All I can manage at the moment is a quick overview off the top of my head. If I continue to watch the McDowell interview I may have to come back and make some corrections but I'll try to avoid saying things I'll have to correct.
McDowell is the son of Josh McDowell, well-known Christian apologist whose books were widely read in the nineties. I read them. He's a Christian. So why on earth doesn't he know that
1) Yes NDEs are real supernatural experiences (some are anyuway, some may be frauds)
2) No,they don't come from God; they are demonic manifestations.
That is the impression I get from his opening remarks. If I hear more and he says something different I'll come back and correct this.
One way you can tell they are false, maybe THE way you can tell they are false, is that they have nothing to do with Christ. He may be mentioned but only as a remote figure off somewhere in the background of the scenario. The scenario is usually a pastoral sort of landscape, pretty and peaceful, with beautiful colors, flowers etc. In the case of the book "Heaven is for Real" the boy who had the experience was introduced to a sister he didn't know he had, who had died in the womb before he was born, and to a grandfather he never knew. This kind of experience is very confincing. Well, it's convinding that something supernatural did indeed happen, he really did get information he couldn't otherwise have known.
But these are Christians. They should know better. We are told in scripture that the devil often appears "as an angel of light." He likes to impersonate God Himself after all.
What would be Satan's motive for deceiving people in this way? It's really prettyh clear: it's to get people focused on experience instead of on Christ and scripture. Our faith is to be in Christ, not in our experiences, and those of us who have had supernatural experiences are definitely susceptible to putting our trust in them rather than in Jesus. I've had to fight my own tendency in this direction.
But NDEs are experienced by all kinds of pewople, not just Christians. A Mormon woman wrote a book about hers a couple decades ago that became quite popular. So in that case it confirmed her in her false Mormon beliefs, not something that would comew from God, clearly a demonic delusion.
The first man I mention above clearly puts all his faith that he will be going to heaven when he dies in his NDE experience. It was so real, so amazingly peaceful. When someone asked if he's a Christian he said yes but then he spoke of Jesus as someone he takes as a model, NOT AS THE SAVIOR OF HIS SOUL even though he gave lip service to that idea. Clearly his heart is with the experience, not with Christ.
These experiences are just part of the End Times demonic delusions that have beem proliferating over the last few decades. They include the apparitions of Mary that keep Catholics in thrall when they should be pursuing salvation in Christ; they include the very recent revival of interest in UFOs, now called UAPs, that I've written posts about recently. All these things are stage shows put on by demons to dazzle and deceive human beings and turn us awau from God. The "heaven" stories I wrote about years ago, listed in the right margin here, are also NDEs.
I also recently wrote about a woman "prophet" who has posted a lot of her prophecies, in the form of visions and dreams, She keeps putting up more of them. The few I looked at in any detail are so clearly incompatible with the biblical Christ it's depressing to think that she, with her extensive church experience, can't see through them. But she's only one among many such "prophets" these days. All professing Christians. Jan Markell's latest "Understanding the Times" radio show addresses this phenomenon. Some forty such "prophets" predicted last Fall that Donald Trump was going to win the election. The prophet I mentioned here said the same thing. Only a few of them have apologized for their error, others have tried to rationalize it away.
Such "prophecies" are clearly just another distraction from our need to keep our eyes upon Jesus Himself, especially now when the signs are coming so fast and furious that His return can't be far off. All this stuff comes from the devil. Today's "prophets" are part of the charismatic movement that was pretty soundly debunked by John MacArthur's "Strange Fire" conference some years ago, which I link in the right margin. There is no way the phenomena being experienced by charismatics has anything to do with the "gifts of the Spirit" described in scripture. The conference set me free from some lingering doubts of my own, but unfortunately many in the charismatic movement rejected the message and criticized MacArthur for it.
I'm just tossing this off but I may come back and add some links and make any corrections that seem necessary. I'm doing it this way because when I spend time collecting evidence, links etc., I sometimes just accumulate half-written posts that never make it onto the public blog. That's happened quite a bit recently. I'm still hoping I'll get some of them posted but in any case I wanted to be sure this one did. We're SO close to the Rapture, SO close. I've been yearning more and more to leave this planet which is getting more wicked, perverse, irrational and upside down every day.
IGNORE NDEs. They are demonic deceptions designed to produce a false "faith" that is not of God.
IGNORE APPARITIONS OF "MARY." This is an old demonic delusion by now. May many Catholics wake up.
IGNORE UFOs or UAPs They are not physical, they are not "technology," they are otherworldly beings.
IGNORE THE SO-CALLED "PROPHETS." They are deceived deceivers.
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