NDEs and God

This next NDE account was given to my wife Brenda and me by John, a Christian who was our Malawian African gardener at St Andrews Secondary School in Blantyre.

John watched a video I had prepared of NDE interviews in Malawi that was shown in a shop window in Blantyre as part of a Christian outreach. He told us in great and unusual excitement about his own NDE some years previously, when he had died of a heart attack before being revived. His use of the English language was limited and he used his hands a lot to illustrate what he related to us, which went something like this:

“I die and go to the garden of God. Very beautiful, not like this one, this one rubbish,” and he waved his right arm in a sweep over our garden.

I found this comment amusing. After all, the upkeep and attractiveness of our garden was his responsibility. But I hid my mirth.

“The garden when I died, very good. Green …and flowers… Water in God’s garden come up …like this one; falling down ...like this one.” He raised his hands with his fingers splayed out to show water shooting upwards, and then his fingers wriggled vigorously downwards to show it showering down. I supposed he could be describing large fountains such as he was unlikely to have seen where he lived in Malawi at that time. I questioned him; he had never seen a decorative water fountain. He repeated:

“Grass green, very green. Much flowers. Very beautiful.”

I added his NDE account to the video I was making. His descriptions of Paradise dovetailed with those I had heard from Westerners, despite the disparity between our cultures.

John never did render our garden as beautiful as he had seen in Paradise, but did take good care of it nonetheless. He remained our happy gardener for the time we were in Malawi, and when we left, we arranged his next position as gardener with good friends.

For those who saw John’s testimony on video, it illustrated that God’s design is for the human spirit to separate from the body at death. That spirit then moves into the afterlife, leaving the physical corpse behind.

God has created a number of destinations for spirits entering the afterlife. The most common venue is Paradise, a section in Hades – basically, a stunning rural idyll with beautiful gardens and some interesting buildings. It was where Jesus went straight after His crucifixion and took with Him one of the thieves who had also been crucified near Him, assuring that dying thief that “Today you will be with me in Paradise”. Not in Heaven - but Paradise – a different venue.

God’s provision of afterlife experiences is neither culturally nor religiously determined. There are NDE descriptions from all corners of the world, even in a small African nation such as Malawi.

It is strange how the indigenous Africans I have spoken to from different places on that continent know that at death your spirit leaves your body, as do the Australian Aborigines. My readings about other places suggests that tribal people across the globe appear to comprehend this. How ignorant they must consider people in the developed world to be, many of whom seem to doubt this fundamental fact about human existence and death!

What will the afterlife be like for you and for me? And what about our exciting transition into it?