Does consciousness continue after the heart stops and brainwaves cease? This crucial question is both metaphysical and empirical in nature. The Bible tells us that life doesn’t end when our bodies die and that our souls live on. Paul states in 2 Corinthians 5:8 that it is preferable “to be away from the body and home with the Lord.” And Jesus reassured the thief on the cross, “Today you will be with Me in paradise.” (Luke 23:43).
As secular philosophy has gained popularity over the last few centuries, the existence of an afterlife has been argued away through science and naturalism. However, over the last two decades, there has been an increase in the percentage of people who believe in an afterlife regardless of whether they are considered religious or not. There is a growing wave of near-death experiences (NDE’s), as improvements in medical science save more people through emergency surgeries and better resuscitation techniques.
VERDICAL PERCEPTION
Survivors have written countless books and report out of body experiences and visits to heaven and hell. Recent developments in neuroscience have precipitated new ideas of consciousness and its continuation after physical death. Although reluctant to change, the scientific community is beginning to accept that some of the things described by people who have had out of body experiences simply could not be conjured up in their minds. This phenomenon is referred to as veridical perception and should be impossible based on our understanding of how the brain works. However, in hundreds of instances, the testimonies of those who have shared their out of body experiences have been shown to be accurate.
In one out of body experience a migrant worker named Maria suffered a cardiac arrest, was subsequently resuscitated, and later told her critical care worker, Kimberly Clark, “how she had been able to look down from the ceiling and left the OR. She found herself outside the hospital and spotted a tennis shoe on the ledge of the north side of the building’s third floor and she described it in detail. Maria, not surprisingly, wanted to know whether she had ‘really’ seen the shoe, and asked Clark to go look. Quite skeptical, Clark went where Maria sent her, and found the tennis shoe, just as she’d described it. ‘The only way she could have had such a perspective,’ said Clark, ‘was if she had been floating right outside and at very close range to the tennis shoe.’”
Amazingly, another case involving a shoe was reported by Kenneth Ring and Madelaine Lawrence across the country in Hartford, Connecticut. The patient claimed to have an out of body experience where she floated above the scene and observed the resuscitation team working on her body. She then experienced being “pulled” through several floors of the hospital to the roof where she saw a red shoe. The attending nurse, Kathy Milne, reported the story to a resident physician, who initially mocked her. However, he was motivated to verify the account, so he had a janitor accompany him to the roof where he located the red shoe. Milne was unfamiliar with the other tennis shoe account which had occurred just prior.
Kristle Merzlock had a near death experience when she nearly drowned and was resuscitated. She not only reported specifics about her resuscitation but also observed her parents and siblings in the house, some distance away. She identified the clothes they were wearing and what they were doing, including her mother who was roasting a chicken and cooking rice. These details were verified soon afterwards. In another case, a Dutch patient’s dentures were removed during cardiac arrest, and the nurses couldn’t find them later. The patient reminded them where they had placed them.
IRREFUTABLE EVIDENCE FOR THE AFTERLIFE
There are thousands of similar NDE stories that constitute irrefutable evidence for the afterlife. Other evidence includes documented death bed visions and the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Researchers tell us that once the heart stops, measurable brain waves cease quickly. Many survivors who report NDE’s were clinically dead for up to thirty minutes and suffered no brain damage even though the brain was deprived of oxygen for that length of time. Consciousness conclusively continues after heart and brain activity stops.
While the medical community struggles to understand these inexplicable events, they should come as no surprise. Autopsies have never recovered emotions, feelings or ideas either. The soul is separate and apart from the body and cannot be physically explained. Our bodies are simply the house our souls inhabit while on earth. Jesus referred to His body as a temple, “Destroy this temple and, I will raise it again in three days,” (John 2:19).
Paul wrote, “Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God?” (1 Corinthians 6:19). Our bodies are mortal however our souls are eternal. In Matthew 22, Jesus replies to a question from the Sadducees by saying, “…have you not read what God said to you, ‘I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’? He is not the God of the dead but of the living.” (Verses 31-32).
Dr. May Neal, an accomplished orthopedic spine surgeon and author of “To Heaven and Back,” had a NDE in which she drowned while kayaking in a remote area of Chile. Submerged in ten feet of water and unable to surface she realized she could die and prayed that God’s will be done. She was then transported to heaven. “I never felt alive and then dead, conscious then unconscious,” she said. “I felt conscious, then more conscious, alive and then more alive.” She experienced a seamless transition from physical to spiritual existence and a vivid awareness that she was being held by Christ in that moment.
Both her legs were broken and she was under water for 30 minutes before being pulled ashore and resuscitated. She rose above the river and was taken to heaven and was greeted by spiritual beings that were overjoyed to see her and welcomed her. Mary experienced love beyond human comprehension. In heaven she was given a review of her life from the perspective of understanding, knowledge and grace.
Once revived, Mary was faced with the realization that their location was inaccessible and rescue would require a miracle. A couple of men appeared out of nowhere and helped transport her up the hillside and onto a dirt road. An ambulance happened to be right there which defied all logic, since they had no way of communication in the remote area. The two men or the ambulance driver never spoke and afterward simply disappeared. The God of the Bible is a miracle worker and He is still doing miracles today. Her story was adapted to a movie entitled “After Death” and was carried by Angel Studios.
FACE TO FACE WITH JESUS
I think the most amazing thing in heaven will be having conversations face to face with Jesus – without the vale that currently separates us. Paul asserts in 1 Corinthians 13:12, “For now we only see a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.” Imagine sitting down with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, or conversing with the apostle Paul or Martin Luther, without time constraints or conflicting schedules.
C. S. Lewis proposed the idea that “heaven is utterly inconceivable for human minds. It is totally unspatial and nontemporal; it gives our minds no basis for forming images, gives us nothing to even imagine.” Heaven as a “place” betrays our ability to conceive something beyond our scope of conception. Heaven is a dimension which humanity has no way of describing based on our three-dimensional, physical experience. In the same way that we cannot wrap our minds around God’s omnipresence, the reality of heaven is equal to the reality of God.
No one enters heaven accidentally. Before the creation of the earth and the universe, God chose you to be called. You have been predestined to respond to Christ knocking at the door to your heart. The Bible says if you open the door, He will come in and dine with you, and you with Him. He is preparing a place in heaven for you right now. Are you preparing yourself for a place in heaven?
In 2 Corinthians 12:2-4, Paul states, “I know a man in Christ who fourteen years ago was caught up to the third heaven. Whether it was in the body or out of the body I do not know – God knows. And I know that this man – whether in the body or apart from the body I do not know – but God knows – was caught up to paradise and heard inexpressible things, things that no one is permitted to tell.”
The afterlife is more than a concept. In fact, physical life exists within the afterlife. The physical realm is simply part of the spiritual realm; our existence is more than the limited scope our physical senses can perceive. Humans were created body, soul and spirit. Our true identity is not our body but our spirit and that is what we ought to nurture. Our bodies cannot enter heaven (1 Corinthians 15:50).
There is life after life. One day we will be alive and then we will be more alive! For now, we can only imagine what that will be like. “Surrounded by your glory, what will my heart feel? Will I dance for you Jesus, or in awe of you be still? Will I stand in your presence, or to my knees will I fall? Will I sing hallelujah? Will I be able to speak at all? I can only imagine. I can only imagine.” (Mercy Me, I Can Only Imagine).
Imagine an eternity in heaven. Imagine what it would be like to have no evil or sin. Imagine an existence of absolute purity. Where every thought is good and pure. Imagine being in the very presence of love itself. Imagine knowing fully even as we are fully known. Imagine being in the very bosom of the Creator, looking into His eyes and experiencing nothing but absolute love and grace. Forever.
