Christian expert on near-death experiences reveals 1 thing they all have in common

April 9, 2024

John Burke has studied thousands of near-death experiences (NDEs) over the past three decades and says there is a common element to each of them: every person, regardless of religious background, experiences the God of the Bible.

The Christian Post reports that Burke, co-founder of Gateway Church in Austin, Texas, stated: “I interviewed 70 people on every continent, and found that they all encountered the same God; it didn’t matter their culture, ethnicity or religious background. God is the God of all nations.”

Burke went on to say, “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.” 

Once an agnostic engineer, Burke says his quest for truth began in a hospital room, next to his dying father. He said it was there that he encountered the first seeds of what would become a lifelong search for evidence of an afterlife and of the reality of God.

Burke recounts many of the stories he’s encountered in his book Imagine the God of Heaven: Near Death Experiences, God’s Revelation and the Love You’ve Always Wanted. According to the Christian Post, those experiences include a Hindu engineer who encountered a “brilliant God of lightning” and a nurse in Brownsville who was told by Jesus Himself to spread the message of love and redemption.

Burke clarified that while each individual encounters the God of the Bible during their NDE, he’s not suggesting that they will end up in Heaven. Burke explains that they are experiencing something “in between” that is more like an “entrance into eternity.”

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