John Burke’s Conquest To Expose Life After Death

John Burke is a man who has been researching Near Death Experiences for 35 years.

A Pastor and author, among other books, he has written “Imagine Heaven” and his newest book “Imagine The God Of Heaven.”

He is the founding pastor of Gateway Church in Austin, Texas which he started 26 years ago.

He has analyzed over 1,000 near death experiences and counting.

President of Gateway Leadership Initiative, a non profit organization he started for skeptics to offer and provide evidence for people to build their faith on.

With a goal to start churches that would really truly help people in a culture, he went about accomplishing it by traveling around the world in over 30 countries speaking to over 100,000 leaders for 27 years.

Before his faith based mission in search of life after death he was an agnostic engineer.

Let’s dive into more of his incredible story.

Having started out in his journey as an agnostic and a skeptic, he was discouraged by the fact that no one seemed to care about his questions concerning God and no one had any answers and so John determined to give up on it all.

That is until one day John stumbled upon research material on near death experiences someone gave his dad who was reading it while he was dying of cancer.

This changed John’s mind on giving up being shocked that this research on near death experiences may have been the evidence he was searching for.

After this change of heart toward spiritual things He got involved with a group of people meeting in a home that was reading and talking about the Bible.

John says “There is a ton of evidence. Like right now it would take more faith for me not to believe, than to believe, because of the evidence.”

The people with these experiences come back claiming that while they were not inside their body that they were more alive, in a place more real, in a place more beautiful, experiencing things hard to describe.

He points out that there is an abundant amount of evidence to combat one’s doubts about living past dying and affirms it is very convincing.

Initially, John considered the general theories about hallucinations and such put forth to explain away these occurances of spiritual encounters with God and Jesus, but since then he has developed his observations into “The Ten Points of Evidence.”

One of these points is verifiable observations. These are events that occured around the experiencer’s lifeless body in the world while they were clinically dead that they should not have any knowledge of whatsoever.

During these near death experiences the people say they find themselves outside of their body, often above it, and they are watching what is happening in the room around their body.

One of the accounts he cites is Pam Reynolds who had to have brain surgery and they put her into an extremely cold state, drained all of her blood, validated the brain is showing no signs of activity and monitored everything very closely.

She accurately recounts details of the surgery inlcluding exactly what the brain saw looked like, describing it as an “electric toothbruch” with a box that looked like her “dad’s socket set” but with saw blades.

After seeing these initial events she was carried through a tunnel to a heavenly place where she felt her grandfather’s presence and a God of light and love told her she has to go back.

She gets back to her body and she hears the song Hotel California playing while they are sewing her up at the end of the surgery.

Pam also reported that she was shocked twice, not once, for them to revive her, and all of the doctors verify these observations as accurate.

Another well known incident he points to is the case of the missing dentures.

A man was found dead in the park and a nurse took his dentures out while they were attempting to revive him, and she puts them in a crash cart to the side.

The man was not revived during the attempt and they put him into another room.

After a week the man comes back to life and is complaining that they have lost his dentures, until he sees the nurse that took them out and exclaims that she knows where his dentures are.

John says that the man then proceeds to tell them that he was in the emergency room while they were working on him and describes all the people, what they were doing, and who took his dentures out and where she put them.

He then sees the nurse that removed his dentures and points her out telling them to ask her where she put the dentures.

The cardiologist involved later writes the story up in “The Lancet” one of Europe’s well known medical journals after all the facts checked out as valid.

John continues on, describing heavenly encounters where people meet God and family members they could not have otherwise known about on Earth.

At the young age of 4, Colton Burpo dies while being operated on in the hospital and is carried by angels to meet Jesus.

On the way to Heaven Colton sees his dad in a closet yelling at God and he says that Jesus tells him to pray for his dad who is mad at God for taking his son.

Colton also meets his sister who was miscarried by his mother before Colton was born while in Heaven and tells his parents about it after he is out of the hospital and back at home.

Both parents state that neither of them told little Colton about the miscarried child previous to this event.

He then tells the story of Karina Matinez, another near death experiencer, who has a pace maker that fails on her and she dies.

Finding herself floating above her body she suddenly realizes she is dead and has an awareness that God is real.

Just moments after this she feels herself headed into Hell and starts praying and asking for forgiveness.

Instantly an arm grabs her and pulls her out of the darkness and she is moving toward a bright light and sees people.

She is reluctant to enter in due to self judgment that she can’t let go of, but God tells her to look to her right and she sees two of her dogs that had died previously and gladly follows them in the place of beauty and love.

John says “When people blind from birth, have a near death experience, they can see, and they report the same things that near death experiencers that are sighted report seeing.”

Vicky, a woman blind from birth who dies in a car accident at age 22, is being operated on in the hospital and she dies suddenly and finds herself above her body and able to see her wedding ring and her long hair and determines from these two things that it is indeed her body she is seeing.

She feels great and is amazed at her new ability to see while also knowing who Jesus is and knowing where she was going and determines to move on without a delay.

She quickly moves into a tunnel that takes her to a heavenly garden where she is greeted by her family members who have died before her.

The near death experiencers claim, John says, that the life review is the most life altering event they have ever experienced.

They re-experience their entire lives from birth until death and in a very real way, and there seems to be unlimited time to go through this no matter how long they are dead on Earth.

John states, “They are watching their life replay as if almost like a hologram but, they’re there. They are re-experiencing it.”

He also says that thirty one percent of people who have near death experiences get a life review and that it cannot be “just a brain thing” because they are dead and memories cannot be stored while the mind’s computer is completely off with no activity.

During his research John has found that twenty three percent of people with near death experiences have some sort of encounter with attributes of Hell.

Paul, a cocaine addict and regular in cartels, has an overdose on cocaine and finds himself falling through deep blackness and comes to the realization he is going into Hell.

As he is falling he begins justifying himself saying that he can’t go to hell because he a good person, but the more he justifies his behavior the faster he seems to fall.

Finally, he comes to a point of desperation and calls out to God to save him and God asks him “Paul, what have you done with the life I’ve given you?”

Suddenly he gets a life review and he concludes that he deserves Hell and tells God that he wants people to know about this experience he has had, and instantly finds himself back alive in the hospital receiving a second chance to change his life.

Another hellish account John recalls is of an anesthesiologist who grew up in India who did not believe in life after death name Rajiv Parti.

Dr. Rajiv had brought many people back from operations who claimed to have near death experiences and encounters with God, but he would give them a shot of anti-psychotic drugs and go about his business assuming it to be hallucinations.

Then one day he has his very own experience when he dies in the hospital and finds himself in a place of “darkness and fire, and these evil creatures that are running around torturing him and others.”

John states that, common in many of these tormenting experiences, Dr. Rajiv then calls out to God and is repenting for the selfish way in which he had lived his life and two angels suddenly carry him through a tunnel to a beautiful place.

Dr. Rajiv then sees this God of light and asks Him, “Who are you Lord?”

Out of the light a man with a beard and gold sash steps forward and says to him, “I am Jesus, your Savior.”

God then gives him a second chance and sends him back to Earth and tells him that he has a purpose and He wants Rajiv to learn to be loving.

“Love is a tricky thing,” John says, “because think about it, you can’t buy love. You know, you fall in love with someone, you can buy them lots of gifts, but how do you know they are not sticking around for the gifts? How do you know they really love you?”

He continues on by pointing out that love cannot be forced either, or it obviously is not love, but a type of slavery.

But rather, love must be free, and this is the case with God also who created people and creatures who can choose who they love.

Pointing to God’s own proclaimed evidence for the Bible being true, knowing the end of things from the beginning, John says he started to give the Bible a chance after hearing so many near death experiences. (Isaiah 46:10)

God predicting the Messiah’s entry into the world who would be the Son of God, and called “Mighty God,” in Isaiah chapter 9, and the account of the crucifixion in Isaiah 53, made John rethink his belief in the Lord Jesus Christ.

So why is there so much evil in the world?

John believes from this research and these witness accounts that we experience good things and a small amount of evil in this life to give us every chance to escape a greater evil and suffering in the realm of eternity.

He elaborates, “So this life is a taste of Heaven, and a taste of Hell, very reduced, so that we choose, so that we see that God’s will is good and He did what He did through Jesus to forgive us all.”

Finally he points out that God cares about faith because faith is trust, and you cannot have a relationship without trust, and a relationship is what God wants.