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Live from historic downtown Carlisle, Pennsylvania, home of founding father James Wilson, 19th century hymn writer George Duffield, 19th century gospel minister George Norcross, and sports legend Jim Thorpe.
It's iron sharpens iron. This is a radio platform in which pastors, Christian scholars, and theologians address the burning issues facing the church and the world today. Proverbs chapter 27 verse 17 tells us iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.
Matthew Henry said that in this passage we are cautioned to take heed with whom we converse and directed to have in view in conversation to make one another wiser and better. It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next two hours, and we hope to hear from you, the listener, with your own questions.
And now here's your host Chris Arnson.
Good afternoon Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida, and the rest of humanity living on the planet Earth who are listening via live streaming at ironsharpensironradio .com. This is Chris Arnson, your host of iron sharpens iron radio, wishing you all a happy Monday on this fourth day of March 2024.
Before I introduce my guest and our topic for the day, I want to remind you that I will be the emcee of the Grace Christian Academy of Long Island's fundraising gala once again, and that's going to be held Friday of next week, Friday, March 15th at 7 p .m. at the Coral House Catering Hall in Baldwin, Long Island.
And if that name sounds familiar to many of our listeners of the Iron Sharpens Iron radio program, that may be because that's where, the Coral House that is, that's where I first launched back in 1996 the decade-long series known as the Great Debates between Dr. James R. White of Alpha Omega Ministries and Roman Catholic apologists.
We had our first several debates there at the Coral House, and then when we outgrew it, we moved over to the Huntington Townhouse. The Huntington Townhouse no longer exists. I don't know if we had anything to do with it.
But the Coral House Catering Hall, it's going to be definitely very sentimental for me because of my emceeing all of those debates that began there and it's going to be quite an interesting experience.
The keynote speaker at this fundraising gala for Grace Christian Academy is my friend Dr. Ernie Zara. Many of you may have heard Dr. Zara on my program. He is a noted author and educator who is one of America's most passionate and knowledgeable voices seeking to bring an end to the morally corrupt and bankrupt agenda of the woke movement, which is brainwashing the children of our nation with their anti-christian worldview.
So if you'd like to register for this fundraising gala on Friday, March 15th at 7 p .m. at the Coral House Catering Hall in Baldwin, Long Island, go to gcali .com, that stands for Grace Christian Academy, LongIsland .com, gcali .com forward slash gala, G-A-L-A.
And you could register there, and I really hope to see many of you there, especially those who live on Long Island. And there are so many of you that I haven't seen in years, and I would love to see you there.
And hopefully I'll remember to repeat that towards the end of the program. But today's guest is an old friend of mine going back to the late 1980s and early 1990s when my dear friend, the late Don Blind, pastor of First Baptist Church of Lindenhurst, Long Island, used to bring me out from Long Island to Pennsylvania, starting in Lewisburg and then moving over to New Ringgold to the annual John Bunyan Conference.
And that is where I met my guest today, who was one of the speakers at these conferences that I used to love to attend with my dear friend Don Blind, who was actually my late wife's pastor, one of her pastors, before we got married.
And I am so glad that my guest today, Pastor Gary George, and I have maintained a friendship all these years. Pastor Gary George is pastor of Sovereign Grace Chapel of New Bridge, Massachusetts. He's a conference speaker.
And today we're going to be addressing the very fascinating subject of near-death experiences examined in the light of Holy Scripture. We'll also be announcing the 2024 John Bunyan Conference now being held in Franklin, Tennessee, and their next conference is next month.
But it's my honor and privilege to welcome you back to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Pastor Gary George.
Good to be with you again, Chris. It's always an honor to be on Iron Sharpens Iron. Well, tell our listeners about.
Sovereign Grace Chapel of South Bridge, Massachusetts. Well, we came into existence about.
1990 -91. It was first named Grace Reformed Baptist Church. It was established within a year after they began to meet and form, and we've been in existence ever since in about the year 2000, because on the streets, most people don't know what Reformed means.
They always think about Reformed children, delinquents, and teens, and so on. And the word Baptist has such a wide range these days, especially in our liberal New England area of Massachusetts. We have all kinds of Baptists, the fundamentalists on one end, and then we've got the rabid liberals on the other end.
So we decided to drop the two and just simply call us more generically Sovereign Grace Chapel, and we've been with that name now for 24 years, but we are Doctrines of Grace Church, as all your guests I'm sure are, and we seek to proclaim the gospel indoors, outdoors, and any way we can to spread the good news.
Well, just as a matter of a little correction, not all of my guests are Sovereign Grace believing. The majority certainly are, but occasionally you'll have someone outside of our circles of theology that has written something so important for the whole body of Christ on a subject on a subject outside of the Calvinist-Arminian debate that I'll have that person on.
So just wanted to give a little correction there, but you are right in assuming that at least the vast majority of my guests are Sovereign Grace believers, or Reformed, however you want to put it. And by the way, folks, if any of you live in or near Southbridge, Massachusetts, or you're traveling through there, or you have family, friends, and loved ones that live in or near there, you may visit their website, SovereignGraceMA, for Massachusetts .org, SovereignGraceMA .org, for more details.
Now tell us about the John Bunyan Conference coming up next month, and I believe, if I'm not mistaken, you are actually speaking on the very subject that we are tackling today, near-death experiences.
Correct. So this is like about, maybe, I'm estimating this might be about our 10th consecutive conference that was first named Providence Theological Seminary, was the one that sponsored the conference at the beginning of this ten years ago, and then we graduated, I guess you could say, to a different name because of the difficulties of trying to get credentialed as a seminary.
We had to drop the word seminary and call it Providence Theological Institute, so better known as PTI, simply. So PTI has been sponsoring conferences, first started in Texas, then moved to Colorado, and in the last five, six years or so, it's been in Franklin, Tennessee, and I, being one of the board members, helped line up the conference, and this year we got a host of speakers, and they've gone down to the bottom of the ladder in asking me to be one of them as well.
So we're, our topic is going to be the hope of the gospel, with some emphasis on New Covenant theology, as well just general doctrines of the faith and building up the body of Christ, and we have some interesting speakers, and it's usually a great, great conference, and it's free, which I hope you listen to that.
It's free. That's unusual. We're just generous, and we want to bless as many people as we can. It's worth coming to, so we re-titled the John Bunyan Conference since we're trying to carry on, in some ways, the spirit of a departed dear brother John Reisinger, who pretty much started the John Bunyan Conference back in the late 70s, and he died maybe about, what you say, four or five years ago, but the Bunyan Conference hasn't really, it pretty much phased out in around the year 2013 or so, and so a couple years ago, some of the folks who were connected with the John Bunyan Conferences back then, either as speakers or board members, decided that we should re-title it John Bunyan Conference.
And by the way, I think that you should probably do some damage control here, so that folks do not get the wrong impression that Providence Theological Institute of New Covenant Theology is less than a quality learning institution, because you mentioned before that they could not get licensed as a seminary, so you might want to explain that so people don't just write off.
It wasn't like we were applying to some kind of theological board to evaluate theological perspectives, and it was before, really, my personal time with the Providence Theological Institute had to do with just the technicalities that are involved, and anybody that's involved in the academics knows how difficult it is to get the credential and authorization to be certified as a bona fide seminary from the state, because of certain requirements that were just unreachable, and we just didn't have the resources at the time, but that was the primary reason.
And just to let you know, folks, this is a fairly long roster of speakers that they have at the upcoming John Bunyan Conference. Many of you will recognize the name Dr. Ted Baer, who is a well-known Christian movie and television critic.
I've had him on the program years ago on the old Iron Sherpins Iron program that broadcasted out of WNYG radio on Long Island, in Babylon, Long Island. But he will be speaking there, Dr. Brent Parker, Dr. Richard Lucas, Pastor Greg Van Court, who is actually my guest tomorrow on Iron Sherpins Iron radio, Pastor Blake White, who you've already heard on this program recently, Renee Frey, Pastor Bill Sasser, who is a very dear friend of mine.
Him and his wife Lynn are a couple that I count among my very dearest friends on the planet, and they are financial supporters of Iron Sherpins Iron radio along with the church that Bill pastors, Grace Church at Franklin in Franklin, Tennessee, which is also where the 2024 John Bunyan Conference is being held.
And Zach Maxey is going to be my guest this... Let's see here. When is Zach gonna be on? Zach is on this Wednesday. So, I hope that you all make note of when they will be on so you can listen to those interviews.
The event will be held April 14th through the 17th, which is going to be here before you know it. And as Pastor Gary already said, the theme is the glorious hope of Christ in the new covenant. And for more details, you can go to ptinct .org ptinct .org and click on Conferences and you'll find out all the details that you will need.
And we will, God willing, be repeating that information later on in the show. Well, this is a fascinating subject today, near-death experiences. What led you to request not only this as your topic at the upcoming John Bunyan Conference, but also as your topic of discussion today.
What is it that really compelled you to begin to study and examine this phenomenon more deeply and how you came to the conclusions that you've drawn through this study? Go ahead.
Well, you know, being a street evangelist as well as a pastor, I engaged lots of different cults on the streets from Jehovah Witnesses to Mormons to the Church of Christ, the Church of Scientology, and on and on.
And in the mix, which doesn't really fit a category of being a cult, so to speak, with a heretical position of sorts and an anti-biblical view, it's more from just interviews that I've had or comments from people who have claimed to have out-of-body experiences on their deathbeds or cases where they're close to death.
And the realities that they put into it became very concerning to me. And it became now a new basis for them, whether a believer or a non-believer, for that matter, it became a new source of truth, because the experience in their mind was undeniable.
So what they encountered for them became dogma, and as a result, they would propagate this to others. So I encountered one probably back in the 80s, and it concerned me because I knew the individual quite well.
He was a fairly solid professing Christian. He happened to be a sergeant on the police force. He was not a fluke, so to speak, and he claimed that he had this experience. And I, of course, I'm kind of a doubting Thomas when it comes to things in general like that, but I heard more and more of these kinds of stories, and it became more and more irritable to me, and I thought, I need to do some work on this.
I need to be ready to give an answer and have a defense for the gospel, because I feel like this has developed into another gospel, and I don't think it's been fairly examined. I think most evangelicals like you and I and those that are celebrity speakers and teachers or apologists, for that matter, I don't think that enough attention has been given to this.
The claims are that there has been between 10 and 20 million Americans that have had near-death experiences, which are out-of-body experiences, and these experiences become for them a dogma, and it becomes now a supplement, if you will, and maybe an additional canonical theme to what happens after you die.
So it's now sort of, in their minds, become a displacement for the Scriptures. It's more valid. It's more empirical, and they feel more confident that this is what happens when one dies. And there's a lot to say about it, and I just want to emphasize the fact that it all goes back to what Satan said in the beginning, half God said.
So it's really a rivalry, if you will, between persons' experiences with God's Word, and that's why I am so rabid about this topic, because as one like yourself and all that we connect with are emphatic on the importance of holding forth the Word of Life and believing that God's Word is our final authority for truth and experiences as valid as we may think them to be.
If they contradict Scripture, we must yield to what saith the Scriptures and say amen, because all the promises of God in Christ are yea, and in Him amen. So that's the direction that I want to try to point people to in helping them overcome their subjective experience in making that trump the Bible.
It's serious, and I think it's serious enough that to answer your question, why did I get into it? Because I want to be a good apologist.
Well, any Christian, even those Christians out there who believe that some near-death experiences are valid and genuine, every believer must recognize that many of them are counterfeits of the evil one, because how else could it be true that many people who report these near-death experiences describe them in very wonderful ways, and yet these people giving these reports are not even Christians.
Not only are they not Christians,.
They're either atheists, or they're anti-Christian, or they're anti-Bible, or they have no foundation whatsoever of truth, but now because of their experience, it all of a sudden becomes the new reality for them that they can bank on, and not just for themselves, but they propagate it.
Some of them that have these experiences want to become now hospice workers, so that when they're dealing with dying people, they can assure them everything is going to be all right. And it gives a false piece, and it's a false gospel, and it's it's very, very dangerous.
And by the way, folks, we do have to clarify that, of course, there are some professing Bible-believing Christians, and perhaps even genuine regenerate Christians, who have claimed unusual supernatural experiences on their deathbeds.
And obviously, one of the reasons we're having this discussion today with Pastor Gary is to determine from his own experience and study whether any of these are authentic. But on top of that, we also have to add into the equation what kind of painkillers and drugs that the the departing person may be may have in his system, or her system, that are causing hallucinations and so on.
And maybe just the malfunctioning and deterioration of the brain is causing some of these things. And of course, for the unbeliever, or the person in a false religion, or with a false gospel, these could be very genuine spiritual manifestations, but from Satan.
But anyway, if you could give us some of the reasons through perhaps recounting commonly told deathbed stories, or near-death stories, that would cause you to say, wait a minute, this doesn't match up with the Scripture, and so on.
Yeah, and I'm glad you said what you did say, and of course, I was going to go get into that myself, because we can't dismiss all of this stuff of individuals' experiences that they have. And let me give you a couple simple examples that have been validated.
For instance, a woman had a cardiac arrest, and she was in a state that might be classified as clinically dead, and she had at that time period an out-of-body experience. And in that out-of-body experience period, she was on like the seventh floor or something, and this hospital was maybe 12th or 14th floors.
She claims that she had exited her body, had elevated above and beyond the floors of the hospital to a level above even the rooftop, and she claims, when she came back to life and was resuscitated, that she reported to the nurse about her out-of-body experience and said that she elevated above the roof level and saw on the roof a red sneaker.
Well, the nurse took her somewhat seriously and asked the janitor if he would please go up to the top level of the hospital and get a ladder and go through up to the roof, and tell me what you see or find.
And this is factual. This is not fictitious. Sure enough, there was a red sneaker on the top of the roof. Wow. That was reported. It's in writing. It's been verified. I believe Gary Habermas, who's done some work on this.
Yes, I've interviewed Gary.
Pardon me? I've interviewed Gary on the resurrection.
Okay, yeah, right. Well, Gary was one, and of course, I would give some credence to things that he would propagate, and he was one of the ones that told me, or said this on YouTube, that he had interviewed the person, and it was factual.
So you can't just dismiss this. Another example was a person in the operation room had slipped into a cardiac arrest, went unconscious. All the vital signs seemed to be gone, and the person seemed to be dead.
And during this time period, the individual, again, went out of his body, and when resuscitated, said to the medical staff that what had happened to him, and that he saw a quarter on top of a certain machine, equipment machine, and you know, they kind of snickered at it, but when everyone went out of the room, one of the medical staff stayed behind, got on a stool or chair, and looked up, and sure enough, there was a quarter.
This is like eight feet high that no one would have been able to see unless somebody went above that level. There are numerous examples like that, where patients who have gone into these out-of-body experiences have been able to report things that were taking place in the hospital room when they were in a comatose state, or even more advanced, that they were in a clinically dead classification state, which means that there was no hot, there was no hot beat, and there was no brainwaves that were operating.
Oxygen was off, and during that time period, again, they would come back. For instance, one lady had said to the nurse that while I was on the operating table, you took my dentures out and put them in a certain draw, and again, it was shocking that she was accurate, and these things are incredulous, you know, to our natural minds.
I was so curious about it. Chris, how much time do we have before the break?
In fact, why don't we go to our first break now, so I don't have to interrupt you, and just don't forget where you left off there, and if anybody has a question that you would like to ask of Pastor Gary George, of Sovereign Grace Chapel in Southbridge, Massachusetts, as we discuss near-death experiences examined in the light of Scripture, send them to ChrisArnzen at gmail .com, C-H-R-I-S-A-R-N-Z-E-N at gmail .com.
As always, give us your first name at least, your city and state of residence, and your country of residence, if you live outside the USA. Only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter.
It might even be that you have had a near-death experience, and you'd rather not draw attention to your identity. I would understand that, and anything else similar to that. But if it's a general question, please give us your first name at least, city and state, and country of residence.
Don't go away. We will be right back after these messages.
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That's royaldiadem .com. We're now back with Pastor Gary George of Sovereign Grace Chapel in Southbridge, Massachusetts. He's one of the speakers at the upcoming John Bunyan Conference in Franklin, Tennessee next month, and today we are addressing near-death experiences, and if you could pick up where you left off, Pastor.
Yeah, we've talked about the credibility of out-of-body experiences, and what could be some explanations for the occurrences. Out of curiosity, I inquired from family members. I have in-laws, two of them of which are neurosurgeons, so I thought I would pick their brains, and see what they could offer to me as far as how they would explain these out-of-body experiences.
And I'll just read, you know, what real, real short, I won't read the whole thing to your audience, but one of them responds by saying, as far as I have known, even though I have not witnessed any one or any accounts directly, my personal opinion on this is that when exposed to anoxia, or periods of lack of oxygen, that that is probably the scenario that is happening in those near-death experiences.
A number of neurotransmitters are released in the bloodstream, and a number of sensations are replicated in the brain. Even though individuals are considered dead with no electric brain activity, in no heartbeats, maybe the brain might be in a sort of profound sleeping state.
The other family neurosurgeon says it's controversial, because electric activity is present during sleep as well. So, when those patients make it back to life, so to speak, they recall those experiences and interpret them as being those accounts as of being out of their body, seeing a light in a tunnel, embraced by warmth, etc.
He says not all those experiences are pleasant, as some describe, and he goes on to say it might even be an epileptic phenomena, seizures, triggered also by the hypoxic environment to which neurons were exposed, and he says that all of this is only part of the explanation and doesn't necessarily contradict other alternatives.
It is just a neuroscience point of view. So, that would be more from the chemistry, empirical, scientific perspective, I suppose. So, there's a degree of dismissal on his end, but it's somewhat mysterious.
Both of them sort of admitted that they don't really have explanations for that. There was a doctor who was so curious about this that he actually was able to talk a hospital administrative board into allowing him to put some special cameras in the operating rooms of the hospital so that if there were any accounts of post mortem, or I guess we would call it, you know, at the point of a cardiac arrest where a person is in a clinically dead state, and if they claim an out-of-body experience and could describe something in the room, they would have cameras with audio that could be replayed to verify what the patient would be giving the account for, like if they saw something that was going on when they were in this comatose state or during brain death, etc., they could verify that.
Well, it turned out that he had done this, and he did get permission to set them up in various operation rooms throughout the hospital. The large hospital, I believe it was in England, and they had interviewed 40 different people over the course of two or three years that had these conditions of being in a state of death, like I said, without the brainwaves and without the heartbeat for a period of time, and not one of the 40 of them claimed to have any out-of-body experience, so out-of-body experience is a rarity I think some between 10 and 12, 20 million Americans claim to have had them, but the percentages of those who do have cardiac arrest and are in these states do not have out-of-body experiences, so that becomes problematic for those who want to try to stereotype them all as categorically occurring, so why do some have it and some don't have it when they're in the same medical health condition as others do?
That's a mystery. That's unexplainable. Why is it that a person, and this has been recorded, one person would have, who has had more than one out-of-body experience from cardiac arrest, they have been interviewed, and they have claimed that these out-of-body experiences that they have, one differed from the other one.
It was the same person, had two OBEs, and yet recorded, reported two different events that took place in this out-of-body state. Again, there's something going on here, you know. We could say it's all demonic, and I'm not going to go that far personally, because I think there's too many credible testimonies, as I gave you a couple examples about the woman who saw the sneakers on top of the roof or the person that could say that, you know, my dentures were taken out of my mouth and put in a drawer.
I mean, there was no medical explanation how they could possibly have known those kinds of things, so there's, it's still up for grab, so to speak. There's some research being done on it, but again, it's inconclusive, because you can't classify it like you can other scientific.
Experiments, if you will. Now, let me read a listener question, because it really is a perfect segue to what you are saying right now. We have Rene in Coyote, California, and Rene says, What do you do with the recorded last words of some very great heroes of the Christian faith, even heroes of Reformed and Calvinistic Christians like Charles Spurgeon?
It is reported that Spurgeon, on his deathbed, said, I can hear them coming. He sat straight up in his bed and asked, Don't you hear them? This is my coronation day. I can see the chariots. I'm ready to board.
Can we write this off as something just being said from a failing brain?
Excellent. Great question. Great point. I do not in any way discount that. I do believe that there are experiences that believers have at the point of departure, as we read in James 2 26, as the body without the spirit is dead.
The classification is the body's dead, but the spirit doesn't die. We know that the spirit survives. We're not Jehovah Witnesses. We're not Seventh-day Adventists. We don't believe in soul sleep. We believe in the activity of consciousness when death occurs.
And so, sure, I mean, when we read in Luke 16 about the rich man in Lazarus, you know, he was carried by the angels into Abraham's bosom. So there was obviously some sort of divine escorting and experiences that someone like a Spurgeon and others that we could go down the list and say they have, and I know individual people, myself, that have told me of their family members or loved ones who knew the Lord, how they experienced some sort of almost like a divine presence that gave them a consolation and almost like an invitational experience of exiting this world and going to be with the Lord.
So I'm not, I want to be sure that the listening audience doesn't think that I am pooh-poohing all OBEs or all extraordinary or unusual or somewhat miraculous like experiences that individuals could be having in their state of departure from their body, but I would say the majority of the ones that I've listened to, and I've listened to oodles of them on YouTube, and you can find tons of them, and the testimonies that they give, for instance, this young boy, young man died, and he claimed that he went to heaven, and he said that he saw John the Baptist, and we were doing a Bible study at that time, and we were talking about the subject, and one of the sisters wisely said, Did the boy see John the Baptist with a head or without a head?
I think that kind of highlights some of the fallacies that people are claiming, at least biblical fallacies. By the way, what was the answer to that? Because.
Obviously, in the afterlife, John the Baptist would have a new head.
Well, that brings up the other topic, is what is the spirit or soul clothed with in the disembodied state while they're waiting for the resurrection of the body? That's a very curious topic to me as well.
I've kind of assumed from the book of Revelation, where you have them clothed in white robes, that there's some sort of a temporal clothing or embodiment of some sort that's not, that's temporary in awaiting the time when Christ will, with their spirits, return to earth, and the body be reunited with the spirit, and then the person be in their full personhood at that point.
So that's another problem when people are claiming that they're seeing people in this out-of-body state, and the people that they're seeing that are embodied people with a likeness of the body that they had on earth.
The book that Don Piper wrote on 90 Minutes in Heaven, for instance, he claims that when he went out of his body, he went right to heaven. He was greeted by his grandfather on all of his family members that had died before him, and also high school students that had died.
So, you know, I think as serious biblical Christians, we'd have to say, now, wait a minute. God had a greeting committee of family members and high school students who were going to meet him at his coming into heaven.
I mean, the simple believeth every word, but the prudent man looketh well to his going. I'd have to say that I think I'd have to be in a simplistic state of mind to believe that testimony that he just met only his family members and high school students.
He also reported that everybody was at the age of 33. And if he met his grandfather, I wonder if he knew what his grandfather looked at 33. I know I don't look anymore now. I'm in my 70s. I might not be recognizable to somebody who would see me when I was 33 years of age, for instance.
So there are these kinds of difficulties that arise when you start to challenge these testimonies as far as the reality of them. And plus, every testimony differs from another. There are no two that are identically alike.
And most of them have a cultural parallel, if you will, when they die. For instance, an American person who's basically brought up in Judeo-Christianity will meet God. A person from the Far East who grew up in Buddhism ends up meeting Buddha.
So there's no stock reality behind these stories. Why would it be like that if there's one heaven? And again, my basis for what I believe is what I believe the Bible is about. It's the truth. So I can't accept the testimony of man over the testimony of the Scriptures.
So when the testimonies of people are so odd and peculiar and anti-biblical, I have to say, I have to dismiss that.
Yes, and one of the most fascinating near-death experiences I've ever heard, which was repeated on a number of occasions on the Get Smart television series, is when Maxwell Smart would be kneeling at the side of someone who is just about to die, and he'd say to that person, do you have any last words?
And the person would whisper something in his ear, and someone would say, well, what did he say, Max? Stop kneeling on my chest! What do you make, by the way? You were talking about a sign that that people who are having these near-death experiences or having visions of some kind on their deathbed who see physically visions of previously deceased people because they haven't been reunited with their bodies because the Judgment Day, the final judgment, has not yet come.
When that occurs, and how do you rectify that or align that with the highly debated, mysterious account we have in the Old Testament? When Saul goes to the witch of Tarsus. I mean, I'm sorry, the witch of Endor.
The witch of Tarsus, the witch of Endor, and she apparently raises Samuel from the dead, and there is no indication in the context of that account that this was a deceiving spirit or a false manifestation.
And, you know, they saw Samuel. So how do you rectify that?
Yeah, it was an account of it, that's for sure, because Samuel had said to Saul that both you and your sons will be with me, and he was referring to the state that he was in. Some people take that to assume that that's a proof text that Saul was saved because he and his sons, and his son would have included Jonathan, that since Jonathan would be with Samuel rightfully as a righteous man, Saul too, who's included in that company of those who would go to be with Samuel, must have been saved as well.
I think, though, and I've looked at that passage and thought about it many times, I think Samuel is simply saying that you're going to be in the state of death that I am with. You're all going to die.
I don't think that, and of course, most people who died that are recorded in the Old Testament, the words that are used, they were gathered unto their fathers. And so I think it's a generic term to describe going to the place of the dead.
The dead could be inclusive of the sheol side of the.
Spiritual side of the dead. Now, could you pick up on Saul and the Witch of Endor and Samuel after we come back from the midway break? Sure. If you have a question, send it to chrisarnsen at gmail .com.
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Before I return to my friend Pastor Gary George of Sovereign Grace Chapel in Southbridge, Massachusetts and our discussion on near near-death experiences, I just have a couple of very important announcements to make.
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That's chrisarnson at gmail .com, gives the first name at least, city and state and country of residence, and we were talking about the account in the Old Testament where Saul gets the the witch of Endor to perform a seance, as it were, and rose Samuel from the dead, and you were in the midst of talking about that, if you could pick up.
Yeah, that's a kind of a controversial portion in the Old Testament. I don't know if this would be of an interest to your audience or even to our subject necessarily, but I think it is interesting nevertheless as to this statement of Samuel's to Saul through the witch who said, tomorrow you and your sons will be with me, and so we do know that at the point of death people depart their bodies, and we know from the New Testament that we have a clarification as to the outcome once the body, once the spirit is separated from the soul, that one would go instantly either to heaven or to hell, but one who has to be careful to not be reading the New Testament into the Old Testament, and as I said a few minutes back that there are many examples of people who die in the statement is said of them, they were gathered unto their people, they were gathered unto their fathers, and I think that that what Samuel is saying about Saul, tomorrow you and your sons are going to be with me, is in that same vein, but some, again, I think of wrongly, and I'll give you an example, Charles Wesley, because of that expression, you're going to be with me, he writes this following little thing here, listen up, it says, the bodies cannot be the fulfillment because a day after their death, no, this is, excuse me, right here, what do these solemn words portend?
A ray of hope when life shall end? Thou and thy sons, though slain, shall be tomorrow in repose with me, not in a state of hellish pain, if Saul with Samuel do remain, not in a state of damned despair, if loving Jonathan be there.
So, obviously, Charles Wesley is interpreting that, that Samuel is stating that Saul's state after death is going to be with him, which he describes as being in a place when he says to the witch, why have you disturbed me?
Why have you disquieted me, the King James said, so he was obviously in a state of consolation and peace, so the assumption is by Wesley and others that might take that passage to mean that Saul himself went to be where Samuel was in a place of peace and comfort, you could say the good side of Abraham's bosom and shield.
So, that, in my opinion, is how that's to be understood. I do think it was a real, a real appearance of real Saul to the witch. She recognizes him. So, again, he has a bodily.
Appearance. Now, would that be a unique experience since the dead have not received their bodies yet?
Yeah, I mean, again, we know that the body is not going to be the body that shall be. It's sown in weakness. It's raised in power. It is sown a natural body. It will be raised a spiritual body, etc. In 1 Corinthians 15, 42 to 44, you get those expressions.
So, the bodies that persons after death and before their resurrection bodies could be in some form of a body that would not be the natural body that they would be occupied in their earthly journey. For instance, what if Moses appeared on the mount with Jesus?
The apostles were there. But remember, God buried Saul's body, and Michael the archangel, you know, fought over the soma, the body of Moses. So, Moses may have been an exception to being clothed with a body that was his body here on earth.
That, again, is another mystery, and I can't be dogmatic about that. But you were going to say something, I think.
I was just going to throw out there another thing to complicate the issue. The rich man in hell, in the story that Christ told of the rich man and Lazarus, he has a tongue in the story, and he's asking for water, a drop of water to be placed on his tongue.
So, that's another thing that makes the issue confusing.
Correct, and I think the soul has body sensations, even though they may be bodiless. And I think if you talk to somebody that had their leg amputated, they might on occasions reach down to scratch their foot when there's no foot there.
It's just part of their body mechanism, the way it operates, you know. These are interesting things, just like this whole topic. I mean, you know, we're told in the scriptures that necromancing is an evil, and mediums, and sorcerers, and all these kinds of things.
I'll give you an example, and I've gone to see Amazing Crescent when I was a college student. They invited him as a guest, and I could just go on and tell you some amazing things that even the psychologists, the psychology professors, and all that, they were lined up in the front row trying to figure out how he does what he does.
And he took two rings, for instance. They were both on my football team, and he said, can I have two rings provided? And they were class rings. You know how thick a college class ring would be, had their initials in it.
Crescent took them in his hands. He shuffled them in his hands. He turned his hands over, his palms over, and the two rings were interlocked. And they were passed through the audience so people could handle them.
And he said, do you see any initials on the inside of these rings? And sure enough, I mean, I could go on and tell you about things that just blows my mind.
I can say, though, years ago when Crescent was a guest on David Letterman, and Crescent did not have control over the act of doing something that he claimed is supernatural, he failed on every occasion.
When it was the staff members of David Letterman's show that had ultimate control over everything, he couldn't do what he was claiming that he was trying to do.
Yeah, and that happened before, too. In instances like when I was at this particular one, the school, and this was back in the 70s, the school had written a $2 ,000 checkout hint to him, and it was an envelope, and he told the school, remove me from the building and give me two minutes when I come back.
If I can't find it, it's a gift to the school. Well, the whole audience were trying to come up with the weirdest, most unlikely place that he could possibly think of. Well, he came back, and he played the game and let the clock run down, and then he pointed.
He said, it's up there, and it was above on a curtain, like 14 feet high, but he has failed on other occasions when he had to do the same thing, so he was not 100 accurate like you were just saying.
So, I mean, look at the magicians who imitated what Moses was doing. Up to the point when Moses could strike the dust, and it would create the knaps, the magician said, this is none other than the finger of God.
In other words, it was unimitable. They could not duplicate. They could not fabricate any miracle that could possibly match that. That was giving life. That was out of their league, but the devil and demons have amazing amounts of power.
The spiritual world is such a profound reality, and we're forbidden to engage it.
Right, and then the bottom line is, no matter how real a personal experience may be, no matter how authentic a supernatural experience may be, it's the Word of God that trumps all of that. Am I correct?
Because even at least one of these child authors who apparently, that the child had a temporary death and was revived and went to heaven, there were at least two of these stories that were put into print.
One of them was revealed to be an absolute fraud by the child himself when he got older, but there was one that was not revealed as such, but you had things happening that defied what the Bible teaches about the afterlife and about heaven, and the thing that was strange is that even the Roman Catholic Church—I don't know, I can't remember if the pope at the time, it may have been Francis, I can't remember if he put a seal of approval on the story, but definitely there were Catholic priests who were promoting the book, and it even defied Catholic teaching, you know, so it didn't make any sense.
But anyway, we have to always, no matter how real something is, we have to keep going back to the Word of God. Or should I say, no matter how real something seems, we have.
To go back to the Word of God. Well, it used to be said that the middle verse of the Bible—this is what it taught me, and this is using the King James, of course, Psalm 118 verse 8 says, it is better to trust in the Lord than to put confidence in men.
And it sounds really great, because if that is the middle or is the middle verse of the Bible, that the emphasis is it's better to trust the Lord than to put confidence in men. And in essence, that's what my motivation is.
I don't want to see the Word of God displaced by a new breed of gospel preachers and teachers trying to soothe the consciences of unconverted people that everything is going to be all right. There was a woman who had one of these out-of-body experiences, and of course, it was delightful.
She comes back, and she says this, I'd like to take the pulpit and tell people what is really on the other side, and that the guilt preached by Christian churches is completely inappropriate. That's the kind of thing that I think we need to be aware of, even though there may be credibility that some of these testimonies, it does not at all displace or debunk the Bible.
So the problem is that people who have these experiences, it gives them a false sense of fearlessness of death in the afterlife. Hell is almost obliterated by the common testimonies of OBEers, and if they become, in the minds of other people, sort of the voice of divine truth, now all of a sudden the Bible is outdated, archaic, and useless when it comes to defining or describing life after death.
Jesus says, fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul, but rather fear him who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell. He also says in Luke 12 .5, he says, fear him who after he has killed has authority to cast into hell.
Yea, I say unto you, fear him. So these out-of-body experiences can remove the necessity of what is the beginning of knowledge and wisdom, and that is the fear of God. And if the fear of God is not realized, we're dealing with a holy God, a God who hates sin, a God that can only ponder on the basis of the righteousness of his son in the blood that he shed on Calvary for the remission of people's sins.
Jesus says, if you die in your sins, where I am, you cannot go. So people like Betty Eadie, who was a Mormon, claimed that she went to heaven, and she has all kinds of Mormon ideas, because, again, that's what her religious background was, and so naturally she's going to describe her experience in Mormonish-type terminologies.
So she doesn't, she rejects the Trinity and so on and so forth, and she now becomes sort of a spokesperson for the afterlife and has this extraordinary insight. She quotes saying, at the time of death, we are given the choice to remain on this earth until our bodies are buried or to move on.
She happened to be a hypnotherapist herself. Carl Jung, who was a Swiss psychiatrist, claimed to have had an out-of-body experience as well, but he happened to be a medium, a professional medium as well, and a fortune teller, and I'm not trying to say that all OBEs ought to be labeled with a Betty Eadie kind of a person behind it or a Carl Jung atheistic person and so on, but it's just something to be aware of, and I'm glad what you said what you said, and that's where I'm coming from, is we can't let the experiences of people trump the authority of the Bible.
I believe I heard Ossie Spools say once, listening to one of his radio broadcasts, a person with an experience, no, a person with an argument is at the mercy of a person with an experience, meaning that the person who has the experience can say, hey, I had this experience.
You can't tell me differently. Well, if the Bible contradicts your experience, what is the truth? Your experience.
Or what sayeth the Scriptures? Yes. In fact, I know somebody who's a very, very close friend of mine. I'm not going to identify this person who insists. It's been a while since this person made this claim or repeated this claim, but I remember frequently over the years after I became a Christian that this person who was not demonstrating a life of repentance, was living an open rebellion against God, was claiming he was a Christian because he had an experience, he claims, that while in a state of deep depression and anguish, the Lord Jesus appeared to him, picked him up off the ground, and rocked him in his arms like a baby, and he swore that this was true.
And that was what gave this person the peace of heart and mind to continue living as he was without repentance, because he knew that he was in Jesus' arms and that nothing was going to take that experience away from him.
And I know that that person also at one time was a drug user, so I have no idea if that was a part of the reason that this manifestation happened, but nonetheless, obviously, this was giving this person false security.
And unfortunately, you know, the vast majority, way over 90 percent of the reported OBEs are always in delightful terms. Peaceful, warm, end-of-the-tunnel lights, meadows, gardens, flowers, music, sweet music, everything is kind of la-di-da-di-dee, and wow, wow, death is not so bad.
Death, where is your sting, if you will, to use that wrongly?
La-di-da-di-dee? You mean Sonny and Cher appear in these visions? I'm sorry.
Yeah, it's unfortunate. The Scripture says, man dieth and wasteth away yea, a man giveth up the spirit, and where is he? Job 14 verse 10. It's an important question that people solve that, and the only way it can be certified is if we put our trust in Christ like the thief on the cross who can have words said to him like could be said to us and understood by us today.
You'll be with me in paradise. And so that's the glorious thing about dying. As Paul says, to be with Christ is far better. Absent from the body, at home with the Lord. To die is gain. But how are these things achieved?
It's through the truth of the gospel which has come unto you as it is in all the world, Paul says in Colossians 115, 1 -5, for the hope which is laid up for you in heaven. So, you know, in all of these cases that I have mentioned or we have, you know, been talking about, these, none of them are permanent states of death.
That's important for your listening audience to keep in mind. None of them are permanent. They come back. They're resuscitated. And some of these, we don't, they only estimate, the person on their own estimates how long they were dead.
They may not have even been dead. They may have been in a sleep state of some sort that could have been either wrongly diagnosed by them as being dead, or there's things that are in the crevices of our internal being that we don't realize are not really dead when they might be classified clinically dead.
Now, I know we don't believe in burying people alive anymore, so we're sure when they go to the embalmer and that they have a coroner come to their body that there's certain tests, and I've talked to one of our nurses in our church who works in a trauma unit about people who die, you know, in the hospital.
How do they finalize their being in a state of death? And I wouldn't even want to try to describe it to you, but it's one that absolutely guarantees that this person is lifeless, will never exist in this body, in this world, at this time, this way.
This person is, as we would say, naturally speaking, the person is gone. You know, they used to bury people in the past when they assumed that they were dead, but they used to have a, they were buried with bells inside their coffins, and that's why they had people who worked the third shift, the grave shift it was called.
The reason why they worked it in case a bell went off, which meant they would bet someone was alive in a casket that was under the ground, and his job was to dig up that body to resuscitate him or to get him, not resuscitate, but to get him out of that box, you know, he was alive.
So thankfully we're more advanced these days, and we're thankful for, you know, medical technology, but sometimes it can confuse us. I had to do a term paper when I believe I was in college. I took a course called medical ethics, and it was taught by a professor who was a board member of a major college in the city that I grew up in, Worcester, Massachusetts.
He was a teacher, and he had been a Jesuit as well, and he was sharing with us, you know, some of the difficulties when it comes to ethics in regards to how certain things are to be done, and we're in, you know, days where it's even more complicated with cloning and, you know, babies being born in test tubes and, you know, on and on the list goes, and there's a new one coming out where a male can have a baby created from his own cells.
There's research being done on that, so it doesn't have, I mean, it gets freakish. It's got to be the last days, brother. Well, I guess you're not a post-millennialist. Well, I gave you my, I turned my hand over there on you, so yeah, no, I'm not.
We have.
Not because of that reason. We have. Go ahead. We have a question from Schaefer in Cottontown, Pennsylvania, another city that I am learning about for the first time, being a fairly new resident of Pennsylvania.
Schaefer says, the vast majority of near-death experiences I have ever heard are from those that claim beautiful, gorgeous, glorious, and wonderful things that they have experienced after coming to a near-death point, but there have been a couple that I have heard of people who had terrifying experiences that gave them the impression that they were going to hell if they did not repent, and then when they were revived, that radically changed their lives.
They did repent, believe upon Christ, and follow him. Could we say that these near-death experiences that were terrifying and perhaps had a vision of hell or something were necessarily fake experiences?
No, you know, again, like I said, I don't want to cast out the baby with the bathwater. There is some credulity to these testimonies, and yes, there is a minority of cases of hellish experiences. For instance, the person who wrote the book, I think his name was Bill Weiss, called 23 Minutes in Hell, and this is kind of crazy, but he claims that he saw 15-foot-tall reptile demons, he saw rats the size of dogs, and snakes the size of trains.
Talking about having a hellish experience, that would be a good way of describing being in a place of suffering to a degree. So, you know, God can use some of these things, and I have actually used these to try to show to cults that don't believe in post-death consciousness, post-mortem consciousness, that these are genuine experiences.
When I told you about the sneaker on top of the roof and the quarter on top of the machine equipment in the operating room, these are factual in proof that the soul can live, the spirit can live outside of the body, have consciousness and awareness.
So whether or not the soul goes to a place of bliss or a place of torment, that is sort of an open question, but I can say that those who claim to go to heaven, their experience is very—I mean, there's only one heaven.
The book of Revelation describes for us in visionary literature what heaven is like. There's not two different kinds of heaven. There's not a back room to heaven. There's not a second floor to heaven, or there's one heaven, and it's described in one way with those who are there should be, by all people who go there, come back saying, this is what heaven is like.
If that was the case, I would be sold 100 on these OBEs. But when they come back with various views, various ideas, theological confusions, people that want to now become sort of like spokespersons for death in the afterlife and give false hope to people who are living a licentious and sin-filled life, that they can now have hope that, oh, don't worry about death.
It's all good. You're going to go to heaven no matter what you do, how you live, and what you believe. That there is damnable. And I think in some ways, Kristen, that's why I'm glad you've had me on the program, because I feel that this is more serious than what the cults are teaching.
As vile as their teachings are, and as many as they can be leading to hell, this is what becomes doctrines of OBEs. And there's actually a society of NDE people around the country that meet in conferences in different places.
I actually wanted to attend one that was in the Boston area one time. It just didn't happen to fit my schedule. But I just wanted to go to hear and to see what transpires at them. And I'm sure you can find them on YouTube if you look.
They're pretty easy to find. Again, it's just making the Bible become a museum piece and really have no validity for people to believe anymore.
Yeah, it's also interesting that most, the vast majority of these charlatans that claim to be prophets, when you see them on television, or maybe you're actually attending a service at a Pentecostal or charismatic church that believes in extra-biblical new revelation and prophecy and prophets as people and as an office in the church, when they are giving their prophecies to individuals who come up the aisle, it's always good news.
Or at least the vast majority. I've never even once heard a so-called prophet who's laying their hands on somebody and prophesying, say, oh no, there's something dark ahead of you. There's a dangerous thing that's about to occur.
Oh, you know, nothing like that. It's always wonderful news waiting for them.
Yeah, exactly. And like you said, there's all these positive spins that they put on it. And I wanted to attend one of these NDE conferences, just like when Benny Hinn came to Worcester. You know, we have a 16 ,000-person stadium, indoor theater place.
So I went there because I wanted to see for myself. I also went with 5 ,000 tracks that we put together.
Do you have to go on a break, Chris? Yeah, in fact, pick up where you left off on the Benny Hinn. All right. We're going to be right back. Don't go away.
This is Pastor Bill Sousa, Grace Church at Franklin, here in the beautiful state of Tennessee. Our congregation is one of a growing number of churches who love and support Iron Sharpens Iron radio financially.
Grace Church at Franklin is an independent, autonomous body of believers which strives to clearly declare the whole counsel of God as revealed in Scripture through the person and work of our Lord Jesus Christ.
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To sing their praises sufficiently, but I'll give it a shot, Jeffrey Rice of Post Tenebrous Luxe is a remarkably gifted craftsman and artisan. All his work is done by hand from the cutting, to the pleating of corners, to the perimeter stitching.
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Hi, I'm Buzz Taylor. Chris Arnzen of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio has had a long-time partnership with our friends at CVBBS which stands for Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service. They specialize in supplying Reformed and Puritan books and Bibles at discount prices that make them affordable for everyone.
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I'm Dr. Tony Costa, Professor of Apologetics and Islam at Toronto Baptist Seminary. I'm thrilled to introduce to you a church where I've been invited to speak and have grown to love, Hope Reform Baptist Church in Corham, Long Island, New York, pastored by Rich Jensen and Christopher McDowell.
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I'm Dr. Joseph Piper, president emeritus and professor of systematic and applied theology at Greenville Presbyterian Theological Seminary. Every Christian who's serious about the Deformed Faith and the Westminster Standards should have and use the eight-volume commentary on the theology and ethics of the Westminster Larger Catechism titled Authentic Christianity by Dr. Joseph Morecraft.
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Please tell Dr. Morecraft and the Saints at Heritage Presbyterian Church of Cumming, Georgia, that Dr. Joseph Piper of Greenville Presbyterian Theological Seminary said...
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We are talking about near-death experiences, and you were talking about a Benny Hinn event.
Well, if we wouldn't have enough time for me to go into the details, I guess I can tell you this at least. When I showed up there, I had 5 ,000 tracks that were made up with a picture with Benny Hinn on the front cover with his hands spread out in a white suit that said, Benny Hinn, the prophet.
And then when you opened up the track, it said, all the false prophecies of Benny Hinn. And we were carrying sandwich boards that said, don't give a penny to Benny, was one of them. And the other one was, Benny, stop hindering the truth.
But I also managed to get inside. It was free anyway. But I wanted to see for myself things that were going on. And again, it's just a curiosity that I have partly, but also because I don't want to see God's people misled.
Matter of fact, people were surrounding me, trying to cast out demons out of me, and challenging that I was a Christian, how I could be speaking against Benny Hinn and so on. And I don't want to be a negativist.
At the same time, I don't want to be a gullibilist either. So when it comes to this topic, and I know we got to close in a minute or two, I basically just want to say there are lots of books that have come out.
I've noted over 50 of them, at least, that have been out there. And many of them are on the top shelves, bestsellers, New York Times bestsellers. And they have become, for many Christians, the best resources now for understanding the state of man after dying.
And it's kind of, it's the new and the best way to know the unknown, they think. And these books are not merely appendices to the Bible, but they are becoming now like supplemental canonical books of the Bible.
And they're being given by people the highest rating for knowing what happens as soon as you die. And this becomes very, very problematic for people who believe the Word of God. And you've got to compete with people who have experiences.
And I don't necessarily try to squash people who are claiming that they have these, but I try to tell them, look it, don't make your experience become the Bible to you. Let the Bible interpret your experience rather than your experience interpret the Bible.
So it can be a dangerous zone that we need to be aware of. And we need to know how to handle the topic so that we don't get consumed by it. And yet at the same time, there's a side of it that is positive.
There is life after death. People do leave their bodies. And praise God, we can, as believers in Christ, have that blessed assurance that to be death, to meet death, for us is life with Christ. And that death is not the end.
It's only the beginning of the new life where we have had our treasures laid up, that moth and rust can't corrupt, and thieves can't break through their steel. So we want to give God the glory, and we believe that Jesus is, as the Scripture says, in Him I hid all the treasures of wisdom and of knowledge, Colossians chapter 2, verse 2 and 3.
I have time for one more very quick question. Alicia in Merrick, Long Island, New York, does Matthew 16, verse 4, apply to this, a wicked and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign? Yes, that's a good point.
That's unfortunate. People are hungry, but if they're not hungry for the Word, and they're hungry just to fulfill their appetites that might not be searching in the right places, they could be filled with something that could mislead them, like these ideas that OBEs have in trying to promote the afterlife as being all glorious, all joy, all heaven, all life, everything that's good is a very dangerous thing to be promoting.
So yes, thank you for bringing that verse off. We are living in days where people are searching, but they're looking for it in wrong places.
Let me give everybody your websites for Sovereign Grace Chapel in Southbridge, Massachusetts. It's sovereigngracema .org, sovereigngracema .org. For the John Bunyan Conference coming up April 14th through the 17th, where my guest is one of the speakers, go to ptinct .org, ptinct .org.
And don't forget about the website to register for the Grace Christian Academy fundraising gala on Friday, March 15th, when I will be the emcee. Go to gcali .com forward slash gala, g-a-l-a. That's gcali .com forward slash gala, g-a-l-a.
I want to thank you so much, Pastor Gary, for being a superb guest as you always are. And I want you all to always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far greater Savior than you are a sinner.