In the next several posts I am including excerpts from a most interesting book by John Burke. It is a New York Times bestseller entitled Imagine Heaven: Near Death Experiences, God’s Promises, and the Exhilarating Future that Awaits You. I quote Burke:

“Heaven and near-death experiences (NDE) - when people clinically died, were resuscitated, and claimed to have gotten a peek into the afterlife - have been a hot topic of late. . . . Over the past thirty-five years, I’ve read or heard close to 1,000 near-death stories (there are millions out there). I started seeing amazing commonalities across stories - intriguing, detailed descriptions by doctors, professors, commercial airline pilots, children, people from around the globe. Each gave a slightly different angle to what started to look like a very similar picture. . . . You will get a thorough understanding of the picture of Heaven from the Bible . . . . If nothing else, [Burke’s book] will open your eyes to the millions of accounts out there that have convinced skeptical doctors, atheistic college professors, and many others . . . that Heaven is for real.

“Could people make up stories or fabricate detail to sell more books? Yes. For this reason, I’ve tried to choose stories from people with little or no profit motive: orthopedic surgeons, commercial airline pilots, professors, neurosurgeons - people who probably don’t need the money but have credibility to lose by making up wild tales. I’ve also included children; people from predominately Muslim, Hindu, and Buddhist countries; and people who did not write books. Amazingly, they all add color to a similar, grand picture of the afterlife.”

Finally, I include these excerpts with my comments to present an increasingly compelling case for dualist interaction between the immaterial spirit and soul (mind, will and emotion) of human beings and the material neural synaptic networks of the brain. It is an interaction that also includes communion with the immaterial Mind of God, His Holy Spirit. I am also endeavoring to make the case for the eternal existence of the immaterial human spirit and soul. It is my belief that God gives mankind progressive revelation as Man is able to receive and at least partially comprehend it. Are NDE “clues” to what is to come, identified so strongly by Scripture? If so, we have hope increased for the life to come, blessed by our being in the presence of the living Jesus Christ, God with us, for eternity!

I conclude posting excerpts from Jabay’s books, this one speaking to the throne that every human being has:

“In the center of every human heart is a throne. It is always occupied. Not a person in all the world is without both throne and someone occupying that throne at all times.

“The aspirants to the throne are only two: God and the self - or, as we will call it, the prideful, self-centered ego. If God is enthroned by a human spirit, then that man is under the regime of the kingdom of God. Man, because he is human spirit with that godlike freedom of choice, can choose who will sit on that throne. If God is enthroned, the prideful ego is dethroned and the human spirit is correctly positioned under God and with people. But when the ego is self-enthroned, God is ignored while man, who is now mispositioned in his world, plays god. It is this mispositioning of man which brings him now to live without God and against his fellow men. The tragic result of egoistic self-enthronement is correctly termed godlessness.

I have endeavored to show in compelling manner that by the boundless love and grace of God through the sin sacrifice of His living Son, Jesus Christ, we can have personal communion restored with the Holy Spirit, a dualist interaction that leads believers to sanctification and everlasting entry into the Kingdom of God.

I concluded my reading of the second book by Earl Jabay, The God Players: How Not to Run Your Life, and am posting a couple of exerpts that consider specifically the human spirit and the Kingdom of God.

“One of the first things the Scriptures tell us about man is that he bears a likeness to God. . . . we are created in the image of God. . . . That is, as God is Spirit, so man is spirit. Man is essentially a spiritual being, related to and of the type similar to God the Eternal Spirit. Human spirit and Divine Spirit are not the same but they are in the same spiritual order. Man, being created, is lower in the spiritual order than God, for ‘thou hast made him little less than God,’ but man is highly honored in that ‘Thou hast given him dominion over the works of thy hands’ (Psalm 8:5,6).

“That man is human spirit is a profound and difficult thought. It means that an unimaginable gift has come to us, in that we are in the same spiritual order as God. It means that we are not what we externally appear to be. It also means that man is quite as indefinable and as descriptively elusive as God Himself. The most the word spirit can do is tell us that what we really are cannot be seen.”

This “unimaginable gift” given to man by God enables the personal, intimate communion intended by God between Him and the immaterial spirit and soul of man. It is a bidirectional, dualist interaction that has been restored to repentant people through the sin sacrifice of Jesus Christ who now indwells His people as the Counselor, the Helper, the Holy Spirit.

In the near future I will be posting selected excerpts from a second book by Jabay I am now reading. Jabay discusses elements of what it means to join the Kingdom of God, dying to Self and allowing the indwelling Holy Spirit to govern all aspects of our lives. A second book I am studying, Imagine Heaven, by John Burke makes the compelling case for the immateriality and eternality of our human spirit and soul. I look forward to sharing these excerpts with you and encourage you to read these book for yourselves.

Jabay concludes his book with the following passages:

“I sense so keenly in these last few moments of our fellowship the need for us all to receive and remain open to that Divine Person, the Holy Spirit. ‘Be filled with the [Holy] Spirit’ (Eph 5:18), says Paul. Let these simple words come true in our hearts [souls]. . . . We are witnessing a twentieth-century Pentecost. God is now filling us with His Holy Spirit once again. The people of the Paraclete [Holy Spirit] are becoming Spirit-empowered, Spirit-disciplined and, most importantly, Spirit-led. Praise the Lord!”

It is my hope and prayer that my books and blogs have provided compelling evidence for the reality of dualist interaction between the immaterial Holy Spirit, human spirit and soul and the material synaptic networks of the human brain. The Holy Spirit has provided a way to restore His personal communion with us in our time, and we are learning how this is happening.

Jabay continues with compelling comments about the basic problem in human life:

“The movement of the Holy Spirit accurately discerns the spiritual nature of our basic problem in life. Most charismatics, following the teaching of that most unusual Chinese Christian, Watchman Nee [I cite Nee in my books, a man whose writings provided guidance to my research], affirm the biblical teaching that man is composed of spirit, soul, and body. Modern psychology ignores man’s spirit, because the behavioral scientists are so completely absorbed in the study of man’s soul (intellect, will, and emotions) [and I have pointed out in my blogs how neuroscience is focused on material reductionism, that all expressions of the soul are based entirely in the physiology of the brain]. We are encouraged to develop our soulish powers by which to assert our mastery over life. Watchman Nee correctly discerned that this is the very worst mistake man can make. What we need is not soul-development but for our dead human spirits to be brought to life and joined by the Holy Spirit. We cannot really be helped until we are born of the Holy Spirit. Once our spiritual need is met by the Holy Spirit joining Himself to our spirits, a sure foundation for emotional health is laid. What this means is that the problem with man is basically spiritual rather than psychological or genetic or environmental. We are human spirits who need the [indwelling of the] Holy Spirit. When ‘he who is united to the Lord becomes one spirit with him’ (1 Cor. 6:17), the basic life-problem is solved. How simple!”

Jabay has compelling comments about egoists:

“This is the basic problem with all egocentrics: we lack the power to deliver ourselves from the power of evil. This is why we must turn away from the pseudoreligionists and the psychologists and turn to the God of all power. This God - this God of all power - has a name. He is the Holy Spirit. Many egoists, when they are sick and tired of being sick and tired, ask for and receive the Holy Spirit and His power. That old obsessive fascination with power now leads the weary egoist straight to the source of all power in the Holy Spirit. So thank God for our power-hungry egoism! But praise Him even more that the Holy Spirit is today dramatically filling our need for the power to be delivered from the Kingdom of Self. God is again revealing to us that the Holy Spirit is abundantly powerful to bring us into the Kingdom of His Son, Jesus Christ. Just look around and see what is happening today. The Holy Spirit is falling upon God’s people all over the world. A new Pentecost has come upon us as thousands upon thousands are receiving the Baptism in the Holy Spirit. I rejoice to participate in the current charismatic revival. Why? Because I am a devotee of the divine person who possesses all power - the Holy Spirit.”

Jabay states, “It is true, also, that God can and does speak directly to a person through the Holy Spirit. When we are brought before governors and kings, we are not to be anxious about what we are to say, for the Holy Spirit will tell us what to speak (Mark 13:11). The Holy Spirit is speaking directly to the hearts [souls] of His people today as never before, praise the Lord.”

I am sharing these comments from Jabay:

“In summary, there are two kingdoms: the Kingdom of Self and the Kingdom of God. If God’s kingdom becomes established in the human heart [soul], it is hardly noticed at first, because we allow God only the smallest control over our wills. King Self surrenders by degrees [in the process of sanctification]. Ego-slaying and obedience are terribly painful, and yet afterward there is a quality of inexpressible joy which the presence of God generates in us. It is a law of the Kingdom of God that we must lose all to find Him. We must die to our egocentrism to be born anew into the eternal Kingdom. Finally, to live under the King who is God, means to live with other persons in a loving, non-violent style of life.”

And I have shown in my books and blogs that the Holy Spirit - God -communes with the repentant, receptive human spirit and soul in our time. Please read my next blog with comments by Jabay.

I lead the excerpts taken from Jabay’s book with his introduction to Chapter 5:

“The Kingdom of Heaven, the Kingdom of Christ, the Kingdom of God - these are all the same Kingdom. . . . The Kingdom is Christ’s because Christ is God’s Son, and, therefore, He is heir to the Kingdom. This Kingdom is God’s, and He is the rightful King not only because He alone is divine, but because His subjects have freely invited Him to rule over them.

“I hasten to add, however, that He chose us as His subjects long before we chose Him as our king. He led us to Himself with an utterly uncoerced coercion. God did this and is doing it today through the cross - His and ours. The demonstrated love of Christ dying as an atonement for our sins evokes our love. But God is also drawing us to Him through the suffering of our personal crosses. When the deadly cup of suffering finally kills off all intention of self-rule, we are made ready for the rule of God.

“For us today, the Kingdom of God is also at hand. I understand this to mean that we should not think of the Kingdom of God as some past or future event. Nor should we think of it as something which we must bring into our lives by hard work. Everything has been done. The Kingdom of God is now, at the very moment you are reading these words.”