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

by John Burke

God was the one who was addressing me. It was like the voice of a hundred friends talking in harmonious unison. It was a voice that was familiar and comforting and drew me near.

God let me know how much He valued me. It’s almost impossible to describe the perfect sense of acceptance that surrounded me,

How do we know our unique purpose? It always starts with loving and seeking God, then following his lead to love the people closest to us, and then using the gifts and passions he’s put in us to serve humanity. You don’t need to worry about not fulfilling your purpose; if you seek God and his will, you will live it.

Crystal describes being immersed in a feeling of complete and utter purity, perfection, unbrokenness, and peace, a kind of assurance

“It was like being bathed in love,”

The best way to put it is this: I was

home.”

So if love and relationship is the goal of life on earth, why would we think God wants to tear that apart or take relationship from us in Heaven? Nothing could be further from the truth.

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

God’s people live on by God’s power! And the power of God can unite people in ways that overcome our relational squabbles and concerns, and that’s what he will do for all his children.

God created love, relationship, and family, and they remain important to him in

Heaven.

Imagine Heaven—the greatest reunion ever—with friends, family, even distant relatives you never knew. Ancestry.com can’t come close to giving you a sense of your heritage like it will be when you actually meet your relatives! Little kids report meeting deceased relatives during their NDEs—even ones they never knew!

Shocked, Sonja asked her son who it was that told him she had a baby die in her tummy. “She did, Mommy,” Colton explained. “She said she died in your tummy.” Sonja was overcome with emotion. They had never told Colton about the miscarriage. “It’s okay, Mommy,” Colton said. “God adopted her.” Todd said he could hear the effort it took for Sonja to steady her voice as she asked Colton what his sister looked like.

will go to him one day, but he cannot return to me” (2 Samuel 12:23 NLT). David knew he would see his son again in Heaven.

There was no element of time and no verbally spoken word . . . everything was open thought communication.8

So maybe in Heaven we will be known for our true identity and our outer appearance can adapt to the needs of others.

Although we will be able to talk and sing with our voices in Heaven, most indicate the preferred way of communicating with God, angels, and people will be directly heart to heart. God tells the prophet Isaiah about Heaven’s communication, saying, “Before they call, I will answer; while they are still speaking I will hear” (Isaiah 65:24). People describe this in different ways, but it’s uncanny how consistently NDErs describe this nonverbal, perfect communication in Heaven.

“There was no room whatsoever for secrets or shame or misunderstanding or anything negative,” she remembers. “There was just this wonderful, beautiful, nourishing sense of knowing.”15

Because everything is alive, everything can communicate so that you “experience” the communication—you don’t just hear it.

the unity Jesus described. “Everything was distinct,” he remembers, “yet everything was also a part of everything else.”21 He recalls that hearing and seeing were not separate in this other place.

I was being given the opportunity to actually hand them over to God. To let them go in peace, love, and gratitude. Everything suddenly made sense. Everything had divine order. I could give my son to God and not have him taken away from me. . . . I held my baby son as God himself held me. I experienced the oneness of all of it . . . the being behind me inviting me to let it all go and give Griffin to Him. In all that peace and knowledge, I hugged my little boy tightly one last time, kissed him on the cheek, and gently laid him back down in the crib. I willingly gave him up. No one would ever take him away

from me again. He was mine. We were one, and I was one with God. . . . Griffin was alive in a place more real than anything here.

And a strong sense of belonging filled my heart; I never wanted to leave. Somehow I knew I was made for this place and this place was made for me.

God] has also set eternity in the human heart” (Ecclesiastes 3:11).

so that you will always be with me where I am” (John 14:1–3 NLT).

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? Let’s imagine!

Dr. Alexander found himself flying over a green, gorgeous, idyllic landscape that seemed very much like earth, yet at the same time was very different.

“The important thing to understand is this gateway valley was much more real than this world—far sharper, crisper, more real than this—this [world] is very dream-like by comparison. That was a deep, deep mystery to me for a long time, trying to understand that ultra-reality.”

The best way I can explain it is to say that I felt as if I were in another dimension. Never, even in my happiest moments, had I ever felt so fully alive.6

“Time is within eternity, not outside of it. The created universe is within the kingdom of God, not outside it. . . . When we pass through what we call death, we do not lose the world. Indeed, we see it for the first time as it really is.”

we don’t lose the experience of our three-dimensional earth, we expand it.

Revelation 21 foretells a day when Heaven and earth unite—seeming

to imply that our space-time fabric is simply contained within a more expanded space and time that will one day reunite.

“The eyes of the LORD search the whole earth in order to strengthen those whose hearts are fully committed to him” (2 Chronicles 16:9 NLT).

“I still had a ‘body,’ but it was entirely different. I could see in three dimensions as if I had no body at all. . . . I could see all directions at once, yet there were no directions or dimensions as we think of them.”10

“First, I had 360 degree vision, I could see above, below, on my right, on my left, behind, I could see EVERYWHERE at the same time! Secondly, I could zoom on a particular point. Also I travelled at the speed of thought, I just needed to think about a place or somebody and I was instantly there! I could go through walls, I went through matter, and it was VERY EXCITING!”

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!”

It was something like being in a 3-D movie and then putting on the 3-D glasses. . . . Suddenly everything has more dimensions, more richness.

But that is an understatement. Multiply that by ten thousand and it would be like what I was experiencing.”

Our sun is but a dim, very limited spectrum of the colors of light visible in Heaven. And combined with a new, expanded sense of sight, the Light brings everything alive in a whole

new dimension.

As we will see, this rest comes from an eternal peace through connection with God.

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. We can’t get enough of love because ours always falls short of what we crave. The Old Testament prophets tell us that God created all people for a unique, loving relationship with him, and even though humanity turns away from God to taste the bitter fruit of the knowledge of evil, God’s love has pursued us relentlessly.

Love matters most to God because he is love at the core of his being.

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

His love rightly orders all other loves.

Every single person who encounters this Being of Light, no matter what they call him, knows that he’s a person who knows every secret about them and yet loves them more than they ever imagined.

Yahweh reveals himself as a Father who longs for loving children, the Angel of his Presence who is their Savior, and the Holy Spirit who can feel grief. God is emotionally involved with us because we were created in his image—and he is personal. Though God is infinite, omniscient, and powerful beyond our comprehension, he’s also personally involved with every person he created.

“It knew me deeply and overflowed with qualities that . . . I’ve always associated with human beings, and human beings alone: warmth, compassion, pathos . . . even irony and humor.”