An Open Letter to Atheists and Agnostics

When I was growing up, I was taught to believe in a large white ghost-man in the sky called God who had a physical son named Jesus through a magical virgin birth that made no sense, but I tried to believe it, because that’s what good American Christians were supposed to believe. About all I really understood was that Moses, Jesus, and Paul were the heroes in an ancient cosmic TV western where the good guys suffered a lot, but always won in the end. I had no concept of things like justification by grace through faith alone or the literal blood ransom atonement doctrine. Had I been brainwashed to believe this stuff as a child, I may have ended up an atheist or agnostic myself.

Contemporary society teaches that there are two kinds of people, Christian conservatives and atheistic liberals. Christian conservatives don’t have sex outside of marriage, but are selfish, bigoted, anti-intellectual, and will verbally cheat whenever they begin to lose an argument. Atheistic liberals can’t keep their genitals inside their pants and can’t resist shooting, snorting, and/or smoking anything except tobacco. They are educated, skeptical, and open minded, and they disdain many of the conservative qualities mentioned above.

Contemporary society teaches that you can either believe in the Bible, which is irrational but can make you happy and/or save you from hell, OR you can believe the science book from school, which is rational insofar as it goes, but leaves many important questions unanswered. Uneducated and ignorant people believe the Bible while smart and enlightened people believe the science book. If you actually believe the evolutionary theories taught in school, you cannot believe in God because the Bible says God created the earth in seven days. The notion that God could have created something through evolution is not even seriously considered by most contemporaries. Religious people must ignore science while scientific people ignore religion. These contemporary notions themselves are ignorant.

Fundamentalism and atheism are NOT the only two choices in life. They are the fastest growing philosophies right now because modern society is not very thoughtful. Just because something is growing does not make it right. Cancer, the Black Plague, Fascism, and Communism have all grown at one time or another.

In this endeavor, we will search for truth, not popularity. We will use logic and empirical evidence, not conformity or fear, in that search. If you are still an atheist or agnostic after reading this, so be it. All I ask is that you listen.

Some people become atheists in reaction against the overly emotional and irrational claims of television evangelism. Even the genuine original, Billy Graham, is conservative, and his successors are mostly right wing Republican demagogues whose strategies include scaring you into supporting their neo-fascist agendas by threatening you with hell if you don’t. These rich pied pipers preach their hate and prejudice in the name of Jesus, who was not at all like them. These modern day scribes are almost enough to make an atheist out of anyone who has half a mind, especially if that person has never been exposed to any real religion.

Many fundamentalists are good people, but even good people often lie to themselves when they’re scared, and fear is what motivates most fundamentalists. I feel sorry for the poor sheep who are dumb enough to follow a televangelist, especially the one who spent time in jail for ripping off contributors, or the one who got caught with his pants down at a whorehouse in New Orleans. Nonetheless, the sheep continue to flock to these types. Meanwhile, rational and honest religion continues to decline. It is no wonder that many people have abandoned God when so many of these shallow self righteous preachers carry God’s name in vain.

None of this, however, means that God does not exist. The fact that modern day chief priests misrepresent ancient truths about a supreme being does not prove the non-existence of the being itself. In fact, the old time chief priests of Jesus’ time did that too, and Jesus argued a lot more with them than with any atheists or agnostics. That last fact does not mean that Jesus was an atheist. In case you missed it, Jesus did believe in God.

I am writing to try to convince you via evidence and logic that there is a real God who is more than an idea or concept. Furthermore, my goal is to convince you that there is life after death in a non-physical spiritual realm which Jesus taught us about and which people today have experienced and written about. It is not my goal to try to make a Pauline Christian out of you, especially since that shoe does not fit my foot too well either. I intend to pursue the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth: No bull, no copouts, no out of bounds questions.

Are you an atheist? You must be smarter than me. I’m dumb enough to believe in things I don’t yet see. You’ll prove me wrong with your superior logical skills, right? Accept the challenge. Are you an agnostic? You don’t want to get involved with things you can’t control? Aren’t you tired of not knowing what you believe? Wouldn’t you like to stimulate your mind with some philosophical thinking and reflection? You don’t have to do anything, unless you should cave in and admit that I’m right, and you’re not dumb enough to do that, are you?

Do you remember the Pizza Hut commercial where somebody asked a certain famous athlete which type of pizza he wanted, and his reply was "both"? Let’s deal with some obvious logical issues: If two statements are contradictory, they cannot both be right, but they can both be wrong. Just because somebody is right or wrong about one thing does not prove that he is right or wrong about all things. When an argument begins with a conclusion and then logically proceeds to prove the same conclusion, that is a fallacy called a circular argument. If an argument contains a logical fallacy at any point, it is not a valid argument, and its conclusion may be false, although it is possible that the conclusion could still be true by coincidence. Keep these things in mind as we proceed, especially the pizza.

Let us define what we mean by God. Some of you might already believe in what I’m talking about without the arms, legs, and big boots. Realize that we are almost trying to define the undefinable, but we’ll do the best we can. Somehow, the physical universe got here. A common definition of God is that of universe creator.

The true atheist would say that initial existence was an accident, perhaps the big bang, a chance event, which got things going, and then scientific evolution took over, resulting in what we have now. Life on earth was an accident: It didn’t have to happen, it just did, and to attribute that to a supreme being is wishful thinking. It happened, and we may or may not ever know how or why. Once life on earth was in place, the process of survival of the fittest began. Such is a typical atheistic position.

Let us take a case in point to define the survival of the fittest position more precisely. Let us examine a particular species of green frog which survives with the aid of camouflage, that is, it hides itself among green stems and leaves in order not to be eaten by predators. If it was not green from the beginning, HOW did the frog become green? Did many generations rub themselves against the green leaves and stems for centuries, gradually becoming the tiniest bit greener? More likely, genetics played a part as greener frogs had higher survival rates through the centuries, thus breeding more greener frogs in certain areas until we had what humans define as a species, the green frog. This is the classic survival of the fittest evolutionary explanation for the origin of human life as well as green frogs.

Would it shock you if I agreed with the evolutionary argument for the existence of the green frog? After all, I believe in God. Doesn’t that mean that I’m supposed to believe that God created green frogs and women for man sometime around when Adam found himself in the Garden of Eden? Do you realize that there were, and probably still are, many civilizations around the world who have believed in God for centuries but have never heard of the Garden of Eden? I will not attempt to refute the survival of the fittest argument by insisting that God created a green frog rather than allowing it to evolve from a brown or gray frog. Neither will I attempt to refute it as a possible explanation for the origin of humanity.

I do have a question for you, however. How did the first frog get here? What did frogs evolve from? Some other amphibian? OK, how did the first amphibian get here? From some rodent or reptile? OK, how did the first snake or roach get here? From some lower form of animal life? OK, how did the first ameba, or whatever was the first living thing on earth, get here? From hot rocks being cooled by water? How did the first particle of matter on earth get here? Didn’t something have to be created by something that we really do not understand? Our lack of total understanding does not scientifically prove that God created the earth, but doesn’t our inability to answer the question of the origin of matter make you wonder if there is a God that created the universe?

The most basic concept of God is that there is some unified power, some mystery, some logic behind our existence, that wasn’t an accident. You may recognize this position as the First Cause Argument of St. Thomas Aquinas. Whether or not you happen to agree, it is this very general definition of God that I am proposing right now. In my view, more precise definition crosses over into the question of the nature of God, what God is like, rather than the question of God, whether there is one. Although I believe in a personal God, and later supporting testimony will include same, I am not insisting at this point that God must be a person or even a being. For now, let’s explore the more basic question: Is there some power, any power, that is beyond what science has shown us, that was involved with how and why we got here? I will not attempt to deceive you by offering quasi-scientific proof with certainty that the answer is yes. I will, however, review the First Cause Argument along with some logical considerations.

For you big bangers who think it all took place by accident, I have some questions. Agnostic science assumes that all of creation, or whatever we call it, came into existence through laws of cause and effect. For example, what we call thoughts, feelings, even spirit, may well be nothing more than physical brain activities whose origins can be traced through cause and effect evolution of matter all the way back to the big bang. OK, let’s assume that this is true for a moment. If all existence comes from matter through cause and effect, and if there was a time before the big bang when there was nothing, how then could the big bang possibly happen? It is impossible by the logic of its own argument! The agnostic laws of science say that matter and force are required to make things happen through the laws of cause and effect.

How can the big bang possibly be caused by nothing? If you say that the big bang created the physical universe without God and you also say that this universe is finite, you have contradicted yourself. It can’t bang if there’s nothing to bang from! In other words, there had to have been a first cause, exactly as Aquinas argued. Otherwise, the big bang is God, the Creator, and therefore God existed, at least in the past. The only other logical recourse is to say that something was there from which to bang, which implies either the existence of a creator God or that the physical universe itself is infinite and eternal, thus making it God, therefore proving that God exists now as well as in the past. Otherwise, you have denied the scientific laws of cause and effect, thereby making your argument at least as unscientific and unproven as the literal interpretation of the creation story in Genesis. It does not behoove the atheistic position to be unscientific!

Aren’t we really arguing about the nature of a God, who by pure logic, must of necessity exist? If you attribute the power of initial existence to the big bang or to the physical universe itself, you are in essence defining one of them to be God and therefore proving that God exists.

Maybe you say that there was never a time before matter and/or force existed, therefore, the big bang had something to bang from. Fine. Now, if this is the case, then that means that matter and/or force are eternal. If they have always been there, then they’re eternal, right? Could this then mean that matter and/or force are God? If something is eternal, isn’t it God? Isn’t that what God is? Could matter and/or force be God? Yet if you’re an atheist, how can you say that matter, force, or anything is eternal? Do atheists believe in eternity? I didn’t think so. I won’t call this a contradiction, but I will call it damn close to one, and I’ll call it a problem worth thinking about for awhile.

So now let’s dodge the issue by insisting that consideration of the origin of life and matter is beyond the scope of scientific method, therefore making the first cause question invalid. If you advance this argument, you are playing the wrong game in the wrong ballpark. This is not the game of university physics where professors make the rules. This is the game of life, and that old copout holds no water here. I exist, therefore I will ask how life began, and if you can’t answer, then at least be honest enough to say "I don’t know" rather than some bull about the question not being valid. All questions are valid because questions are questions, not answers. Various answers may be invalid, but no questions are invalid. Since a question does not provide, but rather seeks, information, it cannot possibly be invalid. To deny the question is a gigantic denial of life.

Have I therefore absolutely proven the First Cause Argument and the existence of God? Close but no cigar. Just because somebody else is wrong doesn’t make me right. That’s another of those logic rules that are often ignored. Nonetheless, the previous five paragraphs have shown that it is at least as rational and logical to believe in God as it is not to believe in God. Scientifically, neither conclusion has been proven, but consideration of the origins of things leads toward a tentative conclusion that there is a supreme being or essence that created the universe.

Before proceeding, let me leave one more thought with you. I have heard that science has concluded that if the orbit of planet earth around the sun was a slight measure less than it is, the climate would be too hot to support life. Likewise, if the orbit was just a bit further out, the planet would freeze to death. Did the evolution of life on earth determine what the orbit would be? I didn’t think so. Quite a coincidence, right?

This concludes discussion of the very general definition of a creative power of some sort and whether or not it exists. Perhaps you have not changed your mind yet, but hopefully you are doing some thinking. This theoretical debate about God is not my primary purpose. Let’s get more specific and define God further by discussing the nature of God. What or who is this supposed being?

The biggest problem with humans trying to define God is our tendency to think in anthropomorphic terms, namely that God is a man. Some say that man created God in his own image, meaning that we make up ideas about God based on our limited human knowledge, sometimes reducing God down to our size, often with ludicrous implications. It must be confessed that this is the way that many biblical writers thought, especially in Old Testament times. The ancient Jewish Yahweh God was often portrayed as almost human with a voice, it lived in the tabernacle, it had a bad temper, and it would sometimes repent after being really nasty to the Jews.

Note two things. First, the God of the New Testament is not nearly so anthropomorphic. The concept of the Holy Spirit, sometimes incorrectly translated as Holy Ghost, is not so manlike. The analogy is now wind rather than despot. Jesus’ description of God as his Father, while still carrying anthropomorphic symbolism, at least had advanced beyond the God-is-our-warlord concept of ancient Israel. Second, remember the pizza. Did God create man in His image or did man create God in his image? I say to you, both! Realizing that I have not yet proven anything, suffice it to say that just because we humans create false Gods in our minds does not therefore mean that a real God is non-existent.

The Old Testament even addresses this very point of man creating gods in some image when it talks about the worship of golden calves and other graven images that primitive man created with his own hands. More modern anthropomorphic concepts of God amount to the same thing in more subtle ways, sometimes so subtle that we don’t even realize that we’re doing it. After all, how is man supposed to define God apart from his own experience? That’s hard to do. Therefore, we often end up with anthropomorphic language that is offensive to well educated scientific people, and half the time, we don’t really mean it that way anyway, but we struggle to find a better way to define or discuss God apart from our own human images. Just because man created God in his image, therefore, does not disprove the idea that God also created man in His/Her/Its more spiritual image. Now, I wonder what woman has to say about all this? I’ll let someone else take that one on, but it’s a valid question.

Belief in the general definition of God that we have discussed thus far might qualify one to be called a theist, but more information is needed if we are to deal with such questions as God’s relationship to humanity and the larger universe of animal life, plant life, rocks, gasses, and outer space. If one has a deep and real appreciation for an impersonal creative force that guides the universe, but has almost no theology concerning its relation to us and/or what its will is, that person has nonetheless achieved, in my opinion, a degree of divine understanding. To use a really trite analogy, we could say that this person has reached first base in the cosmic baseball game of spiritual life.

Consider for a moment a modern pantheistic position, upheld by some Unitarian Universalists, not the ancient pantheon of gods and goddesses, but rather that God is nature and nature is God. Forget Christianity, heaven/hell, or even human ethics for a minute. We observe nature, we theorize about its evolution, we test hypotheses, we discover things about it, and we live in it, but we don’t know how it got here. Scientists tell us that it was here long before the first human was ever born, hatched, created, evolved, big-banged, or however-the-h we got here. We didn’t create nature. It created us, maybe from monkeys. We learn about its laws but we didn’t create its laws. Newton didn’t create Newton’s Law. He discovered it. Magellan proved that the earth was round by sailing around it without falling off the edge, but Magellan did not create planet earth from meteors of the Milky Way and put it here 93 million miles from this particular sun. How it all got here is a great mystery: A great mystery, one pillar in the foundation of defining God.

A modern universalistic pantheist can rejoice in the great mystery without having to explain the contradiction of how a big bang can bang from nothing or the unverifiable notion that matter and/or force are eternal. In its most generic definition, the modern universalistic pantheist believes in God, not the one with two arms, two legs, and a head, but the God of nature. When asked how the first tree or the first atom got here, he/she replies that God created it. When asked how God can create himself (nature) or whether something existed before God (nature), he/she can honestly answer, "I don’t know, it’s a great mystery of God". Is this position essentially different from the position that it was all a big accident? Absolutely! The God of nature is predictable, purposeful, and unified by its laws. Accidents are not.

Is this God of nature all loving like Jesus’ description in the Gospel of John about his loving Father in heaven? Not really. Nature is marvelous and beautiful almost beyond belief, but it can also be very violent and brutal. If God is nature, then God is probably all powerful but not all loving. If God is nature, only nature can answer the great questions of life, and we can continue to seek the truth by observing nature. Nature is more than matter because it includes the laws of nature. If the laws of nature are God, then this God created the big bang or whatever else started the evolutionary ball rolling in the physical universe.

This belief that God is nature, or more precisely the laws of nature, is not to be confused with Christianity or any other world religion, even in its more liberal forms. Modern universalistic pantheism is a naturalistic religious philosophy that often denies the supernatural as manmade unnatural superstition. It usually denies life after death as well. It upholds belief in God, but not the one of the Bible. If the reader refuses to consider more orthodox versions of religion, but would affirm this type of pantheism rather than atheism, I would consider the reader to be on the right path. Nonetheless, the game of life has not yet finished, and neither have I.

Pantheism of the type described above is basically the position that I settled on several years ago, largely in reaction against the shallowness, ignorance, and arrogance of fundamentalists and conservatives who called themselves Christian but whose real agendas were to serve themselves and perpetuate their financial empires and religious institutions.

It is amazing how reactionary we humans are. It took national reaction against the excesses of southern bigots to accomplish the 1964 Civil Rights Act that was not forthcoming in prior years from Christian preaching, appeals to basic fairness, or any other positive motivation.

In my situation, my reactions against part of Christianity provided sufficient motivation for my choosing universalistic pantheism, although my choice was not all that well thought out. I had never rejected the teachings of Jesus, but somehow I had convinced myself that universalistic pantheism is what he actually taught. It wasn’t. I had to read the four gospels again to find out that I had been wrong about that. My reaction against the flaws of others had caused me to be in error myself.

This is my primary plea to you: If you are an atheist or agnostic partly because of reaction against the excesses, errors, and/or dishonesty of those who call themselves Christian, please remember that Jesus spoke of many false prophets coming in his name, and that these people you are reacting against may well be some of those false prophets. Just because there are false prophets does not mean that there are no true prophets. Various biblical accounts make it clear that there are both real and false prophets just as there are false gods among the real one.

Please do not toss the baby out the window with the dirty bath water. Don’t flush yourself down the toilet along with the manure of these modern day chief priests and scribes. Just because most so called Christians and/or Jews and/or Muslims that you know are insincere does not prove that the religions themselves are totally invalid. The same is true for Hinduism, Buddhism, or any religion. I believe that there is much good along with the bad in almost all religions.

Jesus did say to judge by the fruits of the spirit, and there are a lot of rotten apples out there, but that doesn’t mean that your sample of fruits is a scientific sample or that there isn’t one good apple in the whole basket. The thing about real religion is that you only have to find one good apple. Even if everybody else is wrong, one good apple can give you hope and something to live for. The truth still stands, even if nobody on earth believes it. The truth is the truth, period. Popularity contests do not determine the truth. All you need is one good apple. Don’t trash it with the rotted out barrel. Don’t reject God for irrational reasons.

If you have the guts to be an atheist in American society, make sure you also have the brains to defend your position rationally. At least make sure you’re not rejecting God because of some phony religiosity you saw on television or some convoluted logic that you read in some "Christian" book. Examine all the evidence. Don’t be reactionary. Whatever you decide to believe, do it for the right reasons. Look at the facts and think. Then, when you can’t figure it out, be humble. If you’re still an atheist after honestly doing that, so be it, at least for awhile.

As I mentioned previously, my own reactionary errors were revealed to me after I read again what Jesus actually said. I was in for a big surprise! He did not say at all what my flawed memory had conjured up from my own prejudiced emotions. Even if the supernatural miracles were exaggerated or symbolic, there was no way that I could deny that he taught and believed in life after death, that is, eternal life, a spirit world that transcends physical life. Either I had to change my pantheistic theology or I had to admit that I did not believe in Jesus. Although I chose the former, I did not really believe in life after death until I read another book that will be examined later.

I can’t stop now and hope you’ll be a good universalistic pantheist when I know there’s more to it than that. We need to consider a God that is more than just a distant Deist Creator and another name for nature. We need to look at the one Jesus called his Father. Sorry about the anthropomorphic language, but that’s what he said to uneducated human beings in 30 A.D. who wouldn’t have understood people like you and I, with all our fancy words and concepts. He had to talk to them in their own language or they wouldn’t get it. He called God his Father instead of the tribal Lord Yahweh of the Old Testament. In those days, that was radical liberal stuff. So who and/or what is God the Father?

Let us define God the Father basically as the Christian God of scripture minus the anthropomorphic implications of Old Testament thinking and literal interpretation. Also let us universalize the definition, as I believe Jesus intended, to include some features of the Hindu, Muslim, Jewish, Native American tribal, and other definitions of God as well. One could argue for polytheism, but history would not be on that side. Most religious believers gave up the notion of many gods long ago for a more unified concept. The argument today is not primarily one or many, but rather one or zero.

Let us visualize a unified being or essence, which can and has taken the form of a human body, but whose primary nature is not that of a body, but rather of a loving spirit that is both beyond and within each human spirit. This being or essence may well have a spiritual body, that is, a non-physical but real image that can actually be seen in the spirit world.

Realizing that this very definition may include things that you do not believe in, such as spiritual bodies, let me offer an analogy. Suppose that God is like water. We cannot live without water. Our bodies contain water, over 50% in fact. You could almost say that we are water in a sense. On the other hand, if I was dead, there would still be water. In fact, if all humans were dead, there would still be water in rivers, oceans, and rain, which do not depend on humans for their existence. Water does not have two arms, two legs, and a head, but some of the things that it resides in do. Theologians call these concepts the full imminence and transcendence of God. It means that God is like water.

Jesus said that God was like a father. How is water like your father? They both give life! Jesus was giving a personal analogy to uneducated people who already believed in God. I am giving a scientific analogy to educated people who may or may not believe in God. Jesus was not necessarily saying that God has two arms, two legs, and a head. His analogy is best explained in the Gospel of John, and it is spiritual in nature. I offer my analogy because it may resonate better in this scientific age where some fathers are jerks, but I hope and believe that both analogies symbolize the same literal reality which is difficult to explain with the human languages of physical planet earth.

The definition of God that I am proposing is that God is love, specifically that God is both an all loving being AND that God is the love itself. Using the water analogy, the loving being would be the ocean while the love itself would be the water inside each person.

Having given up my former universalistic pantheism, I am not defining God to be omnipotent or all powerful at this point. If God ever was omnipotent, this power was apparently given up so that other spirits might have free will. You may be asking, "doesn’t that make free will God?" Good question, but I’d say no and I’d also say that you’re getting too philosophical for your own good. I know a lot about that because I’ve done it so much myself. Don’t be so philosophical that you can’t give God a chance. Think, ponder, rethink, and philosophize if you must, but don’t reject anything as non-factual just because some who advocate it are irrational and/or wrong.

In the case of this more specific, scripture oriented definition of God, I bet something else is bothering you. I bet you’re like I was in saying, "come on, this magic zappo stuff doesn’t happen now, and it didn’t happen then either, it’s fable". I bet you have seen about as many superstitious supernatural supermarket tabloid accounts of Nostradamus’ eighteenth resurrection as you care to see in one lifetime. I bet you are as tired of the Santa Claus and Superman God as I once was. Do you think that all supernatural phenomena are nothing more than the shallow minded make believe fable that we often see on television? That’s what I thought a few years ago.

I still loathe tabloid super-unnatural superstition because I think that some supernatural phenomena are real, and I resent the media portraying what might well be God’s action as the trite make believe garbage that we see while waiting to pay for our groceries. If Nostradamus ever does come back, it will most likely be to smack some tabloid writer silly or to give some television director the finger. This trash is not supernatural. It is phony, it is superstitious, and it never really happened.

If you think that you’re reading some emotional fantasy from someone who believes in astrology, you are sadly mistaken. I tend to be highly suspicious of anybody who makes claims about the supernatural. Fully realizing that there is a gross overabundance of false prophecy, both tabloid and religious, in our society, I have nonetheless become convinced of certain supernatural phenomena in spite of my general skepticism on the topic.

You will likely have a difficult time, like I did, respecting the views of people who actually believe in life after death, supernatural events, visions, and/or visitations from the spirit world. You may think, like I did, that they’re irrational and/or selfish, not willing to accept their mortality, hopelessly lost in wishful thinking, and living in denial. You may be thinking, like I almost did, that Karl Marx was right when he said that religion was the opium of the masses. You may think, like I did, that rich people use belief in the afterlife to keep poor people from overthrowing the government in this life, just like the southern plantation owners who taught the slaves about heaven to keep them from running away or causing trouble. Some people do use belief in the afterlife to keep people down in this life, but that fact does not prove that there is no life after death. It only proves that some people misuse the concept. We have already covered that ground. The existence of false prophets does not prove that there are no real ones.

How can I convince you that there really is life after death in another world where our spirits go when we kick the proverbial bucket? I won’t try citing personal experience because I have received no direct revelations about this myself. Nor do I know of anyone personally who has had a near death experience (NDE) in heaven or after death communication (ADC) from a loved one. I know only second hand about a friend of a friend who was in a serious car accident: This person indicated that he was hovering about looking down on his own body after this crash. In literature that I have read on the subject of near death experiences, it is common for the person having the experience to describe this type of phenomenon. A more common one is hovering about the ceiling in the hospital room after clinical death prior to resuscitation. That didn’t convince you? I’d want more evidence too. There’s a whole lot more evidence contained in other modern literature, and here comes some of it.

Melinda, who is now a homemaker in Washington, had this totally unexpected meeting with her friend, Tom:

Tom and I grew up together. We were next-door neighbors, but I hadn’t seen him since he entered the priesthood. I lost complete contact with him and his family after I moved to Texas.

One night over ten years later, I woke up out of a sound sleep. I saw Tom standing at the bottom of my bed in a Navy uniform! When I saw his uniform, I couldn’t believe it because I thought he was a Catholic priest! He said, "Good-bye Melinda. I’m leaving now". And he disappeared.

My husband woke up, and I told him what had happened. But he said I was just dreaming.

Three days later, I got a letter from my mother stating that Tom had just been killed in action. I also found out he had been a chaplain in the Navy!¹

Quite a coincidence, huh? Having been a statistics major in college, I can’t think small enough to tell you what those odds would be. Wishful thinking and subconscious phenomena? She had no prior knowledge about his being in the Navy. What was there to be wishful about in the subconscious? Would you tell me that she had a secret desire for him to be in the Navy? Gee, that would almost be a miracle in itself, since he was in the Navy, but she didn’t know about it until after this appearance.

Sue Ellen is a homemaker in Florida. Her father delivered a personal message when she was 24 years old.

I was lying on the sofa. Suddenly, I saw my father very clearly! He was definitely there with me - I could see his smiling face.

I heard him say, "It’s all right, honey. It’s beautiful over here! I’m really happy, so don’t you worry". Then he laughed and added, "Now I don’t have to pay for all that furniture your mom and sister bought". Of course, I didn’t know what he meant.

Almost simultaneously, the phone was ringing. I could hear my husband in the background saying, "Oh, my gosh!" He learned my father had just died from a heart attack. My father was only fifty-three and had been in excellent health!

After that, we got a letter saying my mother and sister had gone out and bought a house full of furniture just before my father died. But my father’s insurance paid for all of it! That was verification for me that my experience was real.²

There were two verifications that the above experience was real, the timing of her father’s appearance with his death being the first, and the furniture situation being the second.

Note that the accounts thus far have been in the form of visions. Although physical attributes such as a navy uniform are mentioned, it does not say that the appearance itself was physical in nature like Moses turning a stick into a snake or Jesus raising Lazarus from the four days stone mummified dead. Other accounts of visions and visitations from dead people indicate that other people in the room often do not see what the person having the experience sees. Rather than concluding that the experiences were hallucinations, I will state only that they appear to be non-physical in nature, that is, the bodies and objects seen in the visions are not physical bodies and objects.

Realizing that this sounds terribly similar to ghost and goblin stories, I must point out that ghosts are usually conceptualized as physical beings that have no texture. The spiritual bodies, or whatever you want to call them, that appear in these visions, while similar to ghosts in some ways, are conceived primarily as beings from another realm of reality, not just as invisible, transparent, or translucent physical bodies. If you define ghosts as beings from another realm of reality, then OK, they’re ghosts. Boo!

It is entirely possible that these appearances may be as subjective as dreams, what you might call hallucinations. For now, we’ll assume that’s the case. The timing of the appearances may well be more miraculous in nature than the appearances themselves, kind of like if you dreamed that you won the lottery, then were awakened by a phone call informing you that you had won the lottery. Neither event alone is miraculous, but together, they are quite convincing.

Dominic is a 38-year-old physician in Florida. He gained an important awareness while he and a classmate isolated themselves in a country cottage to study for their medical school examinations:

When my friend and I were studying, I experienced the extremely strong and distinctive smell of a medication that my mother used on Grandmother - camphor and alcohol. This home remedy was used as a cold compress that was applied to her forehead when she was feeling weak.

There was definitely no alcohol or camphor in the cottage. Yet the odor was so strong that I told my friend I believed my grandmother had just died. He sort of brushed it off, but I noted the time when it happened, 10:10 a.m.

Shortly after that, I felt the very peaceful presence of my grandmother. I realized that something extraordinary was happening! The whole feeling was that she was saying, "Good-bye. Don’t worry. Everything is fine."

Grandmother had Alzheimer’s disease. In the last months of her life, she was incoherent. But when I felt her presence, she was the person I had known before she became ill. She left me with a sense of relief and serenity and peace.

When I went home that day, my mother was waiting for me. She said, "Your grandmother has taken a turn for the worse". I told her, "Don’t worry. I know what happened. She died at 10:10 this morning." Then my mother confirmed that my grandmother had died at exactly that time.³

Another coincidence down to the minute? Note that this individual was studying, not sleeping or getting high, when this happened. Unless you count studying for medical exams, there is no indication of emotional stress or mental instability here - if this guy was that messed up in the mind, how did he get through medical school? By the way, I’m only selecting a few of over 300 documented experiences of this type in footnoted reference. Recommend you read the whole thing, and I don’t know the authors from Adam Smith.

Marian is a 71-year-old realtor in Florida. Thankfully, her father warned her of danger 33 years after he died of an aneurysm:

I was in bed reading one evening. All of a sudden, I heard my father’s voice say very urgently, "Get out of that bed! Get out of that bed!"

I jumped right up and stood there quivering. I walked into the family room and sat down, wondering what was the matter.

I hadn’t been there three minutes when I heard a horrible cracking sound. My whole house shuddered, and things were rattling in cupboards and falling off shelves!

I went outside and saw that a heavy limb from my neighbor’s tree had fallen on my roof! There had been no wind or storm - it was a fair night.

Then I went back into the house and to my bedroom. There I saw three enormous holes in the ceiling and a large branch projecting over my bed. The entire bed was covered with lumber and plaster and debris - just where I had been lying!⁴

OK, let’s assume that she was hallucinating or dreaming. It saved her life! Was that a coincidence? I think not.

Bernice is a writer in the Northwest. Her son, Gene, gave her some strong advice about 3 years after he took his life at age 32 when he was terminally ill with Hodgkin’s disease:

The Captain of the Golden Odyssey sent us an invitation to go on their Mediterranean cruise in the spring of 1977. My husband and I wanted to go, and he asked me to make the reservations.

The next morning I got all dressed up to go to the travel agency. Halfway to the car, I heard my son, Gene, say, "Mom, you must not take that plane to Athens".

My son’s voice was very calm, but he made me feel we mustn’t go. So I turned right around and went back in the house. That night I told my husband what had happened. He accepted it, and we didn’t make the reservations.

On the night that we would have taken the plane from Los Angeles to Athens, I sat in our living room and felt sad that we weren’t going.

The next day the same plane took off from Tenerife in the Canary Islands and collided with a Dutch KLM airliner. It was the greatest passenger plane crash in history - 581 people were killed!⁵

Just another coincidence? An acquaintance of mine’s life was also saved a few years ago because of a change of plans prior to the crash of a plane near the Pittsburgh airport. There was no ADC involved in that case, but it makes one think and wonder. Quite a few physical bodies perished in that crash too.

The next subject obviously moved from New York to Florida some time after the experience happened.

Florence is a 61-year-old homemaker in Florida. She heard from her father not just once, but twice, long after he died of heart disease:

This was eight years after my father died. I had just had my car serviced at the dealership, and my ten-year-old son and I were heading home. I usually would have taken the New York State Thruway and gone 70 miles per hour. However, I suddenly had the feeling that my father was in the back seat of the car. I felt his loving presence very strongly.

My father said, "Please, I want you to go home on the back roads. Go no more than ten miles an hour. Go real slow so that I can enjoy the plants." My father’s hobby had been gardening. It was a beautiful day, and all the spring flowers were in bloom.

When I was about three or four blocks from home, I thought I was getting a flat tire. I got out and looked, but all of them seemed okay. So I got back into the car again.

As I started driving again, there was an old man walking along the sidewalk. He was very nervous and excited. He called out to me, "Please, don’t move! Your wheels are coming off!"

We were only blocks away from a gas station. My son ran up there, and they came back with a tow truck. They found that the wheels had been rotated, but when they were placed back on the axles they had never been tightened. All four wheels were very loose!

Later I realized that if I had driven on the thruway at 70 miles per hour, one of the wheels could have come off! There could have been a severe accident

involving myself and possibly a lot of other people. Obviously, my father saved us from a catastrophe …. ⁶

Apparently, the old man by the road was her father again, the second appearance. Hopefully, the uncertainty about this did not obfuscate the point of the case. Quite another coincidence or something else?

Typically, modern skeptics ascribe such phenomena to psychological causes such as depression induced hallucinations. Isn’t it odd that these people would just happen to have these really weird hallucinations right at the exact moment of another random occurrence such as a related death, or that the hallucination would happen purely by chance to save someone from a plane crash, falling tree limb, or potentially fatal car accident? The statistical probability of even one such example is remote, and for more than one such case to occur purely by chance is strange indeed.

There are only two remaining possibilities. Either these events really happened via intervention from spirits, angels, and/or God, or else these people and/or the source cited are lying through their teeth and making up stories that never happened. Do you think the latter? If you don’t believe me, contact the publishers, the authors, and/or the sources yourself and conduct a thorough unbiased study. Ask tough questions and find out whether this stuff really happened or whether it’s all a big hoax. I have heard, seen, and read a lot of bull in my lifetime, and these accounts do not seem like bull to me. Neither does what’s coming.

… My senses told me that I was alone, and I could feel my body becoming weaker and weaker.

I reached for the cord near the bed in an attempt to call the nurse. But try as I might, I could not bring myself to move. I felt a terrible sinking sensation, like the very last drops of blood were being drained from me. I heard a soft buzzing sound in my head and continued to sink until I felt my body become still and lifeless.

Then I felt a surge of energy. It was almost as if I felt a pop or release inside me, and my spirit was suddenly drawn out through my chest and pulled upward, as if by a giant magnet. My first impression was that I was free. There was nothing unnatural about the experience. I was above the bed, hovering near the ceiling. My sense of freedom was limitless and it seemed as if I had done this forever. I turned and saw a body lying on the bed. I was curious about who it was, and immediately I began descending toward it. Having worked as an LPN, I knew well the appearance of a dead body, and as I got closer to the face I knew at once that it was lifeless. And then I recognized that it was my own. That was my body on the bed. I wasn’t taken aback, and I wasn’t frightened; I simply felt a kind of sympathy for it ….⁷

Subsequently, she describes meeting three guardian angels (monks) while still there hovering over the hospital room, and then later going through a dark tunnel, but without fear, toward a great light, which is what she is referring to in the next citation.

... Although his light was much brighter than my own, I was aware that my light, too, illuminated us. And as our lights merged, I felt as if I had stepped into his countenance, and I felt an utter explosion of love.

It was the most unconditional love I have ever felt, and as I saw his arms open to receive me I went to him and received his complete embrace and said over and over, "I’m home. I’m home. I’m finally home." I felt his enormous spirit and knew that I had always been a part of him, that in reality I had never been away from him. And I knew that I was worthy to be with him, to embrace him. I knew that he was aware of all my sins and faults, but that they didn’t matter right now. He just wanted to hold me and share his love with me, and I wanted to share mine with him.

There was no questioning who he was. I knew that he was my Savior, and friend, and God. He was Jesus Christ, who had always loved me, even when I thought he hated me. He was life itself, love itself, and his love gave me a fullness of joy, even to overflowing. I knew that I had known him from the beginning, from long before my earth life, because my spirit remembered him.

All my life I had feared him, and I now saw - I knew - that he was my choicest friend. Gently, he opened his arms and let me stand back far enough to look into his eyes, and he said, "Your death was premature, it is not yet your time"…

… Then questions began coming into my mind. I wanted to know why I had died as I had - not prematurely, but how my spirit had come to him before the resurrection. I was still laboring under the teachings and beliefs of my childhood. His light now began to fill my mind, and my questions were answered even before I fully asked them. His light was knowledge. It had power to fill me with all truth. As I gained confidence and let the light flow into me, my questions came faster than I thought possible, and they were just as quickly answered. And the answers were absolute and complete. In my fears, I had misinterpreted death, had expected something that was not so. The grave was never intended for the spirit - only for the body. I felt no judgment for having been mistaken. There was just a feeling that a simple, living truth had replaced my error. I understood that he was the Son of God, though he himself was also a God, and that he had chosen from before the creation of the world to be our Savior. I understood, or rather, I remembered his role as creator of the earth. His mission was to come into the world to teach love …

I wanted to know why there were so many churches in the world. Why didn’t God give us only one church, one pure religion? The answer came to me with the purest of understanding. Each of us,

I was told, is at a different level of spiritual development and understanding. Each person is therefore prepared for a different level of spiritual knowledge. All religions upon the earth are necessary because there are people who need what they teach ….⁸

Jesus Christ’s mission was to come into the world to teach love. What happened to the magical blood and guts ransom atonement? Note that Hindus, Muslims, Buddhists, and Jews are not condemned to hell here. Do these things blow your mind? Perhaps some atheists find this more palatable than do some fundamentalists? Nonetheless, this woman wasn’t embraced by the light of scientific skepticism. She wasn’t being taught by an agnostic. There’s a bevy of theology between the lines of what was just cited, but that’s not the point right now. Theology is a waste of time until we answer the big question. Right now, you don’t even believe in God, or do you?

I saw that in the pre-mortal world we knew about and even chose our missions in life. I understood that our stations in life are based upon the objectives of those missions. Through divine knowledge we knew what many of our tests and experiences would be, and we prepared accordingly. We bonded with others - family members and friends - to help us complete our missions. We needed their help. We came as volunteers, each eager to learn and experience all that God had created for us. I knew that each of us who made the decision to come here was a valiant spirit. Even the least developed among us here was strong and valiant there.

We were given agency to act for ourselves here. Our own actions determine the course of our lives, and we can alter or redirect our lives at any time. I understood that this was crucial; God made the promise that he wouldn’t intervene in our lives unless we asked him …

… Whatever we become here in mortality is meaningless unless it is done for the benefit of others. Our gifts and talents are given to help us serve. And in serving others we grow spiritually.

Above all, I was shown that love is supreme. I saw that truly without love we are nothing. We are here to help each other, to care for each other, to understand, forgive, and serve one another. We are here to have love for every person born on earth ….⁹

The text in bold above was not bold in the source cited. I added it to emphasize the point made about God not interfering with human affairs unless asked to do same. You may wonder, as I often have, why you have never witnessed anything like this yourself or why you don’t know anybody who has. This type experience is very rare, but note the bolded material above. Most people have never really asked God for miracles or direct revelations because most people, including most "Christians", do not really believe in them, although many say they do.

The first step toward most miracles and revelations is that you pray for same believing that you will receive it. This does not mean that every person who does same will indeed receive or experience a miracle, have an after death communication (ADC) from a loved one, or have a near death experience (NDE). Would you want to have a near death experience? I’m too chicken to volunteer for plain old pain and suffering, let alone being nearly dead. These type of things happen from time to time, but you cannot make them happen. That is God’s work, or if you still don’t believe in God, then you might say that it is chance with very slim odds of happening to you or anyone you know.

These type phenomena are rare, regardless of whether or not you believe they are genuine. By the way, some have been reported by former nonbelievers. However, if you are waiting for an ADC from mom before you believe in God, you may be an atheist for quite a while, because that’s not the way it works. The Roman soldiers who crucified Jesus mocked him and asked for a miracle to prove that he really was who he said he was. No miracle was forthcoming. He was crucified, but that didn’t keep him from becoming the most famous person in human history.

Miracles usually happen to believers, but just because one is a believer does not mean that a miracle will occur. Just because you and I don’t know anyone personally who has had an ADC or NDE does not mean that nobody has ever had one anywhere. There’s more evidence which continues from the material cited above.

… My spiritual eyes were opened once again, and I saw that God created many universes and that within them he controls the elements. He has authority over all laws and energy and matter …

Because our thoughts can affect this eternal energy, they are the source of creation. All creation begins in the mind. It must be thought first ... I understood that life is lived most fully in the imagination - that, ironically, imagination is the key to reality. This is something that I never would have supposed. We are sent here to live life fully, and to live it abundantly, to find joy in our own creations, whether they are new thoughts or things or emotions or experiences. We are to create our own lives, to exercise our gifts and experience both failure and success. We are to use our free will to expand and magnify our lives.

With all of this understanding, I understood again that love is supreme ...

Christ continued to smile upon me. He was pleased with my pleasure in learning, with my excitement in the experience.

Now I knew that there actually was a God. No longer did I believe in just a Universal Power, but now I saw the Man behind that Power. I saw a loving Being who created the universe and placed all knowledge within it ….¹⁰

Once again, the bolding was mine, but the italics were from the source. If you have a problem with the reference to God as a man, remember that this is a spiritual man and that the English language lacks a proper term for this. Are there some things in the cited material that I question myself? Yes, but that doesn’t mean that I dismiss it as nothing more than the author’s imagination. This woman actually had an extensive near death experience, actually an after death experience. Who am I to argue with someone who may have actually seen God and then returned to report it? There’s more. Other spiritual beings told her some things, one of which you may not like very much.

They told me that it is important for us to acquire knowledge of the spirit while we are in the flesh. The more knowledge we acquire here, the further and faster we will progress there. Because of lack of knowledge and belief, some spirits are virtual prisoners of this earth. Some who die as atheists, or those who have bonded to the world through greed, bodily appetites, or other earthly commitments find it difficult to move on, and they become earth-bound. They often lack the faith and power to reach for, or in some cases even to recognize, the energy and light that pulls us toward God. These spirits stay on the earth until they learn to accept the greater power around them and let go of the world. When I was in the black mass before moving towards the light, I felt the presence of such lingering spirits. They reside there as long as they want to in its love and warmth, accepting its healing influence, but eventually they learn to move on to accept the greater warmth and security of God.

Of all knowledge, however, there is none more essential than knowing Jesus Christ. I was told that he is the door through which we will all return. He is the only door through which we can return. Whether we learn of Jesus Christ here or while in the spirit, we must eventually accept him and surrender to his love.

My friends in the garden were full of love as they stood around me, and they realized that I didn’t want to go back yet, that I wanted to see more. In their desire to please me, they showed me much more.¹¹

Once again, the bolding is mine but the italics are from the source cited. Were you surprised that you weren’t condemned to hell? Did you catch the universal salvation message? Did you also notice that Jesus Christ is the only door? That one bothers me some, but earlier it was made clear that all religions are valid at one level or another. I have a sneaking suspicion that the above reference to Jesus Christ as the only door has little or nothing to do with theology, but rather with surrendering to love, the right kind of love, Greek agape love, God’s kind of love. Is some of this testimony in conflict with certain parts of the Gospel of Matthew or with some of Paul’s epistles or with the Book of Revelation? You bet. Did I say that Matthew, Paul, or Revelation was infallible? No! I’m not saying that the cited source is infallible either, but I’m taking all of it seriously. This stuff is too important to ignore.

So maybe you’re not going to burn in hell forever after all. Instead, you’re going to hang around in the loving black mass until you’re ready to go to the light of Jesus’ love. That’s not exactly traditional Christian teaching about atheists and agnostics. This particular concept of faith in God is like a shortcut to heaven that goes over the mountain. You still have to go through one big tunnel and some steep hills and dangerous curves, but the view is great and it cuts off 10 miles of winding through creek valleys, mud slides, road construction, and long slow tunnels. Both roads end up in the same place, but the shortcut saves much unpleasant time and makes more sense. To get to the shortcut road, you must start driving in this life.

If you are the wrong kind of atheist or agnostic, you may feel some relief about being spared hellfire and damnation, and reason yourself into thinking that since all are saved in the end, just in case this stuff is true, it doesn’t make that much difference anyway. If you’re the right kind of atheist or agnostic, relatively speaking, maybe you will realize that the great stumbling blocks of condemnation, hate, and bigotry that orthodox religion has heaped on you through the centuries have been taken off your shoulders. You may realize that without all this hate coming from "God", perhaps you can become free to love. If you can realize that the "God" you despise is not the real God, then maybe you can stop denying its existence.

So we’re saved and everything will be hunky-dory even if we become scoundrels? Well, you wanted Hertz, but what you got was not exactly. The following takes place later in the source cited above. The author’s earth life is being reviewed in the presence of a council of twelve, perhaps the spirits of Jesus’ disciples?

… Then I saw the disappointment that I had caused others, and I cringed as their feelings of disappointment filled me, compounded by my own guilt. I understood all the suffering I had caused, and I felt it. I began to tremble. I saw how much grief my bad temper had caused, and I suffered this grief. I saw my selfishness, and my heart cried for relief. How had I been so uncaring?

Then in the midst of my pain, I felt the love of the council come over me. They watched my life with understanding and mercy. Everything about me was taken into consideration, how I was raised, the things I had been taught, the pain given me by others, the opportunities I had received or not received. And I realized that the council was not judging me. I was judging myself. Their love and mercy were absolute. Their respect for me could never be lessened. I was especially grateful for their love as the next phase of my review passed before me.

I was shown the "ripple effect", as they described it. I saw how I had often wronged people and how they had often turned to others and committed a similar wrong. This chain continued from victim to victim, like a circle of dominos, until it came back to the start - to me, the offender. The ripples went out, and they came back. I had offended far more people than I knew, and my pain multiplied and became unbearable.

The Savior stepped toward me, full of concern and love. His spirit gave me strength, and he said that I was judging myself too critically. "You’re being too harsh on yourself", he said. Then he showed me the reverse side of the ripple effect. I saw myself perform an act of kindness, just a simple act of unselfishness, and I saw the ripples go out again. The friend I had been kind to was kind in turn to one of her friends, and the chain repeated itself. I saw love and happiness increase in others’ lives because of that one simple act on my part. I saw their happiness grow and affect their lives in positive ways, some significantly. My pain was replaced with joy. I felt the love they felt, and I felt their joy. And this from one simple act of kindness. A powerful thought hit me, and I repeated it over and over in my mind: "Love is really the only thing that matters. Love is really the only thing that matters, and love is joy!"…

… Jesus or one of the men responded, and the answer was ingrained in me. It sank into the deepest part of my soul, changing my outlook on trials and opposition forever: "You needed the negative as well as the positive experiences on earth. Before you can feel joy, you must know sorrow."¹²

Again, the bolding is mine and the italics are the source’s. Could the last statement above, along with the wisdom of God’s eternal view, be the answer to the age old question from Job about evil and injustice in a world created by a loving God? Perhaps, but the best human answer at this time on earth is still, "I don’t know, but I believe anyway."

Did you notice that there was some pain and regret in this heavenly place? Could it be that there are not two eternal places, but one? Could it be that the afterlife is relative, that we really do reap what we sow, that there’s no magical escape from ourselves? Did you also notice who does the judging? Not Saint Peter, not Satan, not God, but us, we judge ourselves! Wow, that’s nice, except that in the spirit world, there’s nothing hidden, no escape from the truth. Oops.

Other contemporaries who have studied the subject of life after death are not quite so sure that there is no hell. A cardiologist once resuscitated a patient that thought he was in hell. This physician wrote a gripping account about numerous interviews with patients revived after clinical death, and not all of the news is good.¹³ Written from a conservative-to-fundamentalist viewpoint, he cites and analyzes various NDE’s, including several about people who were saved by God and/or Jesus while in route to or on location at the traditional fire and brimstone hell. However, this author does not state that any of the subjects were doomed to hell forever, in fact, they escaped it, at least temporarily, and most if not all became Christians afterward.¹⁴

In light of what was stated above about who does the judging, is it possible that some people choose hell, at least for awhile? Some material in the Gospel of John on the subject of judgment could be so interpreted. Could hell be God’s last resort? I don’t know, and my goal is not to scare you into belief in God. Others have probably tried that strategy already, which may be one reason you became an atheist or agnostic. I found it interesting that this same very conservative interviewer of patients from hell also pointed out that "many Christians, instead of becoming disciples of Jesus Christ, have gradually become products only of their own church doctrine."¹⁵ Even this conservative Christian realizes how short sighted and narrow minded many Christian denominational leaders can be. Jesus had a few choice comments on the ancient Jewish version of the same general subject. See Mark 7, Matthew 15, and Luke 11 for details.

Another modern source also points out the potential existence of a not-so-good place on the other side of life. Referring to suicides, he quotes others, saying:

"If you leave here a tormented soul, you will be a tormented soul over there" … "I went to an awful place" .…¹⁶

There is no mention of the awful place being eternal or of having anything to do with one’s theology or religious beliefs. It has more to do with how one lives his/her life. Apparently, the afterlife is a continuation of this life, spiritually speaking. This same source also states the following:

Through all of my research, however, I have not heard a single reference to a heaven or a hell anything like the customary picture to which we are exposed in this society. Indeed, many persons have stressed how unlike their experiences were to what they had been led to expect in the course of their religious training.¹⁷

Having been exposed to real religion as well as traditional religiosity, the above statement does not surprise me at all. Returning now to the primary NDE source, she describes her return to earth.

No good-byes were said; I simply found myself in the hospital room again. The door was still half open, the light was on above the sink, and lying on the bed under the blankets was my body. I stood in the air and looked down at it and was filled with revulsion … Quickly, my spirit slipped back into the body …

I don’t know how long I slept. When I opened my eyes again it was two a.m. It had been over four hours since my death. How much of that time I had spent in the spirit world I did not know, but four hours didn’t seem nearly long enough for all that happened to me …

As Joe stayed with me, my spirit traveled in and out of both worlds, as if my return had not been made permanent. I remember doctors and nurses working on me; I didn’t know what they were doing, or even how long they had been there, but I sensed the tension and anxiety in their efforts. I continued to view the spirit world during this time, and I saw many wonderful things - things of both this world and the other. Then I received another powerful experience, not in the form of a vision, but a visitation.

A beautiful little girl came into the room. She was only two or three years old and was the only child that I had seen in the spirit. A golden halo of light emanated from her, glowing in the room wherever she walked. She seemed quite attracted to Joe, and while the doctors and nurses were out of the room for a moment I asked him if he could see her. He couldn’t. She had the grace of a ballerina, walking almost on the tips of her toes and performing little gestures, as though she were dancing. I was struck immediately by her spontaneity and happiness. She went to Joe and stood on the toe of his shoe. She balanced on one foot and kicked her other leg up behind her like a ballerina might, and leaned forward to reach into his pants pocket. I was mesmerized by this movement. I asked her what she was doing. She turned and laughed, smiling in an impish way, and I knew that she had heard me ….¹⁸

As you can probably tell, this non-physical visitation was something akin to a vision. Since Joe could not see the child, there was obviously not a physical child in the room. Why include this child in the cited material? You’ll see shortly.

I only included a small portion of the entire NDE account here. It began at page 29 of the book cited and continued at least through page 122, and that is only the part that the author remembered. She likely forgot even more. Quite a dream, right? Can you honestly con yourself into believing that all of that was only a dream? Have you ever had any dream that could fill even one page? Most of mine are bits and pieces of oddly related events that make little sense. This experience was much more than a dream.

Betty J. Eadie, the individual who had the above cited NDE, regained physical health, and after some difficult times, she became a foster mother to a small baby. After becoming attached to the child, the courts ruled that the child had to be located with blood relatives. What ensued were terrible times of depression for both the foster mother and child. Finally, after the child was physically abused and in danger of death, the true story continues after the foster mother had prayed for the child and fallen asleep.

That night I was awakened by a messenger who stood by my bed. I understood that he had come from the spirit world. He said that the situation with my baby was not right, that she would be returned to me. He said that I would receive a phone call in which the caller would say, "I have good news, and I have bad news". I did not sleep the rest of the night …

The phone rang early one morning, and I heard a voice plainly say, "Betty, this is Ellen. I have some good news, and I have some bad news"…

… The voice continued, explaining that my baby was in a hospital. "She wouldn’t adjust to the new family", Ellen said, "and she kept crying. You were her mommy for ten months, and she’s been looking for you."¹⁹

The awakening by the messenger above is similar in nature to the ADC’s documented earlier. This one turned out to be a prophecy, almost down to a gnat’s you-know-what. A few years ago I would have said "bull" to stuff like this. Now I’m not so sure. This kind of thing apparently does happen, even if I have to slap myself sometimes to make sure I’m not dreaming when I read about it. We’re not conditioned for this, but could it be real? I am convinced that it is.

Returning to the cited account, the child was adopted and named Betty, after the cited author. Keep in mind that this is now the mundane physical planet earth we are talking about. No more spirit visitations or trips to heaven.

By the time little Betty was two and a half, she had fully recovered both physically and emotionally. She became once again the most darling and playful child in the house, surprising us constantly with her quick sense of humor. One afternoon she ran over to Joe. As an impish smile came to her face, she stood up on the toe of his shoe, threw her other foot up behind her, and balancing like a ballerina reached up to dig into the pocket of his slacks. A chill ran through me as memories flooded back. Little Betty laughed, and I heard the voice of a little girl years before, a little girl who had kept us company in a hospital room when heaven and earth seemed one. Then I saw and understood more. A vision of a young woman came back to me, a memory of a beautiful and energetic spirit who had once been waiting to come to earth. I remembered her as the young spirit with whom I shared a bond in a previous time, the one in the spirit world whose loveliness and energy captivated me. I wanted to cry as everything about this precious angel came together. I had been allowed to see her as a child in the spirit. Now I knew why I had been shown her as an adult spirit ready to come to earth. I also knew that while she could not be born to me because of my hysterectomy, she found another way to become a part of my life. And now I knew why I had been compelled to take her as a baby. We were closest friends forever, eternities of experiences behind us, and eternities ahead.²⁰

Tell me it was just a coincidence that she had a hallucination or whatever about this child while barely alive in that hospital room, and then years later this real child just happened to behave in exactly the same way, standing on Joe’s toe, balancing like a ballerina, and placing her hand in his pocket. Tell me that and I’ll tell you to go to college and take a course in introductory probability theory. Coupled with everything else documented in this case, that is too much to be a chance happening. Just in case you wondered, all of the cited texts are non-fiction. One of them introduces the topic of NDE’s as follows:

Despite the wide variation in the circumstances surrounding close calls with death and in the types of persons undergoing them, it remains true that there is a striking similarity among the accounts of the experiences themselves. In fact, the similarities among various reports are so great that one can easily pick out about fifteen separate elements which recur again and again in the mass of narratives that I have collected … hears himself pronounced dead by his doctor … noise … moving very rapidly through a long dark tunnel … finds himself outside of his own physical body … still has a "body" but one of a very different nature … Others come to meet and help him … loving warm spirit of a kind he has never encountered before - a being of light … evaluate his life … he must now go back to earth … somehow reunites with his physical body … later he tries to tell others, but he has trouble doing so … no human words adequate to describe … others scoff, so he stops telling other people.²¹

This time the bold and italics are both mine, not the source’s. The excerpts above were highlights, not all 15 elements, of the common experiences. Note the last point: People think he’s crazy, so he stops talking about it. This is NOT the description of a publicity seeking shyster out to make a fast buck through a book publishing deal! The same source continues:

… the description of the being of light is invariable, the identity ascribed to it varies, apparently as a function of the religious background of the individual … in quite a few instances reports have come from persons who had no religious beliefs or training at all prior to their experiences, and their descriptions do not seem to differ in content from people who had quite strong religious beliefs.²²

Did you get that? Are you beginning to understand? Can you see how difficult it is to explain this stuff away when so many different types of people experience the same types of out-of-body phenomena? Can you understand that these are not just dreams or hallucinations brought on by psychological stress and prior religious training? In case you missed it, the above source made it clear that former atheists and agnostics have had these NDE’s that were similar to Christian, Jewish, Hindu, Buddhist, Muslim, and other NDE’s. Religious faith is not always a prerequisite for these type experiences. Are you sure this stuff didn’t really happen? Think about it carefully for a long time.

Logically, there are four possibilities regarding the material cited thus far:

1. These events actually happened, therefore proving or at least strongly implying by real evidence that there is a living God, perhaps not the one you have heard about, but a real God.

2. These events are only psychological phenomena such as dreams, hallucinations, etc. This has already been proven false. Dreams and hallucinations cannot cause actual physical events like deaths and escapes from airplane crashes to happen unless something else is involved: God, luck, or some of both.

3. These events can be explained as pure coincidence. Someone just happened to have a dream or vision that was luckily followed by an event that seemed related, but actually was not. While this option is theoretically possible, it has already been shown to be highly unlikely and untenable if the testimonies in the referenced material are anything more than blatant lies.

4. The referenced material is totally fictitious, i.e., the authors were lying through their teeth in order to make money on a book. While it is certainly not uncommon for "supernatural" garbage to be published in tabloids and such, these works are of an entirely different nature. Do you really think that a major publisher of serious works would publish a pack of lies that would damage its long term reputation just to make one fast buck? Possibly, but not likely. If you think that the referenced material is fictitious, kindly read these books in their entirety first, then if you have doubts, contact the publishers and/or the authors (one of them gives the author’s address in the back of the book), ask questions, seek the views of individuals referenced in the books, and then decide whether it is poppycock. To conclude that something is fictitious simply because it is not what you currently believe or want to hear is a king size intellectual copout of the first order. It is downright illogical and irrational. By the way, as of the time of this writing, I have never met or corresponded with any of these authors and I am receiving absolutely nothing from anyone for any publicity about the books referenced here.

Of the four possibilities above, which makes the most sense? Which is the most logical? Which is the most likely to be true? Do you have a fifth possibility that is something other than bull? Let’s hear it. Is it time to bite the bullet and admit that God not only exists but lives? Could it be that despite all the superficial malarkey often preached in church and on television, there is still a real God anyway? Could that guy really order two pizzas? Could there be both a real God and the false one that so many people make up and get mentally drunk on?

The following words are from another medical doctor with years of experience in scientific research about near death experiences:

Near-death experiences are not caused by a lack of oxygen to the brain, or drugs, or psychological stresses evoked by the fear of dying. Almost twenty years of scientific research has documented that these experiences are a natural and normal process. We have even documented an area in the brain which allows us to have the experience. This means that near-death experiences are absolutely real and not hallucinations of the mind. They are as real as any other human capability; they are as real as math, as real as language.

It has only been eight years since my research group at the University of Washington and Seattle Children’s Hospital published this information in the American Medical Association’s Pediatric journals. Although this research has been replicated by researchers throughout the world, including by the University of Florida, Boston Children’s Hospital, and the University of Ultrech in the Netherlands, it is not yet widely understood by the general population. Unfortunately, our society has not yet accepted the scientific advances in understanding the dying process which have occurred in the past two decades. We desperately need to reeducate ourselves that we are spiritual beings as well as biological machines ….²³

The bold italics are mine, not the cited author’s. The two paragraphs above did not come from a hallucinating housewife. The fact that it came from a doctor with published A.M.A. material does not make it true, but it does make it credible, worthy of our attention.

Wonder why we don’t hear more about this kind of thing on television? The doctor above just told you: The culture hasn’t caught up with the science and the evidence. Most of modern humanity has not really believed in anything beyond physical death in so long that belief in a real God who is more than a theology has not been taken seriously by the mass culture since the middle ages, maybe since the first century, A.D. A long time ago, we screwed up by thinking that the earth was flat. Later, we screwed up again by thinking that because somebody proved it to be round, therefore, God did not exist. Only recently has the notion that God may have created science been taken seriously. The mass culture still thinks in terms of God or science, wondering which one is correct. The truth is, you’ll never guess, both!

We might consider our body to be our "earth suit". Without it we could not hold this book, answer a telephone, or interact with the physical world in any way. We would pass through walls and all other solid objects and most likely not be seen or heard by anyone. In short, we would be in the same position as a deceased loved one who is complete in every way but just doesn’t have a physical body any longer.

Our earth suit is as necessary for life on this planet as a space suit is for astronauts while they perform tasks outside their spacecraft high above the earth. Unfortunately, many people, having worn their earth suit during their entire lifetime, believe "I am my body. Without it I will no longer exist!"²⁴

Our society is not accustomed to thinking in this way. That’s why this stuff does not end up on television very often. We are too busy ironing our earth suits to contemplate or believe that life is possible without one. Also, we fear the unknown, and one method used to escape our fears is to ignore them. Conservative Christians do this frequently. So do secular people. I am not asking you to become a conservative or necessarily even a Christian as defined by society. I am asking you to believe in God and the teachings of Jesus. All else is secondary.

Conservatives frequently talk about having a personal relationship with and/or knowing Jesus Christ. In my opinion, if a person really believes in his teachings and honestly tries to follow them, that person already has or will have that personal relationship and/or knowledge. Note, however, that this knowledge is NOT scientific intellectual type knowledge, but rather faith, actually trust, in an essence and/or being that one is convinced is real and committed to follow. It is like knowing a friend, not like knowing how to do arithmetic.

Don’t let conservative talk, orthodox dogma, or anybody’s theology get in the way. Believing in real unlimited and unconditional love is too important to be subject to the trite language of theology and doctrine. Don’t worry about the correct theology unless it helps you find the Truth. Some like me are logical, rational, and curious by nature, and we need theology sometimes, but theology is the study of God, not God itself. God created us. We created theology.

There are a few more accounts to examine before closing.

George is a mental health counselor in the Southeast. He was 24 years old when he received a message from his grandmother about 4 years after she had died of kidney failure.

... She was in a loving, soft mood and spoke directly to me. She said, "I’ve come to let you know that I love you. Who you are and what you are is right for you. I want you to know that I approve of you. Your life is right for you"…

I woke up the next morning feeling a new security and freedom. I felt like a great weight had been lifted off me.

To be quite honest with you, I’m gay. My grandmother came at a time that was a real transition for me. I was struggling with my gay identity and my self acceptance. This experience helped me to move forward with my life.²⁵

Gee whiz, Pat Robertson says people like that go to hell, doesn’t he? I guess he’s wrong? I’m not asking you to become a Christian Coalition right wing religious bigot, I’m asking you to believe in God and the religion of Jesus. As far as we know, Jesus never bashed gays. Paul did, but Jesus never did in recorded scripture. Paul was wrong about several things, in my opinion, including women having to wear veils over their heads and remain silent while in church.²⁶ Jesus never said anything like that either. Paul was probably the first conservative Christian heretic. Don’t worry about Paul. Pay attention to Jesus and what he taught. Care about God, especially if you don’t believe in God yet. Forget Paul’s homophobia and sexism. They’re insignificant side issues. No problem if you forget what Jerry Falwell and Cal Thomas say either, in fact, please do.

It just occurred to me that I may have violated one of Christ’s teachings to one of the cited subjects, namely that I may have condemned fundamentalism, Paulism, and/or conservative Christianity as a religion. He said that all religions have their purpose, and that none of them should be condemned. Some people apparently need the simplistic all-or-nothing type thinking that these brands of Christianity feature.

Better to be a fundamentalist than a drug addict? I’d say yes, but I do not happen to be the kind of person who needs the absolutist thinking offered by fundamentalism; in fact, I view it as a stumbling block. I doubt if you need that kind of thinking either; in fact, it may be why you thought that you didn’t believe in God. My purpose is to offer another alternative, lest you think that conservatism and atheism are the only choices. Apparently, there are other alternatives for alcoholics too.

Adeline, a homemaker in North Carolina, was asked to convey a message about 9 years after her Uncle Ned died in his 40s:

Uncle Ned was an active alcoholic and a shifter from one thing to another. My family was so afraid that he hadn’t asked God to forgive him for his sins before he died.

I was home by myself one night, in bed reading, and then I turned my bedside light off. I looked at the foot of my bed, and Uncle Ned was standing there! He was in good health and seemed pretty solid.

My mother’s name is Millie, and her sister’s name is Belle. Uncle Ned was very calm and said, "Tell Millie and Belle that I am all right now. And tell them to stop worrying about me"….

Uncle Ned suffered from the disease of untreated chronic alcoholism, which surely destroyed much of his adult life and his relationships with others. Reportedly, there are many healing centers in the spiritual realms for people who have such illnesses ….²⁷

Well, well. This alcoholic didn’t go to hell either. So much for another Southern Baptist myth. One more time: I’m not asking you to believe in conservative Christianity, but I am asking you to believe in big G and the teachings of J.C.

The next reference concerns a woman who was sexually abused by her Uncle Mickey, causing much trauma, even alcoholism. She later sobered up, and was able to forgive him. Still later, she received an after death communication from him and someone else!

Rosalyn is a 39-year-old chemical dependency counselor in Washington. The healing power of prayer and forgiveness were dramatically revealed to her:

… In the spring of this year, I was sleeping and woke up. I turned over and Jesus and Uncle Mickey were next to my bed! I only saw their heads and shoulders, and there was a light behind both of them.

There was an overwhelming presence of love and a seriousness too. The Lord was asking me a question that I heard in my mind. There was authority and power and yet a gentleness in His voice.

Jesus asked, "Do you hold anything against this man?" I told him, "No, I don’t." Then Jesus turned and looked at my uncle and said, "Neither do I hold anything against him." I knew then Uncle Mickey was at peace and was with the Lord - and that he was free.

A couple of days later, I got a letter from my mother that said Uncle Mickey had died.²⁸

Jesus’ words above sound very similar to some of his words in the gospels. The books cited here are by no means the only ones on the subjects at hand. They just happen to be the ones that I have read recently. I am in the process of taking a second look at all sorts of ideas that I thought I’d buried years ago. Just when we think we know so much, we discover that we really don’t know very much at all.

Don’t rejoice prematurely over that last comment, agnostics. Lack of scientific certainty is not an excuse for lack of decision making. You still must decide whether or not to take an umbrella to work, even if you cannot scientifically prove that it will rain. Either way, you face the consequences of the decision you make. Didn’t somebody once say that not to decide is to decide in the negative? Isn’t an agnostic who never decides really an atheist?

You may be thinking, "decide what?" Intellectual belief in God is a starting point, but what I really mean is trust in God. Theologians sometimes call this "grace through faith" or whatever, but what it means is that we admit we are not righteous or good apart from the greater power that I call God. This power is both outside us and within us, but we are free to choose or deny both aspects of it.

I do not claim to be Christ-like or advanced in spiritual wisdom. As you may have detected already, I am much more the philosopher than the spiritual saint or mystic guru. In some ways, I am immature and fearful. Nonetheless, I am growing and hopefully heading in the right direction. Most importantly though, I am wise enough to realize that God’s "Kingdom" must be freely accepted and received like a child receives a Christmas present, with or without belief in Santa Claus. That’s what some people call the grace of God. To return to the water analogy, I may not be a very good whitewater rafter, but at least I have enough sense to realize I need a glass of water.

I choose to believe in God. If I am wrong, then I have wasted a lot of time and energy being concerned about it, but I still do not regret it. On the other hand, what if the unbelievers are wrong? Some fundamentalists are ready to throw them in hell right now, but the actual situation may be that they spend time in a holding area, sort of like the alcoholics maybe, until they can bring themselves to the truth. You may have noticed that the above references to unbelief are now in the third person rather than the second. This is because I trust that you have enough sense at this point to at least consider belief in a living God.

As far as I can tell from the modern day revelations discussed thus far, we will all be with God some day, but the closer we get in this earth life, the less pain and rehabilitation will be necessary in the next. Also, the time required for a change while on earth may be far less than that required on the other side, because earth is like college where we have much opportunity to learn.

None of the references cited here claim infallibility, and I wouldn’t believe them if they did, but you should deal seriously with the issues they raise. They could be far more important in the long run than your job, your house, or anything else you hold dear in your earth suit. Whether you believe or not, I implore you to read, think, ponder, and even pray about the matters that we have examined here.

Pray? How might a person who is not fully convinced of the existence of God pray? Maybe like this: "God, if you’re out there, wherever you are, if you are, please help me to …" (whatever your need is). Don’t expect a lightening bolt followed by a mammoth voice from the sky - you may be waiting for a long time. If you don’t feel anything, let some time pass and try again later. God has different ways of communicating with different people. Give prayer a chance. If it doesn’t work, move on, but be sure you were listening before you conclude that God was not in some way talking to you.

If you are considering a change of outlook at this point, there may still be some stumbling blocks in your mind. Aren’t people who believe in God supposed to go to church on Sunday? Perhaps your exposure to contemporary Sunday school and/or worship was one of the reasons for your unbelief? Going to church is a good idea but it is not critical right now. Although honoring the Sabbath is one of the Ten Commandments, and although Jesus did go to the temple and synagogue fairly often, he and his disciples often broke certain Sabbath laws that religious leaders of the day held to be sacred. He would probably defend people today who work on Sundays from the condemnation of the goody-goodies who place such a high value on the Sunday church ritual.

Going to church is recommended but not paramount in importance. There are many spiritual people who meditate every day but do not go to church. Also, finding the right church for your needs can be a time consuming and frustrating process. There probably is a right one for you somewhere, but it might take six months to find it. There are many people who believe in God but not in the institutional church. The church is secondary. Worry now about the primary: Whether or not the loving God is real. If you need to go to church to find that out, then go to church.

What about this atonement doctrine stuff? Aren’t Christians supposed to believe that Jesus’ death was a magic blood ransom that saved the whole world at that moment once for all time? Isn’t the Christian religion really based on anthropomorphic superstition like that? Isn’t that what the bread and wine of communion are all about? Isn’t blood ransom the very cornerstone of Christianity?

First, I’m not even asking you to be a Christian at this point, just to believe in a loving God and the religion of Jesus. That’s not necessarily Christianity. Christianity, like the church, is secondary and can come later if that be God’s will. Second, I don’t believe in the literal blood ransom atonement myself, and I’m certainly not asking you to.

Jesus summed up what the bread and wine meant when he said to do this "in remembrance of me."²⁹ Jesus literally died for his disciples because they all would have likely been killed had Jesus fought rather than surrendered to the gang of authorities who came with Judas to arrest him. Universalizing that fact to include all humanity, however, is a teaching of Paul and others in the early church, but probably not a teaching of Jesus. Paul is the same guy who said that man "is the image and glory of God; but the woman is the glory of the man."³⁰ Again, don’t worry about Paul. Not all Christians, and certainly not all theists, believe in the atonement doctrine. Among those who do so believe, there are various interpretations that can be dealt with later if you are so inclined.

Belief in the real God does not depend on theological dogma, but the institutional church has wasted much time and energy through the centuries denying that fact. Don’t let orthodoxy place stumbling blocks in your path that serve as excuses for unbelief. You are bigger than that, and God is bigger than these manmade theologies and doctrines. Kick the doctrinaire stumbling blocks out of the way and believe in the power of real love. That is what really matters to the God that I am advocating here.

What about this justification by grace through faith alone stuff? Doesn’t the Bible say that works don’t count and that you’re supposed to have right belief to be saved? Isn’t it ludicrous to believe that scoundrels who repent on their deathbeds go to heaven while nice people who do good works but don’t believe this stuff go to hell forever? How can a loving God condemn anyone to hell forever anyway? Isn’t this whole notion just a lot of superstitious bigotry designed to recruit more church members to fatten the pockets of preachers and evangelists?

First, let’s deal with justification by grace through faith alone (J by G thru FA) as proposed by Martin Luther and the apostle Paul. We’ve already seen how Paul denied half the humanity of women. Martin Luther ridiculed Copernicus for his wild theory that the earth was round, not flat as Luther believed.³¹ Don’t worry too much about Luther either.

New religions are usually started by brilliant spiritual leaders like Jesus, Buddha, and Mohammed. Then maintenance of the establishment kicks in, and the religions are controlled by reactionaries more concerned about tradition than truth. For one prime example, read Mark 7.

Paul was an early link on the road from Jesus, the visionary radical leader, toward the egotistical and paranoid medieval popes who forbade laymen to possess Bibles for fear that someone might question the infallible papal interpretations of the infallible Bibles that only the clergy were allowed to read. Paul was a great man in many ways, and he was a far cry from these medieval popes, but sexism was not his only flaw. He was no Jesus, not by a long shot.

Luther was actually a reformer, but one must understand that what he was reforming had degenerated to such a state that it made Paul seem like God by comparison. Christianity went down hill for a long time before Luther made it a little better, but not that much better. Subsequent developments within both Catholicism and Protestantism brought more meaningful reforms to certain factions of each, but many modern Christians are still as ignorant as their medieval predecessors.

Paul and Luther, better than most but worse than others, were both very imperfect saints whose teachings fall far short of Jesus. To summarize Paul and Luther’s J by G thru FA stuff, Paul misinterpreted Jesus and then Luther misinterpreted Paul and then modern suburbanites misinterpreted Luther until we have the current doctrine of sit on thy apathetic ass and do nothing because right belief will save you. Paul and Luther were good men who were wrong about J by G thru FA. How do I know? I don’t, but Jesus does, because he contradicted this notion in his own teachings in the gospels!

Jesus most certainly did not teach this J by G thru FA stuff. Read Matthew 25! It is those who do likewise (good works) to the least of these who are saved, not those who have right belief.³² Much of modern Christianity has turned the teachings of Jesus upside down in its self inflicted denial of the truth. Don’t worry about J by G thru FA. I don’t believe in it, and neither did Jesus!

One more word on J by G though: While Jesus did not teach that faith was the sole method of salvation, neither did he teach works righteousness, i.e., that we’re so good, without fault or flaw, that we deserve the highest honor in heaven. He made it clear that other things like forgiveness, confession, repentance, honesty, even faith were part of the mix, and that salvation was a gift of God, not a well deserved paycheck for work done and/or dues paid to the God side. He did not teach works righteousness, but he did teach that works were a very important part of the mix. The "by faith alone" stuff was a heresy. Jesus never taught it. The Book of James, which may have been written or influenced by Jesus’ brother of that name, never taught it either.

Now this hell stuff is another matter. Although I personally believe that most of this actually came from the author of Matthew rather than from Jesus, I cannot ignore Matthew 25:46, which indicates the flip side of the above referenced salvation scenario, namely that those who do not do good to the least of these will receive everlasting and/or eternal torment.³³ I also cannot ignore the fact that Jesus did talk about hell or something similar several times, mostly in Matthew, but also in Luke, and to a lesser degree in Mark.

I wish Matthew 25:46 was not there because I cannot believe that a loving God would condemn anyone to hell forever. Even I wouldn’t do that, and I’m not all that terribly loving. It is noteworthy that this one passage is the only reference by Jesus in the gospels to everlasting punishment. Numerous other passages speak of the fire being everlasting, but not the punishment. Also, every reference by Jesus to hell in my RSV Bible has a footnote saying, "Greek Gehenna."³⁴ Gehenna was a city dump outside Jerusalem where the fire never went out and where people were sometimes thrown into that fire. A modern translation of the eastern text, however, contains some references to Gehenna, some to hell, and some to Gehenna as figuratively hell.³⁵

It is hard to conclude from all this what Jesus actually said about the subject. I tend to think that Matthew 25:46 was a mistranslation or misinterpretation of Jesus’ actual words to the effect that "eternal or after physical death" ended up as "everlasting or never ending". In other words, there may be a price to pay in the next life for transgressions, but it is not necessarily forever. The orthodox church upheld the opposite view, everlasting hell, apparently on the strength of Matthew 25:46 alone, and most of the Protestant reformers apparently never challenged it. It is noteworthy that the Gospel of John contains no reference to hell whatsoever.

I think that heaven and hell are relative like earth life, that is, we’ll have enough love to sustain us but with enough pain to help us grow spiritually. This is consistent with the testimonies of most of the cited NDE and ADC references. As we discussed earlier, it is also possible that some spirits, because of grudges, fear of real love, or whatever reason, actually might choose a hell like existence rather than surrender to the sometimes tough love of God. Maybe some condemn themselves to hell, relatively speaking, rather than forgive someone or accept someone’s love, and maybe they stay there until they learn how to do these things. I do not know, but I do know this about the 25^th Chapter of Matthew: If there is a hell and if it’s forever, the people that Jesus describes going there are not those with wrong belief, but rather those who don’t give a damn about the poor. Those who love to preach about hell so much rarely mention that!

Don’t worry about the perverted teachings of modern, medieval or ancient Christianity which would have you believe that salvation depends on right belief and/or theology. Jesus roundly condemned some of the Pharisees of his day who may have had right belief but who self righteously and hypocritically ignored the weightier matters of justice and mercy.³⁶ Don’t worry about having exactly the right beliefs. Worry about the love of God and whether you are living it.

You may well have other reasons for reservations about making a commitment to a living and loving God. Let these concerns be for awhile and put first things first. There’s a saying from the Vietnam War era that there are no atheists in foxholes. Will you still be an atheist when you are so old and helpless that a nursing home nanny must wipe off your butt after you crap in the bed? Will you still be an agnostic when you start having chest pains? Think about it. What do you really believe?

Perhaps you are considering these matters, but somehow the notion of God still seems emotionally unreal to you. Reading an essay or book is one thing, but real life is quite another. God can be rather difficult to find or discern sometimes in the rat race work-a-day world of red lights, lane changing on the Interstate, office politics, and the evening news. I could recommend that you go to church, and I do, but this may or may not do any good in the short run. I could recommend that you meditate, and I will, but if you’re no better at it than me, you might be frustrated by the lack of results. When I begin to stray off the right path, I try to find a back country two lane highway, drive to a remote state park or other out of the way spot, park the car, get out, and walk through the woods or in a meadow. If time does not permit a trip, find the most deserted natural and relatively undisturbed place that you can find, and take a long walk.

Think about whatever you want to and keep walking for about an hour. Then stop walking and look up into the treetops or the sky and look over at the woods or the wild flowers. You are now looking at God. That might not be correct theology, but the point is that human beings did not create the trees, the flowers, or the clouds. Even if you think it’s all nothing more than survival of the fittest, you must admit that this is far more than anything that humanity has ever built or invented. However this stuff got here, most of it got here without us. Realizing this fact is the beginning of wisdom. If nothing else convinces you that there might be a God, take a long walk in the woods.

While you are there, also consider this: How did it come to be that the union of a sperm and an egg would produce a baby? Was that process an accident? How did it come to pass that plants consume carbon dioxide and give off oxygen, which just happens to be exactly what we animals need for survival? Another accident caused by the big bang? How in the world did all those complex systems in your body continue to function in harmony every day and night for years so that you woke up alive this morning? More accidents? Think about these things and walk a little further. Then look up one more time.

If you still do not believe in God after that, I don’t know what else I can say, other than this: If you have decided not to believe in God because of reaction against the hypocrisy of the church and/or those who call themselves Christian, don’t forget the pizza. Did man create God in his own image or did God create man and woman in his/her/its own image? Seriously consider that the answer may be both. Have a good earth life and a good life too.