Is Heaven Real?
The man was on his way home from a conference when he was in a terrible multi-car wreck. The paramedics arrived and pronounced him dead. His body was so mangled that they didn’t even bother to pull it from the car. What was the point in wasting time on a dead man? But while Don Piper’s body lay crushed in his vehicle, the real Don Piper awoke to a different reality. He found himself outside the loveliest gate that he had ever seen. It had the luster of a pearl. On each side and above it, walls extended far beyond where he could see. The gate opened into a city that was beautiful and majestic beyond description.
Waiting for Don Piper outside the gate was a huge welcoming party. As he walked toward them, he realized that all of them were people from his life who had died. Don was a strong believer in Jesus Christ who had spent his life in ministry as a pastor. As he looked at them he realized that each person waiting for him had contributed something of importance about his knowledge of Jesus. He recognized every single face. No matter what they had looked like in this world, and some had grown quite old, each was now young, indescribably beautiful and filled with utter joy. There was the Light of Heaven in them.
That Amazing Light, lovely beyond anything in this world, was everywhere. Piper says it felt as though he spent a long time greeting and talking to each person. They didn’t reminisce about the past, they talked about the joy of being in Heaven right now. Finally, they led him toward the gate. As he got closer, the light from inside grew into the Blazing Glory of God. It was so brilliant and beautiful that it made every other light seem like darkness, but it didn’t hurt his eyes. And he heard singing such as he had never heard in this world. He says that all the joyful songs that had ever been written for the glory of God here on earth were blended into a great medley with the music of Heaven.
As he walked toward the gate, the joy that flooded through him was beyond anything he could have imagined. He knew that he had come home, to the place he had always wanted to be. Led by the crowd, he drew close to the gate and saw inside. Before him lay a huge ravishing city made of the purist gold. From the heart of the city, blazed the Light of Jesus Christ Himself. Piper was overwhelmed with ecstasy. But just as he was about to go through the gate, he was jerked back to the agony of this world. He awoke in his crushed body. A pastor friend who had been at the conference had come upon the accident and recognized Piper’s car. He had gotten into the back seat behind him and was praying fervently for him.
Don Piper wrote about the experience in his book, 90 Minutes in Heaven. He says that often he feels a terrible loneliness and a deep desire to go back to that City. He writes that he especially misses the music. It echoes in his mind and nothing on earth is like it. He was not given a vision of Jesus, but he knew that He was there within those walls. The physical damage that he sustained in the accident stayed with him for years.
A lot of people have ideas about Heaven. Often it’s a vague image of happiness or maybe angels sitting on clouds playing harps. And there are many who don’t believe Heaven exists at all. When you die you just vanish. Some put their faith in the vague eastern mystical concepts of Brahman and Nirvana. Through virtually endless cycles of karma and samsara eventually you achieve a state where all personhood vanishes into a great unknown.
In opposition to all of that is what Jesus Christ taught about Heaven. In John 14:1 He says to his followers: “Let not your heart be troubled; you believe in God, believe also in Me. In My Father’s house are many dwelling places. If it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to Myself that where I am, there you may be also.”
Those words were meant for everyone in the world who has placed their faith in Him. The Gospel of John was written for non-Jewish readers. For people who lived in the ancient pagan world, death was a terrifying mystery. To the Greeks the afterlife was a place of dark shadows where you would confront a river called Styx, a word that means hate and detestation. A ghostly boat would arrive to take you to the land of the dead, a world of gloom and darkness where you would become a ghost or what they called a shade.
If you were Egyptian you believed that at death you would stand before the dog faced god Anubis who would weigh your heart against a feather to see if you were worthy to progress upward. Of course, even in that day there were some who believed that after death there was nothing, you just ceased to exist.
So Jesus was saying to His followers, “I am going away to where God, my Father, is and in that vast creation I’m going to build a place for you to live which will be your eternal home. I’ll be there with you.” This implies several things. First, the peace and comfort of going home. The year that I was in Vietnam, how I longed for home and it was so wonderful when I got on a plane to return there. Everyone on that flight was a soldier. When the wheels left the ground all of us spontaneously cheered. The exhaustion, terror and deep loneliness of war were over. Finally, finally, we were going home.
The second implication of Jesus’ statement is that at death there will be no loss of personhood. Can you imagine Him telling his followers, “I’m going to prepare a place for you, but when you get there you won’t have a clue who you are. You won’t have any memory. You won’t even know that you’re a person. But don’t be afraid. It’s all fine.” Notice that He used the words, I and you. This means that He will know us and we will know Him, so, obviously, we will know ourselves and each other? Third, He doesn’t say, “After being here a while with me you will be reincarnated, sent back into a new body where you won’t remember anything about the endless lives that you have lived. So just struggle on in misery. See you again at the end of life 468. By the way, in the last one you were pretty horrible. So in the next one you’re going to be a cockroach. But don’t worry, it won’t last long before you get stomped.” Fourth, and this is so wonderful. In the place Jesus has prepared all the sorrows of this world will be healed.
Vicki Noratuk was born 22 weeks premature and became totally blind unable to see any light or even the slightest shadow. As she grew up, she couldn’t understand the concept of light. Her dreams were only about touch and taste. Then at 22 years old, she was in a horrible car accident. Suddenly, she was outside of her body and that was when Vicki Noratuk began to see for the first time. And the world of sight was frightening.
In the emergency room she found herself floating near the ceiling. People were working on her. She could see them and hear their conversation. At first she didn’t know the body on the table was her. She had never seen her own face. But the body was tall and thin, so she knew it must be her. And then it happened. While she was looking down at herself, suddenly, she was pulled out of the room. Vicki rose up through the entire hospital until she was above the roof. For a brief moment, she could see the entire area. The freedom was wonderful. Then she began to hear beautiful music. Instantly, her view of this world vanished. Vicki found herself travelling up some kind of dark tube moving toward light at the end. She heard lovely hymns.
Popping out of the tube Vicki rolled onto grass. All around her were trees and flowers. And many people. She had entered a world of ecstasy filled with radiant light. And she says that you didn’t just see the radiance, you could feel it. In the light was overwhelming love. As she tells it in her words, “Everybody there was made of light. I was made of light. There was love everywhere. It was like love came from the grass, love came from the birds, love came from the trees.
Through the light, five people walked up to welcome her. Two were little girls who had been with her in school. They had died years before. One had been eleven and the other six. In life not only had they been blind, they had Down syndrome. But here they were beautiful and healthy. And they weren’t children anymore. Two of the others were people who had cared for her growing up. And then there was her grandmother who had died just two years before. She hugged Vicki. No words were spoken. No words were needed.
As she stood in the garden world of Heaven, Vicki was overwhelmed with knowledge. She found that she could understand languages that she had never known. Suddenly, she knew how the planets were formed. And math. She understood calculus. Never had she known that. Vicki realized that in this wonderful place were the answers to everything. Most of all, she began to understand amazing things about God. All of this fits perfectly with what the Apostle Paul wrote about Heaven in the New Testament book of I Corinthians chapter 13:12. He says, “For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.”
A radiant figure appeared beside Vicki. It was Jesus and His light was greater than all the other light in that world. He greeted her with great tenderness. She told Him how excited she was to be here and to learn so many things. Quietly, He said to her, “Yes, it’s wonderful, but you can’t stay here now. It’s not your time to be here yet. You have to go back.” That’s not what Vicki wanted to hear and she started arguing with Him, “No, I want to stay with you.” Jesus told her that she would be here again, but she had to go back and “and learn and teach more about loving and forgiving.”
Vicki wasn’t having any of that. She wanted to stay in Heaven forever. Then Jesus told her that she had to go back to have her children. And that changed everything. She had wanted so desperately to have children. Before she left Heaven, Jesus showed her a very personal vision. In a great panorama, Vicki saw everything that had happened from her birth. Gently, He helped her understand the importance of her actions and their repercussions. He helped her understand her life. When the review was over Jesus told her it was time to leave.
With what she described as a “sickening thud”, she was back in her body, blind once more and full of pain. Vicki Noratuck lived and was overjoyed to welcome three children into her life. But she waits for the moment when her blindness will be healed forever. She waits for the moment when she will go home. Her story was told by Kevin Williams in September 21, 2019 on the website Near-Death.com. The post is entitled People Born Blind Can See During NDE.
Vicki’s story means so much to me because my little sister, Virginia, had Down syndrome. She couldn’t read, but she knew Jesus. Through her life, over and over, she paged through a little New Testament which she left for us. Virginia passed away in 2006. I think of her now as Virginia, the Beautiful, of Heaven. I’m going to see her again. We’ll walk and talk together in ways we never could in this world.
Think about something with me. Jesus Christ loves you enough to have died for you. If you love someone enough to die for them and you are going to build a home for that person, wouldn’t all of your love be poured into the construction? Every detail would be an expression of that love.
Years ago, Carel and I had a home in the San Fernando Valley of Los Angeles. Carel is an artist, a painter and I love her work. It hangs in our home. In the backyard of that house we built a large art studio for her. I wanted it to be the perfect place where she could express her creativity, a place where she could have everything she needed to joyfully paint the visions that God would give to her. In that artistic home we tried to put everything she might need to make her happy and productive. If we want to do that for the people we love, what has Jesus prepared just for you? He’s the One who gave you your personality and all the gifts that you have. He knows what will make you happy far better than you do.
From what I read in the Bible, Heaven has two parts, Paradise, the garden world that Vicki experienced and The New Jerusalem, the city that Jesus built for those who love Him. So what does your home in that city look like? I believe it’s designed specifically with you in mind. When you enter the home He prepared for you, you will realize that all the other places you have ever lived were just temporary campsites. The only question is, do you want that home or will you refuse it? Heaven has been prepared for people who love Jesus and have received His forgiveness for all their sins. Is that who you are? I hope so. But why do your sins need to be forgiven? Aren’t you basically a good person? Isn’t that enough?
I live in the mountains of central California. Our water comes from our own well. We’ve had it tested. It is pure and delicious. Imagine that you come to my home for a visit. When you arrive, it’s blistering hot and you’re terribly thirsty. I bring you a glass of ice-cold mountain water. But before I give it to you, I say something strange. “You’re going to love this water, it’s so good. But I must tell you that in it is an invisible speck of feces. But not to worry, you can’t see it or taste it. Drink up and enjoy.” You wouldn’t touch that water. The pollution in it could kill you.
Our lives are like glasses of water and sin is the diseased pollution. Heaven, God’s home, is a place where not the tiniest drop of evil can be allowed in because like a virus it would metastasize and destroy everything, just as it has done in our world. Which presents a serious problem. A glass of contaminated water can’t cleanse itself. Any cleansing has to come from outside. And so it is with your life and mine. We may do things that clean us up quite a bit and that’s good, but it isn’t enough. It won’t get us into Heaven. We can burn a thousand candles, kneel endlessly in mosques, crawl on our knees over broken glass and pray to golden statues. The sin contamination remains and a polluted life ends in a polluted death. That’s why hell exists. It is eternal quarantine for people who refuse to be cleansed.
If your life is going to get pure enough for Heaven, help has to come from outside. That’s why Jesus Christ came. He who had never sinned took your sin and mine into His own body and paid the price for it by dying the death that you and I should have died. Now the miracle can be yours. First John 1:7 says that the blood of Jesus, God’s Son cleanses us from all sin. A single drop of His blood into your life and all sin is gone. From that moment, God sees you through the life of his Son as never having sinned at all. Welcome to Heaven. That doesn’t mean that everything we do in this world will be perfect. Far from it. But we will be perfect in the next. Here is the challenge. You have to want to be clean. You have to ask Him to forgive your sins and become Lord of your life. To do that means having the humility of a little child who knows he or she needs help and most people are too proud for that. They insist that they are just fine the way they are. It’s like dying of Ebola while you ride in a Rolls Royce.
Over and over, Jesus described the Kingdom of Heaven as an amazing treasure more valuable than all the wealth in this world. Think of what some people do to acquire great wealth. How do they seek it? That’s the way those who believe in Jesus are to seek the Eternal Kingdom of God. Take your eyes off cheap substitutes in this world. Seek His Kingdom and His righteousness, His Purity, with all the burning passion that some people have felt collecting bitcoin.
Those who have experienced the real Heaven are never the same again. They have been sent back as witnesses. I want to leave you with the story of a 70-year old accountant. These are his words: “They were rushing me to the intensive care unit because of my chest pains. They told me it was a heart attack. In the elevator, I felt my heart stop and I stopped breathing and I thought, “This is it”. The next thing I remember was looking down on my body in the intensive care unit. I don’t know how I got there, but they were working on me.” He goes on to say that there was a young doctor in a white coat and three nurses. An African American nurse was doing most of the work, shoving down on his chest. Another nurse was breathing for him and someone was yelling instructions. The African American nurse was wearing a black bowtie. All of this he saw only while he was above his body. His statement continues:
“Next thing I remember, I was going through this dark passage. I didn’t touch any of the walls. I emerged out into an open field and was walking toward a big, white wall which was very long. It had three steps leading up to a doorway in the wall. On a landing above the stairs sat a man clothed in a robe that was dazzling white and glowing. His face had a glowing radiance also. He was looking down into a big book, studying. As I approached him I felt a great reverence and I asked him, “Are you Jesus?” He said, “No, you will find Jesus and your loved ones beyond the door.” After he looked in his book he said, “You may go through.”
And then I walked through the door and saw on the other side this beautiful, brilliantly lit city reflecting what seemed to be the sun’s rays. It was all made of gold or some shiny metal with domes and steeples in beautiful array. And the streets were shining, not quite like marble but made of something I’ve never seen before. There were many people all dressed in glowing white robes with radiant faces. They looked beautiful. The air smelled so fresh. I have never smelled anything like it. There was a background of music that was beautiful, heavenly music. I saw two figures walking toward me and I immediately recognized them. They were my mother and father. Both had died years ago. My mother was an amputee and yet that leg was now restored. She was walking on two legs. I said to my mother, “You and father are beautiful.” They said to me, “You have the same radiance and you are also beautiful.”
As we walked along together to find Jesus, I noticed that there was one building larger than all of the others. It looked like a football stadium with an open end to the building, where a blinding light radiated from it. I tried to look up at the light but couldn’t. It was too brilliant. Many people seemed to be bowed in front of this building in adoration and prayer. I said to my parents, “What is that?” They said, “In there is God.” I will never forget it. I have never seen anything like it. We walked on as they were taking me to see Jesus and we passed many people. All of them were happy. I have never felt such a sense of well-being.
As we approached the place where Jesus was located, I felt this tremendous surge of electricity through my body as if someone had hit me in the chest. My body lurched upward as they were defibrillating my heart. I had been restored to my former life. But I was not too happy to come back. However, I knew I had been sent back to tell others about this experience. I plan to dedicate the rest of my life to telling anyone who will listen.” That experience is in the book Life, Death and Beyond by J. Kerby Anderson.
My friend, is your name written in that book? It is Jesus’ Book of Eternal Life. Only those who have asked for His forgiveness for their sins and given their lives to him will be allowed to enter through that door. The God who loves you more than you could ever imagine is waiting to welcome you home. Maybe you knew Jesus once, but you walked away. Isn’t it time to meet Him again?
As we speak about near death experiences of Heaven, I have to tell you something very important. There is a fake heaven and a fake Jesus that many people see when they are at death’s door. In the next essay we’re going to talk about that.
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