By Kayla DeKraker
Is heaven real? Although unbelievers doubt its reality, author and speaker Lee Strobel has studied the topic and heard people’s “near-death experience” stories that verify heaven’s validity.
“A ‘near-death experience’ is when someone is clinically dead, they have no brain waves, no respiration, no heartbeat, and so technically they’re dead but they’re going to come back,” Strobel explained on Kirk Cameron’s TBN show. “They are going to be revived, they are going there, and so they can come back and tell you about what they experienced when they were clinically dead.”
On the other hand, some people communicate what they see of the afterlife moments before they die.
“A deathbed experience is when a person is literally about to die, and they get a glimpse of what’s to come,” Strobel said.
Strobel is a well-known auther and former investigative journalist whose testimony explored in “The Case for Christ” book and Movieguide® Award-Winning movie by the same name.
He explained how in the Bible before Stephen was stoned, he saw heaven.
Acts 7:55-56 says, “But Stephen, full of the Holy Spirit, looked up to heaven and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing at the right hand of God. ‘Look,’ he said, ‘I see heaven open and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God.’”
Lee Strobel continued, “People see angels coming for them. And here’s what’s fascinating, children who are dying often see angels coming for them, but they’re not angels that you would think the children would imagine if this were just in their imagination.”
He shared how one young girl who was dying told her mother that she could see angels. Her mother, who couldn’t see anything, played along and mentioned the angels’ beautiful wings, since most children believe angels have wings. The girl stopped her mom and explained that these angels did not have them.
Lee Strobel warned, however, that the demonic realm is also real, and people should not seek such experiences.
“There is a demonic world. The Bible says that Satan can masquerade as an angel of light and so we have to be very careful,” he warned. “The Bible tells us to stay away from psychics…we have to compare it to scripture.”
Related: Lee Strobel Says God Wants ‘Us To Yield Our Lives To Him’
Stories like this can give us hope for the life God has in store for us.
Thankfully many people believe in life after death, but not all believe in Jesus. 2 Corinthians 5:6-9 tells us that there is hope to be with God after death if we accept Jesus as Lord:
Therefore we are always confident and know that as long as we are at home in the body we are away from the Lord. For we live by faith, not by sight. We are confident, I say, and would prefer to be away from the body and at home with the Lord. So we make it our goal to please him, whether we are at home in the body or away from it.
There is wonderful hope in Jesus, not only for this life, but also for the one to come.
Read Next: What Lee Strobel Discovered About the Afterlife Following Near-Death Experience
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