Yahoo! UK News Message Boards – Religion – Fear provides converts.
PK, For those who’ve had those NDE’s they cannot ‘unlearn’ what they’ve learned through those experiences – such things remain on their conscience and they do well to live accordingly – hence their apparently ‘religious’ behaviour as the world sees it. God has given them the best teacher apart from Himself – their experience of Himself.
It is the depth of their experience which dictates to them the extent to which they consequently seek after God, not necessarily because of any need to ‘cling to any hope’ but more because if they don’t stay in fellowship with God but fall away, they are likely to lose what they’d just been given – for eternity.
Being ‘good’ is a relative term though, isn’t it? What is ‘good’ to one person, isn’t always as ‘good’ to another – How long is the 'silver cord' You've been given…?
The only accurate way to decide one’s genuine ‘goodness’ as God requires of then, is to follow the means which He has set in place, since He also created us all as equal (however we look upon ourselves or each other).
Since God knows all things, including the deepest thoughts & motives of our hearts, should we not truthfully acknowledge that deep down we know only too well we are not as truly ‘good’ as we’d like to be or indeed as He’d like us to be?
We therefore need to do things God’s way -not ours- if we are to ever be justified by Him. What pleases Him and justifies us then? Faith! The “faith which comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of God”.
While there may be some who’ve had a Biblical/ church-based upbringing, what of those such as Howard Storm who was an avowed atheist like yourself?
Do atheists also ‘inevitably see what has been planted there’ – even though they are avowed atheists or those who’ve otherwise Never had any kind of exposure to such ‘religious’ ideas?? I doubt it!
They are however, unable to unlearn what their experiences have taught them. Deny it they might though – but knowingly to their eternal expense…
The reason why the similarities are so abundant, is because as so many are unrelated and totally unconnected to one another, it means they corroborate each other – and God's Word.
For so many of the Biblically unschooled who have had these experiences, they are confirming what the rest of us know from the Word. They are indeed privileged however, because they get to teach us what the Scriptures are saying when they read them, sometimes even for the first time!
There are indeed measures of distance in the spiritual realm – why should the physical realm be the only measurable one??
It’s interesting to note too, that those believers who’ve known spiritual communion with the Father have –knowingly or unknowingly– also been ‘seated with Him in heavenly places’, meaning their spirits have spent time in God’s Holy Presence, wherever their bodies may have been perceived to be physically.
It’s also interesting to note that these NDE’s line up with Biblical teachings as opposed to other non-Biblical writings …
What do you think that means then? None met Buddha, Krishna, Mohammed, the pagan goddess Diana or anyone else for that matter. Kinda tells you who’s who, eh?
So for those who return from NDE’s, it isn’t their ‘mind’ which is responsible for healing them and raising them from the dead – it is only the One who has the Spirit, Power and Grace to do this for them – their Creator, Whom they subsequently acknowledge to have been God all along.
“As an atheist myself, I am fully aware of these notions of the hereafter, so it doesn't mean that I would be any different from a believer in the same cir$%^&stances. Even someone who does not have a biblical knowledge will have the basic human instinct of good versus evil, light versus darkness, a happy place or a sad place.” – The difference depends on what you choose to do with Jesus Christ.
So you see, even the atheist has no excuse not to seek God while he can…
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