Encountering God’s Love in Near-Death Experiences

Never in history, until now, have we been able to hear from so many people around the world brought back from clinical death. I believe NDEs are God’s gift to our globally connected world—widespread evidence of God’s reality and his great love for people of all nations.

Already in this chapter, you’ve read about encounters with God described by Indian, African, North American, Middle Eastern, and European NDErs. As you will continue to discover in the pages that follow, people from diverse religious backgrounds and cultures encounter the same God of Light and Love in their NDEs. How do we explain such a diversity of humanity agreeing on the basic description of the God they encounter in clinical death? Could it be that God is reaching out to humanity in a profound way, offering hope to people of all nations?

Not only will you read stories of people from diverse cultures, but also from professors, psychologists, doctors, lawyers, CEOs—people who only lose professional credibility talking about wild stories of seeing God. People like Dr. Bell Chung.

A native of Hong Kong, Dr. Bell Chung earned his PhD in cognitive psychology and loved adventure travel. By the age of thirty, he had gone scuba diving, skiing, and mountain climbing in thirty countries. But the ultimate form of adventure and freedom for Dr. Chung was hang gliding—to fly as free as a bird.

While vacationing in New Zealand, he went hang gliding in the mountains one day. Just after liftoff, he noticed the glider was climbing too fast and at too steep an angle. Just as sharp as its ascent, the glider stalled and plummeted down like a broken kite, falling over one hundred meters.

Bang! As the glider hit the ground, it smashed into pieces. Dr. Chung found himself looking down on the wrecked body of the glider, glass and metal strewn across the ground.

“[I] saw a broken young man lying there dying,” Dr. Chung said. “In horror, I realized this man looked just like me! That’s my body!” Dr. Chung then noticed a warm, golden light that spoke to him.

“The darkness is over. Welcome to the brightness,” the golden light said to me.

I found myself bathed in a sea of golden light, so peaceful and calm. I was fully embraced by a comforting love and gentleness. I also found my body dazzling, reflecting rays of golden light. The senses of warmth and love saturated me. . . .

“Would you like to go or to stay?”. . .

Someone was speaking to me from the source of light. Our communication did not work through the voice, but the mind, like telepathy. I tried to look at the source of light but could hardly see anything or any person other than the halo of light. I had no idea who was speaking to me, but I knew that was the source of the greatest love. . . . Perhaps it’s what we called God?

“To go or to stay?” I muttered. Does it mean I could choose between life and death?

“This is the last question of your life.” He seemed to be able to comprehend my thoughts. . . .

“Before making your decision, you may wish to see your life in review.” . . .

[I] found myself in a cinema, with thousands of screens around me. Playing on every screen were episodes of the different moments in my thirty years of life, from early childhood till the present. Some of which I remembered, some of which I had long forgotten. I was intrigued by this fascinating . . . panoramic picture of my entire life.20

Dr. Chung eventually returned. It took a rescue team thirty minutes to cut him out of the wreckage. After three days in a coma, he began the long road of recovery as a different man.

People of all nationalities, professions, and backgrounds encounter the same God of Light and Love in their NDEs. God is not experienced as an impersonal force, but as a personal God who knows each individual more intimately than they had ever imagined—recalling things about their lives even they had forgotten. They all come back knowing that God is love, and that love is what matters most to God.

As we will come to understand, our modern era of NDEs is not the first time this God of Light and Love has revealed himself. Near the beginning of written history, around four thousand years ago, and before any of the world’s modern religions were formalized in a sacred text,21 God claims he appeared with a plan to bless all the nations. “The LORD had said to Abram . . . ‘I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you . . . and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you’” (Genesis 12:1-3, NIV).

I am convinced God created all people in his image, and he is for all people of all nations. NDErs confirm God speaks to them in their native languages. This God sees all, knows all, wants to forgive all, and unconditionally loves each person uniquely.

While I have never had a mystical spiritual experience such as those described by NDErs, I have clearly seen how this love from God is real and available to us ordinary, non-NDErs. God cares uniquely about each individual he created. I believe he wants us all to know and even experience his great love in a very personal way.

JOHN BURKE is the author of the New York Times bestseller Imagine Heaven as well as No Perfect People Allowed, Soul Revolution, and Unshockable Love. His latest book is Imagine the God of Heaven. John and Kathy Burke are the founders of Gateway Church, a multisite church based in Austin, Texas.