- All right. Let me tell you what
we're going to be doing right now with my
friend John Burke. He's been a friend of
mine for over 20 years. He started church
in Austin, Texas, the same time I
started Crossroads that started in Cincinnati. And he's gone on to exceed me
in a bunch of different areas. One of them is in writing. Like he actually makes the
New York Times best seller list with Imagined Heaven. I had him on my podcast,
The Aggressive Life. I had a bunch of
people on my podcast, Matthew McConaughey,
I had him on my podcast. He was the most
listened to podcast I had. And then John came along and blew by him in
about three weeks. And it still grows
because this message of heaven being real
and talking with people, John has interacted
with 2000 people. He's the foremost
authority in the world on near-death experiences. Nobody has spoken
firsthand with 2000 people who have gone to the next level, the next realm, and come back. He has, and he
understands the scriptures. He's made ties that
are just amazing. But of all those folks,
he's got 70 stories inside of his new book
Imagine the God of Heaven. Let's look at a couple of them. - Hey. Welcome,
Crossroads. Great to be back. Well, welcome
everybody that are online, the different campuses. And you just heard
from some of the people that I have interviewed
who clinically died, you know, no heartbeat,
brainwaves stopped. And yet when they
were resuscitated, they came back talking about
a life more real than this one, in a place far more beautiful
and in the presence of a God of light and love, who
they never wanted to leave. And now I know what some
of you are already thinking. You're thinking, "Oh
now, this is just weird. This guy talks to dead people?" No, I talk to them
when they're alive again. And it's actually
way more normal than you would ever imagine. Do you know that in
2019, a study was done by the European
Academy of Neurology across 35 countries,
and they found that 5% of the population,
when clinically dead, had what's called a
near-death experience, like these people
you heard from. I mean, that's millions of
people all over the globe. And I believe that
God is giving testimony of global evidence
of His great love and grace offered
to all nations. But if you're still
skeptical, I get it, because when I first
started studying these, I was a skeptical engineer. My dad was dying of cancer. Someone gave him
the very first research on near-death
experiences, and I saw it by his bedside table, picked
it up, read it in one night. And I said, "Oh, my gosh, this
God Jesus stuff may be real." I was an agnostic. And not long after that,
I came to faith in Christ. And over the last 35
years, as Brian said, I've studied thousands of
these near-death experiences. And in 2015, I wrote a
book, Imagine Heaven, showing how the commonalities
of these experiences perfectly align
with what the Bible has been telling us
about the afterlife all along. And recently I wrote this book, Imagine the God of Heaven,
because of all the people I interviewed they
would say consistently of all the wonders
and beauty of heaven, of all the glorious reunions,
nothing could compare to being in the presence of God. He is the love
you've always wanted. And if you don't believe that, I want to stretch your
imagination today. You know, this new
book is really about God. And some of you may be saying, "But how do you
know that this is true? I mean, how do you know
these experiences are true? How do you know
they're not hallucination or like endorphins
flooding the brain or anoxia, lack of oxygen? Just a trick the brain is
playing as as we die?" And I deal with all of
those alternate theories in chapter two, and I list
the ten points of evidence that convinced me as
a skeptical engineer, but also have convinced
many skeptical medical doctors that this is
grounded in reality. Like, for instance,
when people die, they are out of their
bodies, but they still are in the room watching
the resuscitation, and they can see things
happening that later, when they come
back, can be verified. And statistically, they're
like 98% accurate. Second, blind people,
when they have a near-death
experience, they can see and they see all the same
things that sighted people do. And then when people die,
many times on the other side, they meet a deceased person that they didn't even know had
died until they come back. And seven other
points of evidence. But let me ask you a question: Has God just started
revealing Himself like this across the globe in our age of modern medical
resuscitation and NDEs? Of course not. And what I'm really trying
to show in this new book is that the Bible is
actually God's love story. The Bible is God's
love story for all nations from the very beginning,
that God created every person for a love relationship
with Himself. But all of us, at some
point, we push God away, we reject His love. And yet, from the
beginning, 4000 years ago, before any world
religion was put down in a sacred writing, God
calls Abraham and Sarah and says, "I will make
you into a great nation, and I will bless you
and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you." And through the Jewish
nation God foretells through His prophets
that He's going to send this Messiah who will be
the Savior of all the world. And then Jesus comes and He dies for the
sins of the whole world. And then in the last book
of the Bible John says he's taken up into
heaven, and he sees: before Jesus. And then it says,
there's a great wedding. It's bizarre and mysterious. But you see, the Bible
is really God's love story. He's in love with all
people of all nations. And He also says: And I'm going to
let you hear from -- There's 70 NDE
testimonies that I interviewed from all across the
globe in the new book, Imagine the God of Heaven. But I want you to hear
how these things are true. So I've brought eight
of them on video. So watch some of them. Why would a 16
year old Jewish girl who grew up hearing
that Jesus was a hoax see Jesus when she
dies and know that He was the God she had
prayed to her whole life? And how do you explain
why a Muslim Imam would come back
from this beginning of a hellish experience
at his burial proclaiming that Jesus saved him, and
today he's an Anglican pastor who's had seven
attempts on his life because he will not shut
up about Jesus? [applause] And how do you explain a
Hindu manufacturing engineer describing the exact
same city of God that John describes in
Revelation chapter 21, when he said that: And Santosh came back
seeking God with all his heart. He was like, this is -- This was not like the
Hindu gods I learned about. Who was this God of
tenderness and mercy and love and compassion? And he kept praying, "God, I
want to know You. Who are you?" And two years
later, his daughter, who was a choral major
in college, was invited by a friend to sing in a
choir at Easter in a church. Santosh goes to hear her. When he walks into the church, he feels the presence
of this loving God. And here's what the message
was on that day, Matthew 7: And John 10: And Santosh told
me he went home, started reading
the Bible and said, "Everything I
experienced was in there." How do you explain this? And I'll tell you, friends,
God brought me testimony, 70 people that
I've put in the book from every continent
from Tehran, Singapore, India, China, Africa,
Australia, all over the globe. They are testifying
about the same God. And what Peter
discovered when God saw the heart of Cornelius,
a Roman soldier, and sent Peter to
tell him about Jesus. And Peter goes on to
explain what Jesus did. Now, sometimes I find
this confuses Christians. They say things to me
like, "Well, are you saying that everyone goes to heaven?" No. No, in fact, near
death experiences of those who come
forward, 23% come forward talking about a hellish
experience they had. Half the people you're
seeing in these videos today, they first started
seeing a hellish reality before they saw
a heavenly reality. And this is a very important
thing to understand. NDEs are not eternity. 30% of NDE-ers say there
was a border or boundary in their experience they
knew they couldn't cross and still come back to Earth. And what that means is
they have not crossed over into either eternal
life or eternal death. Instead, this is just a
peek into the reality of both. And we shouldn't be
surprised that people who don't even know
Jesus would see God. After all, think about
the apostle Paul. He didn't believe in Jesus. He was having Christians
arrested and persecuted. In Acts 9 he's on
the Damascus road and the same brilliant
God of light appears to him that appeared to
all these NDE-ers. And he says, "Who
are you, Lord?" And He says, "I'm Jesus,
who you're persecuting." Now notice something, Jesus does not explain
the gospel to him. He later sends Ananias
to explain it to him, because Paul
still had a free will, and Paul could either
turn and follow Jesus, but he had a lot to lose.
He was a wealthy Pharisee. And that's the same with
these NDE testimonies. They come back. They
don't always understand fully. But when they seek, they find, but they still have a free will. They still have
a choice to make. Now, what these
NDE-ers are, I think, is more like if I visited
Buckingham Palace, right? I can see the place,
I can visit the place, but that doesn't
mean the Royal family is ready to adopt me and
have me move in forever. And that, I believe, is
what these NDEs are like. All right. So what is God like? That's really what I
spend the majority of this new book talking about. And let me just say, those
of us who know Jesus, we kind of think we
know what God is like. But I want to challenge
you because the truth is, all of us put God in a box.
We have to. We're finite. And so we have walls
to how we imagine God. But the truth is, God
is far more mysterious and beautiful and
powerful and majestic and all these big, huge words
than you've ever imagined. But He's also far more
relatable and personable and enjoyable and even fun. And maybe that hits
the wall of your box. I want to challenge you to start to expand
your thinking today. You know what God wants
is just honest relationship. And the more you understand
how God feels about you, the more you're going to
want to move toward Him every single day. - You know, God is far
more personable and loving and relatable and even fun
than you have ever imagined. You know, so many
of us, we think God is like this killjoy,
this party pooper. "He doesn't get us. He's
distant and unrelatable." And nothing could be
further from the truth. No one else gets
you like He does. No one has been with you
through it all except Him. You know, the
scriptures tell us that: You know, not only
can God relate to you, but He's kind and He's merciful, just as Santosh and
Swidiq discovered. And you know, there's
nothing too small and there's nothing
too large that God doesn't care about
that you can take to Him. You know, people will
say, "Well, 8 billion people on the planet, He
can't care about me." But that's how great He is. Not only does He care about you, there's no one
else like you to Him. And you know you think,
"Billions of people praying, He doesn't hear my prayers." He hears every single one and answers every
prayer from your heart. And that's part of
what I'm trying to stretch your mind to see God
is mystery and majesty. He's far greater than you
and I have ever imagined. You know, the Bible talks
about how God is imminent. He's always with us. But He's also transcendent.
He's beyond it all. It says in Ephesians 4: In other words, God is
the very life force of you and of everything that
exists and He's infinite. He's everywhere all the time. But He's also over all. He transcends and He's
beyond what He created. You know, all those big words
in the Bible that you read: Omniscient and
omnipotent and omnipresent and holy and
eternal and infinite, you know, they all
mean something, but we read them
and we don't get it. But when you hear it through
the words of these NDE-ers, what that's like, you
realize, "Oh, my gosh." It's like this 112 year old girl who had a near death experience
and she's there with Jesus. Interestingly, she
said, sitting on His lap. And then she sees the
glory and the majesty of God. And she said all those big
words, they mean something. And I experienced it and all I
could say is, "Whoa, just whoa." And what's also fascinating
is this 12 year old girl, and Heidi, she was 16, you know,
when she encountered Jesus. Both had no
knowledge of the Bible, yet they experienced one God, but Father, Son,
and Holy Spirit. Wild, right? And you know, in the
book, I talk about the Trinity and how these NDE-ers can
help us because, you know, we hear the Trinity, one
God, Father, Son and spirit, three persons and
that sounds like a contradiction to us, right? Because three
persons can't be one. And so I use an analogy
of imagine if I created a flat, two dimensional
world, all right. And I stick my three fingers as a three dimensional
creator into that world, like this, they would see me
as three round slices, right? They would see me like,
can you go to the next one? And the next one after that. They'd see me like that,
three round slices. Right? But what if I told them, I'm
not actually three round slices? I'm actually one being." But that would be a
contradiction in their world, because three round slices
can never stack up an arm into one being
because there is no up. There's only back and
forth and side to side. So what if in our finite
limited dimensions it's a contradiction, but God, the Father, Son and
Spirit connect up somehow in dimensions far beyond
ours or beyond dimensions? Funny little story is when I
was in a writing deadline and I thought, "You know, I
need a picture to explain this," and it was too late. But my son-in-law
Dom is in high tech and he's really good
with computer graphics. I called him, I said, "Hey, I
need this computer graphic and I need it tomorrow.
Can you do it?" And he said sure. And
he sends that to me. And it went in the book. And now the book
is being translated in multiple
languages and all that. And I thought that was
computer generated. And he said, "Oh, no, I
was sitting in the bathroom. I just took a picture
of my hand." [laughter] I was like, "That's
your real hand and in the bathroom?" You know? And so I joke with
him now, I said, "Well, if high tech sales
don't work out, you know, you now have experiences
in international hand model." He likes to say, "I have
a hand in that book." Dr. Ron Smothermon
is a neurologist and psychiatrist
that I interviewed. He was attacked
by one of his patients who had a psychotic
break, stabbed 13 times. He showed me the wounds,
even through his neck. And right before the
14th blow to his heart, he said, "It was like time
stopped and there before me was this divine God of light." Listen as first Dean
and then Ron describe the mystery and the
majestic qualities of this God. Now, Jesus said, "I am the light
of the world." And then He said: You know, friends,
if you imagine God as this taskmaster,
demanding, impossible to please, always wanting more
from you, that's not God. You need to let
Him out of that box. You need to imagine
God as He actually is. He actually wants to walk
with you to ease your burdens. He's humble and gentle. And, as Ron noted,
even humorous and fun. You know God is
joyful and enjoyable. Does that stretch your
imagination a little bit? Does it surprise you that
I interviewed many people who said they laughed with God? And you know, I'll
be honest with you, when I first heard
Heidi tell me about surfing this wave of light at
the speed of light with Jesus. Remember, she was a 16
year old when this happened. And I thought to myself,
"Yeah, probably not." I don't believe everything
everybody tells me. I wait to see do many of
them say the same thing? So I kind of just
set it on a shelf. And then I interviewed
another young girl. She was 12. And she talks about with
Jesus and in a similar way, kind of like flying and the
funnest thing she's ever done. And then a little boy
who was four years old, who died in a hospital
when he was little and kept telling his
parents, "I want to go run and play with Jesus
in the fields again." And suddenly I
realized, why not? I mean, who do
we think created us with the ability to enjoy life and adventure and pleasure? Do we think we made it all up? No. God is the most joyful,
enjoyable being in the universe. C.S. Lewis says, "Joy is the
serious business of heaven." And you know we
shouldn't be shocked. Do you know, in
the Old Testament, God had the nation of Israel throw seven national
street parties, seven of them, every year for like weeks
at a time. And he said this: And Jesus' last night
on earth, He said, And you know, joy is
actually your birthright if you are a child of God, if you've given
your heart to Jesus. And NDE-ers remind us that joy is not dependent
on circumstances, i t's only dependent on
you staying connected to the source, to God. And you stay connected
very simply by prayer. Prayer is not some rote,
you know, ritualistic thing. It's just talking to
God from your heart. Do you know that NDE-er tell us every prayer from your heart, doesn't matter how
silly or trite or whatever He hears it and He answers it. And do you know
that every prayer is recorded in heaven as well so that one day you'll see how God answered
that for your good. And God is so good. You know He desires to give
you the desires of your heart. You know, Psalm 37:4 says: And now I don't think that means if you're happy about God, you'll get the
Lamborghini if you want it. You know, I don't think it means we get everything
we want in this life, but I have interviewed
so many NDE-ers that I've started to realize
that in the life to come, God really does delight in giving
us the desires of our heart. And the truth is,
if you ever thought that following God
would make you miss out on something,
you're wrong. You won't miss out on anything. You know, Jim Woodford
discovered that God is good even to those who
don't deserve it. He's a commercial airline pilot, owned several multi-million
dollar businesses, very wealthy man. He had an airplane,
a yacht, a horse farm and 19 British sports
cars in his garage, and none of that mattered when he died of
an opioid overdose that he was taking for
Guillain-Barré disease. And he told me, he said, "You know, you know
when you're dying." And he was sitting in his truck and he suddenly had this
realization that he was dying. And his wife was a Christian
who had been praying for him. He had never prayed in his life. And suddenly he realizes," I've never thanked
God for this life that I thought was
my own making," and he realized it wasn't. And he said as his head
was hitting the steering wheel, he cried out, "God forgive me." I love to joke with Jim, "I think you beat
the thief on the cross for last minute
conversion, buddy." He said, "That's who I
identify with, actually." But listen as Jim
talks first about, many times I find when people
last minute cry out to God, He first lets them see
where they were going and then takes them to
where they're going to be because of His forgiveness. But listen as Jim talks
about the goodness of God, even when we don't deserve it. - You are His child
and what He wants is for you to know Him and
love Him and trust Him and then walk through
this life daily with Him so that you can experience
more and more of His joy. And all He needs is your
willingness, your heart. Have you ever
given Him your heart? Have you ever just said, "God, I want what Jesus did
on the cross to count for me. I want Your forgiveness
and Your leadership." And maybe you have. Maybe
you've wandered from Him. Well, come back, you know, and start walking with Him daily because I guarantee
He is what you want. Let's pray together. God, thank You so much
for stretching our imagination to understand
that You're greater than we've ever
conceived in every way. And God, some of us
never knew that relationship with You is a gift You want to
give us that we have to receive. And if that's you and you want relationship with God tonight, just right now in
your heart, tell him, "God, I want what
Jesus did to count for me. I want Your forgiveness
and leadership." And God, thank You, You
tell us that is all You need to never leave us or forsake us. And God, some of us have,
we've turned away from You even though we know that. And we want to turn
back right now, God, and commit to walking
closer to You every day. Just like you told Santosh, You want relationship
365 days a year, just being honest. And thank You,
God, that You have so many good
things in store for us. There's nothing we've
ever loved about this life that You haven't already given, and there's so much more
yet to come, and we thank You. In Jesus name, Amen. [applause] - You know that's so moving,
because hearing things from people who've
experienced something that are consistent, it
just resonates with us. You know, there
wasn't irrefutable data that was shared today. There wasn't things you
could go tell somebody about and they wouldn't have,
"Well, yeah, but what about?" There wasn't -- I don't
know if you could have won a debate today with
a Christopher Hitchens or something like that.
But you know what I know? I know there's some people
in here right now who know, that's what I know. And what all those
folks have experienced is a sense of boldness
that changed them. And you start your
walk with Christ with a moment of boldness,
not a passive belief, but a moment of boldness that
marks you as being different. So I don't know, last
time I've done this, but we're going
to do is right now. I'm going to give you
a chance to be bold and have God see you right
now and step over the line and mark your future. And if you've never done that, if you've never given
your life to Christ, I want you to stand right now. Right now. Come on, come on. I know there's somebody in here. I know there's people who
are bold in here right now. Come on. That's right. Of course it'd be a young man. Of course it'll be
a bold young man. It's not your emotions, dude. Come on. Who else is
bold in here? Who wants it? Yes, you do? Yes, you
do want to, miss. Yes. Come on. Who else? Who else wants to
cross over in here? Yeah. You do. Of course
you do. Why wouldn't you? Everything else you know is
untrue relative to this truth. Everything else you know, there's nothing as real as
this or as important as this. Now, for all of us who
have stood and went around, just put your hand towards
them. We'll pray for you. And those of you
who are standing, those of you are standing right
now, just say something like this: God, Jesus, I want You
now. I ask You forgive me. I give You my life and I ask You to fill me with
Your Holy Spirit. I'll follow You as best
I can. Amen. Amen. All right, grab a seat. Well
done. Welcome to family. Your life review
just got different. Now there's others of
us who walked in here, were we were stale, very stale. The world does
that to all of us. I'm sitting over there and
I've got tears in my eyes because, you know the
purity and the rawness and the simplicity
and the visceral nature of these experiences
that line up with the Bible, it's like shakes up my
cobwebs, like, "Oh, my gosh, I keep getting carried
away with things that I shouldn't get
carried away with." I just wonder if
you've just gotten stale and you want the God
of heaven to see you and to know that you're
going to a different place. You need a moment
of boldness too. I just ask you to
boldly stand right now. Let me pray for you. Stand
right now. Come on now. Come on. That's right. Come on. God is just excited about
what's happening to you as anybody before
because He loves you and He's for you and He's
with you and He's died for you. So here we go.
Let's pray right now. God, God, I ask right
now -- Just say this. God, I ask right
now, refresh me. And I turned from the
things that delude me. I want the scales off of
my eyes and off my heart. I want You and only
You, Jesus. Amen. Hey, how about
-- I'll be out of key, but we'll pick it up. How about anything that's good,
that's good comes from You. Anything that's good,
it's good comes from You. Why don't we stand,
let's sing us together. - One more time. One
more time on the anything. One more time on the anything. All right. Sing
anything that's good. - Amen.
