Blinded by the Light

By Quigg Lawrence

Blinded by the Light sounds an alarm for all who are confused by various reports of Near Death Experiences (NDEs). Lawrence discusses the characteristics of NDEs, including the dark tunnel, the out-of-body experience, the Being of Light, and theological claims such as reincarnation, universal salvation, and the divinity of humanity.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Thomas Nelson
• Release date: Jun 16, 2015
• ISBN: 9781418558048

Book preview

Blinded by the

LIGHT

Blinded by the

LIGHT

RAYMOND QUIGG LAWRENCE, JR.

Exposing the Truth About Near-Death Experiences

Blinded_by_the_Light_final_0003_001

Copyright © 1996 by Word, Incorporated All rights reserved. No portion of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or any other—except for brief quotations in printed reviews, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

All Scripture quotations in this book, except those noted otherwise, are from the

[author we need this information]

Other Scripture quotations are from the following sources:

The New International Version of the Bible (NIV),

copyright © 1983 by the International Bible Society.

Used by permission of Zondervan Bible Publishers.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:

Lawrence, Quigg

ISBN 0-8499-4004-4

[cip data to come]

ISBN 0-8499-1313-6

Printed and bound in the United State of America

6 7 8 9 BVG 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

To the seven martyrs

Bruce Spain (my mom)

Quigg Lawrence, Sr. (my dad)

Leslie Downs (my twin sister)

Annette (my bride)

Fleet (my son and best male friend)

Ann Preston (my daughter)

Mary Wynne (my younger daughter)

Contents

Foreword

Preface

Acknowledgements

Chapter One

Blinded by a Near-Death Experience

Chapter Two

What is a Near-Death Experience?

Chapter Three

Weighing NDE Truths Against Scripture

Chapter Four

What Causes a Near-Death Experience?

Chapter Five

Is the NDE a Spiritual Phenomenon?

Chapter Six

Are NDE Researchers Biased Against Christianity?

Chapter Seven

NDE Messages—Based on Faulty Bible Interpretation

Chapter Eight

The Threat of the NDE to the Church

Appendix A: A History of NDE

Accounts and Research

Appendix B: Basic Tenets of

New Age Philosophy

Appendix C: Understanding the Occult

Appendix D: Betty Eadie’s New Message: The Awakening Heart

Bibliography

Acknowledgments

Thank you to my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, who has defeated death and reconciled me to the Father. Thanks to my long-lost friend Mo Gill, M.D., for sharing Christ with me—that took a lot of courage!

Gerald McDermott, Assistant Professor of Religion at Roanoke College, took time out of his busy writing and teaching schedule to help a green author through the process. He has been and is a dear brother in the faith. Without his help and encouragement Blinded by the Light would never have been written.

I must give special recognition to Kathy Decker, my copy editor. She took an unwieldy, disjointed doctoral dissertation and breathed life into it. Her keen insight, sharp legal mind, and ability as an assisting author were essential to producing this book.

Thank you to Richard Lovelace, Richard Peace, and Gwenfair Walters, my professors at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, who encouraged me to have my dissertation published in popular form.

Thank you to Steve Wike for getting my manuscript into the hands of an acquisitions editor who would actually read it.

Thank you to my parish leaders at Church of the Holy Spirit for encouraging me to pursue a doctorate and to my staff and church family for humoring me when I ranted on and on about the NDE and the book.

Thank you to my secretary, Arline Hearn, for typing over 900 pages of notes during my doctoral studies and for keeping my study time free of non-emergencies. You are a godly woman.

Thanks to my twin brothers, Dave Fuller and Dave Anderson, for your encouragement and help.

Thank you to Robert Williams, M.D. and Paul Frantz, M.D., faithful brothers in my church who helped with the medical section.

A Special thanks to my brother in Christ, Doyle Lawson, the best bluegrass singer/musician in the world, whose CDs accompanied me in the midnight hours.

I gratefully acknowledge the sacrificial financial assistance given by Joseph and Laura Anna Adams and William L. Andrews. Without your help, I would be facing tremendous debt.

A debt of gratitude is owed to all who have attempted to analyze and interpret the NDE from a biblical perspective. Specifically, Tal Brooke and the staff at Spiritual Counterfeits Project in Berkeley, Doug Groothuis, Richard Abanes, Maurice Rawlings, Bill Alnor, John Ankerberg, John Weldon, and George Gallup, Jr.

Thank you to my friends at Word Publishing, David Moberg, Terri Gibbs, and Lara Lleverino for being longsuffering with a rookie author.

Finally, I thank and gratefully acknowledge the major sacrifices of my wife, Annette, and children, Fleet, Ann Preston, and Mary Wynne. You showed extraordinary grace and love to me, especially when I was grouchy and preoccupied. Next to the Lord, you are the joy of my life! I love you. Annette, I know this project was a real sacrifice for you, and I promise I will never again try to be a student, senior pastor, parent, and author simultaneously. If I do, you can give me a near-death experience!

Quigg Lawrence

Preface

It’s amazing that people can live with a serious problem yet be unaware of its danger. Parade magazine ran an article from Pravda some years back that recounted the story of a six-year-old Russian girl. This young girl went out into her family’s garden to pick tomatoes. She fell asleep and rested peacefully. When she awoke, she suddenly became aware of a serious problem—a snake had slithered into her throat while she lay sleeping. The girl was gripped with fear as she realized the reality of her situation.

Just as the snake worked its way into the throat of the unsuspecting Russian girl, so the insidious Serpent, Satan, is working his way into our culture through the phenomenon of the modern-day near-death experience (NDE).

The NDE is pervasive. In his 1990 statistical study of the NDE phenomenon, the pollster George Gallup estimated that 12 percent of all adult Americans, or almost twenty-three million people, have had a verge of death or temporary-death experience, and of that number about eight million have experienced some sort of mystical encounter along with the death event.¹ Moreover, on the heels of the 1975 publication of Raymond Moody’s seminal work on the NDE, Life After Life,² vast amounts of literature and media attention has been given to the subject of the NDE.

Books and articles on the subject abound—autobiographical accounts by people who have had NDEs (NDErs), researchers’ studies of NDEs, and all manner of interpretations of the causes and effects of the NDE. In 1990, NDE researcher Terry Basford’s annotated bibliography of books and articles on the NDE included over seven hundred sources.³ A recent trip through my local library’s computer card catalogue and periodical index revealed almost five hundred titles on the NDE, and this in a small rural community.

Articles on the NDE appear in such diverse periodicals as: Golf, Publishers Weekly, Discover, People Weekly, Essence, MaCall’s, Redbook, The Washingtonian, Psychology Today, Ladies’ Home Journal, Life, The American Legion, American Health, Reader’s Digest, and The National Inquirer.

Secular bookstores offer a plethora of books on the NDE, and there is no denying people’s appetites for these books. Moody’s Life After Life has surpassed an unbelievable twelve million copies in print. In August of 1994, two books on the NDE appeared together on the New York Times Best Seller List. In first place was Betty Eadie’s Embraced by the Light. In sixth was Dannion Brinkley’s Saved by the Light. The popularity of the NDE has given rise to fictional novels such as Peter James’ Twilight and even to a spate of satirical titles like Embarrassed by the Light and Purring in the Light: Near Death Accounts of Cats.

The print media, of course, has not been alone in capitalizing on the popularity of the NDE. The movie and television industries have played their parts. Hollywood has contributed such movies as Flat Liners, Ghost, Fearless, Always, and Blown Away. Secular talk shows, Unsolved Mysteries, and even morning news shows have featured those who claim to have had an NDE. Recently, QVC, the national home-sales television show, featured a live segment with Eadie, where over 100 copies of Embraced by the Light and its accompanying video sold in less than ten minutes. NDE researcher and author Carol Zaleski notes the great demand for NDErs on the talk-show circuit and other media forms:

In great demand on the talk-show circuit is the near-death experiencer who appears, escorted by sympathetic psychologists, as a latter-day Lazarus bearing clinically tested tidings of the afterlife. Every year the theme of revival from clinical death resurfaces in novels, documentary films, and fantasy or horror movies—complete with special effects. As one television commentator put it, Now in the twentieth century it’s fashionable to be dead and come back and talk about it.⁴

Sadly, the NDE phenomenon has even gained popularity through the Christian media and in Christian churches. Christian television shows such as the CBN’s 700 Club and TBN’s Praise the Lord often feature NDErs. Articles on the NDE have appeared in Guideposts,⁵ the NDE has made its way into Christian novels (for example, Death Trip by Mark Littleton); and it is not uncommon to find autobiographical accounts of NDErs in Christian bookstores. Christian churches have even offered Sunday school classes where such NDE books as Eadie’s Embraced by the Light, George Ritchie’s Return from Tomorrow, and Moody’s Life After Life are studied for spiritual benefit and enlightenment.

Having infiltrated our secular culture as well as the church, the NDE phenomenon is radically affecting the way our society views foundational issues: mankind’s purpose in life, Jesus Christ, salvation and the afterlife, and the Scriptures. On all of these issues, the message of the NDE is pointedly at odds with the teaching of biblical Christianity. The message of the NDE includes unorthodox notions of reincarnation; the belief that we need not fear death; the equality of all religions; universal salvation; salvation earned by good works (as opposed to faith); monism, pantheism, and the divinity of humankind; the relative unimportance of church organizations; the belief that we will judge ourselves; and the concept that primary authority for religious truth is based on experience (specifically the NDE), not on Scripture.

This is a false message, a false gospel. Is Satan behind it? Is Satan using the false gospel of the NDE to confuse Christians as well as the world at large? The fact that growing numbers of people have blithely swallowed the unorthodox messages of the NDE may attest not to the truth of those messages but to Satan’s masterful ability to blind us to the real truth. In the popularized version of the NDE, NDErs embark on an otherwordly journey where they encounter a Being of Light cloaked in warmth and love and imparting all-encompassing knowledge and an unmatched sense of well-being. The spiritual nature of the NDE, the warm, reassuring Being of Light, the resulting sense of enlightenment and well-being, all lead people into thinking that this must be a spiritual experience from God.

But are we being blinded by the Light? I was a member of an NDE cult. I have read every major book on the NDE; I have spent a year of intense doctoral-level study on the NDE and have searched the Scriptures with the background of an Episcopal priest. I believe the NDE is indeed a spiritual phenomenon—but is it Satan or God who is behind it?

The message of the NDE clearly contradicts the Scriptures and directs people away from the true gospel of salvation through Jesus Christ. How can this experience be of God? Risking an obvious comparison to Saturday Night Live’s church lady, I ask you to consider, Is it Satan’s message that is infiltrating our culture through the NDE, a message that leaves Christians and non-Christians alike with a reassuring feeling about the afterlife?

Regrettably, like the slumbering Russian girl, the church has been slow to recognize the Serpent in its midst. In spite of its tremendous popularity in our culture, there has been little awareness by Christian theologians or pastors of the NDE’s message and its impact on our culture.⁶ Only recently have biblically committed Christians thoroughly studied the message of the NDE. With few exceptions, most notably Richard Abanes’ Journey into the Light and Doug Groothuis’ Deceived by the Light,⁷ these books have focused on a single aspect of the NDE, such as hellish experiences;⁸ they have been written in response to a particular autobiographical account⁹ or are similarly limited in scope. It is also true that the NDE has been analyzed and made known for the most part by researchers and NDErs with decided biases against Christianity or with a limited understanding and skewed interpretations of the Bible.

In writing this book I hope to add to the body of NDE literature a Christian analysis that will thoughtfully and credibly expose Satan’s deception at work in the NDE. I feel strongly that Christians must be educated about the false gospel of the NDE and made aware of the urgent need to speak out against it. Moreover, as an evangelical Christian minister, it is my deepest desire to reach the many non-Christians who, believing the NDE’s promise of a pleasurable afterlife to all, would die without receiving the saving grace of our Lord Jesus Christ and upon death would be gripped with fear as they realize the reality of their situation.

To critically evaluate the NDE and its messages has necessarily involved examining and calling into question much of what my uncle espouses. So it is not without personal consequences that I have written this book. It is not without a sense of sadness that I have had to conclude that much of what my uncle teaches contradicts basic Christian doctrine.

If doctrine were merely a mental exercise conducted by theologians, I might not have ventured on this critical evaluation of the NDE and my uncle’s beliefs. But the NDE messages are not found only by ivory tower theologians in dusty books in seminary libraries. They are pervading our culture and having a dramatic influence on how we view life, death, God and Jesus Christ, salvation, the nature of humankind, humankind’s purpose in life, and the trustworthiness of God’s Word.

So I must speak out against them. To remain quiet would be disobedient to the Lord who has called me to be a pastor and guardian of the faith. Raymond Moody graciously insisted that he does not have all the answers on the NDE phenomenon and strongly encouraged ministers and other professionals to critically study and evaluate his preliminary findings.¹⁰ So I accepted his challenge. I have tried to write this book without a mean spirit and have endeavored to hold grace in one hand while searching for truth with the other. My hope is that all who read this book will see it for what it is meant to be—a comprehensive and thoughtful evaluation of the NDE from the perspective of a biblically committed Christian.

1 Telephone conversation with George Gallup, IV, on June 5, 1996; Gallup Organization, Gallup-Aipo, November 1990. Gallup Organization, Gallup-Aipo, November

2 Raymond Moody, Life After Life (Atlanta: Mockingbird Books, 1975).

3 Terry K. Brasford, Near-Death Experiences: An Annotated Bibliography (New York: Garland Publishing, 1990).

4 Carol Zaleski, Otherworld Journeys: Accounts of Near-Death Experience in Medieval and Modern Times (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987), 97.

5 Guideposts has even published two books on the NDE, one pairing George Ritchie’s Return from Tomorrow with Betty Malz’s My Glimpse of Eternity and another combining Moody’s first two books, Life After Life and Reflections on Life After Life.

6 Indeed, as discussed above, the church has been partially responsible for popularizing the NDE phenomenon.

7 Doug Groothuis, Deceived by the Light (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 1986). Press,

8 See, for example, Maurice Rawlings, To Hell and Back (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1993).

9 See, for example, Richard Abanes, Embraced by the Light and the Bible (Camp Hill, Pennsylvania: Horizon Books, 1994), an investigation of Betty Eadie’s Embraced by the Light.

10 Raymond Moody, Jr., Life After Life (Atlanta: Mockingbird Books, 1975), 184.

Chapter

1

BLINDED BY A NEAR-DEATH EXPERIENCE

I am no newcomer to the near-death experience (NDE). George Ritchie—the grandfather of the NDE—is my uncle. Ritchie, who had his NDE at Camp Barkley, Texas, in December of 1943, was the first person to share an NDE with Raymond Moody, whose pioneering book Life After Life launched the entire modern-day NDE movement. Moody dedicated that book to my uncle and quoted him anonymously throughout the work. My uncle is well known in both Christian and non-Christian circles, having been published by Guideposts, Chosen Books, Bantam Books, Fleming Revell Publishing, and Hampton Roads Publishing. His first book, Return from Tomorrow, even won Campus Life’s prestigious Medallion Award. He has been featured in numerous newspaper articles, has appeared on several national television shows, and speaks about his NDE all over the world.

I have heard about this experience from my uncle since I was ten years old. Unfortunately, his NDE was a strong influence in my spiritual life, delaying me from becoming a disciple of Jesus Christ for over ten years. Here is my story.

When I was eleven years old, my parents