did in Matthew 20:15 regarding the words, “what I will.”
So how could all this be true you ask, in that, Jesus is secretly trying to get something over on us? To glimpse the Cerberus standing guard over the eternal fires of knowledge like so much red meat at a fresh kill, we need only gaze back at all those fleeting, off-colored intangibles concerning religion that have unknowingly infiltrated our lives since childhood. We all have them. They prove themselves out in those people that have died, and come back to life. We know this to be true by the stories they tell, concerning their trip to the “other side.” What surgeons have done is to put highly visible objects in the operating room near the ceiling that are easily viewed form above, but out of sight (and mind) from below. This way, if the person has a true out of body experience, they should be able to recount it with the artifact in mind. To date, not one person who has died and come back has been able to do that in order to validate their experience. Not even when hovering above their bodies near the ceiling, for prolonged periods of time.
Therefore, we need to investigate this mystery further. After all, no one is accusing these people of fabricating such grandiose stories, so something special must actually be happening to them. But then, what could it be? Moreover, why is it that every last one of these experiences is highly religious, if not spiritually inspired? Could the Bible actually be telling us the truth about God, heaven, and hell? I will let you be the judge. But of this, you can be sure: the mind is a powerful thing, made even stronger when embraced by what it chooses to believe. Ah, but it is. Not only that, but with biblical proof to come, I might add.
Let us, therefore, begin with a guy who died for several minutes while on the operating table. He tells of how he engaged in a conversation with, of all people, Moses. He then talks about feeling an undisclosed presence behind him. He asks Moses who it is, and Moses tells him that it’s I AM. The man then starts to turn around to look, but Moses stops him, telling him that no one can look upon the face of I AM and live. (Well, all except for Moses, it would seem. But even that’s not true, as you will discover next for yourself.)
Now, as for the verse that binds this story as an off-colored intangible that most likely, and unknowingly, infiltrated this guy’s life from cradle to grave; and in this case back again; I give you Exodus 3:13. “Moses spoke to God, saying, ‘Behold, when I come to the children of Israel, and say to them that the God of your fathers has sent me to you; and they ask me what his name is, what will I tell them?’ 14 Then God said to Moses: ‘I AM THAT I AM. Thus will you say to the children of Israel, I AM has sent me unto you.’”
Next, we have Exodus 33:18 as wrought for elucidation where we learn that not even Moses, was allowed to look upon the face of I AM, putting a crimp of truth in this guy’s otherwise plausible experience. “Moses pleaded, saying, ‘I beseech thee, O Lord, to show me your glory.’ 19 God replied, saying: ‘I will make my presence to pass before you. As I do, I will proclaim my name before you. 20 However, you cannot see my face, for no one will see my face and live. 21 ‘Behold! There is a place near me where you will stand upon a rock. 22 It will come to be that, when I pass by you, that I will put you in a cleft of that rock, and will cover your face with my hand. 23 Then, when I remove my hand, you will see my backside only: but my face will not be seen.’”
All this, and not one person in all of recorded history ever reported the same experience.
There was another guy who died in a car wreck when his vehicle flipped and rolled over into a shallow bank of water, pinning him on the murky bottom. Medical records indicate that he ingested something like a liter of mud into each of his lungs. The surgeons later saved his life on the operating table. He talks about how, in death, the Earth opened its mouth up, and swallowed him whole. He goes on to say that he knew he was in that place called sheol, and begged God that if he were to give him a second chance, he would forever change his life around. (As you will learn, the vow doesn’t have to make sense it just has to progress. Why? Because if we live in anything in this life, it’s a universe of change, is why. To be more succinct: we live in a universe of entropy where all matter, to include life, exists in varying states of decay as guided by the arrow of time belonging to the second law of thermodynamics.)
For the correlation, albeit for edification, I give you Numbers 16:28. That being where Moses said to the congregation, “Hereby you will know that the Lord has sent me to do all these works, and that it has not been of my own accord. 29 If these unrepented men among you die an ordinary death, or are in any way visited by a fate common to all men, then the Lord has not sent me. 30 But if the Lord creates something new, and the ground opens up her mouth, and swallows them up…and they go down alive into sheol [earthen hell;] then you will know that these men have displeased the Lord.”
Now see Numbers 16:32 for the conclusion. “So the Earth opened her mouth, and swallowed them up with their households. Along with these evil unrepented men, so went their wives and their children, and all that belonged to them. 33 They all went down alive into sheol, and the ground closed over them: and they perished from the midst of the assembly.”
All this, and not one person in all of recorded history ever reported the same experience.
Something interesting about this is that this guy never lived what any normal person would label as so sinful, that he should have to change anything about his life around. In fact, he lived a rather normal existence. What trapped him into believing all this, especially as it pertains to the self, is where the Bible says that, if the Earth opens her mouth to swallow anyone up, then that person perished because they displeased the Lord. The truth here is that he fell victim to nothing more sinister, than the power of suggestion. And who really knows what the subconscious chooses to latch on to in the end, and why?
My last story concerns my own father, now deceased. He was nine years old when his alcoholic father took him out back, hit him over the head with a shovel, and buried him in a waiting pit. Being drunk, however, he left part of his white t-shirt showing. It was maybe three or four minutes later that one of his older brothers stumbled onto the scene, and spotting the white t-shirt sticking up out of the ground, went to investigate. He ran back into the house screaming bloody murder at the top of his lungs, where the rest of the family gathered up and unearthed his lifeless body. Needless to say, in the end, he survived his encounter with death. However, he came back with a story to tell. It was one that; and for the rest of his life; made him a religious zealot. (By the way: the word, ‘zealot’ belongs to an ancient breakaway Hebrew religious group, forming about the same time as the Essenes during the era of Jesus, and means: “dagger.” All because, that’s how they dealt with those politicians who dared to disagree with their idea of religion.)
My father would tell me (and anyone else who would listen) of how he was hanging out with “The Man,” and that this man took him on a tour of the universe where all knowledge is stored. He says they spoke in tongues at a rate not humanly possible, and that, for a brief moment in non-time, he understood everything there was to ever know as it related to our universe. And there, while coddled within the fires of eternal knowledge, he came to be at peace with his death and the abusive father who delivered him over to it. He never did, hold a grudge. He said that, if “The Man” was going to grant him another chance at life, he would have to let his father go in order to move on. And so he did, as well as did the rest of the family. I, therefore, never knew my real grandfather from my father’s side. He later one day drank himself to death, whereby forging his own afterlife experience.
Many years thereafter, maybe in his early thirties, my dad drew a map of his life that he says Jesus showed him when they were together in the afterlife. Imagine the outline of an oval standing on one of its ends, and that is what he drew. On the right side were all these crazy zigs and zags that terminated at age sixty-six. The left side was considerably longer, and perfectly smooth. He went on to say that “The Man” told him the right side represented his life the way he lived it according to the dictates of mammon, and the left side the way it could have been. As for the rest of the maps regarding the knowledge of the universe that he drew,
