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>>Ankerberg: Nancy, start us off with the characteristics. What is the pattern that
these millions of folks that are having these clinical and near-death experiences, what
are they coming back and telling us?
>>Bush: Not everybody will hit all, but characteristics include the feeling of being out of the body,
very often watching what’s going on around the body or at a distance; very powerful emotions.
There may be movement through a tunnel or space; encounter with a light, which is not
just visible light but a radiant, loving presence, or, as a corollary, the absence of that light
which may be perceived as a very deep and often unloving darkness; presences; review
of one’s life is very common; and then, a return with life-changing aftereffects.
The experience is so powerful that whatever the kind of experience, it has the ability
to make people’s lives different.
>>Ankerberg: Dr. Maurice Rawlings, we’ve already covered this in one program, but what
if somebody looks at Nancy and looks at the rest of us and says, “Hey, it’s nothing
more than what your mind is giving back to you, just like in a dream.” Why is it more
than that?
>>Rawlings: One, it’s life-changing. You don’t even interview the patient unless
it’s changed their life upside down—good or bad. Number two, the sequence—like Nancy
said. If they had the same dream last night, listen. Third, recall. If they can reconstruct
what went on in the room—maybe 10% or so can: exactly who was doing what when they
were flat-liners, dead, but they were looking on. Impossible. No dream can do a recall.
>>Ankerberg: Yes. We talked about the fact of the EEG, the brainwaves, are absolutely
dead and they’re picking up information from another area, another geographical location.
>>Rawlings: One fellow was a blind man. He recalled what went on in the room, had his
sight restored during the period of near-death experience, while he was out-of-the-body.
You can have either one, “out-of-the-body/near-death,” all together. And then was blind again when
he was resuscitated.
>>Ankerberg: Yes. So the question was, how in the world could he see what was going on
in that room?
>>Rawlings: I don’t know.
>>Ankerberg: June, you’ve heard about these experiences and so on, what did they mean
to you? What did they tell you? What conclusions do you draw?
>>Langley: I hear my colleagues talking and I hear them say “Jesus Christ.” But I
want to know, “What about the other religions and the people of the world that see Muhammad,
that see Buddha?” And why can’t they see the person? I feel it’s a deity, whatever
name you want to give it. Because the children that have come back and talked to me, they
see the “light.” Whatever I feel this deity is to that person in that particular
time takes them to the light or to another passing. He, as “infinite wisdom,” can
take these children and adults. They wouldn’t frighten a child by being a man in a white
robe that has never heard of Jesus Christ. They see something they’re comfortable with.
And I feel when we die, if that is of our faith, that’s what we see and that’s how
we pass over.
>>Ankerberg: Nancy, isn’t it true that people across the world—and you’ve got to tell
me if this includes some of the letters and information that you have—but don’t people
see the religious figure that they’re familiar with in other cultures? Or how does it work?
>>Bush: The example I use is from “Star Trek.” Year after year, “Star Trek.”
Every week a new galaxy. Every galaxy has a different brand of aliens. And they all
speak English. So what speaks to people is what they can receive. Any of us will report
in the words that are available to us. If I am, say, a Burmese illiterate peasant, I
will report an experience in Burmese illiterate peasant terms. It may be an identical experience
or as identical as it can be; the spirit of it is the same. The fact, I think, that the
words differ, the heart of the experience and the fact that whoever the experiencers
are come back, as Howard has said, with the conviction that there is a God.