Near Death Experiences PROVE Hell Is REAL! | Pastor Reacts

Near-Death Experiences and Hellish Reports Across Worldviews

5 of the population or 1 out of 20 claims to have had a near-death experience, but they also found an even greater percentage that had hellish experiences.

There are a subset of folks who experience NDEs across all religious worldviews, and they seem to talk about the same typical experiences, a bright light, a tunnel, feeling good, but that's in the first few minutes.

What happens when you're dead for a longer period of time? This is frightening. We all have to face death, ladies and gentlemen, but if we don't get right with God on his terms, not ours, the fate that awaits us is absolutely horrific.

What happens when we die? This is the age-old question that human beings have been wrestling with for millennia. Now, if you're a Christian, you have a biblically-based answer, but what if I told you that the near-death experiences of people who don't know God actually back up what Jesus said in the Bible?

We're about to get into it, but first, welcome to Wise Disciple. My name is Nate Sala, and I'm helping you become the effective Christian that you are meant to be. That includes understanding how near-death experiences affirm what the Bible says about death and the afterlife.

Make sure to like and subscribe, and if you think this video is helpful, please share it with somebody else, as it just helps me to get the word out about this ministry.

In one study, and again, I told you near-death experiencers are reticent to come forward because this is a sacred experience that is hard to describe in our three-dimensional terms, so they don't often come forward readily, but even of those who have come forward, 23%, according to one study, came forward talking about having a hellish experience to some degree or another.

These are common. This 2019 European Academy of Neurology did a study across 35 countries, found that 5 of the population, or one out of 20, claims to have had a near-death experience, but they also found an even greater percentage that had hellish experiences or negative experiences.

So, you got to make sense of these.

As well. So, it's one thing to say negative experience, and it's another thing entirely to say hellish, at least if you're trying to understand whether or not there's a connection between near-death experiences and the Bible.

So, let's pay close attention to the experiences and pull up scripture along the way to see if there are any parallels here.

Jesus’ Warnings About Hell in Matthew and Mark

You know, interestingly, Jesus talked about hell a lot as something real, but not as a scare tactic. I think it's more as a, look, this is reality, and what he came to do.

Was that no one would go there. Real quick, I've got two passages for you where Jesus describes hell. Take a look at this. Matthew 25, verse 30. This is part of a story that Jesus is telling, but this is what he says, cast the worthless servant into the outer darkness.

In that place, there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. Again, in verse 41, then he will say to those on his left, this is at the end, depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire, prepared for the devil and his angels.

Also, take a look at this. This is Mark chapter 9, verse 43. And if your hand causes you to sin, cut it off. It is better for you to enter life crippled than with two hands to go to hell, to the unquenchable fire.

So, already we have some descriptors in here where Jesus is describing something. He was explicitly warning people to avoid this final destination, to repent and to turn to God and be saved. But is this commensurate with what people experience when they die?

Let's find out. For instance, I interviewed this atheist.

College professor, tenured college professor, who was, he was an art professor who was doing a tour with students in Europe, in France, and his lower duodeum ruptured. You usually have like five to six hours before you're dead, because you're spilling all that junk into your cavity.

And it was a weekend, so they couldn't find a surgeon in France. And after eight hours, he died. Now, he thought when you die, it's just unplug the computer, screen goes blank, there's nothing. And that's not what happened.

And instead, he said he was standing there by his bed, he felt the worst he had ever felt in his life, and suddenly he felt wonderful. And he doesn't even know he's dead. Like he doesn't realize he's dead, because he's sitting there thinking, something happened, I feel, I feel wonderful.

And he feels these new senses, this, this group of people then come into the hallway, and he can see him in the hallway, and they're calling to him, Howard, come, come with us. And he said, I'm sick, I need a surgeon, you know, that's what he's been waiting for.

And they said, Oh, we know, we know all about you, come, come with us. Don't you want us to help you? We're gonna help you. Come on. We've been.

Waiting a long time. Come with us. So these are not people he knows. These are strangers, it sounds like now. This is not what everyone experiences. Sometimes people see dead relatives and others. But for this man, that was not the case.

And it sounds like he doesn't even know that he's dead yet. He just knows that he feels wonderful. Okay, so time out. I like to point out.

That not every near death experience is as deep as others, like meaning all the elements. So some just there's an out of body experience, and they're back in, okay, those can be interpreted in a million ways, right?

A million worldviews can wrap around that. If Howard had at this point, come back to his body and been resuscitated, his interpretation probably would have been Hey, it's all good. Atheists go to heaven, it feels great.

It's nice people, everything's good.

But that's not what happened. By the way, there are a subset of folks who experience NDEs across all religious worldviews. And they seem to talk about the same typical experiences, a bright light, a tunnel, feeling good.

But that's in the first few minutes. And like Burke says, if that's all the experience, you can interpret that within your own particular framework. But what happens when you're dead for a longer period of time?

This is frightening. So he starts to follow these people. And again, time and even distance. It doesn't work the same on the other side. Which I don't fully understand that except that by analogy, you know, think about, you know, from from here to Austin, Texas, where I live, Nashville to Austin.

It's a long way, right? It's a two hour flight. But what if I could think it and be there? How far is it now? Yeah, right. All of a sudden, distance doesn't mean the same the same thing. So on the other side, so he couldn't tell.

And he follows these people. And they end up he ended up he starts to realize they're deceiving him. They're starting to mock him. They're they're, they're cursing them. They're all these, you know, and and he starts to realize this is not good.

And then he realizes he's in this darkness, and it keeps getting dark. And he tries to say, Hey, I want to go back. And they're like, you're not going anywhere. They start pushing and shoving. And he's in and he calls it a darkness.

It's darker than black. And I've heard people commonly say.

That. Listen closely to the words of Jesus as he describes hell, Matthew chapter 22, verse 13, then the king said to the attendants bind this person hand and foot, cast him into the outer darkness. In that place, there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

So this is commensurate with what we read before. Now, if you combine all the descriptors that Jesus uses to characterize hell, I think you're going to quickly realize that he's describing something that is otherworldly and cannot be fully captured in everyday language.

But darkness is absolutely something that Jesus uses to describe hell. And that's what this atheist professor experienced when he died. People who maybe they were people, maybe they weren't, lured him away from his body, and then started to mock him and torment him as he moved further and further into darkness.

But it actually even gets worse than that. Jesus called it the outer darkness where there.

Will be weeping and gnashing of teeth, meaning like just it's, you know, I don't know, I guess, just horrific. And that's what he experienced. And so he finally realizes he's being deceived by these creatures that he couldn't fully see completely because they were kind of veiled.

But now it's dark and he can't, he can't see them, but he can feel them. And they start to maul him. He starts to try to fight to get away and they just, and they're having fun. So I've had him talk to me about this four times and he starts to describe it.

And then he says to me, I can't go any farther because he had PTSD from it. Every single time you interviewed him, he couldn't push past. Yeah. There's a certain point that he would say, I can't go any farther because it's taken me a long time to, he had what, you know, vets would call PTSD because it's real.

It's more real than this. By the way, when Jesus describes hell, he drops a Ramez in his descriptions that takes us back to the old Testament. And I've mentioned these things before, but I bring this up to say the concept of gnashing of teeth.

We tend to think of it in terms of people grimacing in pain, that they're gnashing their teeth because they're in pain. The Psalmist where Jesus pulls from actually describes it in a completely different context.

Look at this. This is Psalm 35, and this is a person who is righteous, who is bemoaning his plight. Look at this. But at my stumbling, they rejoiced and gathered. They gathered together against me. Wretches whom I did not know tore at me without ceasing.

Like profane mockers at a feast, they gnashed me with their teeth. So in this context, gnashing of teeth, it's not supposed to describe what people do as a reaction to their pain. It's a form of mockery that wicked people do as they are tormenting a person.

That's what Jesus says is going to happen in hell. But wait a second. Does that sound familiar to you? That was this atheist experience. This, this, this man's near-death experience, is it not? How can an atheist who had a near-death experience go through the same thing that the Psalmist wrote about thousands of years ago?

That Jesus used to describe hell thousands of years ago. That's.

Interesting. And I think that's a very important point to note. That what's, what's ahead is better than the best we've experienced, but what's ahead is worse than the worst we've experienced, too. And, and I believe that we are in a, a temporal, you know, time capsule for a purpose.

We are, we are in a time of choosing. We're in a time of choosing. What kingdom do we want to be a part of? Is it me and my kingdom and I rule? Because as it turns out, that's what hell is. Hell is the creature wanting to play God and it's dominate or be dominated.

This is what Moses meant when he said this. This is Deuteronomy 30 verse 19. I call heaven and earth to witness against you today that I've set before you life and death, blessing and curse. Therefore choose life that you and your offspring may live, loving the Lord your God, obeying his voice and holding fast to him.

For God is your life and length of days that you may dwell in the land that the Lord swore to your fathers, to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob to give to them. The Bible goes on to say that our life is but a vapor that vanishes.

That means what we do here today matters. While you still have breath in your lungs today, what you do right now, how you respond to God and his word right now can make the difference for the rest of your entire life.

Either way, we all have to face death, ladies and gentlemen. But if we don't get right with God on his terms, not ours, the fate that awaits us is absolutely horrific.

And that's what Howard realized in this place. It was really interesting because he said, I mean, first of all, picture the worst prison scene, like the worst. Years ago, I saw a movie Midnight Express.

You ever see that? No, I haven't. A Turkish prison, you know, just getting brutalized and raped daily and all kinds of, it's a pretty gruesome movie. That's what was going on. And so, and just being eviscerated, and what he said, several things he said that was interesting.

He said, you know, I realized that these people were my kindred spirits. I said, what do you mean? So, I realized that they were like me on earth. I came to a point in my life when I thought the biggest, baddest bear in the woods wins, and that's how I lived.

And he said, I wasn't good to my, I wasn't nice to my students. I was all about me and building my monuments to myself and my ego. I cheated on my wife a lot. It was all about me. And he said, what I realized is that these people were like me on earth.

But when the good was gone, it just spirals down worse and worse.

C. S. Lewis, the Prison of the Mind, and Choosing Life

C .S. Lewis draws this concept out in The Great Divorce. It's a brilliant little book. I encourage everyone to read it. Very quick read. But the point is made, if the doors of hell were unlocked for a day, and people in hell were sent to heaven, they were just picked up and dropped off in heaven, they would still reject it.

Why? Well, because their nature has been shaped by a million decisions to reject the good, to reject God, and to be repulsed by God's heaven, which actually touches on the question that some people have as to why hell is eternal.

And the answer is because people in hell still reject God at every single moment, even steeped in the consequences of their own sin, they refuse to bend the knee. And it sounds like this man's near-death experience tracks along these lines.

So he's in this place, and this is really fascinating. He hears, he said, like in his solar plex, because he still was himself. And he said, he heard, pray to God. And his first thought is, I don't believe in God.

And he feels it again, pray to God. And he's like, I don't, he's fighting. And this is a very important thing, Sean, because the ego can imprison us. Our egos can absolutely imprison us. And here he is literally in a hellish place, experiencing the worst things you can imagine.

And he's hearing this, pray to God, but he's fighting.

It. That's second Corinthians 10, five, by the way, that's the prison that we are commanded to lead people out of. It's the prison of the mind. You remember this verse, second Corinthians 10, verse three, for though we walk in the flesh, we're not waging war according to the flesh for the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh, but here it is, have divine power to destroy strongholds, to destroy prisons.

We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God and take every thought captive to obey Christ. These strongholds or prisons, right, that Paul mentions, they are the fortresses of the mind.

I've preached on this passage, so it's fresh. That's why, again, C .S. Lewis was right. The gates of hell are locked from the inside. From the resident of hell's perspective, there's nowhere else they would rather be because the antithesis of hell, which is God's heaven is repulsive.

It's just not an option. You might ask, well, how does a person get to the point where they believe such a thing? It's through, hear me, man, man, I was raised by hippies. Hear me, ladies and gentlemen, it's through a million little decisions every single day to reject God and to reject his word.

It all provides a cumulative effect that degrades your mind. This is clearly taught in God's word.

And finally, the third time, he's like, I don't even know what to pray. I don't. And he, you know, and he starts just saying this, like, God bless America and thy country tis of thee. And, you know, he's just piecing things together.

And, and he's saying these things. But when he, when he says the name of God, they become more angry and are threatening him even more. But he also noticed backing off. So, so he keeps doing it because it's working.

And then he ends up just alone there. And he said, for how long? I don't know. He said, time doesn't work the same. It could have been decades, but he was just thinking about his life. And he was thinking about, you know, how, again, on the other side, truth is truth.

There's no hiding. And he's like, he's like, this is, this is who I become. This is what I deserve. But at the same time, he didn't want that. And he hears in his soul, the song he heard when someone took him to church as a kid, Jesus loves me.

And he couldn't remember anymore, except Jesus loves me. And he had this thought, and he now thinks God was even in that trying to reach him, you know, in this, in this battle he's having in his own spirit, even, even then.

And he finally gets to the end of himself. You know, we all have to hit rock bottom before we look up. That's a famous recovery principle. Some different people have different rock bottoms, but, you know, many times we have to hit rock bottom before we look up.

And Howard said to me, my rock bottom was low. And, um, and he cries out, you know, he thinks to himself, even if Jesus does exist, why would you care about me? I've been so horrible. But in desperation, he just cried out, Jesus saved me.

And he said, into this darkness, he sees a speck of light coming, getting brighter and brighter and brighter till again, he described as brighter than the sun, but he could look at it. And it was mesmerizing and reach out, pick him up, take him out of there.

And he's then standing before these angels being held by Jesus. And he gives them a life review. Now I want to, I want to fast forward for a.

Second because hold on a life review sounds like the book of revelation. So, so let me back up. Isn't this interesting that an atheist who can't even remember the words, the lyrics to Jesus loves me, rejected God live for himself, essentially his whole life.

I'm not even sure if it says, you know, if this person ever read the Bible, all of a sudden he's having all of these experiences that are incredibly biblical that are line for line matching what the Bible specifically says about hell.

And then he's given a life review. That's revelation chapter 20, verse 11. Then I saw a great white throne and him who was seated on it from his presence, earth and sky fled away and no place was found for them.

And I saw the dead great and small standing before the throne and the books were opened. Then another book was opened, which is the book of life. And the dead were judged by what was written in the books, according to what they had done.

And the sea gave up the dead who were in it. Death and Hades gave up the dead who are in them. And they were judged each one of them, according to what they had done. Then death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire.

This is the second death, the lake of fire. And if anyone's name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire. This matches what Jesus said in Matthew 12, right? That men will give an account for every careless word they spoke on the day of judgment.

Sounds like a thorough life review to me. You know,.

Life Review, Conversion, and Reconciliation

This, this is a, this is fascinating. The story sounds so like you gotta be making this up, but after this near-death experience, this Howard, this atheist, tenured college professor, and once you have tenure, you don't leave that.

You can't be fired. It's the most secure thing you could have. Two years after his near-death experience, he leaves his tenured college professorship to become a Christian pastor. His wife divorces him because she's still an atheist, atheist and thinks he's crazy.

How do you explain that? Yeah. And what he would say, Jesus, you know, in, in the presence of Jesus, he's, he's getting this life review and he said some very interesting things. So he had a very abusive father and, um, like, like beat him daily, cursed him out daily.

Nothing was ever good enough. And he said, you know, I was seeing these scenes in my life play out. And I was seeing that my father was, he was, he was a horrible person, but I was also seeing that there, it was a two way street that I resented him.

And I did things to provoke him and to rebel against him. And he said that the places where I always thought, well, I'm the victim, I'm the good guy. And everybody else is a bad guy. He said, no, I realized that God wants us to take responsibility for ourselves.

He'll take responsibility of what's right and wrong and who's, who's where and what all we can do is take responsibility for ourselves. And so he, um, when he came back, he reconciled with his father and his brothers and sisters disowned him for a while because they were like, how in the world can you reach out to him and become friends with him?

He was horrible.

That's the love and the grace and the mercy of God flowing through this man. We Christians know what this is, right? Because we see a changed life from someone who clearly encountered the living God. Amen.

I love it. I love it. All right. I highly encourage you to watch this full interview. I think it's incredible. I think it's frightening and also at times comforting in the sense that we see the God of the Bible reaching out to some folks, even in their last moments, apparently.

So definitely check it out. I'll leave a link for the interview below, but Hey, now it's your turn. What do you think about near death experiences? Are they veridical accounts of people going into the afterlife?

Or is there some other explanation? Let me know in the comments below. I'd really love to get your thoughts on this. Hey, since you made it all the way to the end, why not join my Patreon community today is the day you can read the Bible with me.

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