On the radio this Sunday, a couple of presenters were discussing a woman’s Near Death Experience. Lynda Cramer claimed that in 2021 she had been clinically dead for 14 minutes when she visited Heaven for five years. You can see her raving about it on YouTube, while the Amazon synopsis of her book, Five Years In Heaven (of course there’s a book; four in fact) reads:
In May 2001, Dr Lynda Cramer died. This is the story of her Near Death Experience, outlining the five years that she spent in Heaven. Starting when she found herself “floating” in the living room for over 45 minutes, she then went on a journey where she entered Heaven, she then processed her Life Review prior to meeting her great-great-great-great grandmother who explained what Life Lessons, Life Contracts and Reincarnation are all about. Backed up by Medical Records as well as diagrams she drew, this is her personal account for anyone intrigued by what happens in the afterlife…
So, is this real? Did Lynda Cramer visit Heaven while she was dead for 14 minutes? She’s a doctor, after all, so superficially at least, she has credible credentials. Until you see that her PhD was obtained researching Near Death Experiences themselves. Vested interest or what?.
But, let’s not be cynical; she has diagrams too, for God’s sake. What more proof could we ask for? We know too, because our resident Christian tells us, that dreams and visions like this are most definitely from God. Lynda’s experience ticks all the boxes, no matter what we sceptics might think.
Except, no. Lynda was not dead for 14 minutes. We have only her word for it that she was declared clinically dead, while she describes her experience as a Near Death Experience. The clue is in the name. If she was near death, she was not dead; her brain was still alive, if only just. Her mind was still active, creating, if this happened at all, a reassuring experience for itself as it came close to shutting down. There is well documented evidence that this is what the brain is capable of doing when it is close to death (but not actually dead).
Significantly, the scenario her mind created was informed by cultural, quasi-Christian images of Heaven, just as believers’ dreams of God are informed by the same images and characters that occupy their waking minds. My own dreams, for example, are populated by people I know and places I’m familiar with (though sometimes only vaguely; my subconscious fills in the details often in bizarrely imaginative ways.)
Nonetheless, Lynda’s life-changing 5 years visit to Heaven (during which she seems to have done nothing except admire mountains and buildings while blue balls, hijacked from science-fiction, danced around her) is just as real, just as divine, just as valid as the God-given dreams and visions Christians claim they sometimes have. Naturally, we sceptics can’t possibly appreciate these until we’ve experienced them for ourselves.
Lynda’s experience was a subjective, emotional experience while she was unconscious. But such ‘spiritual’ inner experiences are ‘real’ according to at least some Christians, and we can’t argue with that which we have not experienced for ourselves.
Right, Don?
rejectingjesus, 
Neil: The clue is in the name. If she was near death, she was not dead
This reminds me of the recent release of UFO videos and images from the government. Popular media has conditioned us to interpret “UFO” as “Space Aliens.” Even when Unidentified is right there in the name. (The Air Force has changed the name to UAP – Unidentified Aerial Phenomena – but Unidentified remains front and center.)
As a kid I was sucked into the whole space alien thing. It started with TV “documentaries” like In Search of Ancient Astronauts, In Search of Ancient Mysteries and The Outer Space Connection. I soon had many of Erich von Däniken books from the 1960s and 70s which I devoured over and over again.
I soon found out that some family friends had the same interest and they loaned me book after book of first hand accounts by people who had been abducted and the different alien races they’d encountered.
I was a preteen and didn’t know what pseudohistory, pseudoarchaeology, and pseudoscience were. I didn’t know that some people were delusional, some were liars trying to make a quick buck, and many simply weren’t equipped to correctly interpret what they saw or were presented with.
Luckily I grew out of it in my teens.
I believed in space aliens visiting Earth because I wanted to believe. I lost that belief as I learned more about real history and real science and my desire to understand reality overcame my desire believe something “cool.”
Although it took much, much longer, losing my faith was much the same and for the same reason – my desire to understand reality overcame my desire to believe for no reason.
While I had pseudohistorian Erich von Däniken, today kids have faux journalist Graham Hancock presenting his “documentary” Ancient Apocalypse on Netflix. There will always be people ready to make a few bucks selling something people want to believe.
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IMO … sums up Christianity to a “T”: I believed in space aliens visiting Earth because I wanted to believe.
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These experiences seem to have one thing in common…everyone seems to be able to bring back statistics:
“After being resuscitated, she was able to recall “being in heaven” – for what felt like five years – where she said she saw a mountain range that was 30,000 times higher than Mount Everest.”
She even repeats it:
I was observing the mountain range 30,000 times huger than Mount Everest,” she said.
How did she calculate 30,000 times something?
Not 10 times, not 50 times, but 30,000?
“I could see buildings with skyscrapers. Dubai are like little miniature huts in comparison.”
I think I remember jesus talking about skyscrapers in Matthew, I just forget the verse.
Here’s another one:
“Now the author, who has a PhD in metaphysics, has discussed the ordeal in depth more than 20 years later, saying it felt like she spent “five years in heaven”.”
5 years…not one, or a couple, but a very specific 5 years. How would you estimate time, if you’re in a spiritual body in a spiritual place?
So many questions…
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Like you said, Neil…we have to take these experiences as true!
Don, from the other thread:
“Nan, you are thinking as a fundie. That must have been your background. If so, it hasn’t served you well., God is not a respecter of persons. (Doesn’t the Bible say that?) Muslims often have visions of Jesus. Mormons believe in Jesus. They are different, but I’ll let God sort that out.”
Wow, so that means since these people have a truly “personal “ relationship with their version of god, it must be true!
Like I asked Don…what is the MECHANISM that we can use to validate these experiences as true?
If there isn’t one, then you have to believe EVERY claim that is made about the spirit world.
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Yes. Without some sort of mechanism, all spiritual encounters – dreams, NDEs, visions – have to be regarded either as real or entirely within the experiencers’ heads. There’s no middle ground.
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Right. It was her experience. If she is honest about it. And yes, we cannot appreciate such an experience until we have one ourselves. But like dreams, every NDE is not ipso facto a spiritual experience or an experience from God.
The condition is how it agrees with the other information we have about God. In other words, does it agree with what others who know God have experienced.
It is the same for dreams. The assumption is that God speaks with one voice. I cannot tell from the little you relate whether Cramer’s experience was an experience of God or of heaven or not.
The other test is how it changed her life. The common report from others who have experienced a NDE is that their lives are changed in some way. If that change is what we see in other encounters with God, that is, toward a life in line with God’s directions for life and a life lived in closer relationship with God, then I consider the NDE more likely from God.
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Don sez: The condition is how it agrees with the other information we have about God. In other words, does it agree with what others who know God have experienced.
I know you think this is informative perhaps even profound. But it’s not. It says nothing.
Who is the “God” here? It’s Don Camp’s version of God, of course. What is this other information we have about Don’s God? It’s Don Camp’s collected thoughts about his God. Who are the others who “know God”? They are those who believe the same as Don Camp and have passed whatever litmus test Don images makes a True Christian.™
We can replace you statements with The condition [for testing the validity of a near death experience] is how it agrees with me, Don Camp.
Which, of course, we knew before you opened your gob.
You are giving us a subjective way to test someone‘s subjective experience. Which is worth less than nothing.
Without objective evidence for this god thingy anything you say on the subject is just your opinion. Just another god delusion among billions.
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So, your “mechanism “ is:
“The condition is how it agrees with the other information we have about God. In other words, does it agree with what others who know God have experienced.”
Ditto Koseighty and Nan…
Your mechanism fails because of
SPAG: self-projection as god.
It’s what YOU think about god.
This is subjective as hell, and is NOT a valid mechanism for finding the truth!
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Don:
(From the other thread)
“God is not a respecter of persons. (Doesn’t the Bible say that?) Muslims often have visions of Jesus. Mormons believe in Jesus. They are different, but I’ll let God sort that out.”
This thread:
“The condition is how it agrees with the other information we have about God. In other words, does it agree with what others who know God have experienced.”
Mormons and Muslims both believe in god…they have experiences with god also.
According to you, they are legitimate.
You have to accept their visions of god and heaven equally as valid, correct?
Would you read from the Koran or the Book of Mormon in your church?
Do you tell your brethren that you’re all the same?
Does your church teach that Mormons and Muslims are your brethren in jesus?
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Would I read from the Quran in church? No. Though Muslims may have legitimate visions of Jesus there is too much that is not consistent in their religion. The same with the book of Mormon. I would, however, have a Muslim share what he or she experienced in their visions of Jesus.
Do I tell my brethren that we are all the same? No, because in many ways we are not, but I would and do tell them we have one God, and God loves us all.
Does your church teach that Mormons and Muslims are your brethren in jesus? No. We do not even teach that everyone who claims to be a Christian is truly our brethren in Jesus.
Your God is too small, goyo. If God is not God for all people he is not the God described in the Bible. If he does not speak to all people, he is not the God of the Bible.
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Don:
“Your God is too small, goyo. If God is not God for all people he is not the God described in the Bible. If he does not speak to all people, he is not the God of the Bible.”
My god is not too small, because I don’t believe a god exists.
Here’s a great message from your god about people:
Deut: 22:5: a woman shall not wear man’s clothing, nor shall a man wear women’s clothing, because whoever does these things is an abomination to god.
Do the women in your church wear pants, Don?
Uh oh…
You’re right, you have more in common with the taliban than you thought!
Why does god always speak like the people and times that wrote about him?
Why did he not foresee the 21st century a little better?
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You are trying too hard, goyo.
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Actually, the ONLY person that might have been upset about people’s clothing would have been the writer of Deuteronomy because in truth, we have no idea what type of “clothing” God used for A & E. except that is was made of skins. Moreover, early humans are often depicted with men wearing “skirts” of animal skins. Does that mean they were an “abomination” against “God”?
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You are splitting hairs. I think that it means appropriate for women or for men. Cross dressing is a problem.
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Nan is splitting hairs? My god, Don, have you no self-awareness?
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Correction: The God you don’t believe in is too small.
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Don, from the other thread:
“Dr. Mary Neal had a near death experience during which she was told her son would die.”
Remember, you said a mechanism is:
“The condition is how it agrees with the other information we have about God”
From the link you provided:
“I was in a hurry to get to this big, domed structure of sorts,” she says.
In Revelation, heaven is described as a cube:
Rev: 21:16: the city was shaped like a cube, because it was just as high as it was wide.
To use your mechanism…her description of heaven is DIFFERENT than the Bible’s description, therefore her testimony is WRONG!
According to your criteria, her testimony is invalid!
Got another?
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Rev. 21 is a picture of the new earth. And it is a symbolic picture. The structure represents the redeemed of all the ages.
Heaven is not a physical place. It is a spiritual place. And the symbolic place in Rev. 21 is the new heaven and earth of the future not the present.
The building in verse 16 represents symbolically the redeemed of all the ages who have comes down from heaven to the new earth at the beginning of the new eternal age. And recall, this is also a vision, not a description of an actual physical place and not a description of an actual building.
But all this is beside the point. The visions of heaven people have during an NDE vary in their descriptions and they would because they are not visions of a physical place. But it is not the physical descriptions I am interested it. It is the experience they have. If they encounter God or Jesus, what is God or Jesus like? Not what they look like but what they ARE like. What are the beings they encounter in their vision like? And are these consistent with what we know of God and Jesus in then scriptures?
Cramer’s vision does not “tick all the boxes” as Neil says. Except for Cramer’s reference to her ancestors Neil has given us little to go on except his take from the video. It is too little for me to get any idea of what she experiences. But In that little bit, I do not see any consistency with anything biblical.
Not every NDE is legitimately a visit to heaven even in a spiritual sense nor is it God given. As John says in 1st John “don’t believe every spirit, but test the spirits, whether they are of God,” I am not sure Neil has the ability to do that or whether you do. I have no idea whether Ms Cramer has that ability.
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After reading your post I thought I should view the YouTube video. I did, and my opinion is that Ms. Cramer is a nut case. I have known women like that. They are carried away with all kinds of arcane and spiritually divergent ideas and lose connection with reality.
Did she have a NDE? Who know? What she describes is unlike anything I have heard before. It has no connection with anything biblical. In other words, it is invalid as a vision of heaven. If it was her experience, the vision comes from another place. “Test the spirits” is what John says.
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You’ve twice implied I didn’t provide enough detail about Cramer’s NDE experience, yet you hadn’t even bothered looking at it? You’re impossible, Don.
Now you’ve decided she’s a nutcase who’s lost connection with reality. Aren’t others allowed to have these ‘spiritual experiences’ and aren’t they as valid (or invalid) as any that Christians have? Why are Christian ones special and everyone else’s delusional? Can’t you see that the criteria you use to dismiss others’ experiences apply equally to those of Christians? Let me help you out with this: if Cramer’s a nutcase who’s lost connection with reality, so are they. So are you.
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“Aren’t others allowed to have these ‘spiritual experiences’”
Yes. U would rather4 expect they would.
Are they valid? That depends on what you mean by valid. They are valid experiences, yes, but are they valid visions of heaven? Not if they are inconsistent with biblical information.
“Why are Christian ones special?” They are not. Many others have had visions of Jesus and heaven. Muslims come to mind. Beyond that many people groups have had visions that are consistent with bible revelation, many who have had no knowledge of the Bible. Some of those are documented in the book Eternity In Their Hearts.
Those may seem crazy and very subjective to you. But when they have real physical and historical fulfillment, they become objective and able to be critiqued with something more than what you have done.
I have mentioned before my friend Allyn Cooke’s experience with the Lisu people of China in the 1930s. When he first encountered the Lisu they had had no contact with Europeans and no knowledge of Christianity. But the Lisu had a story passed on through generations of ancestors that one day a man would come with big ears and he would have a book that told them about God.
It happens that Mr. Cooke had enormous ears and he had a book that told them about God. You can read the rest of the story here https://biblicalmusing.blogspot.com/2023/02/oriigin-of-religion.html
That is the case in many though not all NDEs that are consistent with biblical revelation about God and heaven; there is corroborating evidence in the physical world and in history. . (There is actually, very little description of heaven in the Bible.)
In Ms Cramer’s case, there is none.
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So her vision, or whatever it was, doesn’t match those of the nutjobs in the Bible. That’s your criteria?
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No it is that her visions of heaven Is not what God reveals heaven to be like. There is one huge piece missing … God.
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As I said, it didn’t match the visions of those who’d lost contact with reality back when your cult was getting under way.
Visions, NDEs and dreams, whenever they’re experienced, either in the 1st or 21st century, don’t reveal a damn thing about heaven because there’s no such place.
You’ve had your chance to demonstrate that the supernatural realm exists and you’ve evaded, avoided, obfuscated and ducked and dived. I think we’ve heard enough from you.
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What about Dr. Mary Neal’s NDE experience?
She’s the one YOU referenced…does her experience “tick all the boxes”, or is she a nutcase too?
It’s her description of heaven I was referring to.
Also this from Don:
“I have known women like that.
They are carried away with all kinds of arcane and spiritually divergent ideas and lose connection with reality.”
Crazy women! If only they would listen to the apostle Paul and keep their mouths shut, and don’t come out of the kitchen!
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What really gets me about these sort of things, especially when they refer to them as out of body experiences, is that they aren’t out of body at all. All of this happens between their ears. Dreams may seem “out of body” but they can’t be! All religions are based on the existence of an imagined “heaven”. And, that is what heaven is; human imagination, fueled by ignorance and superstition. I would like to see all god bashers agree on that point. Heaven doesn’t exist except in human imagination. GROG
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That’s absolutely right. There is no evidence heaven exists anywhere other than in people’s heads.
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Goyo:
I read Dr. Neal’s book probably ten years ago now and then gave it away, so I can’t skim it again. But I was satisfied then that it was consistent with biblical revelation.
Remember, I am not really interested in description of what would be physical things in heaven. Heaven is not a physical place, and the new earth to which believers will be resurrected is not yet present. In any event we really have very little idea of what heaven is like except for what we know about God and Jesus. So, what I am interested in are what the communications were and with whom and what the character is of those who are found in heaven.
And I am interested in any corroboration of what is heard in heaven with the physical material world and history going forward.
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Don:
“Remember, I am not really interested in description of what would be physical things in heaven. Heaven is not a physical place, and the new earth to which believers will be resurrected is not yet present.”
“In My Father’s house are many mansions; if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to Myself; that where I am, there you may be also” (John 14:2-3).
What is jesus talking about here?
Is it metaphor, or literal?
I’m willing to wager that the majority of xtians and preachers all believe in a literal mansion.
All the ones I’ve ever talked to do.
Why does he even imply that there are dwelling places in heaven if everything is so spiritual?
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When Jesus returns and receives us to himself (John 14:2) where will he be? Where will we be? It is not heaven; it is the new earth. (Rev. 21:1,2).
Yes, I know some translations, particularly the KJV call these mansions. The word in Greek is μοναι and means dwelling places. (See John 14:23 where the same word means make home with us). Most newer translations translate μοναι as dwelling places.
The KJV influenced many believers from the 1600s on and was picked up in hymns and Negro spirituals. But it is not the best translation. “Dwelling places” will do. But most significantly they are not in heaven. They will be on the new earth, the earth that will be remade after the disaster of the empire of those who rebel against God and after the final judgement of the nations (Rev. 19). Jesus does so by just a word, BTW.
As for heaven, it is the abode of God. It is not a physical place. It is not somewhere in space as Yuri Gagarin the early Soviet cosmonaut supposed. The redeemed when they die go to be with the Lord. But that is not bodily. Their spirits go to be with God. Their bodies go to the grave and return to dust. They (their spirits) return to earth when Jesus returns (Rev. 19) to destroy the world empire that has determined to destroy Jerusalem. Those saints will be united with a new immortal body like that of Jesus and those who are alive at Jesus’ return will be transformed into their new immortal bodies.
They will then live and reign with Christ for eternity on the new earth. God will be present on that new earth in ways he has not before (Rev. 21:1) and so we can say that heaven and earth become one.
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Preaching
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