I do not believe this". I was teaching music ministry to youth group at the time. Just one DAY! POP! was GONE. Talk about a crisis.

Now skip to the end! If you've read all this I thank you kindly. Sorry for being verbose but I feel context is necessary.

So I "popped" out of christianity. I think it was 2 years later or so, when I finally had to have the talk with my parents. That I no longer believed. Boy, that was hard.

So after that whole ordeal, I found myself wandering and searching. I found little to stimulate me spiritually. I looked into different faiths, ba'hai particularly and bahaullah (sorry if spelled wrong). But nothing was speaking to my spirit, really. Nothing was stimulating me like Jesus did.

Until I found Near Death Experiences. It was kind of a eureka moment! Go straight to the horse's mouth. These people clinically died man! They were revived and able to tell their experiences.

To me, this was IT! No need to listen to people who lived thousands of years ago. These people, went there FIRST HAND.

So unless I am wanting to write a book, I should leave it there. So sorry!

Joe Schmoe who died in the O.R. and floated around the hospital, before being sucked up in the tunnel to meet the light... WHY IS HIS EXPERIENCE SATANIC. He says, that God is love and light, and not to worry about a thing. WHY can't we listen, to him?

When I found NDE's I soaked them up like a sponge. They resonate with my highest self. The truths that my spirit knows but cannot express.

Please guys! Tell me your thoughts. This is what my life is all about. I am also a talented artist and musician. I believe that God is putting tremendous pressure on me, so that I proclaim the real good news. My heart is decwptively wicked my brother would say. I create god in my own image in order to justify living a sinful life.

But how is wanting every single person who ever lived, to be reconciled to God, wicked in any way? I asked him that and he quoted scripture to me.

Sorry loves! I'm on fire over here. Again if yoy've read all of this THANK you for your time ❤
 

Terry Sampson

Well-Known Member
I say: There is no Hell, just Heaven. Of course, if you don't want to be there, then Heaven is Hell.
You're in Purgatory, if you want to be in Heaven but have to watch a lot of movies, first, of the people that you harmed or hurt or could have helped but didn't, and how that harm/hurt/neglect affected them and rippled through their lives, the lives of others around them, and their descendants, if any.
 
Last edited:

George-ananda

Advaita Vedanta, Theosophy, Spiritualism
Premium Member
Are people's near death experiences true visions of the afterlife or are they a deception from satan?
I believe the Near Death Experiences are true visions of the beginning of the afterlife. The idea of them being a deception from Satan is ridiculous to me on so many levels.
.
Many will tell you that they are hallucinations of a dying brain and have nothing to do with an afterlife. I don't see how that explanation is possible either when the most dramatic visions happen at times of no higher brain functioning and they can report real world events even in another room of the hospital for example knowing minute details. These types of Near Death Experiences are called Veridical Near Death Experiences. Something paranormal is going on.

Going beyond that I have come to believe we will all find Liberation in the end. I also believe in a considerable period for each of us on the higher planes after death and eventually reincarnation.
 

Hockeycowboy

Witness for Jehovah
Premium Member
Wow, you certainly are passionate about this!!

Is there anything I could ever say -- at least at this moment -- that could sway your pov?

Almost everyone who is religious, believes in some kind of immediate "life after death." I dont; rather, I believe that a resurrection to life comes at a future time, not immediately. (John 6:44) And that they won't be resurrected 'from another realm', but from their graves. -- John 5:28-29.

Why from their graves, i.e., "memorial tombs"? Because they're dead, and the "dead know nothing." They are 'sleeping.' -- Ecclesiastes 9:5; Psalms 146:3-4; Psalms 115:17; John 11:11-14; Genesis 3:19; 1 Corinthians 15 6,20,51; 1 Thessalonians 4:13-15; Acts of the Apostles 7:60.

Very few religions in Christendom teach this, but these are the Bible's words.

You know what's great about you, though? Your concern for others is strong! You love people...that's what Jehovah God wants from us!

I wish you all the best!
 
Last edited:

Deeje

Avid Bible Student
Premium Member
Hello @ComaToast and welcome to RF.

Thank you for sharing your story....it closely matches my own, except the details are a little different. "Hell" was my biggest problem too. It's not something a loving God would do and to punish people forever with suffering and anguish was unjust as a penalty for a relatively short life of sin. (Which was not our fault in the first place) The punishment just didn't fit the crime IMO.

The death of my father at a young age sent me on a journey of discovery too. I wanted to know where he was. The scriptures told me straight away......and it wasn't what I was expecting. It opened up a whole new way of looking at scripture.

I realized that what I was rejecting was not the Bible or God or Christianity....but the church's twisting of everything Jesus taught. So I got rid of the church. I kept God and the Bible as my treasures in life and still do to this day. I also found that, like the first Christians, the truth often hides in strange places....God has never been mainstream. Never accept popular opinion......there is a reason why it is popular. More about that later.....

With regard to NDE's.....it's best not to get carried away by emotion, which I believe has little place in God's worship. It's true that we must express love for God and our fellow man, but emotions can be transitory and can evaporate very quickly if not grounded firmly in God's word. It's the "sand" that Jesus spoke about. We have to build our faith on the solid rock that is Jesus Christ.

The first thing people usually mention with regard to NDE's is the "light". So do we have something in the Bible to guide us here? Jesus is "the light of the world"....right? But is there also a fake light that is shining on a different path, causing people to go in an opposite direction?

At 2 Corinthians 11:13-15....the apostle Paul, speaking of those who present themselves as followers of Christ, but who are just the opposite, said....
"For such men are false apostles, deceitful workers, disguising themselves as apostles of Christ. 14 And no wonder, for Satan himself keeps disguising himself as an angel of light. 15 It is therefore nothing extraordinary if his ministers also keep disguising themselves as ministers of righteousness. But their end will be according to their works."

Who is the "angel of light" here? And does he have "ministers" who claim to be "ministers of righteousness", but who misrepresent God and his Christ to the masses?....painting him as some fiendish torturer.
Since Jesus spoke about the "wheat and the weeds" as competing for our worship, don't we have to wonder if the whole church system a product of the "angel of light"? It looks as if you might be onto something. :cool:

Those NDE's are often experienced through an individuals own religious concepts, which means that there is already an implanted expectation even in people who don't acknowledge it. If the "light" that they see is a ruse designed by the devil to capture people's emotions, then where is that taking then?

Are the dead alive in heaven...or somewhere else? What does the Bible actually teach about this.....it isn't close to what I was taught in church....you might be surprised....
 

dybmh

דניאל יוסף בן מאיר הירש
ComaToast,. I enjoyed reading your story. I know absolutely nothing about NDE. I have nothing to contribute but support in your journey and appreciation for learning something new in your thread.
 

sun rise

The world is on fire
Premium Member
Are people's near death experiences true visions of the afterlife or are they a deception from satan?

I don't believe in a satan as an active entity opposing a God who is also an entity separate from creation. My conception is that God is in everyone's heart. We don't experience the divine because our hearts are covered with 'curtains' that in the East is called "maya" - that which creates and sustains illusion.

I remember the day, the first day I believed that NO ONE goes to hell forever.

I see it that way as well. In the afterlife, we review our just passed lives. If our lives have been on balance positive, we experience great joy that is labeled heaven. If our lives have been negative, we experience regret etc that seems eternal and is labeled hell. But once we've reviewed and learned from the experience, we no longer have those deep, deep emotions.

Even from a Christian perspective, C. S. Lewis wrote in the "Great Divorce" about hell being a state where we refuse to give up something tiny - we choose to remain there. He wrote:

“There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, “Thy will be done,” and those to whom God says, in the end, “Thy will be done.” All that are in Hell, choose it. Without that self-choice there could be no Hell. No soul that seriously and constantly desires joy will ever miss it. Those who seek find. To those who knock it is opened.”
― C.S. Lewis, The Great Divorce

What makes you think those are the only two options?

Yes.
 

Hockeycowboy

Witness for Jehovah
Premium Member

TagliatelliMonster

Veteran Member
These types of Near Death Experiences are called Veridical Near Death Experiences. Something paranormal is going on.

That website presents nothing but anecdotes. Which are just bare claims without evidence.

When extremely outlandish claims are being made without evidence, the most likely answer is not that the claims are correct. The most likely answer is that those making the claim are either mistaken or lying.

And if the things for which they are claiming to have explanations, also actually have substantiated scientific explanations that do NOT require the assumptions of outlandish phenomena that nobody has ever even come close to demonstrating........

Well.... you know what the rational conclusion then is / should be.
 

Fool

ALL in all
Premium Member
Hi everyone!

I am almost literally, obsessed with this topic. I can't help it! It's practically all I think about in my spare time, all I research and meditate on. Obviously it's extremely important to me lol, and now that I have found your wondeful site I finally found the place to discuss it with the right mix of people. Thank you for that guys!!! Whoop whoop you all rock no matter what you believe ❤

Here is the question:

Are people's near death experiences true visions of the afterlife or are they a deception from satan?

Feel free to skip the rest of this post and answer if you like

To me, there is no more important question to be asked/answered.

A little back story. (Or a lot sorry guys)- I was once a devout christian. 10 years ago if you told me that I would not be a christian today, I would have genuinely laughed at you. I was a true believer, sincere and as pure of heart as a person can be. But I had this nagging splinter in my spiritual mind. Every time I heard the doctrine of hell preached, I think I literally raised a shield over my heart unconsciously. Once that became a conscious phenomenon, I decided I had to do something about it. Namely, study, pray, and search.

I found The Restitution of All Things by Andrew Jukes. What a balm that book was to my soul!!! I devoured it. I discovered early christian philosophies, and Origen. That was all new to me.

At that time it turned out that it was only a matter of misinterpretation! Fire and brimstone are cleansing and purifying. Jesus is the jubilee of jubilees! So many other things I have since forgotten. But it was BEAUTIFUL!!!!

I remember the day, the first day I believed that NO ONE goes to hell forever. Very clearly I remember it! I got into my car, drove around, and every single person I saw made me weep with joy! I was a weeping lunatic lol. Looking at everyone, saying I will see you in heaven! And you and you and YOU and you and you.... Lol. It was a magically beautiful moment.

So naturally, being brimming over with joy at this good news I brought it to the elders, and my brother, who at the time was in school getting his bachelors degree. He was actively studying greek and hebrew and fully immersed in it.

These people who I fully trusted, were able to systematically shut me down. I wasn't studying greek and hebrew. I wasn't going to school or had not graduated from school, with the qualifications to make keen observations. By and large, the answer I remember, when I pressed them in my exuberant passion, was "His ways are not our ways and His thoughts are not our thoughts". That's when I was doing well lol. When I was really making them work for it.

I think one day, and it wasn't a fully conscious decision, I said "I do not believe this". I was teaching music ministry to youth group at the time. Just one DAY! POP! was GONE. Talk about a crisis.

Now skip to the end! If you've read all this I thank you kindly. Sorry for being verbose but I feel context is necessary.

So I "popped" out of christianity. I think it was 2 years later or so, when I finally had to have the talk with my parents. That I no longer believed. Boy, that was hard.

So after that whole ordeal, I found myself wandering and searching. I found little to stimulate me spiritually. I looked into different faiths, ba'hai particularly and bahaullah (sorry if spelled wrong). But nothing was speaking to my spirit, really. Nothing was stimulating me like Jesus did.

Until I found Near Death Experiences. It was kind of a eureka moment! Go straight to the horse's mouth. These people clinically died man! They were revived and able to tell their experiences.

To me, this was IT! No need to listen to people who lived thousands of years ago. These people, went there FIRST HAND.

So unless I am wanting to write a book, I should leave it there. So sorry!

Joe Schmoe who died in the O.R. and floated around the hospital, before being sucked up in the tunnel to meet the light... WHY IS HIS EXPERIENCE SATANIC. He says, that God is love and light, and not to worry about a thing. WHY can't we listen, to him?

When I found NDE's I soaked them up like a sponge. They resonate with my highest self. The truths that my spirit knows but cannot express.

Please guys! Tell me your thoughts. This is what my life is all about. I am also a talented artist and musician. I believe that God is putting tremendous pressure on me, so that I proclaim the real good news. My heart is decwptively wicked my brother would say. I create god in my own image in order to justify living a sinful life.

But how is wanting every single person who ever lived, to be reconciled to God, wicked in any way? I asked him that and he quoted scripture to me.

Sorry loves! I'm on fire over here. Again if yoy've read all of this THANK you for your time ❤


welcome to RF

enjoy the ride


 

shunyadragon

shunyadragon
Premium Member
Hi everyone!

I am almost literally, obsessed with this topic. I can't help it! It's practically all I think about in my spare time, all I research and meditate on. Obviously it's extremely important to me lol, and now that I have found your wondeful site I finally found the place to discuss it with the right mix of people. Thank you for that guys!!! Whoop whoop you all rock no matter what you believe ❤

Here is the question:

Are people's near death experiences true visions of the afterlife or are they a deception from satan?

Neither, ancient paradyme fears and an active imagination are not good motives to understand the unknown. NDE's are interpreted based on the individual's religious beliefs and culture..

To me, there is no more important question to be asked/answered.

I would try to find more important questions that need to be answer.
 
Last edited:

Vinayaka

devotee
Premium Member
I have studied this topic myself as I too am very interested. One thing I found when looking into this across different cultures and religions is that nde's tend to match the religion of the one having the experience.
That makes total sense. Just as dreams reflect the religion or paradigm of the person, there would be some subconscious carryover into the moment of death.
 

ComaToast

Zealous dogma prolongs pain and the path of fools
Wow this is awesome! Thanks so much everyone :hearteyes:

Going beyond that I have come to believe we will all find Liberation in the end. I also believe in a considerable period for each of us on the higher planes after death and eventually reincarnation.
I agree with this completely!

I haven’t studied NDEs, but I doubt they are from Satan. (That being said I see Satan as a metaphor for man’s lower nature and not an actual being).
:)
I'm on the fence about whether or not there is an actual persona for evil. If there is, didn't god create it for his purposes? If there is actually a "satan", I don't want him to burn in hell forever either.

You presented a false dichotomy and ignored the most likely explanation. They appear to be the natural result of the brain shutting down.
This doesn't explain the multitude of OBE (out of body experience) accounts there are though. People who observed events going on in other rooms of the hospital, and their own resuscitation efforts. Also, there are several accounts of blind people being able to see during their NDE. If we are not out bodies, this makes sense. Our bodies are vehicles? When the vehicle bites the dust we just get out lol.

What makes you think those are the only two options?



Neither. It's brain chemistry.
If you're talking about the brain releasing DMT during a death experience, and apoxia what not, that makes sense! I believe though through personal experience that god is real, yet I completely understand why atheists do not! I've had some far out stuff happen in my life, and as a very small child I remember feeling the love of god. Going to church to me was like "aha! So THAT'S what that is". If you have never had a spiritual experience, it only makes sense to not believe it.

NDEr's find it very hard to explain, but they say that they are absolutely certain that it wasn't a dream. That wherever they went was more "real" than this place. They have trouble articulating the LOVE they experience, nothing on earth compares there is no frame of reference. They also have a sense of being "home", of the whole thing being familiar. I think the most impressive evidence is how transformative it is for these people. It literally changes their whole lives, they are different people.

Those NDE's are often experienced through an individuals own religious concepts, which means that there is already an implanted expectation even in people who don't acknowledge it

I have studied this topic myself as I too am very interested. One thing I found when looking into this across different cultures and religions is that nde's tend to match the religion of the one having the experience.

Yes isn't that interesting!!! So it MUST be a lie from satan lol. The true god would appear consistently to everyone right? This is just evidence to me that it doesn't matter what we believe here.

I think the most interesting ones are the people who fly out into space and talk with the stars and galaxies, that's flipping AWESOME lol.
 
Top