I’ve always been skeptical about near death experiences. I’ve never given any of those movies the time of day that tell the story of someone who has gone to heaven and come back. I roll my eyes at those things and think, “Seriously, you expect me to believe that?”

Enter John Burke. A guy I respect. Pastor of Gateway Church in Austin, Texas. Someone I’ve interviewed many times on a variety of books he’s written talking about sensical things. When his book, Imagine Heaven: Near-Death Experiences, God’s Promises, and the Exhilarating Future That Awaits You, crossed my desk, I did a double-take. Spotting John as the author was a shocker! My immediate thought was, “John doesn’t write books like this.” It’s not his style. That’s what I thought. But in the words of Gomer Pyle, “Surprise, surprise!”

I agree with John that most of us long to know what life after death will be like. What I learned in this week’s podcast is that over the years John interviewed approximately 1,000 people who claimed to have near death experiences (NDEs) and that their recounting of what happened to them surprisingly lines up with the scriptural view of heaven. In his book he compares more than 100 stores of NDEs to what Scripture says about our biggest questions of heaven. I think you’ll be encouraged and challenged as you listen to John tell some of these stories, as well as his own story of reading his book manuscript to his dying mother before she passed from this life to the next.

John thinks that the more we hear about NDEs it will change the way we view heaven and change the way we live. Take a listen to his enthusiasm as he works to convince me of the veracity of the claims in his book.