Becky was miserable in her marriage. She was ready to give up, but God pricked her heart. I got down on my knees and I said, Lord, I can't do this.
I said, God, if I'm going to stay, I cannot leave, but God, you've got to take over because I can't do this anymore. God answered Becky's prayer in an unexpected way, and it transformed her family. I went to the mailbox one day and got my mail, and there on the top of the stack of mail was a magazine from Focus on the Family.
And every article in the magazine was about marriage. Talk about amazing like that. That was a miracle. I knew it was a miracle.
I'm Jim Daly. Through our magazine and podcast, Becky was able to restore and rebuild the relationship with her husband. And today you can help us give families hope like Becky's. Donate and your gift will be doubled. Call 800 the letter A in the word family or visit Focus on the Family dot com slash gift. And this is the thing that's just it's hard to imagine, but it's important to imagine what people say in God's presence is that every relationship we have on Earth is just a metaphor of this relationship we were meant to have with the one who created that makes perfect sense.
Even, I mean, not only child to parent, friend to friend, best friend who knows you and gets you and does things with you, but also spouse to spouse. Well, that's John Burke, and he's with us today on Focus on the Family with Jim Daly as we take a look back at our best of 2024 episodes. John will be talking about the hope of heaven that we have as followers of Christ. Thanks for joining us.
I'm John Fuller. John, I don't know about you, but the thought of heaven excites me. It does. Yes.
Yeah. I know it's it's how we should be as believers. I mean, I'm I'm looking forward to it. And I love the promise in the New Testament right there in the Book of Revelation, chapter 21, verse four. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes and death shall be no more. Neither shall there be mourning nor crying nor pain anymore for the former things have passed away. That's something to look forward to. I think it's even difficult to perceive that because this life is so full of burden and tears and disappointment. But we're looking forward to when that will not be the case. And John Burke is here with us and he's going to share some amazing stories that will highlight an understanding of God that I think will challenge conventional wisdom, Christian wisdom particularly, and maybe stretch our ability to understand the character of God.
Yeah. God's love is so big and deep and wide. John Burke is a popular speaker and author. He founded Gateway Church in Austin, Texas, and he was lead pastor there until just this past May. He's married to Kathy. They have an adult son and daughter and two granddaughters. We've already heard about the grandkids.
Let's see the photos. I love it. And today we're going to be talking about John's book, Imagine the God of Heaven. Near-death experiences, God's revelation, and the love you've always wanted. And we've got details about John and this book in the show notes. John, welcome back. Well, great to be back. You've got two granddaughters.
Let's start there. Do a little bragging, Grandpa bragging. Is it fun? It's the best. In fact, I was on the way to the airport. I went 20 minutes out of my way because I had 30 minutes, and I went to hang out with my little granddaughter.
Give them a hug. Yeah. Oh, man.
It's the best. I think you are smitten. I am. That's a good thing. Your book, Imagine Heaven, was a bestseller.
We covered that. You and I, that just ignited in many ways a sense of what heaven could be like. For so many readers that got a hold of that book, it ended up being a bestseller, I think a New York Times bestseller. That's an achievement, and especially in a world that maybe isn't so open to spiritual things or certainly Christian things the way they once were. How do you explain that interest in people?
What's going on there? And, of course, you're covering near-death experiences in that book. Well, what I find fascinating is that people who would not necessarily be open to talking about God or heaven are fascinated with near-death experiences. Right.
Yeah. And I think, again, for those that didn't listen to that, go back in the archive and listen to those broadcasts because, again, there's a handful that really captured me. And maybe it's my enthusiasm, but it was profound. It was different. And even in that regard, I mean, you came at this as an agnostic, an engineer, and I love that mind. I mean, Gene is chemistry, and so, you know, you guys are very black and white. You want to see the facts.
You want to have everything kind of in a column, and I appreciated that approach. Describe that journey for yourself, and then out of it, I mean, you became a Christian. Yeah. I mean, I was. I was a skeptical agnostic, and my dad was dying of cancer. Someone gave him the very first research that coined the term near-death experience.
It's when someone clinically dies, their heart stops beating, their brainwaves cease, and yet they're resuscitated, and sometimes minutes, sometimes hours later. Yeah. Which is miraculous. Yeah, that's miraculous in itself. And when they come back, they talk about this reality of a life to come, more real than this life, and the wonders, the beauty, the reunions, this God of light and love. Some knew he was Jesus. Some look like Jesus. And what I'm really focusing on is not just their experience of heaven, but the God of heaven. Well, and those are the attributes you really get into, and that's fantastic, so it's not the experience of what they had. And that's really important and interesting, but you covered many of those stories in Imagine Heaven. Imagine the God of heaven really talks about God. Exactly. And I think it is proof of God's existence.
I think God is giving these testimonies all over the globe right now as a witness to our globally connected world that he is real, that he is the God of all nations. That's well said. Let's talk about the idea, and you've dealt with this. Sometimes in the Christian community particularly, we can be very careful, rightly so, about these areas, these edgy areas of experience. And some people might even think, well, this sounds a little new-agey. And you and I talked before that in some ways the Christian community handed these experiences over to other philosophies, New Age, et cetera. But you can find them in Scripture. Describe that if you were talking to somebody with that attitude, you know, John, this is all good.
It's a great experience, but it's really new-agey to me. Well, I do not advocate that people go form their view of heaven or their view of hell or their view of God just from reading near-death experiences. Right.
I don't. And that's not – what I'm trying to do is I'm trying to show – and by the way, the reason for that is that every one of these is a – look at it like a testimony. If I went back to Jesus' day and went around Jerusalem and interviewed witnesses, right, of Jesus raising the dead, doing miracles, I would hear some say, he's of God.
He's the Messiah. How else do you explain this? And others who saw and experienced the same thing saying he's demonic, he's a sorcerer, he's dangerous. Right. So an experience, though real, does not take away free will. And that's a very, very important thing. That just because these people experience heaven or experience the God of the Bible, and that's who they're describing.
And that's what I'm showing in Imagine the God of Heaven, is that this is none other. And it doesn't matter what their previous culture or even religious background. This is all over the globe. All over the globe. Hindus, Muslims, Buddhists.
Buddhists, Muslims. So, yeah, and I mean, some of the stories just blew me away. Let's get into Santosh. I've got one here lined up. Well, that's the one I was about to tell you. Oh, good.
Let's hit it. He's such a dear man. He's become a great friend now. So Santosh was a manufacturing engineer. And I like to say that. I like to say that as well, that a lot of these people, they're doctors, they're lawyers, they're engineers. They're going to be critical of such an experience. That's the point. To talk about this hurts them in their careers. It doesn't make sense.
But they say it was more real than anything they've ever experienced. So Santosh is a manufacturing engineer. He grew up in India. His father was a Sanskrit scholar.
Hinduism was all he knew. He had gallstones that erupted into his pancreas. He hears code blue, code blue.
His heart had crashed. And he's suddenly up above his body. One of the commonalities like we talked about, you know. Right. That also Paul talks about that when we leave this body, we have a spiritual body. And they say this. And that spiritual body can go different places.
But we have a spiritual body. And he experiences this. He realizes he's dead. This brilliant light comes to him. And he describes, and this is commonly how they describe, brighter than the sun but mesmerizing to look at.
Not hard to look at. And he said, I instantly knew this was a divine light. This was God. And this was an authority that I had to obey.
There wasn't question. But he said, but I fell in love with this divine light. He sensed this God of light is for me. So then he follows. And they travel. He said they traveled through, and he described it as tunnels.
That's also a commonality many times. But they come to this place. And this is what just. Santosh said this light parks over this giant, enormous, beautiful compound. With very high, beautiful walls and inside lush, gorgeous grounds and mansions and these buildings of otherworldly material. And he said it was enormous, thousands of miles, and it was a square. And there were 12 gates.
He said, I counted them. And all these gates were gorgeous, but they were closed to me. And then on the outside, I noticed angels guarding the gates.
And suddenly I knew I'm looking at the kingdom of heaven. Now he is describing the new Jerusalem in Revelation 21. He doesn't know it. Right.
He had never read the Bible. But he's seeing it. But he's seeing it. And there's a lot more to it. But he sees a vision of hell, and he describes it. And it is an abyss of darkness and a lake of fire. This is a Hindu guy, and that's how he's describing it.
Right. And I have others from around the world describing these same things, even though they wouldn't have known the Bible. Then he looks to his right, and there he sees what he says is the Almighty on his throne. And he said, I looked up. And he later believes it was Jesus in his glorified state. And he looks up, and he sees eyes.
And he said it was like lightning coming out of the eyes. Well, Daniel described that, too, when he sees God. So did John in Revelation 1.
Right. And so this is Jesus in his glorified state. And he instantly knows this is the Almighty. He drops to his knees, and he said, forgive me, Lord. Forgive me, Lord. Forgive me, Lord. And he thought, this is my last day.
There is no hope. And then he hears the Lord. And he said, I was shocked because I heard tenderness and mercy and compassion and love in his voice. And he said, I'm going to send you back. And when I send you back, I want you to love your family, especially your daughter.
She needs you right now. Wow. Now think about that.
Wow. Here's a guy who doesn't know the Lord, but the Lord knows, even if we don't know him, he wants to guide us. But we have to turn to him. Let me interject this, because when I was reading your first book, I had this discussion, I felt, with the Lord on this. Because I was like, wow, Lord, that's very generous that this Muslim Hindu fill in the blank person would pass out of this body into some other state and have this experience with you.
And then he comes back and begins to follow you. That's only probably going to happen to a handful of people of these other faiths. Is that fair? I mean, I actually said that. It's embarrassing. Yeah.
What I heard back in my heart was, oh, do you set the boundaries of my grace? Yeah. I was like, Lord, I don't understand it at all. Yeah.
You mean they're going to get paid the same amount I am and I worked all day and they only worked one hour? The impression I had is he loves everyone he created. Look, we don't understand this as followers of Jesus.
There are so many parables Jesus tried to give of this. Exactly. The unfair workers, right? The brothers. Yeah. If I want to be gracious.
The older brother and the younger brother. And we've got to remember all the way back, the Bible, and this is what I'm trying to do in Imagine the God of Heaven is show, this is a comprehensive book about God, about his love story. You know, the Bible is a love story.
It starts with the relationship, relationship broken, God making a way to restore relationship, and the whole thing ends in revelation with a wedding. Yeah. If you miss that, you miss so much of why God does the things he does the way he does. It's the context. It's the context. Yeah. You miss the context. You're left asking a lot of like, well, that's not fair. And why do you do that? Right.
Why don't you? And we deal with all that. But also we're showing in this book that the heart of God, the character, the attributes of God and how God is ultimately the love you have always wanted.
Yes. And this is, so this is what Santosh, cause this is crazy. So Santosh then asked, he sees to the right of this throne a, what he calls a narrow gate or a narrow door that was open to him. He knew it was open to him. And when the Lord was so tender and compassionate to him, he said, Lord, when I come back, I want to go through that narrow door. I want to go into your kingdom. And he said, what must I do?
And he's thinking what religion must I join and go to every week. And here's what the Lord said. I want honest relationship.
I want to see how honest you are with me. Not, not one day a week, 365 days a year, every day. Walk with me, surrender daily to me. The wages of sin is death.
So stop and walk, walk with me. Well, he didn't know what that meant. And then he's back.
Here's the crazy part. He starts seeking God with all his heart. He's like, that was motivating. Who is this God?
This is not like the Hindu gods. Why did he have compassion on me? I knew I deserved that abyss, but he was so tender and compassionate. Well, two years later, his daughter is invited to sing and acquire for an Easter service at a church.
Santosh and his wife go. When he walks in, he feels the love of that divine presence. And the message is on the narrow gate and the broad highway and how Jesus is the gate through which we enter the kingdom of heaven. And he goes back, starts reading the Bible and he says, this is everything I experienced. John, let's go into some of these attributes of God. There's more stories we're going to, if you can stick around, we'll go another day and talk more about these experiences and what people are encountering. But two attributes that you've talked about and that is common in these experiences.
Let's hit those. I think one is the God of light and what's the other. Well, I mean, God is light and God is love.
That's a big one. And those two, interestingly, what people commonly say all around the world, and this is one of the evidentiary parts of this, is that it doesn't matter if it was a Muslim imam in Rwanda. I've got a Muslim in Tehran, a woman related to the prophet Mohammed, but they experienced this God of light.
Sometimes he looks more like Jesus, but brilliant light coming out of them and a love that is our word love doesn't do justice. And so here's the thing, like this one guy, Dr. Ron Smotherman, he's a neurologist and a psychiatrist. And he actually, he had a guy staying in his house while he was traveling.
He was traveling the world doing speaking comes back. The guy had had a psychotic break and attacks him. And suddenly Ron said, time stopped.
And yes, I mean, I mean, who is this guy as a knife aimed at his heart and is like frozen there as Dr. Smotherman sees this, what he called, he said, imagine being five feet away from the point of a nuclear explosion. He said, the power of this light was roiling, you know, like a nuclear explosion. But he said, what was roiling even more was the love. And he said, instantly, these nine qualities of God were like imprinted upon him.
One was infinite love. And he describes it like this. He said, imagine our love is like you're in the ocean and these gentle waves are lapping against your knees. You know, that's our love. That's human love. He said, and then a tsunami comes. That's God's love. He said, in a good way, it just blows you away. But what it blows away, he said, is death and all fear and all worry and leaves you with, he said, one of the qualities was this joy of God that he said, it put me into ecstasy. Wow. Which, you know, that's part of what I think when people read Imagine the God of Heaven.
It's going to blow their categories. Yeah. And we need to. Yeah. We all put God in a box. You know, some of us, we don't see how pure and holy and sovereign and righteous and just and, you know, enormous God is. On the other hand, some of us don't realize how relatable and loving love. And, well, not just loving fun. Yeah. And funny. See, now that for some people, what?
That's not right. I'm going to enjoy that. Well, and I've got I mean, I've got some stories that prove it, but also scripture that proves it that we've just overlooked, because what happens is we we take some scriptures and some things we've heard from pastors or preachers or others and we make our box. We have to.
We're finite. But I believe that Imagine the God of Heaven is going to expand your box both ways. Yeah. And that's so, Ron, you know, like Ron talks about the humor of God. That was one of the characteristics that just caught him off guard mixed with the purity. He called it purity. I think he was describing the holiness of God. He said he's so pure, he's so innocent.
Absolutely. And then the last thing he said to me and I didn't go through all the qualities. He said the power, you know, was like a nuclear explosion.
Like this is power that if you didn't feel his love, you would just fear and tremble. Right. He said. But it elicits surrender, he said. Yeah. But then he said. But you know what?
Of all these qualities, he was humble. Yeah. When and when you read the overlapping stories like this of people experiencing God, it just it blows your category.
Yeah. First John four eight tells us God is love. We've talked about that. That's one of the things that is so inspirational about the Christian faith. I mean, he's a God of justness. I get that.
The commandments. I get that. But overall, he loves us. And so often we forget that. You have a story of Mary from London who experienced God's love in that unique way. Tell us that story.
Yeah. Mary was she was actually dying in childbirth or in a complication with pregnancy. And she had a lot of shame. She grew up Catholic, but she she went away from the church and wasn't sure about God. She got involved in an affair, got pregnant.
You know, it's just it was a mess. And then she dies and she's up above and she's watching the resuscitation. So she then takes off and she goes to this beautiful place and in the presence of this God of light.
And she said, even though I had I had turned from Catholicism, I knew this was God. And in his presence, she experiences a love that is just unconditional, way beyond what a parent has for a child, even or a granddad for his little granddaughters. And he tells her, your son is going to live and you need to go back and you need to raise him. And she goes back.
But as she's coming back. So this is going to sound bizarre, but she passes through the top side of the ceiling fan as she's coming back to her body and she notices a red sticker on the top side of the ceiling fan. And when she comes to, she can not only describe who's in the room and what they were doing during her resuscitation, she finally no one would believe her. It's why a lot of these people just stay silent.
That's the first reaction they get. She convinced a nurse and an orderly to get a ladder and go look on the top side of the ceiling fan, the side you can't see. And she described what was written on the red sticker.
And sure enough, there it was. Right. Had lots of those. Yeah. Lots of those. And man, Jim, I'll tell you one of the most profound things that I wrote right about in Imagine the God of Heaven is several people I interviewed said in God's presence.
So Erica was one of them. She's experiencing this love beyond measure. And then God is giving her these lessons and like lessons about our uniqueness, how he created each one of us unique.
He gave us gifts. We're not to compare to each other because we are to make a unique ripple effect through humanity. And our thoughts and our words and our deeds are what make that ripple effect.
And it all works with God's plan. But then he then she said that feeling shifted and I feel this enormous sadness. She said, I didn't know where it was coming from at first. She said, imagine a sadness like you had just lost all your children. And she said it was like that, but even more. And then she realized the sadness is coming from God. And she said, God, why are you so sad? And he said, look, he was giving her these lessons.
Right. And she sees the planet. She sees earth. And suddenly she realized, oh, my, my children are down there. She loved her children.
She had stopped her nursing career to homeschool her children because she loved them so much. And she was a Christian. And she then feels this overwhelming sadness again. And she sees these flames around the planet. And then the planet bursts into flames and she starts to panic like my family's there. And then she sees these lights, sees what she realized were souls as they came by her going to heaven.
Wow. And her family. And she realizes they're safe.
And she has this like moment of ah. And she turns to God and says, God, why are you still sad? Look, they're coming to heaven.
They're here with us. And he says, look again. And she looks again and she sees souls who are still there.
They're not coming. And what she realized. And the Lord said to her, Erica, with the gift of life, I give the gift of free will.
And what he was saying is that it's real. We're here in a time of choosing. You know, God said to Moses, I've set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now choose life. The Lord is your life. Choose life that you may live. And right. Well, of course. And so we are we are in that time. And and the thing is, it it saddens the heart of God when people don't choose him. They reject him.
But it's real. Well, John Burke offered such great insights, some sobering thoughts as well on today's episode of Focus on the Family with Jim Daly. And there's much more to come. Well, I really enjoy our time in the studio with John Burke. He's always a great guest. The stories he shares are captivating.
And the picture of heaven that he paints is so exciting. It gets me going and gives me great hope and encouragement. I share this message with so many people in airports or I know people that are have loved ones passing away.
And I'll talk about this very content. And let me remind you that Focus on the Family is here for you. If you've never given your life to Jesus Christ, we'd love to talk with you about this most important decision. And we have so many resources available for you, like our free online article, Coming Home. You'll learn what it means to embrace the love of God and accept his grace. And then what are the next steps you can take to become part of his family? We also have the book we talked about today by John Burke, Imagine the God of Heaven.
And you can get it directly through us. That money goes right back into ministry, providing hope to help families just like yours. After a year of stressful politics, financial challenges, unbelievable social changes that are occurring, we want and we need to give these families hope.
The Christmas season is the perfect time to share the hope that Jesus Christ came to give. You can come alongside hurting individuals to give families hope through your support of Focus on the Family. And when you give a gift of any amount today to the ministry, we'll send you a copy of Imagine the God of Heaven as our way of saying thank you for helping others. Donate today and get your copy of the book from John Burke, Imagine the God of Heaven, when you call 800, the letter A in the word family, or stop by the show notes.
We'll have the links right there for you. On behalf of the entire team, thanks for listening to Focus on the Family with Jim Daly. I'm John Fuller inviting you back as we hear more of the conversation with John Burke, and once again, help you and your family thrive in Christ.
Do you feel that chill in the air? It's finally that time of year to decorate the tree, put up those Christmas lights, and bake some cookies. Then kick back with some hot cocoa and a new season of the Christmas Stories podcast. We'll bring you new stories to warm your heart, fun Christmas activities to do with your family, and reminders of Christ's love for us. Listen at FocusOnTheFamily.com slash Christmas Stories and like and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.
