Here's an excerpt from a story tonight on NBC News' website about patients' cardiac arrest testimonies--"what the study researcher called transcendent recalled experiences of death, or what many people think of as a near-death experience.
"That perception can be just a vague feeling that something is happening around them. However, six patients in the study reported 'they may have had a life review, they may have gone to a place that felt like home, and so on,' ” said Dr. Sam Parnia, lead study author and an associate professor in the department of medicine at NYU Langone who is also the director of critical care and resuscitation research at NYU Langone.
"Some survivors had positive memories, such as seeing a light, a tunnel or a family member, or feeling intense emotions, such as love, tranquility and peace. Others, however, had a feeling of separation from the body and a recognition that they had died or had delusions of monsters or faceless figures.
“ 'There’s nothing more extreme than cardiac arrest because they’re literally teetering between life and death, they’re in a deep coma and they don’t respond to us physically at all,' said Parnia. 'What we’re able to show is that up to 40% of people actually have a perception of having been conscious to some extent.' ”
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As we know from Luke 23, hell in "time past" had a torment side for lost people and a paradise side for those saved called "Abraham’s bosom." Jesus Christ says of the rich man in Luke 16:23: [23] And in hell he lift up his eyes, being in torments, and seeth Abraham afar off, and Lazarus in his bosom.
While the rich man, who’s lost, goes down to the torment side, Lazarus, as a Believer, goes to Abraham’s bosom.
“By the way, the rich man sees Lazarus. He’s conscious. It’s conscious existence in torment. That’s what the text says," explains Richard Jordan.
"Somebody argues, ‘It’s a parable.’ Then the reality is worse than what you’re reading! You make it a parable and that means the reality of it is more severe than the illustration! People have all these ideas to get around it, but you just put yourself in the soup even worse.
“Verse 24: [24] And he cried and said, Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus, that he may dip the tip of his finger in water, and cool my tongue; for I am tormented in this flame.
“Notice that what’s in hell and in paradise has a finger and a tongue. The rich man’s buried body was just a carnival for the maggots up on the surface, but your soul has a physical shape to it--appendages to it that are comparable to your physical body. In other words, it’s REAL; it has substance to it.
“He says he’s ‘tormented in this flame.’ If you say, ‘Well, I don’t believe it’s literal,’ then it’s got to be something WORSE than fire. Whatever it is, it’s going to disintegrate you just like that. If you want to do all the symbolic, figurative and apocalyptic stuff, go ahead, but it just makes it worse; it doesn’t make it less.
“This is why people think the grave is hell because these two guys are there. It’s not. The body’s in hell. Verse 25: [25] But Abraham said, Son, remember that thou in thy lifetime receivedst thy good things, and likewise Lazarus evil things: but now he is comforted, and thou art tormented.
“Do you see how you still have your mental faculties? It’s a conscious ability to think. You know, one the most tormenting things to me about a place called 'the torments of hell' would be that issue of remembering.
“If you’re lost, you’re going to die and go to hell and remember every opportunity you had not to be there. Sure as you’re sitting there, there’s some little bony-fingered demon going to come up into your face and mock, ‘Forever, forever, forever, forever,’ and you’re going to remember it didn’t have to be that way.
“Verse 26: ‘[26] And beside all this, between us and you there is a great gulf fixed: so that they which would pass from hence to you cannot; neither can they pass to us, that would come from thence.
“So, if Jesus Christ died and went down to the torment side, that verse says you can’t go from the torment side to the comfort side. You see how that works? There’s a gulf fixed where you can’t go back and forth.
“You say, ‘Well, Jesus is God; He could do what He wanted to do,’ and yeah, He’s telling you right there how He set it up to do! He doesn’t contradict His Word.
"How does it work? If you’ve over there, you stay over there, and if you’re over here, you stay over here. You see, folks who don’t understand how hell works in the Bible wind up with doctrines that don’t fit how things work in the Bible, period.
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"Come to Revelation 20 and notice how hell is not the ultimate end of lost people. Starting in verse 11, it says, [11] And I saw a great white throne, and him that sat on it, from whose face the earth and the heaven fled away; and there was found no place for them.
[12] And I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God; and the books were opened: and another book was opened, which is the book of life: and the dead were judged out of those things which were written in the books, according to their works.
[13] And the sea gave up the dead which were in it; and death and hell delivered up the dead which were in them: and they were judged every man according to their works.
[14] And death and hell were cast into the lake of fire. This is the second death.
[15] And whosoever was not found written in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire.
“After the Cross, and the Old Testament saints are moved into ‘the third heaven,’ who’s down there? Nobody but lost people. Today when somebody dies and goes to hell, it’s because they’re lost.
“Isaiah says ‘hell hath enlarged herself.’ It took over the whole place. After Christ comes back, and at the end of the millennium kingdom's thousand years, you have this 'Great White Throne Judgment' where the dead, both small and great--all the people down in hell--stand before God and all the people not found in ‘the book of life,’ i.e. lost people, are cast into 'the lake of fire'.
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“The verse says hell and death are cast into the lake of fire. Hell is a temporary holding cell until the final judgment.
"John 3:18 says, ‘He that believeth on him is not condemned: but he that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.’
“You see that word ‘already’? They didn’t have to become condemned; they are condemned already. God isn’t waiting to see whether you deserve to die and go to the lake of fire. You deserve it! You were already a sinner come short of the glory of God and condemned.
“It’s like if you go to the courthouse and they find you guilty, they then send you out to the county jail, but you return to the courthouse for your sentencing. There’s no ‘finding you guilty’—you’re already guilty, dude! The trial’s already been had.
“If you want see the transcript from your trial—all of your arguments to get around it—go back and read Romans 1-3. In chapter three, Paul says, ‘We have before proven; we’ve taken you to court and proven you that you’re guilty!'
"You were hoping for a ‘not guilty’ sentence? YOU? Knowing about you what you know about you, and you think you’re going to stand before a righteous God?! Well, you know better than that.
“What the Great White Throne Judgment is is the sentencing where lost people are sent to the Big House called the lake of fire. That’s where you’re ‘judged out of the books’ and according to your works.
"The severity of the punishment takes place there and then all of that is cast down into the lake of fire. They don’t experience the second death in hell; they experience the second death here. Hell’s bad, but in the lake of fire there’s something else that goes on that’s even badder than bad.”
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