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

by John Burke

He opened His arms to me. His beautiful eyes were like blazing fires of consuming love that overwhelmed me.”

He was singing an individual love song to each of His creations.

And don’t forget, there’s no measure that he won’t take to get them back.

But your iniquities [wrongs] have separated you from your God”

For justice to be done, someone has to pay to

set things right. Either we pay the consequences of rebellion against our Creator—which is separation from the Source of all light, life, and love—or we recognize our need, ask his ...

And this Messiah would pay our debts for us, so that all willing people could come home to God (Isaiah 53).

God removed every

barrier between you an...

We can’t be who God intended without relationship with God—so

It was as if Jesus could see through me, reading all the thoughts of my heart. My whole body was shaking. I felt so unworthy to be in His presence. . . . He radiated an amazing love that contained deep acceptance. I felt neither condemnation nor shame. . . . “Welcome home, Samaa,” He said in a voice sweet and gentle, yet also powerful, like the sound of many waters. He opened His arms to me.

The nineteen years I’d lived passed in front of my eyes. After seeing the choices I had made, I realized I had been living for my own agenda and repented. Oh, Lord Jesus, I’m so sorry. Please forgive me. All my life I’ve been living for myself—my ways, my dreams, my desires, my plans. But it’s not about me. It’s all about You.

He wanted me to go back for my family for their salvation, but also for the salvation of His family, which is multitudes! God is all about family, from Genesis to Revelation.

felt so easy to talk to Him, to communicate, like a child speaking to her Father.

“The LORD searches every

heart and understands every desire and every thought. If you seek him, he will be found by you; but if you forsake him, he will reject you forever” (1 Chronicles 28:9).

Because you (their creator) are three-dimensional, they could not see you as you are unless you “ripped” them off their two-dimensional flat plane and changed them into three-dimensional creatures (and that would be death—death means “separation” from their 2-D world).

seeing Jesus himself, but that does not guarantee they will be with him in Heaven eternally. They must choose just as Paul still had to choose. After all, Jesus appeared and did the miraculous right in front of the Pharisees, “but the Pharisees and experts in religious law rejected God’s plan for them” (Luke 7:30 NLT), and they had Jesus crucified. Judas was chosen by Jesus, saw his miracles, felt his love, yet he did not submit to God’s leadership. Judas tried to force Jesus to do his own will (overthrow

When people look into his eyes, they feel like they see and understand everything. “Then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known” (1 Corinthians 13:12).

“And his eyes . . . Oh, Dad, his eyes are so pretty!” As he said this, Colton looked as if he was enjoying a wonderful memory.

Colton always saw something wrong with every Jesus picture. Several years later, Todd saw a CNN report on artist prodigy Akiane Kramarik (whom I wrote about in chapter 12), who reported seeing Heaven when she was four years old. She described Heaven’s amazing colors and Jesus, who was “very masculine, really strong and big. And his eyes are just beautiful.” It struck Todd that two four-year-olds both mentioned all the colors of Heaven and the amazing eyes of Jesus. When

Akiane’s Prince of Peace painting that night on CNN’s website, he stared at the screen and declared, “Dad, that one’s right!”

“I recognized [this Being] as Jesus Christ. . . . I looked into his eyes. They were piercing but loving and as clear as blue water. . . . When he looked at you, he looked straight

through you and into you. You realized immediately that he knew all there was to know about you.”

Gary Wood brought it all together for me: “When He looked at me, His eyes pierced me, they went all the way through me. Just pure love! I melted in His presence. [Jesus’s] eyes were deep, beautiful pools of love, and they were blue.

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.

omnipresent. He can commune with the Father, play with little children, interact with groups of adults, and be with you and me personally in Heaven—simultaneously.

One of the things that blows my mind is imagining a Being more powerful than the sun, but who feels like a close friend!

Because God’s children are human beings—made of flesh and blood—the Son also became flesh and blood. . . . It was necessary for him to be made in every respect like us, his brothers and sisters, so that he could be our merciful and faithful High Priest before God. Then he could offer a sacrifice that would take away the sins

of the people. Since he himself has gone through suffering and testing, he is able to help us when we are being tested. . . . [Jesus] understands our weaknesses, for he faced all of the same testings we do, yet he did not sin. So let us come boldly to the throne of our gracious God. There we will receive his mercy, and we will find grace to help us when we need it most. (Hebrews 2:14, 17–18; 4:15–16 NLT)

The only comparison comes by analogy—the connection we feel with a best friend, the oneness we want with a spouse, our tender love and desire for our children—and yet there’s an intimacy that we seek with each other that always eludes us. We can never be as close, as intimate, or as one with another person as our souls crave. That’s because the oneness we crave will only be found when we are united by God with God. God likens it to his own marriage to all of us together.

the fine linen represents the good deeds of God’s holy people.

It’s not surprising that even those who do not believe would experience this, because “in Him we live and move and have our being” right now (Acts 17:28). “The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word” (Hebrews 1:3, italics mine).

I am praying . . . for all who will ever believe in me through their message. I pray that they will all be one, just as you and I are one—as you are in me, Father, and I am in you. And may they be in us so that the world will believe you sent me.

. . . I am in them and you are in me. May they experience such perfect unity that the world will know that you sent me and that you love them as much as you love me. Father, I want these whom you have given me to be with me where I am. Then they can see all the glory you gave me because you loved me even before the world began! (John 17:20–24 NLT)

“One of the most fascinating things I experienced was being connected to everything there at the same moment.

came to understanding life in heaven fast. It is like the electricity that connects power to run anything that needs electric energy here. It is like our computer system that is connected to the Internet, which connects us to every computer in the world. God connects every one of His creations together.”

He thought, I dreamed what He dreamed, I felt what He felt.”14 Dr. Eby describes an intimacy that’s hard to convey: “This will be hard for people on earth to understand, but I was instantly in Messiah, in Him. . . . I knew I was me, and yet I was in Messiah. . . . His love is in a different dimension than our idea of love. 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.”

“THE MAN” in Heaven. “[His love] was just so warm, accepting, understanding, being with someone who just knew. Knew you inside and out, and outside down. It’s like the closest you could ever be to being one with someone. It was a feeling of oneness. I don’t have the words!”

“I was instantly aware of two beings in front of me and to my left, and I knew right away who they were—they were angels. But they weren’t just any angels—they were my angels. I recognized them immediately.”

The angels felt like the closest friends she could ever have, Crystal

remembers, “as if they had been by my side for every tear I ever cried, every decision I had ever made, every day I ever felt lonely.” She felt an immediate connection, a sense of deep communication with them, and a complete lack of shame, secrets, misunderstanding, or negativity. Instead, there was only a deep, beautiful, sustaining sense of knowing.

I’d spent my life doubting His existence and disbelieving His love for me, but in that instant I knew God had always, always been there—right there with me.

In Heaven, Crystal’s questions had been answered before she had even asked them. In God’s presence, Crystal understood God’s plan as perfect.

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.”

Yet God is not indifferent when this cruel, evil world stabs us with pain. David said, “You keep track of all my sorrows. You have collected all my tears in your bottle. You have recorded each one in your book” (Psalm 56:8 NLT). God keeps records because all our loss and sufferings will one day be restored in Heaven.

Like Crystal, Job discovered that seeing God somehow answers everything.

Nothing is lost when Heaven is your destination.

When we suffer, God suffers with us. “In all their suffering he also

suffered, and he personally rescued them. In his love and mercy he redeemed them” (Isaiah 63:9 NLT). Paul was persecuting Christians, yet Jesus asked him, “Why are you persecuting Me?” Jesus feels our pain. He tells us on the final day God will say, “I was hungry, and you fed me. I was thirsty, and you gave me a drink. I was a stranger, and you invited me into your home.” When? they will ask. “When you did it to one of the least of these my brothers and sisters, you were doing it to me!” (Matthew 25:35, 40 NLT).