X-Files: Christ & the Supernatural

   “Near Death Experiences”

Sermon by Noel K. Anderson   First Presbyterian Church of Upland   July 31, 2022

                   [OUTLINE ONLY—COMPUTER CRASH!—APOLOGIES!]

TEXT: 1 Corinthians 12: 2-4

2 I know a person in Christ who fourteen years ago was caught up to the third heaven—whether in the body or out of the body I do not know; God knows. 3 And I know that such a person—whether in the body or out of the body I do not know; God knows—4 was caught up into Paradise and heard things that are not to be told, that no mortal is permitted to repeat.  †

The Lottery is not about MONEY

• Why do people play the lottery?  Can’t be for the money
• The math is against them. Better chances of winning an Oscar.
• A lottery ticket is a license to dream—imagine wholeness and empowerment—all the things you could do with such money.  
• It’s not about money; it’s about HOPE.
• The Christian hope is not such a dream, but a Promise of God—all who play will most certainly win. 

What are we to think about NDEs?

• Scientists for decades have been seriously trying to debunk NDEs
• Psychologists: “dreams, hallucinations, and wish-fulfillments”
• Neurologist: “final short-circuiting of a dying brain”
• Neurologist who HAD and NDE:  Eben Alexander: 
• My coma taught me many things. First and foremost, near-death experiences, and related mystical states of awareness, reveal crucial truths about the nature of existence. Simply dismissing them as hallucinations is convenient for many in the conventional scientific community, but only continues to lead them away from the deeper truth these experiences are revealing to us. The conventional reductive materialist (physicalist) model embraced by many in the scientific community, including its assumption that the physical brain creates consciousness and that our human existence is birth-to-death and nothing more, is fundamentally flawed. At its core, that physicalist model intentionally ignores what I believe is the fundament of all existence — consciousness itself.
• He describes his experience this way: 
• Those memories began in a primitive, coarse, unresponsive realm (the “Earthworm’s Eye View” or EEV) from which I was rescued by a slowly spinning clear white light associated with a musical melody, that served as a portal up into rich and ultrareal realms. The Gateway Valley was filled with many earth-like and spiritual features: vibrant and dynamic plant life, with flowers and buds blossoming richly and no signs of death or decay, waterfalls into sparkling crystal pools, thousands of beings dancing below with great joy and festivity, all fueled by swooping golden orbs in the sky above, angelic choirs emanating chants and anthems that thundered through my awareness, and a lovely girl on a butterfly wing who proved months later to be central to my understanding of the reality of the experience (as reported in detail towards the end of my book Proof of Heaven). The chants and hymns thundering down from those angelic choirs provided yet another portal to higher realms, eventually ushering my awareness into the Core, an unending inky blackness filled to overflowing with the infinite healing power of the all-loving deity at the source, whom many might label as God.
• He speaks of “going to HEAVEN” but this is not the biblical Heaven; it is more like what the Bible calls PARADISE. 

Paradise—is it what we mean by Heaven?

3 And I know that such a person—whether in the body or out of the body I do not know; God knows—4 was caught up into Paradise and heard things that are not to be told,

• And Jesus in Luke 23:43:
• Then he said, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.” He replied, “Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise.”
• That’s “today,” Good Friday, not “in a couple days after I’ve risen.”
• Is Paradise what we tend to mean when we speak of Heaven? 
• What are we to expect happens to us when we die? 
• Some background…

Ancient Greeks on Death

• The Greek world was pagan, and Gnosticism their worldview.
• Gnosticism=all material reality is bad and fallen.
• Immortal souls unfortunately trapped in the flesh
• Death means release of soul to journey up to “God” [the ONE, the ALL—a very Buddhist-like god—the big divine soup into which all souls are dissolved and absorbed]
• Death was good news because it meant the soul was finally free.
• Sylvester cartoon: Death = robe, halo, wings, harp, eternity on clouds—this is a Greco-Gnostic idea, not a biblical/Christian one.
  

Jewish view of Death

• OT speaks of heart, soul, and spirit—but these in close union with the body. Flesh is not bad, but part of God’s good creation. 
• Jewish hope was the Resurrection of the Body—not so much individual bodies as the collective resurrection of Israel.  GENERAL Resurrection.
• This was the basic view of Jesus and the Disciples (and most Jews)
• There was no thought of a single person resurrecting (they did not expect Jesus—or “the Messiah”—to be individually resurrected.
• Hope was the resurrection of Israel to judgment and LIFE in the FLESH.
  

Soul? Spirit? 

• Hebrew: NEPHESH / RUACH  Greek: PSYCHE / PNEUMA 
• Most terms basically interchangeable
• “Soul” the immaterial part of selfhood.
• “Spirit” the realm of the immaterial, unseen world.
• “Immortality of the Soul” is Greek/ Gnostic, not Judeo/Christian.
  

Why not Immortality? 

• Biblically, only God is immortal: 

1 Timothy 6:16 It is he alone who has immortality and dwells in unapproachable light, whom no one has ever seen or can see; to him be honor and eternal dominion. 

• Only God is immortal and he GIVES immortality to those whom he chooses.  
• Immortality is not immaterial. The body is resurrected to immortal flesh.
• Greeks were offended by Resurrection: “Why come back to a body?” 
• The first heresies in Christianity came from the denial that the Son of God could even be fleshly. Greeks believed in eternal spirituality—non-material “heaven” with eternal, immaterial existence.

The Christian Doctrine of Resurrection

• NOT: dying and ascending into an unbodied, “spiritual” eternal life in Heaven. [That is the Gnostic Heaven—too many Christians hold!]
• The promise is Resurrection of THE FLESH—just as Christ was raised.
• Life eternal is life following resurrection.
• So what happens when we die? Do we have souls that go somewhere? 
• Yes. Our souls go to PARADISE—a place in eternal realms where the departed await the Resurrection of the flesh, including a new Earth and new Heavens (Yes, it must include the entire cosmos, which is in decay). 

HOPE: Christian Hope

• The Christian hope is the coming resurrection of all flesh, and the coming judgement of God, who will give immortality (physical, bodily immortality[though the transformed, glorified bodies may be multi-dimensional. Consider Christ’s post-resurrection appearances]) to all whom He chooses to give it. 

2 Corinthians 5: 1-4

1 For we know that if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. 2 For in this tent we groan, longing to be clothed with our heavenly dwelling— 3 if indeed, when we have taken it off we will not be found naked. 4 For while we are still in this tent, we groan under our burden, because we wish not to be unclothed but to be further clothed, so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life.  †

• Are NDEs a glimpse of our future “waiting room”?  Perhaps. 

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Some Questions

• What is “Paradise”? 
• What did the ancient Greeks believe about death? 
• What is the difference between terms like “soul” and “spirit”? 
• Why is there an issue with Christians believing in the “immortality of the soul?”
• How might we separate fantasy from fact when we think and talk about death?
• How does the Christian doctrine of Resurrection differ from immortality of the soul? 
• What is our hope in the face of Death? What is it not?
• What do you feel about your upcoming death, and what does your hope look like?