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>>Ankerberg: Okay, we’re going to talk about the implications of all these experiences,
what they mean, but the fact is, let’s get some more. Nancy, as President of the International
Association for Near-Death Studies, you are now starting to catalog some of these experiences
as well. You’ve got over 50 in your paper here. The question is, what are you seeing?
>>Bush: Well, we’re seeing that there is no one type. We see three. There’s the kind
that Howard described, which is a very hell-like experience; there’s another type which sounds
as if it should be the peaceful, blissful kind, but people are terrified, usually because
it seems to go too fast. It’s out of their control. And a third kind in which people
find themselves in just a featureless space. And it’s very much like being shot into
space without the space capsule. And it’s the void, the indescribable emptiness.
>>Ankerberg: Junie, you have worked at Johns Hopkins, the hospital there, and they don’t
just let anybody work on those patients. You’ve got to be a smart cookie to work there. And
the fact is that you have worked, I think, in the toughest area. All the doctors and
nurses that I know say working with children that are dying is the toughest thing. You
usually go home with all their problems.
>>Langley: That’s true.
>>Ankerberg: What have you seen in terms of the good and bad experiences?
>>Langley: When we talk about the adults,… I should preface this by saying this: When
we talk about suicide, I don’t either condone it or condemn it. I do say nothing about that.
But the three people that I worked with before I was working with the terminally ill children,
was in the Emergency Room. Now, these three people—it was two women and a man—they
committed suicide. They were brought in, pronounced dead, and resuscitated. I got to talk to them
later, and they told me they weren’t in pain; they weren’t dying of cancer or some
disease that was tormenting them; they did it out of spite for a lover. And they told
me they saw demons worse than hell. It was indescribable. And they were frightened. And
the bottom line is, they would never do it again. I don’t know how it changed their
life because I didn’t follow through with that. But what they saw was horrendous. Now,
it’s different with children. Children, the ages that I deal with from two to six
and six to eleven, did not commit suicide.
>>Ankerberg: Yes. We’re going to commit a whole half hour to this whole area of children.
Dr. Rawlings, I think you would admit that people like Howard that come forth with this
kind of a terrible story, you usually don’t find it. Why?
>>Rawlings: They hide it. They don’t want their face on television or any identification
because it’s so embarrassing. It’s like being caught naked. Your soul is exposed.
It’s an “F” on the report card. The audience wants to know immediately, “Tell
us this horrible thing. What kind of a rotten person were you to deserve this.” You know,
get all the good cases. They can’t wait to tell anybody. But the hell cases, they
have to have a conversion or they have to have some good result so they can then present
the bad.
>>Ankerberg: Yes. I think, Howard, let’s ask that question because a lot of people
are saying, “Well, Howard, what did you do that sent you to hell?”
>>Storm: It was a life led according to what our culture teaches us. Look out for number
one, you know. Be self-centered. We don’t live in a Christian culture; we live in a
culture that teaches materialism and self-promotion. That’s what I did. And I denied the faith
that I had been given as a child and I turned my back on it.
>>Ankerberg: Okay. How did you get out of hell?
>>Storm: Through prayer. As simple as that.
>>Ankerberg: What did you say?
>>Storm: I asked Jesus to save me. And it was important for me to acknowledge Jesus
Christ as my personal Savior ,because that’s how I had been shown the revelation of the
true God as a child, and that’s how God had reached out to me. That’s whose name
I had been baptized in. And that’s how I had to communicate with God.
>>Ankerberg: Dave Hunt, you know, you’ve written books that have sold a couple million,
maybe three or four million copies of your books. And the fact is, when you write to
these people, if they were to ask you, “Hey, I don’t want to experience what he experienced.
I don’t want to go to hell. I don’t want to experience that now or anytime,” what
advice would you give them not to go to hell?
>>Hunt: Well, you’re going to have to do exactly what Howard did: call upon Jesus to
save you. Somebody says, “Why Jesus? Why not Buddha? Why not Muhammad? Why not somebody
else?” Because none of them did what Jesus did: He is God who became a man to die for
our sins. He’s the only one. Buddha said, “Don’t come to me with your sins. I’ve
got my own to worry about. Don’t follow me. I don’t know the way.” Jesus said,
“I am the way.” He made claims nobody else made. He did what nobody else did. And
He arose from the dead and He’s alive. And you just can’t escape it. He said, “I
am the way, the truth, the life.” Either He’s a liar, or He’s what He said He is.
And Howard called upon Him and that’s the only way.