Facts on Don Piper: He is making a false interpretation of his experience of heaven as a Christian heaven in a narrow fundamentalist understanding.

   In chapter three of 90 Minutes in Heaven, Don Piper not only tells us that he “did not see God” but also that: “as far ahead as I could see, there was absolutely nothing but intense, radiant light…The light engulfed me, and I had the sense that I was being ushered into the presence of God.”

   As Piper, most people who have near death experiences do experience this intense radiant light from which he had a “sense” that he was in the presence of God. He did not see God; he only had a sense of God, and this is the common experience of people who have NDEs. The experience of God is mostly defined by the light and then most people make the conclusion that this light is God, or that it is of God.

  Michael explains more about his broad experience of God: “It felt as if I was within a sphere of peace and love. Like the atmosphere of the earth lets me breathe, the sphere let me feel peace and love. Only the sphere had no limit of scope.”

   Also Jim’s testimony points us in this direction as he reveals that,

I just experienced this incredible loving light and I was just in awe of it because there wasn’t anything outside of it. That light contained the universe. It contained all the phenomena and all the non-phenomena. There wasn’t anything that wasn’t that light.

   From these testimonies and the conclusion of most people who have NDEs, it is now possible to begin to see why this Light, or God, cannot be limited to one specific or any narrow interpretation of God as Piper tries to do. While the powerful and otherworldly experience of the Light with good reason evokes strong parallels to God, the very broad experience of the nature of God defies the limits of any religion.

   Researcher Kenneth Ring explains that NDEs are “the ‘universal donor’ to spirituality and religion in that they fit easily and well into a great variety of well-established spiritual traditions and world religions.” In this sense as a powerful donor that fits easily into established belief, the NDE “generally serves to reinforce one’s pre-existing faith,” and it seems very clearly that this is what has happened in Piper’s case.

   Ring also explains that:

I think we would do well to emulate the examples of many near death survivors themselves who seem to emerge from their experience with a heightened spiritual orientation which can embrace all forms of religious worship without necessarily espousing any one form for themselves. If near death research has definite spiritual overtones, as I believe it does, I hope that it will ultimately promote the cause of religious diversity rather than religious divisiveness.  

   To back this up I found in my study that 71 percent said that, “What I experienced is behind all religions.” While ‘only’ 71 percent agreed; the rest, 29 percent, did not disagree but said that they were “not sure.” Also to confirm the NDE as a “universal donor” I found that 77 percent said that: “I am free to use any language of any religion to describe my experience.”

  To sum up the main point here is that the NDE works as a powerful neutral spiritual donor to religion, and while some people like Piper translate this neutrality into their pre-existing belief system, still the majority of people who have NDEs will keep this neutrality as they are able to embrace a universal form of religious worship.

   Most people who have NDEs experience a powerful heightened spirituality as a neutral source behind a conventional understanding of God; a neutral source that is as infinite and beyond human comprehension as the universe.

   This is another reason why Piper or anyone else cannot limit the experience of God in the NDE. The fact is that, while Piper uses his experience to confirm a narrow interpretation of the Bible, most people who have an NDE say that the full understanding of their experience is beyond human comprehension.

   The Bible tells us in Romans 11:33; 

Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and of the knowledge of God! How incomprehensible are his judgments and how unsearchable his ways! For who has known the mind of the Lord, or who has been his counselor?