Jeremy L. Berg

I am currently teaching a 4-week class on the topic of Heaven with our high school students. What a fascinating and inexhaustible topic to explore!  Among many questions that this raises is ‘What happens immediately upon death?’  Of course, Christians believe the soul lives on beyond the last heart beat and cessation of brain activity.  But is there evidence for this beyond the claims of the Bible?

In my study and research for class this week I realized that Dinesh D’Souza has just released a new book entitled Life After Death: The Evidence which attempts to substantiate belief in life beyond physical death on more scientific grounds rather than merely faith and Scripture.  A recent Huffington post article called “Life After Death: A View From the Edge” by D’Souza summarizes the argument of the book. D’Souza was interviewed on Fox News and you can view the video here. Newsweek covered the book with an article by Jerry Adler entitled Heaven Can Wait. D’Souza bases part of his argument on the study of near life experiences (NDEs).  As Adler writes:

People with NDEs sometimes report out-of-body experiences, such as looking down on themselves from above and witnessing their own resuscitations. Obviously, if this is actually taking place—and not, say, a composite reconstruction of memories drawn from years of ER episodes—then the threshold requirement for life after death has been met: the separation of consciousness from the physical brain. “Near-death experiences show that clinical death may not be the end,” D’Souza writes. Thus they support his larger point, that “neuroscience reveals that the mind cannot be reduced to the brain … consciousness and free will … seem to operate outside the laws of nature, and therefore are not subject to the laws governing the mortality of the body.”

A study of NDEs reveal many common elements shared by those who have crossed over the threshold and come back to tell about it: moving through tunnels, seeing themselves from outside their bodies, being dazzling by bright lights, meeting deceased relatives, reliving their entire life in an instant and so on.  Read more HERE.  I figured why I was in the mood I better check out Don Piper’s best selling book 90 Minutes in Heaven which has been sitting on my shelf for months — not least because I have been a bit skeptical of this type of book.  Piper shares his own heavenly experience after he was pronounced dead at the scene of his car accident only to come back to life 90 minutes later.  Interesting stuff to say the least.

So, one has to wonder how much should be made of these NDEs and strange stories from beyond the grave. Have such folks actually been given a sneak peak of the Heaven Christians believe in?  What do you think of the reliability of the thousands of stories of near death experiences?  Have you read Don Piper’s 90 Minutes in Heaven? What did you think of this book?

“We are confident, I say, and would prefer to be away from the body and at home with the Lord” (2 Corinthians 5:8).