Imagine Heaven Book Review
Hello friends,
I hope you are all doing well! I have been eager to share more about the book Imagine Heaven throughout reading it. I took longer than normal to read it as I wanted to soak in the words and revelations provided with each chapter and with each near-death experience shared within the chapters. Let me start by saying that I am ever so grateful to have discovered this book and grateful for the author, John Burke, to have taken the time to interview and/or review accounts of near-death experiences.
I believe in God, the father. I believe in Jesus Christ, His son and our Savior. I believe in the Holy Spirit. And, I believe in Heaven.
I didn’t need this book to reassure me that Heaven is real. That I already believed. I needed this book as a source of enlightenment, a source of knowledge, and a source of peace for my grieving heart. I can honestly say that I wish I had read this book years ago, but I know I likely wouldn’t have treasured the information then the way I do know and I also know that it has given me a little bit of enthusiasm to talk to others about Heaven.
Here is my synopsis of Imagine Heaven: Near-Death Experiences, God’s Promises, and the Exhilarating Future that Awaits You.
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John Burke writes this book to read like a novel, and poses questions or ideas to consider along the way. He is thorough in his writing - and while he is a Christian now, he was not always “convinced” and admits he studied the world’s religions before becoming a “convinced Christian”. His passion is helping skeptical people consider all of the reasons that convinced him that God, Jesus, and Heaven ARE REAL.
So in his book Imagine Heaven, he includes over 100 stories of people who were clinically dead or near death and who were revived. He reviewed studies of NDEs (near death experiences), interviewed people directly, interviewed the people who performed the studies, and made sure to intentionally include non-Christian NDEs. He sought to include accounts of skeptical doctors, neuroscientists, atheistic college professors, attorneys, and more with the point that these people would have more to risk (reputations, licensing, degrees) if they made up these stories.
It was essentially as though each chapter was so thoroughly constructed with thoughts, questions, answers, examples, Bible verses, and revelations that each chapter was just so rich in knowledge and power I didn’t want to put the book down. But, at the same time, I needed to let the words marinate within me so I could truly reflect and be able to retain what it all meant.
“How you think about Heaven affects everything in life - how you prioritize love, how willing you are to sacrifice for the long term, how you view suffering, what you fear or don’t fear.”
To highlight some of my key takeaways:
The people who have had NDEs were both Christian and non-Christians. The atheists, the agnostics, and the people of other religions. Jesus gives everyone the opportunity to meet him in Heaven. When they returned, they were adamant and keenly aware that it was Jesus that they met.
Every NDE person (adult or child) describes the feeling of being filled with and over abundance of compassionate, unconditional love when they meet Jesus. They experience the most perfect peace you can imagine but every single one of them have said there just aren’t the right words to describe it.
Every NDE person (adult or child) describes the feeling that they did not want to return to their bodies on Earth. Some were told specifically “This isn’t your time yet, you have to go back” and some were asked if they wanted to go back, to which they said no with hesitation while reviewing their life and seeing a loved one or children crying over their bodies. Then they felt compelled to come back to their earthly bodies.
Every NDE person (adult or child) was able to describe what they could see happening to their body and the scene in which they died (like during surgery, a car accident, or having drowned) before being taken to Heaven. There are accounts of people describing machines used on them to try to save them or where the room was in the hospital that they would not have been able to know because they were unconscious upon arrival. This also includes a blind NDE person - blind since early childhood and they could describe details of what they SAW.
Even the blind NDE people were able to describe what they saw happening to them and in Heaven, using as descriptive of words as possible given they never could have know what words like “blue” truly look like. Their visual accounts stunned their doctors and their visual accounts of Heaven correlate with what NDE people describe without visual impairment.
We ARE RESTORED to full health in Heaven. NDE people describe seeing others or themselves with all of their limbs, or for example one saw their best friend in full form who had died by decapitation.
Some NDE people (not all) had a life review where they saw their life playback to them. And some that did not have the life review playback were also asked by Jesus similar questions, “What did you do with the life I gave you?” “Did you show love the way you should have?”
Every NDE person came back feeling like they needed to love people better, be a better person. They expressed the sentiments that even if they felt disappointed in watching their own life review, they felt nothing but compassionate love from Jesus. So while He was encouraging them to reflect on how they could have lived better, He was not judging them, but loving them with the most profound love fathomable.
Every NDE person described their senses being magnified in Heaven. They could hear better, see better, feel more, taste better. It is described as though what we think is clarity of senses here on Earth will feel like hazied and muddied compared to what we will be able to experience there.
Every NDE person described Heaven as brightly lit with the light of the throne of God and the radiant light of Jesus, and Heaven as profoundly colorful in hues we’ve never dreamed of. And they describe Jesus’s eyes as luminescent with bright light. The light shines through and from within everything there. His radiance fills everything and he is omnipresent at all times, with you while also present with everyone else.
We will have jobs there, assignments. We will have houses and neighborhoods there. But traveling and talking are almost telepathic. It can happen like we’re used to, but can also just think of something and be there or think of something and the other person (or Jesus, we get to talk with Jesus!) will know what you’re saying without verbally saying it.
Children (including miscarried or aborted babies) and animals / pet WILL BE IN HEAVEN! One NDE person expressed she felt remorse in her life review for how she could have treated her pet better. 😢 Another NDE person expressed seeing a park with children of all ages playing with Jesus and a lion running and playing too.
While we may not understand WHY bad things happen to us here on Earth, like why God allows things to happen, we WILL understand it when we get there. He uses our pain for good, and makes beauty from ashes. One NDE person was haunted by her childhood assaults and built her life around making poor decisions because of the abuse she endured. After meeting Jesus and feeling His love, she said she understood when she came back that He never wanted those things to happen to her and that He washes away every sin, and that He wanted to use HER to help other victims and that changed the course of her life.
There are angels used by God and there are guides used by God. We need to be careful not to be deceived by fallen angels.
There is a hell, and it is real. This chapter was particularly difficult to read and I had to take a break because it is disturbing. There are not as many accounts of NDEs reported about going to hell, and the thought is that a majority of people who experienced a NDE to hell 1) don’t want to talk about it because it was so traumatizing 2) are embarrassed to admit that they went to hell and 3) would rather say they do not remember anything at all than to acknowledge it. One NDE person’s account of hell took him years to discuss because he was so shaken by it and he was a proud and proclaimed atheist. I will spare you the details of his story but it SHOOK ME in the most disturbing of ways. When I told husband about it we were walking in Banff and it made me cry. Spoiler alert: Jesus saved him from hell. Jesus SAVED him from hell. JESUS saved him from hell! Y’all. Not everyone will have the right heart and mind to call out to Jesus from hell. Some people decide to stay in hell with their like-minded peers because they feel they deserve it, still deny Christ, and want to be punished. I was SHAKEN. Jesus saved this atheist man who called out to Him, restored his ripped apart body, held him and took him to Heaven. When that man returned to earth, he quit his profession as a college professor and went to seminary school and became a Christian pastor.
One of the NDE person’s asked Jesus why He would want to save a person like a murderer and Jesus’s eyes responded with anger, because Jesus wants everyone to be saved. Everyone. Even the worst sinners that we think* should be banished to hell, Jesus wants to save them too. In His eyes, sin is sin, no sin is greater than the other, and if someone is truly sorry in seeking forgiveness AND believes that Jesus is Lord, He wants to save that person. We are NOT the ones to cast stones and suggest that one of God’s children shouldn’t be saved. It was powerful.
“Some Christians will probably wonder, how could God possibly reveal Himself to those who don’t believe in Him? But they forget God’s heart longs for every person to come home, from every nation, every language; they were all created by Him and for Him”
I’ll wrap it up there because I could go on and on and I want you to want to read this book. I HIGHLY RECOMMEND IT! You will enjoy the book for what it provides, but you will enjoy the book because of how it will change your heart and mind.
If you or anyone you know is grieving or even questioning Heaven, this book will help reassure them and answer questions that they might have. I hope it blesses you as it did me.
I'm happy to answer any questions about this book or the others I have listed on my page that I have read. Feel free to email me or comment below. You can find my previous book reviews here that I am slowly adding to my site. I haven’t been able to add many through the years but hope to make this a more frequent post.
PS - if you missed my review of 90 Minutes In Heaven : click this link here.
XOXO
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