GOD IN YOUR AFTERLIFE

I ended previously with the question, “now that you know better who God REALLY is, what could be your destiny with this God?”

Begin by looking at life as though you were a baby in a playpen, put here to learn things in a protected environment that you will take with you into an exciting afterlife. For example, because God IS Love (11ohn 4:8), you will need to learn to love in different challenging situations to prepare you for a place in God’s family in eternity, where you will continue to develop Love. Notice please that I use the word “develop” because we are born with a capacity to love and a need for love.

God expects you on earth to learn about Love progressively, for example 2Peter 1:5–7 says: “To your faith (where your relationship with God starts) ADD virtue (turning from sin prepares you to learn more about love) and to your virtue Add knowledge … and to brotherly love add divine love. Notice that YOU are tasked with this progressive development. Challenges you can cope with (with God’s help) will appear progressively throughout your life.

Now what can you expect in the afterlife? It is no surprise that it centres around divine love — because it is God who designs your afterlife experiences, and GOD IS LOVE.

In the investigation of the largest collection of near-death experiences to date, we see overwhelming evidence of God.

— Dr Jeffrey Long, on NDERF website

NDErs by the thousand consistently portray God as streaming out love and light from himself. While visiting Paradise, they are aware they are surrounded by God’s vibrant, created and unique beauty there. They tell us about his deep personal knowledge of them and interest, his communication, and their ability to relate to him as a person.

When they return to life on our planet, they commonly see themselves as people with a God-given purpose.

None of this is too surprising to those of us who see revealed in the Bible the nature and character of God: his Creation, his desire to relate to us, and his preparation of an amazing future after death for those who choose life with him, as was intimated in the last chapter.

Whether or not they are already people of faith, or know anything of the Bible, NDErs visiting Paradise are amazed and thrilled to experience him in stunning locations.

God Is Love

We have discussed this already. It is the first and most striking attribute of God in which NDErs bask. It is time for an example.

Empathising with others is a vital component of love. Here is an NDE report from Mindy B that illustrates God the Father’s empathy. Finding problems in her marriage, Mindy chose to embrace anorexia, which subsequently led to her physical degradation, death, and her NDE.

God the Father led Mindy through her Life Review.

“I started seeing images roll in front of my eyes like a movie. With each image I saw it with pure love. I saw it through God’s eyes, not my own. I knew why everything that had happened to me had happened. All of the abuse, rejection, hate, anger, abandonment. All of it had indeed meant something. God wept with me at one point. I felt more love than humanly possible.”

On return to our world, Mindy recovered her health. “My husband and I are still together, and we are moving forward in amazing ways.”

Here is another insight into God’s love, which is always centred in others. God told NDEr Laura that love was the only thing she would have to bring back to Paradise with her after she had returned to Earth, but that it was a certain kind of love, “The love I gave away.”

This revelation to Laura is important for us too. Only an active love involved with God and with others, “the love we give away”, will develop love in the deepest recesses of our own character, and embed it there for eternity. Self-love, however, is a well-known hindrance to personal development. Unfortunately, much of the popular media, of “modern” education, and almost all advertising, is aimed squarely at self-love rather than loving others and developing the communities around us.