Awesome article , really inspiring.

Heaven Is Real: A Doctor’s Experience With the Afterlife

As a neurosurgeon, I did not believe in the phenomenon of near-death experiences. I grew up in a scientific world, the son of a neurosurgeon. I followed my father’s path and became an academic neurosurgeon, teaching at Harvard Medical School and other universities. I understand what happens to the brain when people are near death, and I had always believed there were good scientific explanations for the heavenly out-of-body journeys described by those who narrowly escaped death.

read more:
http://goo.gl/uMZCc

I won't offer my opinion on this, but does it measure up with scripture? And yes, I have read the whole thing, even watched the interview with him very closely.

richrock, I read this article and listened to the video as well before I came on line here. I also read the comments that followed the article. I think I read this article on WorldNetDaily. Anyhow.

I have serious reservations about it. I will not accuse the doctor of lying because I do not think he is, I do believe he is speaking the truth.

There seems to be a plethora of reports pertaining to the afterlife in recent years. As I read them I am troubled for the most part in my spirit because I know there are genuine experiences of people getting a view of the afterlife, but how does one discern whether any are counterfeit or genuine?

A couple years ago we had a customer come to our store who had an afterlife experience. He told me what he saw, how it was so beautiful. He did not see any angels or Jesus but did sense a presence with him. He told me how he is going to work to be real good so he can go there, pointing to a ring on his finger that he said will help him in this process! The red flags I saw then and still do is that he never saw Jesus or any angelic beings. He never said a word about repentance or how he is urging others to repent. Nothing of the like.

The ones I consider authentic, coming from God are those that urge people to repent from their sins and come to the LORD Jesus. If this message is missing from the story, I chalk it up to a counterfeit. This may sound too stern for some, but I do not want to dishonor the LORD Jesus.

What are you thinking, richrock?

Perhaps I need to explain how I can consider these afterlife experiences real but still call them counterfeit.

The devil can counterfeit God's miraculous. It is to his advantage for people to have wonderful visions that will in effect work to discredit the reality of hell to the unbeliever. This is how I would understand a lot of the wonderful scenery unbelievers are seeing. Now if the the ones having visions are indeed Believers I will regard them differently.

BTW, are you aware that people in pagan religions also see visions? Scary, is it not?

I fully agree with ginny,

I consider the material in the link below to be genuine because it contains a warning and a call to repentence.

http://youtu.be/wivgDck1l88

I'm currently at work (late again) and will offer a response to you later, Ginny. It's difficult to formulate a proper response, but would say that the more 'authentic' experiences should tally with scripture. I have heard of people utterly transformed.

My wife came home recently after hearing about another person who had an NDE, and had died after an argument with their wife. They were told by Jesus that he could not enter heaven because he had not forgiven his wife. I checked this out in scripture, and discovered the opposite. What this guy was now travelling to churches teaching was law (you must forgive to be forgiven) instead of the grace of New Testament (forgive others as God forgave you).

Hence the reason I'm cautious. Sure, these things get people talking about the idea of heaven/hell (nobody seems to go there much, strange that?) but I prefer to be quite biblical about it. Like I wrote earlier, I'll formulate a proper response later.