In the book 90 Minutes in Heaven about Don Piper in Heaven, he uses his personal near death experience to confirm a narrow interpretation of the Bible and religious fundamentalism. Also in the “About Don” section on the Don Piper Ministries website he tells us that, “Don's experience in Heaven gives him a unique insight into eternity and a strong desire to tell others about Christ.”

   The near death experience (NDE) and the experience of heaven is certainly a unique insight that we should all listen to. But using this unique insight as a power to scare people with hell and convert them to Christianity is blasphemy, to use a religious word, according to the inclusive God most commonly experienced in the NDE.

   In the 90 Minutes in Heaven book, Don Piper admits that: “I did not see God…I only saw a bright iridescence.” If Piper did not see God then how can he be sure that the God he “did not see” is the actual God of the Bible?

   Obviously, he cannot, and this is the fault in his logic. Yes, he experienced heaven and the Bible talks about heaven. But this does not automatically follow that the heaven he experienced is the heaven of the Bible. Nor does it follow that the heaven he experienced is limited to the heaven of the Bible or any narrow interpretation thereof.

   In fact, Piper’s conclusion that his experience of heaven confirms a fundamentalist interpretation of the Bible is uncommon among people who have NDEs. Much more common is it that people conclude that God is inclusive, as researcher Kenneth Ring here points out in his book Heading Towards Omega:

The strongest evidence of NDEr’s [people who have NDEs] universalistically spiritual orientation…is their belief in the underlying unity of all religions and their desire for a universal religious faith that will transcend the historical divisiveness of the world’s great religions.

   I confirmed this conclusion in my own study, where I found that 87 percent said that what they had experienced is “the core or essence of all religions.” I also found that 85 percent said: “God is inclusive,” with 64 percent saying that they strongly agreed with this statement.

   The reason that people who have NDEs arrive at this conclusion is, as we saw in chapter two, that they experience God in a very broad sense which is spiritually neutral. A book or one line in a book is very limited compared to an overwhelming experience of God as an indescribable profound love that is as infinite as the universe.      

The presence; all powerful being, was wonderful, kind and loving. It wasn’t like a father or a mother, there was no sense of disappointment or expectation that I had to be someone that I wasn’t…I felt it was bigger than anything I had ever known and I mean powerful…Complete love and kindness, totally accepted.

   In this testimony Priscilla tells us that God, or what she calls “the presence,” is all powerful being and this is a good guide into this very broad understanding of God that we find in the NDE. This testimony also explains my findings mentioned in chapter two; where 93 percent said that what they experienced was non-physical and that, “God is a form of energy.”

   In trying to describe this non-physical energy, Melanie reveals that it’s “a source of energy, like the sun; all knowing, all being, complete.” Another person testifies that it’s “the source of all; loving, compassion, peace, safety, healing, understanding.”

   The reason we are talking about something non-physical is that the NDE is an experience of another reality, the realm of the Light or God, and this other dimension is very different from our physical world.

   This also fits with what Piper told us about; that he did not see God, and in chapter two of his book he explains 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 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?