Living Beyond: Making Sense of Near Death Experiences

NDEs are Pre-Planned

NDEs involve a journey. Since we seldom if ever initiate a journey on Earth without an underlying purpose, planning is needed. For example, whom we are expecting to meet often determines where we go, when and by what mode of transport. NDEs appear to involve a similar style of pre-planning; furthermore, their sequence seems to be arranged by someone with our best interests at heart.

NDEs Are Purposeful

For a particular NDEr the order or nature of the events depicted in the model above might be different. I must stress again that because God made us different and individual, he deals with us individually, as he did with each person we read about in scripture. Nevertheless, certain general truths about how he works in human lives remain, summarised by his never acting outside of his character. This means that while an NDEr may be able to relate to many of the common features of NDEs as experienced by millions, it would be surprising if his or her particular NDE did not feature unique differences.

PMH Atwater  1, who has personally had three NDEs and has researched hundreds of others, has come to recognise that deeper purposes drive the NDE.

Experiencers seem to get what they need – whatever it will take to get their attention and make an impression – as if near-death experiences were purposeful somehow… Sometimes what seems unloving is exactly the opposite of that in its impact on the individual.

Some NDErs realise this and it is helpful to them – Dr Mary Neal  2 states: ‘Many have described my accident as terrible and tragic. I describe it as one of the greatest gifts I have ever received,’ because of the NDE that followed.

God is mystifying, and his dealings with humanity can be too. Did you know that you were designed and pre-planned by God before the foundation of the world? (Psalm 139:16 and Ephesians 1:4). And did you know that God monitors your thoughts and holds you accountable for them? (Psalm 139:1-3 and Psalm 94:11). I found that God knew my ‘private’ thoughts as a consequence of a strange experience when I was a new Christian, years before finding it to be so in scripture. It still blows my mind, and makes me uncomfortable. God not only knows all our thoughts, he has recorded them – as NDErs find to their astonishment during their Life Review.

It is entirely to be expected, with all this planning, knowledge and prior concern, that God designs NDEs for the betterment, on return to Earth, of those to whom he grants them.

NDEs are individualised and personalised, for the greater good of the recipient.

To summarise, God designs the particular features of an NDE depending on whom it is for. NDEs are thereby unpredictable to our mortal minds. Period.

Unexpected Meetings During NDEs

It might be planned for you to meet unexpected persons, living or dead. Sometimes these persons are only met in visions, which facilitate deep reflection on your life to that point. One of the unusual visions God may give you at any point during an NDE is of yourself as a young child. Crystal McVea  3 describes her experience of this.

I became aware of yet another presence in the tunnel, just ahead. This was the person God had brought me to meet.

This presence was smaller than my angels and also much more distinct. This figure had a body, and a face, and arms and legs.

It was a child.

It was a little girl.

I had the sensation of locking in on her and soaking up everything about her. She was small and no more than three or four years old… The girl was skipping and prancing and laughing, just like little kids do on Earth. She was bending and dipping her basket into the brightness at her feet and filling it up like she was filling it with water. She would dip the basket and scoop up the brightness and pour it out and do it again. And every time she dipped the basket and came up with it dripping this magical brightness, she laughed.

Every time she laughed, my spirit absolutely swelled with love and pride for her.

God then revealed that this vision of a charming innocent girl was Crystal herself, as he had delighted in her many years before! In real life, Crystal’s innocence had been brutally taken from her while she was still three years old, through sexual abuse, a situation that had reoccurred many times over the years and had driven her to despair – thinking herself totally unlovable and shameful even to God. But by showing Crystal how he saw her at that age as a beautiful child whom he loved despite the abuse, God released her from self-loathing.

Seeing the child was the most profound and powerful thing that ever happened to me, because it did something I didn’t think was possible.

It made me whole.

In that moment, chains that had bound me all my life fell away. Chains of shame and secrets and lies and pain. Chains too heavy for anyone or anything to free me from on Earth. Chains that simply dropped away in the presence of the truth.

That was the key sensation – that the truth of truths had been revealed to me. I was imbued with this penetrating understanding that God had always loved me, like he loves all his children. And so for the first time ever I was filled with love for myself.

At other times God may give the NDEr a vision of someone still alive that he knows will need to be interacted with when the NDEr returns to Earth. This vision can come with relevant deep knowledge imparted by God, and is sometimes a call to the NDEr to forgive and relate correctly with that person on return. In other visions, a relative or child may be seen who is still alive but the vision imparts some important information, guidance, or allaying of fear. RaNelle Wallace  4 experienced an unusual variation of this. To encourage her to return to Earth, she met her future son. ‘His name was Nathaniel, and he hadn’t been born on Earth yet. He said that if I didn’t go back, his own mission would be hindered.’ On returning to Earth, RaNelle went on to have a son named Nathaniel and at times when looking at her boy, she could see the adult she knew he would become.

Throughout my research on NDEs, I have been confronted by one great truth, that they have been planned in minute detail for the NDEr. Perhaps that is the take-home message of this book. Thousands more examples than I mention in these pages illustrate this foundational fact.