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

by John Burke

Nothing is lost when Heaven is your destination.

God never promises us a pain-free, trouble-free life. We live in a world where most of us pursue “our will and ways” more than “God’s will and ways.” When we choose to go our own way, we create ripples of pain, hurt, and suffering that reverberate through humanity and down the generations.

Humans do not become angels—meaning we don’t go through a species change—but we can be messengers.

Even in Heaven, God accomplishes his will through free-will cooperation of angels. Some are guardian angels assigned to individuals, some are assigned to churches (Revelation 2), some are over cities or nations (Daniel 12:1). And some were cast out of Heaven.

Russell points out that although modern people have tended to believe less and less in a supernatural evil force, the practical experience of evil has not decreased but maybe even increased in our society.

What Scripture teaches is nothing like characterizations we’ve seen, but evil would love for us to laugh it off. After all, the best terrorist is the one you don’t know about.

Angels were created to love and serve God. And they were created with a free will—before humans. Some of the angels followed the most beautiful, powerful angel created, Lucifer—which means “lightbearer.” Lucifer was created good. He’s not God’s equal opposite, nor the only source of evil. Created by God with a free will, Lucifer’s downfall was his pride.

We don’t have to wait for Heaven to be set free. The way we fight evil is with truth—taking thoughts captive, resisting lies, and trusting God’s truth.

All NDErs report the same heightened senses that make the heavenly experiences so alive, yet here they make the horrific experiences so much worse than earth’s evils. Nancy Bush studied distressing NDEs and reports that this last category is the least reported, and probably the most written off, yet these experiences usually result in extreme trauma emotionally.

Oxford scholar C. S. Lewis, an atheist turned believer, wrestles with the idea of hell in his book The Problem of Pain and concludes that God does not send anybody to hell: “I willingly believe that the damned are, in one sense, successful, rebels to the end; that the doors of hell are locked from the inside . . . [to] enjoy forever the horrible freedom [from God] they have demanded.”

The degree of suffering and distress is unique to the individual, Storm contends. “Hell is separation from God,” he says. “How it is experienced is proportionate to the life of the individual.” God gives us free will; neither he nor the angels will intervene. He will respect a person’s choice to embark on an eternal journey without him.24

God does not want us to fear death or condemnation. He has made entrance to Heaven so simple that anyone, anywhere, can call on his Name and be saved—set right with God (Romans 10:13). The only thing that can keep us out of Heaven is our pride.

Jesus is God’s redemptive act for a fallen world.

if we fail to love our families, our neighbors, our co-workers, and those in need whom God puts in our path, we’ve failed in the primary task God’s given us.

“Your eyes saw my unformed body; all the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be”

God cannot allow those unwilling to submit to his rule into his eternal kingdom or they would corrupt it like we did the earth and humanity. “Nothing impure will ever enter [the City of God], nor will anyone who does what is shameful or deceitful, but only those whose names are written in the Lamb’s book of life” (Revelation 21:27).

Faith is another word for trust. You can’t have a relationship without trust.

How awesome to know that you may never be rich, powerful, or on the cover of a magazine, but if you faithfully seek God, know the Scriptures, and lovingly obey his will—one day you will be one of the great ones for eternity!

Helping people find faith and grow spiritually might get you mocked or persecuted in the short run, but it will one day bring you great, great joy!

God was showing me that there were many other people who also didn’t know, and would never know unless I was able to share with them. I responded, “I don’t love those people” but he replied, “I love them and I desire all of them to come to know me.”

When you invest in people spiritually, God sees, and he will reward it. One day you will see how one life changed another life, and how your greatest impact on humanity came by developing individuals.

At the end of the game, it all goes back in the box. What lasts is how you played the game to honor God.

Every NDEr says the life to come is real life—just like we live now—only expanded in experience: more beauty, more thrills, more responsibility, more important assignments, more bliss and adventure.

God’s love for him, Howard also began to experience feelings of shame and fear as he remembered all the times in his life he had scoffed at the possibility of God and Heaven, as well as all the thousands of times he had used God’s name as a curse or an insult. Remembering this about himself, Howard felt too ashamed to go closer to the light.

The diameter of the sphere would be sixty thousand miles across. . . . Earth is only eight thousand miles in diameter.

what would motivate doctors, professors, and commercial airline pilots to make up (or copy) the same fantastic vision? It sounds crazy—why would they risk their reputations?

My Harvard-trained lawyer friend told me slight discrepancies of the same story hold more weight in a court of law. It indicates people telling the truth from their slightly different perspectives.

If “all things” really means all things, then the same culture, creativity, fun, and excitement you’d find in the best of earthly endeavors will be resurrected to trump our wildest dreams. So dream big!

Heaven will be a thriving, joyful, festive place, where families and friends work together and then gather for feasts and parties to celebrate and enjoy life with the Giver of Life. It will give God great joy as we enjoy him together.

You’ll finally see how full of life and enjoyment God really is as you realize every good thing we ever enjoyed on earth was but a shadow of Heaven’s wonders. Heaven will be a creative, artistic celebration of God.

Music was everywhere. The worship of God was the heart and focus of the music, and everywhere the joy of the music could be felt. The deepest part of my heart resonated with it, made me want to be a part of it forever. I never wanted it to stop. . . . I had the feeling—and it was the most satisfying of feelings—that I was made for the music, as if each muscle in my body were a taut string of some finely tuned instrument, created to play the most beautiful music ever composed. I felt part of the music. One with it. Full of joy and wonder and worship. Perhaps this is what love sounds like when put to music. . . . I felt all this, every ecstatic moment of it. And I never wanted it to end.28

Imagine Heaven! Live for it now! “Look, I am coming soon! My reward is with me, and I will give to each person according to what they have done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End.

In the Dead Sea Scrolls, we found a complete copy of the book of Isaiah predating Jesus by 150 to 350 years, so we know these prophecies were written before the fact (not later altered to make them look like Jesus fulfilled them).

Isaiah says the infinite God will reveal himself in the form of a son of man, come to Galilee, be called “Mighty God,” and establish eternal peace between God and every willing human. He wrote this 680 years before Jesus walked and taught along the Sea of Galilee—the New Testament writers and extrabiblical history (outside the Bible) affirm Jesus conducted most of his ministry in Galilee.

God removed every barrier between us and God except one—our pride! All he requires is a willing, humble heart wanting his forgiveness and guidance offered through Christ.

Jesus’s enemies could not deny that he was healing people and doing miraculous deeds, but due to their fear of losing power, they claimed his power came from demonic sorcery rather than from God.

How do you explain world history in our day, spoken by Isaiah as a sign from God in 680 BCE, foretold by Jesus in 32 CE, yet fulfilled in 1948? This is not mythology, this is not religion, this is history—His-story

The fact that an NDE is accompanied by greater awareness and knowledge also cannot be explained, nor can science explain how this awareness, knowledge, and other elements of the NDE can even be possible when, in many people, the brain is not functioning normally.