I just finished a new book
by neurosurgeon Eben Alexander. The name of the book is Proof of Heaven.
Alexander is well trained, teaches neurosurgery and has operated on the brains
of thousands of people. He formerly dismissed the idea of the “soul” as merely
the product of brain chemistry. Near Death Experiences, although seeming real
to the persons who are having them, are simply fantasies produced by brains
under extreme stress. This is what he believed until it happened to him.
In 2008 he suffered severe
undiagnosed pain and seizures and lapsed into a coma. His brain was being
attacked by an extremely rare illness. The part of his brain that controls
thought and emotion, which in essence makes us human, shut down completely. It
wasn’t that his brain was malfunctioning, it wasn’t functioning at all. He lay
immobile, in a deep coma for seven days. The neurosurgeons who attended him concluded
that he would not survive and after these seven days were preparing to pull the
plug on all the systems which were helping his physical body survive. But then
he awoke, a true medical miracle.
The greater miracle was
his memory of those seven days. While in the coma his spirit journeyed beyond
this world and encountered an angelic being who guided him into the deepest
realms of super-physical existence. He traveled with this angelic being between
different realms of heaven.
Reading his story reminded
me of someone who had a like experience, the apostle Paul. He claimed he knew a
man (conceded by Bible scholars to have been Paul himself) “who was caught up
to the third heaven.” (2 Corinthians 12:2) Interesting is the report of
Dr. Alexander that he experienced three levels of heaven.
His is a marvelous
account, but those of us who believe the Bible need no proof of heaven.
Grace and peace.
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