Protestant Near-Death experiences?

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As a Catholic do you think Protestant Near-Death Experiences are authentic? For example


  1. *]A Protestant Korean artist says she saw Hell and Jesus
    *]An Ex-Voodoo Protestant claims to have seen Heaven and Hell
    *]A Protestant pastor who claimed to have spent 23 minutes in Hell
    *]A Protestant man who claimed to have spent 90 minutes in Heaven
    *]An Ex-Muslim Protestant who said He saw Jesus and converted

    In your opinion were all these people really seeing the supernatural or were they just dreaming, delusional, or tricked?

    What are your thoughts? I’m Catholic by the way.
 
followingtheway said:
As a Catholic do you think Protestant Near-Death Experiences are authentic? For example


  1. *]A Protestant Korean artist says she saw Hell and Jesus
    *]An Ex-Voodoo Protestant claims to have seen Heaven and Hell
    *]A Protestant pastor who claimed to have spent 23 minutes in Hell
    *]A Protestant man who claimed to have spent 90 minutes in Heaven
    *]An Ex-Muslim Protestant who said He saw Jesus and converted

    In your opinion were all these people really seeing the supernatural or were they just dreaming, delusional, or tricked?

    What are your thoughts? I’m Catholic by the way.
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  1. i’ve been wondering this too like for an example my protestant mom says God talks too her all the time and talks like thy and thee like old english
 
I think they are as legitimate as Catholic experiences. I’ll let you ponder on that.

In any case, God made Protestants, too, and loves them just as much.
 
I’ve heard of people of all faiths (or lack thereof) having such experiences. It’s not something exclusive to Christian – specifically Catholic – people.
 
There’s no reason why such NDEs would be any less authentic than anybody’s.

If the human being has a mechanism for his/her mind to survive and perceive through death, it would logically work the same for everybody. And the rules of the “afterlife” would likewise remain the same for everybody.

Most of us are going to get Purgatory, anyhow.

If people’s NDEs were governed mostly by their religion, I’d say that was an argument for their inauthenticity.

I have diffciulties with NDE as a source of true knowledge anyhow. But I’d take anybody’s account at equal value. Most such accounts are not Catholic, anyhow.

ICXC NIKA
 
There are theological differences between many NDE’s. Some support reincarnation, while others reject it. Some support homosexuality being valid, others reject it. Some support Hell being eternal, others say it’s temporary. There is a lot of variation in NDE’s, which shows them, just like visions people have on Earth, to be a far from foolproof way of knowing things about reality.

Truth is one and the same, not contradictory of itself, so the error must be in the NDE’s rather than in the truth.

Therefore with NDE’s, while there can be truth revealed to people through them, they should not to be considered foolproof by any means. No matter who has had them. Even some of the saints experienced false and deceptive visions, and were convinced by them, at times. St. Gemma Galgani was once deceived by a devil that appeared in the guise of her confessor, uttering horrible things to make her no longer go to that holy man. And St. Catherine of Siena was once deceived by a devil that appeared to her as the Virgin Mary and said she was not immaculately conceived (this was before the dogma was defined, so the matter was in question).
 
We are so blessed to have a teaching authority (Magisterium) of the Church. This keeps us from falling into error.

People can have experiences, but we need to remember that even though it may seem very real to them, and might be, it is very subjective as well.

Our One, Holy, Apostolic, Catholic Church defines faith for us, and contains all the truth we need to know.

It is good that private revelation, when approved by the Church as okay to believe, can be very helpful to us.
 
My big issue with NDE is that, ultimately, it might prove to be just the dying head giving its owner one last sound-and-light show before the curtain falls. Obviously, if that is true, none of the theological content will matter anyhow.

If NDE could be proven to be non-biological, then obviously this would reopen the whole field of human eschatology. I doubt that is even theoretically possible, however.

ICXC NIKA
 
Also, not all famous experience accounts are in fact NDE, Specifically, the author of 23 MINUTES IN HELL, Bill Wiese, was NOT reported to be nearly dead, or anything like that, when he had his supposed visions.

In cases like this, how do we know it’s not just imagination?

ICXC NIKA
 
I am a lifelong Catholic, studying currently for the Diaconate, and I think I’m a pretty level-headed guy. I had an NDE about 22 years ago. I won’t go into details about all of it, but the ‘content,’ if you will, seemed to be consistent with my Catholic faith, and it was a very positive experience for me, then, and now in retrospect.

I have to say, though, that the classic NDE experiences that were a part of what happened for me (looking down on myself from overhead, the tunnel etc.) remind me of that odd event that happens to a lot of people right before they go to sleep–where they feel as if they’re falling? We’re told that the experience, which feels very real, is due to a sudden change in blood pressure right before yo go to sleep; in other words, it’s due to a physical cause. I can’t honestly say that much or most or all of what I experienced wasn’t something like that.

It was meaningful for me in a lot of ways, but I wouldn’t dream of going on talk shows etc. and telling others all about it as if my experiences were objectively real. I’m mildly interested in the various accounts people have, but no more. If the NDE makes them a better, kinder person, or a more effective minister, then great! If they’re trying to finagle a book tour or something, I tune it out.
 
There was an interesting report on local TV long ago in my city involving a surgeon who has been my doctor. He’s a world-class neurosurgeon. Briefly, a woman was drained of blood, her heart was stopped, and her temperature lowered to near freezing. She was flatlined, totally, by her medical team while a brain operation was performed on her. She was clinically dead – brain dead, heart dead, no signs of life. She was restored to life by reversing the procedures and she told the neurosurgeon the experience she had while dead. She was watching overhead, heard what he said, etc. etc. etc. Now that’s a story I can believe. The doctor was interviewed and said the medical profession needs a new definition of “dead.” Brain dead isn’t it. I’ve never forgotten this story.
 
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