(OPINION) For over three decades, John Burke has studied thousands of near-death experiences (NDEs) and discovered a striking commonality among them all: Every individual, regardless of their religious background, experiences the God of the Bible.
“I interviewed 70 people on every continent and found that they all encountered the same God, regardless of their culture, ethnicity, or religious background. God is the God of all nations,” Burke told The Christian Post.
Burke, who founded Gateway Church with his wife, Kathy, a multisite church in Austin, Texas, recounts some of these stories in his book Imagine the God of Heaven: Near-Death Experiences, God’s Revelation, and the Love You’ve Always Wanted.
These stories range from that of a Hindu engineer who encounters a “brilliant god of lightning” to that of a nurse in Brownsville who is told by Jesus Himself to spread the message of love and redemption.
Burke said these stories are part of his broader argument that NDEs are God’s “new global apologetic,” intended to affirm His existence, the reality of the afterlife, and His desire for a relationship with every person.
“They all say, ‘I never wanted to leave His presence and of all the beauty I experienced, all of these great reunions with people I love who’ve gone on before me, nothing could compare to just being in this presence,” Burke said.
He clarified that while every individual encounters the God of the Bible during an NDE, he is not suggesting they will end up in Heaven. Burke said he doesn’t believe these people are experiencing an “entrance into eternity” or a “tunnel of death.” Rather, they’re encountering “something in between.”
“This can confuse some Christians,” he said. “But I like to remind them that the Apostle Paul did not believe in Jesus. He was arresting Christians and having them jailed and killed when the same God of brilliant light appeared to him on the Damascus Road in Acts 9. When Paul asks, ‘Who are you, Lord?’ He says, ‘I’m Jesus.’ But Jesus didn’t tell him what to do, and He didn’t explain the message of the Gospel to him.
“I believe God is saying to the world, ‘I’m real. Heaven is real. Hell is real. And I love every person from every nation, and I want you to be my child through what I did through Jesus, so you can turn your heart back to me and be made right with me.’”
Once an agnostic engineer, Burke’s quest for truth began in the most personal of settings — a hospital room beside his dying father. It was there, amid the struggle of impending loss, he said, that he encountered the first seeds of what would become a lifelong investigation into the evidence of an afterlife and the reality of God.
“Over the last 35 years, I’ve just had this insatiable curiosity to figure out, OK, what are these near-death experiences, and how do they sit with what the Bible’s been saying all along?” he said.
Imagine the God of Heaven, endorsed by Lee Strobel, Carey Nieuwhof, and medical doctors, is a follow-up to Burke’s New York Times bestselling book Imagine Heaven, which has sold more than 1 million copies. (READ MORE)
