Re: Our NDE Experiences Might Awaken Many People!

In answering your question about how my NDE experience applied to my spiritual awakening, etc., I have a lot to share with you. But first, I want you to know what my real name actually is. It is actually, Elijah. I was christened with the name of Elijah, as a baby. That fact was later disclosed to me by my aunt. She was a very young teenager at the time, when she repeatedly told me Elijah was my real name. She honored the Lord, and persisted in calling me Elijah on a daily basis, until her parents (my grandparents) put an abrupt stop to her saying it, and that’s how I know it’s my real name. Unfortunately, I never learned why it was later changed it to Bruce, (and that seemed to be a dark family secret.) "Your real name is Elijah," she would say as she patted me on the head. I was only a little over four years old and when I objected she would repeatedly say, "It's Elijah and it will always be Elijah, because you were christened with that name, in the church, before God and everybody! And no body on this earth can ever change it - not even the angels in heaven!"
There was nothing I could do but of course insist that my real name was Bruce! It was a curious thing however, when I died and was taken up to Paradise. When God asked me my name I said it was Bruce. He seemed distressed or at least set back by that reply. "What is your 'real name?'" He said even more carefully, and I repeated "It's Bruce, it's really Bruce." I could not see what he was doing but I got am impression like he was not very amused. There was a muffled sound, like He was like putting a note in a file or a book. I didn't know where I was, or who I was talking to, and I didn’t even know my own real name. After that was taken care of, He invitingly said, "Well . . . tell me all about yourself." After that, I was soon going through the judgment!
Rudy, most of all I think that my NDE experience applied to my spiritual awakening in regard to my being able to figure out a lot things out. For example, you may not be aware of it, but what God has allowed to happen to you and me means we simply have not been "in step" with the rest of reality - ever since we returned! Also, quite possibly, we have both been on a long life-time search for our real place in this world. I know that’s true for me. My point is, not many persons have truly, transcended a major part of normal scheme that limits all other universal, human relations! I mean, I’m aware from what you write that you have a crystal-clear view of the reality of the Lord, immortal, and Heaven, and that means we are both incredibly blessed! We have been blessed with a real understanding of what it’s like to be in Heaven! I AM ABSOLUTELY SHRE THAT WE HAVE MANY END-TIME MESSAGES - for those who have never been in that ream! Having been there, we know it as far more than any sermon or song, and there is no real difficulty in terms of our believing it to be real! In essence, it appears to others that we think we are infallible, to some degree or in some way – while we nevertheless know that isn’t true at all. We "Fully Believe!" and we "Truly Believe!" because we have both been on "the other side!"
Let me say this also. I have never even met you, yet I'm willing to bet that many others have always told you rather cruel sounding things like "you really think you’re perfect!" Or sometimes, "you think you know it all," or "your not perfect - you strange!" Or "Ok Mr. Know-it-all..." or, "why do you think that God blesses you all the time! He blesses me just as much as He Blesses you! You just think that you're the only one that the Lord is blessing." I know this is a major study for you in your life, and you have often asked yourself, why in the world to people look at me like that!
Rudy. I can honest to God tell you that - on three different occasions in my life as I was rejoicing and just walking down the steps of the church after a great Sunday service - I have heard somebody shout out "Wow! You're the 'richest person' that I have ever seen!" Now the first time it happened I was looking all around me, trying to figure out who they were hollering at! "I mean you!" he started calling out, pointing right at me. So I went over to the individual, about 30 feet away, and I asked him why in the world he was shouting that. "Why! Why! You're absolutely 'the richest person' I've ever seen!"
It made me laugh! What a funny thing to say. I laughed and told him so. "Why, I have only had $3.75 cents in my pocket, and that was all the money I had in the whole world."
He replied, "On no! Not that! What I mean is, you're rich in the things of the Lord!"
I am telling you this in that I am absolutely certain that much the same thing - if not the exact same thing - has also happened to you from time to time. In other words, you and I carry a great deal of "spiritual power." Now let me explain what makes you and I so different from the rest of the world. First, what you and I lack is the freedom to scrutinize reason itself. As NDE’ers, having a real experience traded in for what others can only suppose as being God, we find it considerably difficult to move among the same realms of free inquiry, as does the rest of humanity.
Secondly, here's what's really going on. The current state of mind that prevails today, can be traced back to the Protestant Reformation. When it broke out, the reformers used the power of the authority of the Bible, to replace a corrupt church, or what many felt to be "the infallible Church." The thinking of man was, as if all anyone needed was only what had been collected in the Bible, and this book was "the Word of God." Frankly put, “those who will not be advised by the Savior can expect on other than to fall into the hands of the destroyer.” Nevertheless, the wicked began to attack the claims of all, caring on that the Bible was not divinely inspired. Neither Protestant nor Catholics could escape then. The Protestant held to individual interpretation and a direct revelation of various passages as an all sufficient guide for the individual conduct of one's life upon earth.
The one group basically taught, the Jews were first born, and as such they had the privilege of the first offer. After His resurrection Jesus was preached to all nations. He was sent, with the primary mission to bless, rather than condemn you as all men deserve. Thus, He has power in terms of the fact that he justifies your very existence, and mine. When we accept the justification offered, then we begin to learn a lot more about all of God’s powers. Matthew Henry writes, “The great blessing with which Christ came to bless us, was the turning us away from our iniquities, (otherwise known as) the saving (of) us from our sins.” Hence, we are to pray daily for the forgiveness of our sins, according to Matthew Henry’s commentary, “that we may be qualified to receive all (the) other blessings.”
Hence, the reformers held that everyone needed to whole-heartedly accept the Bible, which many yet call “The Book of Life,” as given to men directly from God - if he or she was to have God’s blessings on his or her life and otherwise to save their soul and attain immortal life. The Catholics, on the other hand, held that the church was of a divine origin and instituted by Jesus Christ to act as a spiritual body politic, with all due and adequate authority to interpret God's Word and to translate it into articles of belief and even various 'codes of action.' They believed, there were certain men in each generation, were its ministers, and that everyone was to follow those men because they were thought to be able to transcend universal human limitations and thereby, the position of "infallibility." In marked contrast, the King of England also laid claim to “infallibility.” Yet all this the Protestant reformers denied. You can see by this that mortals argue all these things in terms of “power!”
The leaders of the reformation maintained, every man is fallible or liable to make mistakes. And they readily pointed to the notorious practices of the Church, not unlike the controversy of homosexuals among the priests as is now current. Hence, there were many who came to be believers, with their eyes glued upon these issues that blinded them - and basically it still causes many of them not to be qualified to receive all the other blessings! Others, who we could classify as non-believers, are those who otherwise suspect the word of God as a system of circular reasoning. Further studies (over time,) resulted in the conclusion that there was not an adequate basis for any of the various systems of religious belief. Based on thinking along these lines the Protestants answered, the Bible itself was the only real answer. The reformers finally fell back, to the position that it was all the power available to each Christian, was essentially based on a personal relationship between man and his Maker. That, in turn, forced Protestantism to the inescapable position of strict individualism - wherein today each individual expects to be granted power, while being his own final authority, and God is supposed to bless him for all his proper beliefs(!) and his own well thought out, self-directed actions! From these beginnings there eventually graduated the multiplication of Protestant sects as we find them in this present day. What a difference there is in yielding one’s heart to the Lordship of Jesus Christ, as God’s final authority. The true Christians are those individuals who have truly “given their hearts to Christ;” they have learned to confesses their own failures and iniquities each day, daily asking God for forgiveness. So they are not blinded by those issues that overtake the unbelievers, and through Christ, as they grow they are continually qualified to receive all the other blessings of God!
Moreover, what is added to that series of difficulties is the major problem of having so many innumerable sects and their accompanying leaders and prophets. Each one claims directly, or indirectly, to be something of a godly channel of infallibility and/or at least a reliable source of divine inspiration. Accordingly, the best energies of the last four centuries have been expended in seeking a solution to these questions. As these things go, however, OTHER THAN THOSE EXPERIENCES AS REPORTED BY YOU AND I AND OTHER, VARIOUS NDE’ERS, no one has been able to find an adequate center of authority, for belief and or conduct, outside of the general set of commonly received traditions.
So why are so many so who refuse the scriptures, and why do they claim that they do not care anything about all of this? In the first half of the seventeenth century however, William Chillingworth wrote a book titled, "The Religion of Protestants a Safe Way to Salvation." It was highly controversial. He wrote, "every man is to judge for himself with the judgment of discretion . . . . . . and the defender of Protestantism confesses, 'For my part I am certain that God hath give us our reason to discern between truth and falsehood; and he that makes NOT this use of it, but believes things he knows not why, I say it is by chance that he believes the truth, and not by choice; and that I cannot but fear that God will not accept of this sacrifice of fools. But you that would not have men follow their reason, what would you have them follow? - their passions? - or pluck out the eyes and go blindfold? No, you say, you would have them follow authority. On God's name let them; we also would have them follow authority; for it is upon the authority of universal tradition that we would have them believe Scripture. But then, as for the authority which you would have them follow, you will let them see reasons why they should follow it. And is not this to go (on) a little about? - to leave reason for a short time and then come to it again, and to do that which you condemn in others? - it being a plain impossibility for any man to submit his reason but to reason; for he that doth it to authority must of necessity think himself to have greater reason to believe that authority."
The actual result of this overall controversy has been the general decay of all forms of living religion. You and I have escaped from the curse that plagues all other men by way of our having already died. We know God as a perfect being of love, who is simply not discoverable unto most men, except by their vague reasoning and remote abstractions. When he is considered as a First Cause of all things, having brought the world into existence, and established all of its unalterable laws, then we can each see that the initial world was indeed perfect, as created by a perfect being. Common sense tells us, however, that the world is not perfect, yet this is why the Bible teaches that existing evils are only apparent, yet not real. So “be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good. Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers. For there is no power but of God: the powers that be are ordained by God. Whosoever therefore resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance of God: and they that resist shall receive unto themselves damnation.”

Elijah Nov 2, 2003, 1:17AM
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