Ankerberg Show

Dr. John Ankerberg: Today on the Johnny Berg Show, is there scientific evidence for life after death? Numerous studies have been performed to evaluate the accounts of people who have been pronounced clinically dead when their doctor saw no heartbeat, that is no EKG, or no brain activity, that is no EEG, or both. Yet after a while, the patient amazingly returned to life with some fantastic accounts of where they had been and what they had seen and heard. Some saw in her people say and do things five states away, but their material physical bodies never left the room where the doctors pronounced them dead.

Many do not realize that between nine and 20 million Americans have reported near death experiences according to the 2017 book The Science of Near Death Experiences by the prestigious University of Missouri Press. A highly acclaimed book that is the world's first peer reviewed series on the science and medical aspects of NDEs by medical professionals. Such experiences compel scientists to ask, is there more to our lives than just our material bodies? If so, what is it? What happens when a person has a sense that their mind or consciousness is functioning apart from their physical body? Or when their consciousness is in the vicinity of their physical body and then goes and sees and hear things 1,250 miles away.

Is it proof that after our material bodies die, we still continue to exist somewhere? If so, where do we go? In our three program series with Dr. Gary Habermas, he reveals stories and statistics that point to a spiritual realm. And since Jesus died and physically rose again, where does he say we will go when we die? Dr. Habermas takes us through six levels of near death experiences from near death experiences in the ambulance to near death experiences from the congenitally blind people who see something real, like colors people are wearing, to heart death, to brain death, and eventually to irreversible biological death experiences.

So join us for this special edition of the Johnny Berg Show. Welcome to our program. I'm Johnny Berg. Thanks for joining me. As you just heard, my guest is Dr. Gary Habermas. He's an expert on the resurrection of Jesus from the dead. And the fact is he is tracking the top scholars in the world. 4,000 of them and of the 4,000 top scholars, he says the most influential 2,000 of those, those are the ones he's quoting for information. What are the facts about Jesus' life, death and resurrection that they all agree to? 95% of them, whether they're skeptics, atheists, Buddhists, Jewish, whatever, the fact is these are people that say these are true facts, historical facts.

All right? But I'm not going to believe it. Okay? What else should you consider? All right? And we're going to talk about what about near death experience, NDEs. Okay? Because this has gone from just silly talk to people, medical doctors, professionals actually tracking the evidence with their machines. And Dr. Habermas is going to talk about some of the data that has been collected. So scholars looking at what we're going to tell you today, here's what some of the skeptics say about the evidence we're going to present to you about near death experiences, what happened to these people.

Okay? Here is John Beloff. He is writing in the Humanist magazine. All right? He's a skeptic and he says this, that evidence for an afterlife was so strong that Humanist should just admit it and attempt to interpret it in naturalistic terms. Anthony Flew, who for 40 years was the world's foremost atheist. Okay? And Gary and I, we both knew him. We actually I did a program with Gary where we did eight debate programs with Anthony Flew. Okay? When he was a solid atheist. All right? He looked at near death experiences and said this, the evidence equally certainly weakens if it does not completely refute my arguments against doctrines of a future life.

Now, what is that evidence? That's what we want you to hear today and most of you have not heard the kind of evidence that Dr. Habermas is going to present. He did his PhD at Michigan State on the resurrection in 1976. Almost all about that time or just a little bit after, he also started thinking about near death experiences. How does this relate to what is being said about the resurrection? Does it add something to the credibility of an afterlife? And you tell me how you got into this.

Dr. Gary Habermas: Well, that that's exactly how I got into it. That if I'm going to study resurrection and if that makes us talk about another realm, so that probably the most frequent critique today from skeptics is not oh, I think such and such a naturalistic theory explains the resurrection. It's Well, yeah, you've piled up some like John Beloff, you've you've piled up some pretty good evidence here, but you're asking me to believe in Narnia. You're asking me to believe in in Oz. I don't know a world like that. I've never been there. So I think that something else besides resurrection must have happened.

So what what NDEs did for me was In fact, I I often start lectures on NDEs like this. I'll say what if I told you, folks, that there is a Narnia?

Dr. John Ankerberg: Yeah, that's CS Lewis's term for heaven. Okay?

Dr. Gary Habermas: Sure. You know, you're right. How'd you like to meet Aslan someday? We go, that's cool. Haha. Nice story. We call that fiction. Well, how do we know if there's a realm like that? I think to open up that realm and if you say wow, there really is something, I think it should make us more open to resurrection. So that's how I got into it. And one way just recently the the latest book on near death experiences was published by the University of Missouri Press. So we're not talking some fictional dime store book. Um a serious book edited by a medical doctor.

Many authors in there are medical doctors and they decide, you can get this right on the beginning of the book, that nine to 20 million Americans have had near death experiences or have heard

Dr. John Ankerberg: Let me say that again. I mean, this is a I've got the statement right here. Between nine and 20 million Americans have had near death experiences.

Dr. Gary Habermas: Now now some it might just be right there in the room and you're looking at your own bed or the bed in the hospital, but a number of them, people believe they are elsewhere. So I 'm thinking to myself, if there's nine to 20, let's say an average 13 14 million, how many of them think they were in another realm? Well, millions. So you may not have seen Narnia. I may not have been to Oz, but we have millions of Americans who say uh do you want to talk to me? I've been there. So that's what's on the line is data here for another realm which could last forever.

Dr. John Ankerberg: Okay. Tell me some of the personal stories that you've been involved in uh just to get our attention on this. And then I want to get down to some of the ones that uh have actually been tracked and the data is absolutely solid in some of the most professional books we've got.

Dr. Gary Habermas: Yeah, I think that's a good insight, what you just said. People are are impressed with evidence, but what I've I've been doing this for a long time with the NDEs and sometimes people are more than the evidence. They're impressed with the heartwarming or the tearjerking type NDE stories. Now here's one of them. I met a lady who had just given birth to her third child and she has not seen this child yet because they're still in surgery and they're taking the child and she said all of a sudden boom, I'm up above my body. And it wasn't a detailed NDE.

She looked down. She said that looks like it might be me, but then again I'm where my consciousness is. So I think I 'm up here in the lights. I 'm up here by the ceiling. And she started to say well, I went out a little bit further from there and I I stopped her and I said let me ask you a question. I said I've I've been led to believe that the strongest biological tie in the universe is between a mother and her child. And she said I'll buy that. And I said okay, you've got some other children.

Yes. You haven't seen this baby yet. Nobody's come up and laid the baby in your arms. No. You'd like to see your baby, wouldn't you? Absolutely. So you're in another realm and you are caught up with the colors and the music and the sound and it just captivated you. Did you want to come back to meet your new child? And and you would think I had said something to her that kind of embarrassed her because when I said that, she looked down and she said no, I did not want to come back. And I said look, I 'm not trying to embarrass you, but let me just drive this point home.

You would rather have stayed where you were than come back to see your baby for the first time. And she said I did. I want people to leave me alone and let me go. That was an amazing insight. Couple of other times Well, I I know another case where a woman was delivered a baby and she was up above her body and she said and it was only seconds. And I said well, okay, so it was only seconds. What kind of an effect did it have on you? And that one said she said well, I know I was going somewhere else.

I know if time had moved on, I'd have been heading up because that was my move from my delivery up to the ceiling. She said ever since then, she said I've not had the slightest fear of death because I know I'm going to another place than two guys, one who drowned in a pool and one who was in a really bad car accident. In both cases, they had near death experiences. And the the first one, he lived out west in a real icy part of the country. Actually it was in Idaho. And he said I was walking on the street recently and I my feet started to go out from under me in the winter time and I had this sick feeling we sometimes have that my back of my head is going to end up on the cement behind me.

And he before he could even he'd already slipped and be the first thought was oh no. The second thought was don't worry. You're going right back to the place you were at before. Now how conscious do you have to be that your first thought is uh oh, second thought. Hey, that's cool. And the other one was in the car accident. I said to the fellow later gotten to know that guy really really well. And I was saying to him hey, what about this and that and this and that about life and he's getting older and he said to me not a problem.

All I will do is go back to the light again. He's committed Christian. He said all I would do is go back to the light. And I thought is it that prominent when people have had these that their very first thought is here it comes and I am ready. So that other worldliness is pervasive. Is it always a good one? No. No. Now there's issues with that because now my next question, you know, would be how much do we have evidence for? But uh I heard one medical doctor who studied NDEs tell me that half of his cases were hellish cases.

On the on the average of the more technical essays, the number of hellish cases is down around 19 to 21%. Now of course, one comeback to that is if you thought you went to hell, would you talk about it? You know, it's like

Dr. John Ankerberg: Yeah.

Dr. Gary Habermas: I had a skeptical doctor. In other words, a doctor that didn't believe in Jesus, didn't believe anything. Okay? And he was cardiologist. Okay? And a guy's on the treadmill doing his stress test in the office and he dropped over. Okay? So he started doing resuscitation. And the guy would come back every once in a while as he was resuscitating him, you'd come out of it and and he was absolutely paralyzed with fear. Okay? And he says doctor doctor, I'm in hell. You got to save me. And then all of a sudden he'd slip back. So he's pounding on his heart again.

Okay? And the guy would come back and he said pray for me. Now this guy's an atheist. Okay? Doesn't believe in God. And he sees this guy keeps coming back and it's bugging him. Okay? That's what he said. It it's bothered him. He's the guy says you got to say a prayer for me or something. So he finally says like on the fourth or fifth time where he's resuscitating this guy, he says okay, say this prayer. And he says Jesus Christ, I believe you died for my sins and I put my trust in you and take away my sins and if I do die, I'm going to trust you to take me to heaven.

The guy said those words and it would slip back. And so he was pounding on his heart. And when he came back the next time, the fact is had absolute peace. Okay? He wasn't scared anymore. Okay? Took him a while to get him. The guy finally lived. But this atheist doctor looked at that and he had other cardiology patients that he had the same kinds of experiences with. All I'm saying is that's what he told me. And we did a whole show with him on this topic. But I'm also I heard your story about you were at a convention or you were speaking at a conference where you had basically all medical doctors in your audience and you had one lady who just was telling you she didn't like what you were talking about or we're going to talk about.

You she hadn't even heard your lecture yet. She just heard the topic you're going to talk about near death experiences. She said it's a waste of time and I mean she bugged you all day long. Okay? And you hadn't even given her the deal. When you finally gave the lecture, here's all medical doctors sitting in the audience. What what happened? Well, a a person who I did not know about, so I did not not ask this person to give a testimony, but this person across the room got everybody's attention after my lecture was over. This other lady said I've been to heaven and I'm up in front.

So I see all these heads going. And the one who was so skeptical shouts across the room well, just don't sit there. Tell us about it like that. That's our manner. And so she started doing it. Well, I walked up to the skeptical one afterwards and I said now what do you think? And she was kind of staring ahead and she kept going pretty intriguing. And that's like all she said. Pretty intriguing. And the and the woman who gave the testimony, there's no evidence. It was just a personal tale of having been like well, you know, I'm from Virginia, but I went to New York this summer.

You know, it's a tale about another place. And she was all ears.

Dr. John Ankerberg: Yeah. All right. We're going to do some more programs on this, but let's let's start giving me one where you start going into the evidence because stories are one thing. Okay? And with no way to check them, you don't know what to say. But in the last how many years medical doctors and a whole group of scientists have started actually defining what is death? Okay? When can we say technically this person is dead? Okay? What has to take place?

Dr. Gary Habermas: Death goes by different definitions depending on who you're talking about and what definition they're going to live by. Here's a beginning definition all the way up to the worst it can be. The beginning one is a state called near death. Hence we get near death experiences. Near death is when you dial 911, call the paramedics. They come to your house and as far as they can tell in a non hospital, non machine atmosphere, you have no pulse. As far as they can tell no measurable or very very low blood pressure. If something's not done quickly, near death is defined as a state from which you will almost assuredly die if something doesn't happen quickly.

All right, that's the first floor. You're close. Next step, usually people talk about as cessation of heartbeat. And that would be a cardiac arrest. Now in there's different kinds of cardiac arrest, but in with cardiac arrest with ventricular fibrillation, that frankly means your heart's not working. So if your heart's not working, you cannot function very long. Sometimes the estimate is less than five minutes before you start losing vital brain information. A flat heart with an EKG would be a good indication that you're getting very close. Next stage up, flat EEG, no measurable brain activity. Now again, this is measurable machine and somebody might say well, there might be something else there, but we're not getting a reading.

So no brain activity is probably the most evidential NDE sort. By the way, and latest this is just a few decades old information. If you have a cardiac arrest with ventricular fibrillation, in studies, the brain, according to the machines, upper brain activity seizes in about 15 to 20 seconds. So if you have the real serious kind of cardiac arrest, 15 20 seconds and neither is working. Now if you have an NDE that lasts because of what you described people around you, you know, someone says well, I looked at my watch and you were gone at 10 02, but you you described something from 10 minutes later.

You know, if you had a ventricular fibrillation uh heart arrest, you know that you have no measurable heart or upper brain activity. The last one is the skeptic's favorite and it's called biological death. And I I kind of like the way they define it. It's kind of like it begs the question. But biological death is if you had it, you wouldn't be talking about it. There's no return from it. So biological death means ain't no coming back on their definition. So near death, heart, brain, we put you in the ground last week. So that's that's the the line.

And I've argued before in print that you can find near death data at each of these four. And you go what about the one you can't come back from? Say stay tuned because we have data beyond that level too.

Dr. John Ankerberg: Yeah. Let's We only got about three and a half minutes left. So again, why are we even approaching this topic and we are still haven't given them the good ones, the technical ones yet. Okay? What we call the evidential ones that are are persuading people that are skeptics. There's got to be some life after what we were we were experiencing here. Okay? What do you want people to learn from what we're telling them?

Dr. Gary Habermas: I think besides just telling a good story because everybody will listen, that's why these things are on the television stations and interviews. Besides just telling a good story, I I think it's very important that we think about our mortality. And I think it's very important that we think about something afterwards. Just like when someone says to you, you may be working 40 years for the right to retire nicely for the last 15 years of your life. Wouldn't you like to make the right choices for 40 that make you be be relaxed for the last 15?

All right, I turn it around this way. If there's a chance of eternity, how much do you want to prepare here and how much should you be interested for all of eternity if decisions on this side make a difference?

Dr. John Ankerberg: Yeah. And we're talking about Jesus and his resurrection because he says if you believe in me, you'll have eternal life.

Dr. Gary Habermas: If 15 years of of retirement are good, how good's eternity? Not only that, but then Jesus provided the proof by coming back from being dead for three days. Okay? He showed us that it's possible. He did it and he's the one saying if you believe in me, I'm going to do that for you too.

Dr. John Ankerberg: Right. Right. Right.

Dr. Gary Habermas: Okay? Now in about 1 and 1/2 minute, give me just a little taste of a near death experience with a little evidence.

Dr. John Ankerberg: With a little evidence. I'll tell you what to to to kind of whet people's appetite. What if I did it this way? What if I give five categories of evidence?

Dr. Gary Habermas: Okay. Some skeptics want citation in the room. And I don't think that's as good, but some of them want things in the operating room. Uh I saw this. I saw that. I went back and verified it later, but you couldn't have known that because that happened after you were out. So verification inside the room. One of the two that I think are the most evidential is verification outside the room while you have a cardiac arrest with ventricular fibrillation. We know that probably you're not going to be having heart or brain activity within two minutes. You tell me something that happens in the waiting room three floors before below where your family's uh waiting or something that happens with the babysitter back in your house four miles from here.

So that that's away. And some of these are way away as in miles to report. Thirdly, NDEs in the blind, especially NDEs in those who have been blind since birth. And the only time they've ever reported sight is during their NDE. And now they've gone back to being blind again because they're alive. So there's the third one. Fourth one, how about these are rare? But how about near death experiences where living healthy people witness a portion of the NDEers NDE. That's one. And then the last one that's beyond that you won't come back stage, what I call twilight zone cases.

What if during your NDE, let's say it lasted two minutes. Let's just to make something up. Let's just say you were with your dad and your dad died 10 years ago and your dad says something very very provocative. Hate to tell you this, son, but tomorrow you're going to get a telegram from your cousin who's been fighting over in Afghanistan for the last year and you're going to get the word that he died cuz he's already dead. Nobody knows it. You're going to hear it tomorrow and it happens, but you learned it today. You weren't irreversibly dead, but your father was.

And that's your information. You put all these five together and depends on different strokes, different folks. What kind of evidence do you like? These are very very intriguing.

Dr. John Ankerberg: All right. Folks, next week we're going to start going into those five categories. Okay? I would just leave you with these words. Jesus said I am the resurrection and the life. He that believes in me, though he dies, yet shall he live. You need to think about those words in relationship to what we're talking about here. Okay? And I hope that you will join us next week when Gary's going to tell us some more of these experiences, near death experiences that are actually tracked by scientists and medical doctors. I hope you'll join us next week.

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