Imagine Heaven: Near-Death Experiences, God's Promises, and the Exhilarating Future That Awaits You

by John Burke

Although all of us face death, not all of us have an expectant hope for the future beyond this life.

Whatever I saw was only—from the doorway, so to speak. But it was enough to convince me totally of two things from that moment on. One, that our consciousness does not cease with physical death—that it becomes in fact keener and more aware than ever. And two, that how we spend our time on earth, the kind of relationships we build, is vastly, infinitely more important than we can know.”

This loving being asks questions communicated through thoughts, leading him to examine his actions, often including a living replay of his entire life.

Over the next few years while studying engineering, I also put my analytical mind to work studying about God. I discovered there really are good, rock-solid reasons to believe for those who want to find them.

I hope you become convinced that your Creator has crazy love for you. But he won’t force himself on you; he gave you a free will.

Maybe the reason we never feel fully satisfied in this life is because we were created for the life to come.

As Mother Teresa said, “In light of heaven, the worst suffering on earth, a life full of the most atrocious tortures on earth, will be seen to be no more serious than one night in an inconvenient hotel.”8

Yet he believes as a sign of what’s to come, God did something the doctors still say is impossible. Gary says, “I have an X-ray that shows that I have no vocal cords, yet I talk and sing.”

the first person we meet in heaven is ourselves.”

What you believe about yourself is what shapes all your decisions and actions.

God never created us to get our identity from what we do or what others did to us, but from who we are to God.

The question, like everything else proceeding from Him, had to do with love. How much have you loved with your life? Have you loved others as I am loving you? Totally? Unconditionally?5

God never intended you to base your identity on accomplishments or performing.

God made you for himself—not to prove your glory, but to be his glory. His pride and joy. His beloved son or daughter. What he wants you to do is learn to be secure in his love, in who he made you to be, and from that place of security, you can do what he created you to do.

Heaven will be that place where you realize how uniquely loved you are.

We want our lives to count, to matter, to be worth something. Yet, apart from God, your name will not be remembered.

No one else has the right or ability to say what you’re worth except the One who created you.

The promise of Heaven is that one day, you will truly know who you were created to be.

‘Tell people they are special and unique, each one. God made every one of His children to have a divine purpose, which only they can accomplish in the earth.’”

Knowing how God sees you sets you free to accomplish things God created you to accomplish.

God has us uniquely here for a purpose—and love is central to that purpose—whatever else we accomplish.

“What I experienced in heaven was so real and so lucid and so utterly intense, it made my experiences on Earth seem hazy and out of focus—as if heaven is the reality and life as we know it is just a dream.”

Real people and real relationships do not end when this life ends, they go on to new depths.

Your temporal life on earth will transition into the most joyous, exciting, celebratory party, welcoming you into Real Life.

Heaven sounds like a place of imaginative fictional fantasy. But maybe the reason we possess within us such imaginative fictional capacity is because of a longing for eternity that God placed in the human heart. Like a bird’s homing instinct, it’s pointing us homeward.

The language of Scripture and the words NDErs use over and over again emphasize the opposite—this temporal (temporary) life is the fuzzy, less-than-real shadow of the brilliant, beautiful-beyond-your-wildest-dreams, solid Life you need to grab onto.

Marv Besteman, as a retired bank president, loved to golf. So naturally, what he noticed in Heaven was the grass. “I saw babies and children and grown-ups of all ages playing and talking and laughing on grass that was the greenest green I’ve ever seen. . . . Picture the verdant, luscious grass at the Masters [golf tournament] and then try to imagine grass far greener and more deluxe. That’s how green the grass is in heaven.”

Maybe that’s why the universe is so vast! When thought can take us anywhere, maybe we will find endless adventure exploring God’s wondrous universe in a new time and space. What might that be like?

Dr. Alexander’s experience proved to him that the death of the body and the brain are not the end of consciousness. He concludes that “human experience continues beyond the grave. More important, it continues under the gaze of a God who loves and cares about each one of us.”

Leonard also got a special color-commentary on his surgery by God himself: “On the other side communication is done via telepathy (thought transfer). I must tell you that God has a fantastic sense of humor; I never laughed so much in all my life!”12

Have you ever looked up at the billions of stars in a clear night sky and wondered—why would God create such a vast universe so beyond our reach? Maybe it’s so that we can explore it forever. “The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands” (Psalm 19:1).

Ian recalls, “I didn’t know what to pray or whom to pray to. Which god should I pray to? Buddha? Kali? Shiva? There are thousands of them. Yet I didn’t see Buddha or Krishna or some other god or man standing there, I saw my mother—and my mother followed Jesus Christ. I wondered what I should pray.”

I’ve come to believe that every form of love we experience on earth, no matter how intense, is merely a drop in the ocean of love God created you and me to experience.

He said in Arabic, “I am the truth, the life, and the way, and no one comes to the Father except by Me.” His voice was like rushing waters, powerful and soothing at the same time. The minute He said, “I am the truth,” I knew immediately it was Jesus. He didn’t say, “I am Jesus,” but every fiber of my being knew who He was. I had never read the Bible before, but somehow I knew what Jesus was saying to me was in the Bible. I was so consumed by His presence that I dropped to my knees and looked up at Him. He is so glorious, so beautiful. All light inside of Light. I said, “Lord! You are Lord!” He said, “Yes, I am Jesus, the One you denied. The One you said is not the Son of God. I came to save you, to make you a happy person. You don’t have to do anything, just know that I love you.” I said, “That’s it?” He said, “Yes, believe in Me.”

God must be our first love because only then can he teach us how to love others as he loves us.

Eben Alexander says the central message he received could be summed up, “You are loved.” Or, to simplify even further: love. Dr. Alexander’s experience taught him “none of us are ever unloved. Each and every one of us is deeply known and cared for by a Creator who cherishes us beyond any ability we have to comprehend. That knowledge must no longer remain a secret.”17

The central theme of the Bible is that God wants a relationship of love with you and every person created. Loving relationship motivates God. But love requires several things—freedom, risk, and choice.

Some Christians will probably wonder, How could God possibly reveal himself to those who don’t believe in him? But they forget God’s heart longs for every person to come home, from every nation, every language; they were all created by him and for him.

God removed every barrier between you and himself. You don’t have to prove you can be good enough—you can’t. You can’t perfectly follow the eightfold path of Buddhism, the five pillars of Islam, the Ten Commandments, or even your own moral conscience.

God will not force us to seek him, admit we need his forgiveness, or turn back to him. He doesn’t want forced slaves; he wants free-willed, loving children who choose to love God.

“Is your Jesus looking at the galaxies?” her mother questioned as they looked at the painting. “He is talking with his Father in heaven . . . about the future of our world. I think Jesus will come back in full power very soon. In the back of him you can see the whole birth process of our new universe.”

Muhammad in Egypt said after his NDE, “I felt that love is the one thing that all humans must feel towards each other.”6 The second thing most NDErs take back with them is the importance of seeking knowledge.

Colton blurted out that the angels sang to him there. When asked what songs they sang, he explained that they sang “Jesus Loves Me” and “Joshua Fought the Battle of Jericho,” but when he asked them to sing “We Will, We Will Rock You,” they wouldn’t sing that song. Then Colton grew solemn and said, “Dad, Jesus had the angels sing to me because I was so scared. They made me feel better.”

There’s an innocence and playfulness that gets squeezed out of most adults, but Jesus will restore it to us and model it for us in Heaven.

“Yes, God is behind the numbers, the perfection of the universe. . . . [But God] is ‘human’ as well—even more human than you and I are.” God, says Dr. Alexander, empathizes with humans much more than we can possibly imagine.

Jesus understands you and me more than we can ever imagine. In fact, it shocks people to realize that he not only knows our languages, but even our colloquialisms.

There is no question of his love. . . . We are in him and he is in us (see Galatians 2:22). Yet we don’t lose our identity.”

Imagine an intimacy and oneness that trumps all other relational intimacies, unites all people, and takes away all the mourning, crying, and pain of our past. It’s coming.

Although she had always referred to God as a him, she understood, in that moment, that God was neither a him nor a her, but simply God. She also understood that God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit “were all One—the One before me now,” she says.

she believes that we aren’t meant to comprehend on earth what we will understand in Heaven. “All I can tell you,” she says, “is that I know God’s plan is perfect. In his radiance, it all makes perfect, perfect sense.”