3 Comments

1. Really enjoyed this dialogue, thanks so much for dedicating the time to answer my question! You guys brought up great points for consideration. Here are some followup thoughts I had. No pressure to reply or commit an episode to answering but if you do touch on any of this, that would be super cool!

   1) The value of subscribing to certain facts for salvation
   This is beyond just the scope of NDEs (falls into divine hiddenness and non-resistant non belief) but it kind of ties in. My understanding is that different individuals have different thresholds for believing something to be true. For instance, in order for me to know that a chair will not collapse when I sit on it, I might require seeing someone else sit on it first, while another person might just require someone telling them the chair has a history of not collapsing when it’s sat on. Everyone has their own set of evidences that will ultimately convince them that something is true. When it comes to Christianity, the traditional belief is that you must not only repent and strive to live in accordance to God’s law, but also believe in certain facts about who God is and the saving work of Jesus. So you could live just as uprightly as a Christian, but be deceived into the wrong theology and end up in hell. It seems odd to me that God wants all to be saved but provides us with 2 obstacles to that salvation instead of 1:
   (1) believe the right facts (this is the problematic one in my opinion)
   (2) choose to honor God with your life instead of living in rebellion to him.
   The issue is, many people would wholeheartedly want to do step 2 but aren’t convinced of the correct facts needed in step 1. For instance, people who are fully devoted believers of non-christian faiths because that was more convincing than Christianity. Or agnostics who aren’t strongly convinced enough to commit to any religion but try to live as morally upright based on their conscience’s convictions. It seems odd to me that some will go to Hell because their personal threshold for believing the correct facts that Christianity requires, was not succeeded by the evidence they had been shown in their lives. God knows what it would take for any of us to believe and commit to Christianity so it’s odd that he hides those truths instead of giving each of us a sufficient amount to be convinced. Some people may not seek the truth anymore because they thought they found it in their religion. Sure I think if God revealed himself clearly and told the whole world that he is the God of the bible, some people would still not follow him. But in that cases, it’s on them for knowingly denying to follow their creator. With all that said, my first concern is “Why does God make believing the right facts part of the salvation equation, and provide some with sufficient evidence to convince them to believe that right facts, but not provide that for others?". This expands beyond NDE's but i think NDE's are definitely an interesting avenue where God could have revealed that. In this episode, you guys mentioned that God gives the responsibility of spreading his word to humanity. Even in that case, he could empower the ministers of his word to do supernatural miracles that no one else can do so that the message they preach is convincing. We saw this used as a tool for spreading the gospel in the early church but it's not always the case today. The average evangelist does not seem to do miracles and so gospel hearers are supposed to just take their word for it. Not everyone finds that convincing enough to commit to the religion.

   2) Are the NDEs actually convincing people to continue searching or perhaps giving the impression that all is okay
   Is it reasonable to expect someone who:
   (1) had a positive NDE,
   (2) was welcomed by and felt that they were fully loved by God,
   (3) experienced a self judgement in a life review, and
   (4) was sent back to Earth being told something along the lines of “Love is all that matters” or “ Go show love to the people around you”
   – would return from that experience and think that it’s their responsibility to search for the correct belief system? Would they come back and expect that their actual afterlife experience will be far more negative than their NDE if they failed to seek and eventually believe the correct facts and subscribe to the correct belief system? I’m not well versed in NDEs so perhaps I’m missing something, but I think more often than not, someone returning from a positive NDE wouldn’t feel that God expects them to subscribe to the correct religion to be reunited with Him after they die for real. It doesn’t seem that they are being led to believe that at all from their NDE but again, maybe I haven’t read enough of the reliable NDEs. With that said, if God does in fact expect us to (1) believe the right facts + (2) choose to honor God with our lives instead of living in rebellion to him – NDEs seem like they could confuse someone into not searching for the right facts and thus missing out on salvation.

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2. Awesome Discussion, loved it,so so Interesting. .

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3. I like these conversations but its pretty much confirmation bias to try and turn ndes into christian experieces. The data just doesnt fit doctrines like the atonement or the trinity. Theres plenty of quraa4n verses that mesh well with ndes but i still dont think these point to islaa4m. Ndes fit mystical traditions. Even if we discard all the anomalous ndes about reincarnation or ones saying theres no right religion it doesnt prove the bible or jesus dying for humanity. Sure ndes could fit teachings of jesus but so does it fit teachings in the bhagwad gita, upanishads and quraa4n.

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