The Truth... What is it?





 Near Death Experiences (NDE)

To whet your appetite for this topic, watch the first 5 minutes of the 2016 National Geographic Channel series, "The Story of God with Morgan Freeman", the episode "Beyond Death" (check You Tube and/or National Geographic).

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Lets face it, often with the slimmest, un-vetted, evidence of uncertain degree of TRUTH, we all decide what we want to believe about every controversial thing we come upon in life. Hence, there are those who believe something ONLY "if scientists say so" (which scientists?). Others disclaim the certainty of a God vs. the many religions that proclaim a God or gods. There are all of the political divisions, the multple ways countries are controlled/governed, etc. Somehow, each of us decides what to "believe". I present the following as what I think is good evidence. And, my goal is to make you aware of the status of "fully saved".

In Sept. 2014, I started a book by Scott Peck1 which mentioned the huge divide that entered the mind-set of western thinkers based on the Galileo Affair which began in 1610AD. This was an epic battle between the church of that day and secular philosophers. It lead to a "turf separation" that finds incompatibility between religion and science. Yet, Andrew B. Newberg2, highlighting the field of neurotheology, began a thinking bridge across this divide...and, more specifically as to NDEs.

My contacts with this issue/topic, reflecting a secular perspective of sorts, are detailed below. Importantly, while NDEs tend to have a typical pattern across all cultures and far back into ancient history, each NDE can be "non-typical"; HERE is an example of one type. NDEs are "near death" & do not require that any professional declared "death". After his being "dead" for 20 minutes, he wonderfully declared the experience as a "near life" experience [story HERE]. Here is a public collection of NDEs. To date, no scientist has been able to stimulate the brain and reproduce any of the following:

  1. Dr. Raymond Moody published his groundbreaking book in 1975, and I bought & read it shortly afterward. I have experienced a single, isolated, short, after-death communication from my father. And I happened to walk into the ICU during a near death herald event my mother was having. My wife has had a single, isolated, short Divine communication in a dream. A close professional colleague physician has been near death twice & actually had a classical near death experience with the first event. My now-deceased aunt, Alice Brown Beaty, told me in about 1998 of a patient describing her experience to my aunt when Aunt Alice was a student nurse [no knowledge of NDE back then in the 1930s] . Dr. Moody's web site; Dr. Jeffrey Long's NDE website; another near death experiences (NDE) website; a forensic pathologist's book noting NDE details from families of some she autopsied. Here is a Wikipedia page of the topic. There is a book, Proof of Heaven, written by Eben Alexander, M. D. Before Easter 2014, the movie, Heaven is For Real came out (based on the true story of a 4 year old Nebraska boy, Colton Burpo, telling what he saw during his emergency appendectomy). Here (Feb. 2014) is a You Tube video of the nurse and a patient describing his NDE. HERE is a web site (NDE Stories) that collects stories by individuals (especially see the NDE story of Dr. Mary Neal...her son's future death was disclosed to her). And then read below the instances that I personally know of.

    In the fall of 2009, I was amazed to find an e-mail from Dr. Moody's office in my "in box":

    "Dr. Shaw,
    Would you like to be listed as a case study in the publisher's press release for
    this book? What that means is that your name and contact phone number and
    personal story will be included in our press material so reporters can call you
    and discuss your experience in particular and these experiences in general.

    We want to make sure that the people we call upon to discuss this book are
    reputable and credentialed, and you are both. Interested?

    Paul Perry"

    I responded (items 2-5):

    "Dear Paul: I'd be honored for you to use my story, and you may use my name and
    ID. I have re-tooled the story slightly, below. Feel free to cite me at my
    permanent-URL website where I have some miracles  & spiritual stuff. I'd
    look forward to seeing the edited version. The pastor I mention in the last
    paragraph below has loads of remarkable stories involving dying church folk and
    secular folk, and it might be well worth your time to see what he has (I did not
    get the impression that he has ANY intent to publish...I'd be willing to check
    with him for you). Anyhow, here is the slightly re-tooled version:

    "Dear Dr. Moody: I am a pathologist age 65 in my 35th year of community hospital
    practice. I read your book back in the 1970s.
  2. My aunt who died the summer [Aunt Alice Brown Beatty] of 2009 told me in 1980 about her experience in about 1942 as a student nurse with a patient that turned out to be the typical near death story. The lady swore my aunt to secrecy because, in those days (at least in our area of the South), community people would have thought that lady patient was 'going crazy' [if determined to be crazy, people were sent to 'insane asylums' such as 'Bull Street' in Columbia...now William S. Hall Institute].
  3. In 1993, I had been urgently summoned from Columbia to Sumter 45 miles away about my father. I was in the Tuomey Hospital hall when the red 'code light' came on about 4AM over the closed door of my father's hospital room (he was age 81 & in the 5th year of his decline into death, nearly blind from macular degeneration & due for insertion of a PEG feeding tube, an end-of-life issue over which my mother & I had strongly disagreed). My mother & I rushed for the door (Daddy had had some type of "sinking spell" about 2 hours prior & was unconscious when I arrived about 15 minutes earlier). As the door opened, the nurse was slightly restraining him, and he was sitting up pointing straight ahead with a profoundly startled stare on his face, like..."My God! Do you see what I see?" Then he sank back in the bed and was dead in another 5 minutes. I was maritally separated & living on a houseboat and newly & intensely back in church after a 25 year hiatus. I worried whether Daddy had seen Satan. In the middle of the night 6-12 months later, I guess, I was startled instantly awake & sat straight up to the sound of my father's voice, 'Bud!, how are y'all down there?' The 'down there' comforted me for years, and I've never heard anything more.
    I tell you the above several items as a preface to the following:
  4. Last night (11/28/09) I heard the most amazing presentation by a long-time Lutheran hospice chaplain, Rev. Mark Bredholt in central South Carolina. The core of his talk was, 'Yes, I testify that it is TRUE that we go on to the afterlife...we are eternal beings just as the Bible indicates'. I think he noted that he'd been with over 12,000 persons during their dying days. And he noted that, so often, it was a beautiful, almost shared experience.
  5. In early 2011, I was again amazed to have an e-mail show up in my "in box" from R. A. "Dick" Pregnall. Dick invited me to a course that he was teaching on NDE. He'd read my story in Moody's new book. Dick was a Christian layman member of Shandon Methodist Church in downtown Columbia, S.C., and a retired ceramics engineer with a heavy-duty education and career understanding of nuclear physics and advanced mathematics. It was an incredible course!...completely convincing of the afterlife & able to use physics to characterize the afterlife as constituting another dimension in which the soul can go to dwell. Dying in early 2013, Dick now knows the truth, first hand!
  6. Shortly after the few weeks of this course by Dick Pregnall was concluded, my Dr. colleague, Leon Bullard, told me of his NDE years ago when on ventilator life support for pneumonia at Baptist Hospital in Columbia. He went down the tunnel of light and and saw his mother waving to him and dressed in her favorite red dress. Then she indicated that it was not yet "time"; and my friend awoke and was extubated from ventilator support shortly after. He personally underwent another totally different near-death event many years later without any hint of NDE. Interestingly, he has become head of the "hospice" end of life program at our hospital!
  7. In mid Dec. 2011, my mother had a NDE "herald event fore-indicating incredible love" in The Lexington Medical Center ICU (West Columbia, S.C.) two days after emergency removal of a blood clot in the main artery to her left leg. As I approached to visit, our hired sitter in the room signaled to me that Momma was NOT asleep...her eyes were simply closed. "Momma?" She opened her eyes and looked up at me with a look slightly like I'd interrupted something she was doing. "Momma, are you feeling OK?" She said, "I think I'm about to go." "Momma...you can't go home yet; there is some recovery that needs to happen." "No, son; I mean that I think I'm about to die." "Momma, why do you say that!?" "Because I have just been lying here with my eyes closed and experiencing the greatest love I have ever experienced...a love for me and also I just feel such amazing love for everyone!" I wonder if Momma was getting a pre-death glimpse of what is alluded to in I Corinthians 13:12-13. Momma died very peacefully about a week later on Dec. 28th, 2011. I wonder if this experience Momma experienced amounted to "a foretaste of the feast to come" [John 2:1-11, preview of Heaven...the best is saved for the last] when true Jesus beleivers...indwelt by the Holy Spirit...will commune in perfect harmony [SEE HOW !] with the God of love. Check an even more powerful, somewhat similar event, HERE.

    At the end of 2011, Momma died peacefully with my wife & sister in the hospital room. Maybe six months after she died, I had a short vivid dream-like vision that instantly awoke me: I had seen Momma sitting in normal clothing and seeming like she and the group were maybe in their late 50s. None of the others looked familiar to me. What stayed in my mind was that Momma was "in a good place" and was "fitting in nicely".
  8. While visiting my wife's best friend, Patti Strickler, in Swickley, PA., May 2012, she told of a dream about 6 months after her father died in 1998. In the "visitation dream", there was a gathering. And all the people Patti could see in the scene had their backs toward Patti. And her father was heading toward Patti...smiling & dressed in a sport coat. The dream stopped, was comforting, and there has been nothing since.
  9. The devotional reading for May 24th in Sarah Young's outstanding devotional book, Jesus Calling..., mentions a 5th dimension of "openness to My (God's) Presence" (the culmination of which [Heaven] is highly remindful of the one alluded to in Dick Pregnall's workshop, above (#6). Sarah, in the quasi-fictitional style of her outstanding devotional book (Jesus Calling, Enjoying Peace in His Presence), has Jesus saying, "There are actually more than four dimensions in this world in which you live. In addition to the three dimensions of space and the dimension of time, there is the dimension of openness to My Presence."
  10. On June 29,  2012, six months after my mother's death, I had a brief dream in which I seemed to be an observer of a group of maybe 10...maybe they were all women, mostly seated on something like a couch. It was almost as if they were posing for an old-timey photo. My mother looked happy...as if she was "fitting in" nicely. I'd say she looked to be in her 70s to early 80s. I did not hear anything. Then the dream was over. I was happy with what I saw. I now interpret it as a "comfort vision"...not a real-time vision from the afterlife, but an image given to me that I would understand and that would comfort me.
  11. On 9/6/2013, my coworker (Sandy Hazzard) told me of what I think is a type of divine "comfort communication". Her husband, Bard's, mother died earlier. After her death, Bard did 3 specific things in memory of his just deceased mother. On a recent day, they got out a couple of copies of their monthly devotional magazine and tossed them onto the counter...one copy landed open. Guess what! The devotional was contributed by someone that neither Sandy nor Bard knew who had done the 3, exactly same, things in memory of his own mother. I would call this a "comfort sign" reminding of the assurrance of "the thereafter".
  12. In late June 2012, our friend, Doris Fletcher, called to check on our family and to ask if I knew of any (hospice-like) sitting opportunities (Doris was a sitter with my mother-in-law, Lallah L. Drafts). As we were concluding our talk on the telephone, she off-handedly mentioned that she'd like to get together before long so that she could tell me about her own experience getting a view of heaven (a foretelling comfort vision?). We finally did in 2014. In maybe 2011, Doris was having breathing issues and underwent bronchoscopy to suction out the airways in her lungs. After the procedure, she felt fantastic. But, shortly she began to feel like she was suffocating. The person in the room screamed for nurses. Doris remembers a sensation that she was "traveling". She looked around and saw vivid light and colors and then could tell that she was approaching a bright light. Then, seeming to come from the direction of the light was a voice clearly and unmistakably saying, "Go back and tell what you saw. Some will believe you and some won't. When I walked the earth, some people believed me and some did not." Doris says that, during this time, her son and two daughters were called and rushed to the hospital. Because Doris had a living will, medical personell could not administer some type of injection. The brother was against it, and a daughter was for it. So, the other daughter insisted that they quickly pray for guidance. The two daughters then felt strongly that their mother needed the chance to continue to help others. The injection was given, and Doris recovered and continues to help others with her smile and upbeat, caring presence!
  13. My wife, Betty Drafts Shaw, recalls the death of her brother, Everett Drafts, in a motorcycle accident. Their mother, Lallah, in fear of afterlife consequences of his wild life, prayed ONLY for his soul and not for his life. Lallah had a dream-type visitation (a comfort vision?) 2-3 years later in which she saw Everett "up" above her while she was "down" below him. This was a source of peace for Lallah.
  14. My wife, Betty Drafts Shaw, asleep in her house prior to our marriage in 1997 and having been fearful for years for her teen-aged daughter's life, had something like a dream. Betty saw an apparition come through her closed bedroom window, robed & with hair on the wrist as the hand reached toward her. A voice told Betty to stop worrying, "I have this under control".
  15. In the summer of 2012, someone tipped me off that there is speculation that famous businessman, Steve Jobs, verbalized a NDE (or near death vision) as he died; HERE is that story.
  16. At the end of August 2012, having noted my mother's herald event to her in an e-mail, a distant Kolb cousin (Ellen Bohon of Goose Creek, S. C., a second cousin once removed [2C1R]) responded: "I read, with interest, your accounts of NDEs.  My brother, Ken, passed away last October and I remember him saying that he had experienced actually dying and coming back earlier that year, while in the hospital [a NDE?].  My father passed away of cancer at Tuomey in 1992, and I remember him saying shortly before passing that love is all there is [did he have an experience similar to my mother's, #11, above?].  And my mom died of heart failure here at Trident; and the morning she died, she told me not to leave the room.  She knew that she was about to pass.  She looked at me and told me I was an angel.  I thought at the time that she was expressing gratitude for my staying there and taking care of her, but now I'm not really sure what she was really seeing."
  17. On 12/27/2012, I had a conversation with a long-time lab colleague, Laura Paterek, whose mother-in-law had died 12/22/2012. We somehow got into a brief discussion about NDE. She related that her mother-in-law (during her last hours of life) seemed asleep (eyes closed) but very agitated and vaguely verbalizing what seemed like a conflict over her wanting to go to sleep vs. wanting to NOT fall asleep. She kept mentioning her father and mother as if she could see them but was not able to get to them. We both wonder if she was in and out of a recurring NDE.
  18. On 11/3/2013, All Saint's Sunday, our interim Pastor, Pastor Jane Mitcham, told her personal story for the first time in public. "My Mom sufferred from a series of strokes and spent the last 2.5 years of her life unable to speak…unable to walk….and with limited ability to even feed herself. The day she died was a – a real blessing. A few weeks later, I was leading a council retreat for one of our North Carolina congregations down on the coast. We stayed in an ocean front motel. I woke up early on that November Saturday morning and sneaked out on the beach. The tide was out...the sky was gray...the water was a little rough...so, most of the shells on the beach were broken. And I walked along halfway talking to my mother and halfway praying to God. 'I know you're OK,' I said to her. 'I know you're up there talking everybody's ears off...I know that. But, God', I said, 'I need a sign that she's OK and I know what I want. I want a whole sand dollar.' In less than 10 steps I looked down and right there in front of me was this whole sand dollar. I picked it up...looked up...and smiled...at my mom and God." I would call this as an example of a "requested comfort sign, fulfilled " reminding of the assurance of "the thereafter".
  19. On February (28th?), 2014 on the TV show, The Kelly File, Brian Miller, a truck driver from Ohio, told his story of cardiac arrest maybe a day following heart catheterization to open up a "widow maker" coronary artery blockage that had gone completely successfully. Onset off the arrest was due to ventricular fibrillation ("V-fib"). CPR was instituted immediately & with cardioversion "shocking" four times & could not convert to a normal rhythm (he either lost electrical activity in his heart or had the useless V-fib activity for 45 minutes). Then his heart beat spontaneously returned. His doctors proclaimed him a miracle! During the 45 minute death, he walked toward a light & went into an area of beauty. A lady & man came to him, and the lady said, "You have to go back; it is not your time yet." The couple were his in-laws, the mother-in-law having died the month prior and the father-in-law years before. Both looked 20 years younger. There is a 20 minute interview on YouTube of Brian on a radio talk show, HERE.
  20. My now-deceased cousin Jane Jeffress Thomas told me in April 2014 of an audible & palpable "visitation" from our grandmother, "Wuh" Brown. Wuh was in Sumter, S. C. & Jane in Louisianna. "I was asleep and at the moment of Wuh's death, she patted me and said, 'I'm alright.' I was sound asleep and just sat up in the bed wide awake. A while later, Momma called crying. When I asked her what was the matter, she said she had gotten the call that Wuh had died. I asked her did she know what time, and it was the time I was waked up." [This was April 30th, 1982. This seems to me to be a sort of comfort near death vision experienced by a family member (grand-daughter).]
  21. My longtime friend and former co-worker, Leslie DeBord Miller, told me on 15 June 2014 of a dream she had of her Uncle the night before he died. In the dream, her uncle seemed fine but was...very oddly for him...wearing a red shirt and black pants. The next day, Leslie heard that her uncle had died. Remembering the dream, she said, "What was he wearing?" He was wearing a red shirt & black pants (just as in the dream). This seems to me to be some type of near death herald information designed to cause some reflective thinking in the family.
  22. On 9/16/2014, my fellow Shaw Family genealogy enthusiast friend, Robin Wallace, tells me via a Face Book post: "Last summer when my brother's struggle with heart failure was ending, we all stood at his bedside. During his last few breaths, his daughter saw him open his eyes for the first time in 2-3 days. She said she did not know what he saw, but what ever it was, was wonderful. Robin: "He has visited me once since his death, leaving me a physical sign so I would know it was him."
  23. On 1 Oct. 2014, my former longtime coworker, Linda Rhinehart Kelly sent this: "Several years ago, Karla [another coworker] invited me to her mom and dad's lake house one night.... now that I think about it, it was probably when she and Hal were building their house and stayed at the lake house during that time. I live just 4 miles or so from there... she gave me directions and I headed over around 8pm for coffee. I followed her directions but came to a fork in the road (dirt roads I think). I knew I should turn left, but had such an overwhelming feeling come over me I just stopped. It was pure fear like I had never felt before. Couldn't go any further even though I knew her directions were right. The longer I sat there the worse the feeling was, so I turned around and went back home. Karla told me I had turned around in the drive way to the farm house where Shari was killed. I had no idea where the event had taken place. I think the farm house was partially covered by vines and such, it did not draw my attention. Just a horrible feeling is all I felt." Shari Smith and Debra May Helmick were killed during a 28-day rein of terror as a man (later caught: Larry Gene Bell) telephoned taunts to the Smith family. This generated this biggest manhunt in S. C. history. Could this be some sort of years post death "spiritual sharing connection" that would result in even more people-connecting feelings within a culture?
  24. On Oct. 10, 2014, I noticed a report in USA Today newspaper of a medical study at University of Southampton in the United Kingdom. They studied 2060 cases of cardiac arrest from 15 hospitals. Of the 330 survivors, about 40% recalled some sort of awareness during their "death" period. Of that 40% (about 820 cases), 46% (379) had atypical memories not commonly associated with NDEs; 9% (about 74 cases) had usual NDEs, HERE.
  25. My first cousin once-removed, W. Reid Patrick, had the terrible experience of his son dying of influenza Jan. 2014. Reid and Alice told me of a precious happening that their neighbor, Mrs. Pringle Franklin, witnessed. The wife of a physician, Pringle is very health conscious; and she jogs every day. She was in the habit of her jogging route taking her close enough to MUSC to drop in at the ICU to see young Reid (in a coma). She happened to come into his area just as he died and briefly witnessed an apparition that looked just like Jesus over him as she came into his ICU bay. Was this possibly a comforting divine "vision of assurance" left for the comfort of the family?
  26. On Dec. 9, 2014, I finished a book2 about famous WWII Gen. George Patton. On page 326, there is detail of immediate post-death visitations by Patton to his daughters, Ruth Ellen and Beatrice. Before she had even heard the news, Ruth Ellen awoke and saw him standing at the foot of her bed in full uniform: "I sat up in bed--I could see him plainly When I saw I was looking at him he gave me the sweetest smile I have ever seen". Beatrice said the telephone woke her from a sound sleep. She picked it up and there was a lot of static, as if it were an overseas call, and she heard George's voice ask, "Little Bee, are you alright?" That was it. But when she called the overseas operator so as to reconnect, she was told that there had not been any overseas call to her line.HERE.
  27. My first cousin ("Bob" R. T. Brown the 3rd) told me in Feb. 2015 about a severe bicycle accident on a bridge in 1978 at about age 37 (not wearing a helmet). Taken by someone to an Emergency Room, there were multiple severe full-thickness lacerations and avulsion flaps involving the upper third of the face, forehead and scalp. The accident made him fly over the handlebars striking his skull and face on the pavement, sustaining skull fracture as well as fracture of the right side of the frontal sinus, superorbital rim on the right, and the right zygoma. "I had my own NDE. I almost didn't make it through the night. I was injured so badly and was passing in and out of consciousness. No heavenly visions or such but just the most seductive and pain free state that was there for me if I would just let go. Also, my own inner voice kept waking me up saying: 'You are only 39 years old. You have a lot of things to do'."

    On 4/28/2016, Bob's beloved wife died. During the night of May 12th (two weeks after her death), Bob was awakened suddenly by a vision of Barbara. He got up and cut all lights on and checked troughut their home...also checking the cremains. "Barbara's expression was one that was typical for her when she was her normal personality. When she was content and happy, she had a kind of Mona Lisa smile. I think she had that expression. It was definitely not the tormented and fearful expression that she had over the last year and a half." Is this another example of a comfort vision?


  28. My sister, Millie Shaw Berg, told me on 10 August 2015 of a miraculous event the day before. Background: for unknown reasons, in our mother's eyes, Millie was the child who could do no "right"; and I was the one who could do no "wrong". It was sad to see and hear confidential stories about this negativity during mine & Millie's visits and phone calls. After marriage, Millie lived out of state until maybe 2000. The Bergs dutifully came home for visits, and Millie & Momma danced there completely negative dance after the first hour home. Momma died at the end of 2011. From then until this Divinely delivered post death release event, we'd talk...get into negative thinking or memories and then say, "But Momma is dead, now." On 9 August 2015, Millie happened to see Samantha "Sam" Blackwell, one of the wonderful group of black women who provided loving and understanding care during Momma's last two years and great comfort to our family for the beloved inter-racial trust and bonds that many Southern whites feel toward our local black brethren. Millie & Sam chat, and Sam says, "Millie, I wanted to tell you something your momma told me on 2nd shift the evening before she died. Your momma made the comment with a lot of genuine excitement & tone of love. She said, 'Sam, I'm going to see my Daddy tomorrow!'" With tears, Millie told this to me & Betty, and aunts Net and Johnnie Brown in Net's room at Covenant Place. Millie: "After Sam told me this, I thought, 'Momma acted negative about Poppoo [her Daddy] sort of like to me. If she loves him that much, then she really did love me, too!' Instantly, I felt that weight of a negative mother-daughter relationship lift off of me and set me free!" While not an NDE, I would call this a Divinely arranged message & meaning conferred about the dead person via an intermediary.
  29. On May 14, 2016, my wife Betty & I were visiting my then 96 year old aunt, Net K. Brown in Sumter; and we were discussing the recent death of her daughter-in-law (#28, above). Net told us of being suddenly awakened some months after the death of her husband by a non-disturbing vision of him. She vividly recalls noticing how blue his eyes looked. Is this another example of a comfort vision?
  30. On September 10, 2015, I was editing my website and noted a NDE in Kristin Harvey's miracle survival, HERE.
  31. Also, while editing my website on September 26th 2015, I saw of former church mate's, Mrs. Manley's, experience of the white light with a message of assurance following her 5th chemotherapy treatment, HERE.
  32. On September 26, 2016, I had an email exchange with a sweet former coworker, Annette Williams. She and her sister, Susan, were still going through the traumatic loss of their beloved father. Annettet told of a couple of "comfort visions/experiences", ythe following particularly grabbing my heart: "Several weeks after dad passed, I pushed myself to Sunday school. I wanted to hear a new series on Paul. I made it, and I thought, 'I don't feel like staying for service'; so headed to the car. Got in the car and something impressed me to go back in. Something said...not audibly, '...probably others feel just as bad or worse; go back in.' Well I went back and sat down in time for pastor to say, 'This morning we are starting our service off a little different. Lucy will come and play clare de lune on the piano.' Wow! Susan and I had played this tune at the funeral home on iPhone while visiting Dad at his coffin. He loved classical music, and he paid for us to learn to play. I felt God speak to me at the service, reminding me that He is with us and Dad is not far away. "
  33. In January 2017, I heard the story of my grandmother Brown ("Wuh") awakening suddenly in the night of the Normandy invasion with a (?) "message" that caused her to exclaim to my grandfather, "Rob! Something has happened to Bill!" It would later be known that her glider pilot son, Bill Brown [details here], had crashed beyond the beaches of Normandy and been seriously injured (but not killed). Was this a twist on a comfort message?
  34. In addition to the instance, above, there have been a number of NDEs had by physicians. Especially striking is that experienced by Dr. Eben Alexander (neurosurgeon), HERE: beginning at 5:00, the Dr. describes later finding out that he...as an adoptee...had a birth sister he'd NEVER met or seen a photo of. His NDE guide was a hauntingly beautiful woman. The Dr. was later able to locate a photo of his never-seen birth sister & it matched the guide exactly! How would chemical reactions in his brain have done that? Dr. Alexander has written a book (2012), Proof of Heaven: A SCIENTIST’S CASE FOR THE AFTERLIFE.
  35. Pat M. Harder's experience: Pat's husband Henry & I have been best friends since 3rd grade; Pat & Henry often spend a night with us on the way to see family in Asheville, N. C. In June 2017, Pat told us of a visitation. My wife's mother, Lallah L. Drafts, spent her last 18 month's in our detached apartment. In a prior vist earlier in 2017, Pat was sleeping soundly and saw an old lady's face approaching her face and saying over & over, "I don't believe I know you." Pat had never seen Lallah. Betty got a picture of Lallah in old age, and Pat exclaimed, "That is her...the one in my dream or vision!!!" I'm not sure how to label this visitation.
  36. Tamara Laroux's experience (VIDEO): in state of deep sin, she attempted suicide with pistol & got a glimpse of Hell! (?) and Howard Storm has hellish NDE and converts from aggressive atheism, HERE.
  37. A 2010 report about Jeffrey Long, MD, a radiation oncologist in Houma, Louisiana, that he has become convinced that the phenomenon known as near-death experience (NDE) establishes the reality of an afterlife. Between 2000-2010, Dr. Long studied thousands of accounts of NDEs and created the Near Death Experience Research Foundation (NDERF), which has become the largest NDE research database in the world. Dr. Long's new book, Evidence of the Afterlife, which is based on more than 1300 accounts of NDEs that were shared with the NDERF, became a New York Times bestseller almost immediately after its release. [The Medscape REPORT...the 9 lines of evidence...on Dr. Long & Wikipedia]
  38. Dr. Sam Parnia and the AWARE study: Wikipedia; Dr. Parnia admits that he cannot prove illusion vs. NDE.
  39. George Marion Drafts (August 2019): my wife's 80 year old cowboy & cattleman brother had emergency surgery for intestinal obstruction near the end of July 2019. He was doing well postop until about 4AM of the 3rd day. He suddenly went into shock and was rushed to the ICU and onto a repirator. A few hours later, major abdominal exploratory surery found that the bowel reconnection was leaking, causing septic shock. At one point in the first hours postop, George almost died. He gradually recovered. About 3 weeks later, as George was about to be transferred from the hospital to a companion rehab facility, George & I and his pastor, Bill Padgett (a Vietnam "tunnel rat" & pastor of Steadman Baptist Church), were talking about what people go through. George said, "The doc said I came about two breaths away rom dyin g. But, I've seen both 'sides", and the 'other side' is total peace. So, I didn't care if I came back or not."
  40. Don Hunt (his wife is older sister of Ronnie Monts) loved to fish. His wife mentioned the topic o NDE one time, & Don q uickly responded, "I don't believe in that!" During a heart failure episode, he had to be electro-shocked a coupl e of times. He told his wife Sharon later that he arose up out of his body during the procedure and could see the people working on him below. Then he was in a fishing boat headed toward a white light; and everything seemed totally peaceful!

Refrences:

  1. M. Scott Peck, M. D. (deceased), People of the Lie, A Touchstone book, 1983, 270 pages.
  2. Andrew Newberg explains as to NDEs, on an 18 Sept. 2014 appearence on the Dr. Oz Show...the episode is on Dr. Oz's web site, HERE. The star of the interview was an investigative journalist with a lifelong fright of death who interviewed around 100 people with NDEs and wrote the book, Glimpsing Heaven... Also in the video, one man had a NDE in which he was told that he'd develope cancer, and he did later and survived.
  3. Killing Patton, by Bill O'Reilly and Martin Dugard, 352 pages, Henry Holt & Co. LLC, 2014.
  4. Dinesh D'Souza, Life After Death: The Evidence, 2009, 269 pages & very readable.

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[posted 14 April 2012; latest adjustment 26 August 2019]