Does it matter that people who have had near-heaven experiences are confused theologically, so long as good news is preached?

My younger brother who is an undercover pentecostal in a baptist church started talking about a man who was held in prison. The man used to go up to heaven when the guards were not looking. My answer to him and anyone else that talks this nonsense is simple. Its the truth that sets men free. The Almighty and Eternal Father and Son has sufficient power without having to rely on the father of lies to ”interest” people in salvation.

If they do not listen to Moses and the Prophets, they will not be persuaded even if someone rises from the dead.

One of the biggest mistakes people make when they think about God—or Allah, or Vishnu, or Jehova, or whatever you choose to call that Source of absolute power, that Creator that rules the universe—is to imagine Om as impersonal.

While it is not at all surprising, it is very disturbing to hear people who belittle theology and elevate experience spew such blasphemous and idolatrous comments. I am not sure what the more significant problem is, however. I do not know if incompetent leaders like this are the bigger problem or if leaders who refuse to extend the harshest of rebukes in response to this behavior are the bigger problem. I think it is a mixture of both.

Piper simply had the look and sound of sanity, of someone who was telling the truth, whose word was his bond. If he said he had visited something like heaven, I would give him the benefit of the doubt.

Of course, this is true of every charlatan I have ever met.

Yes it matters. Truth mixed with error produces falsehood. America has been on the receiving end of gospel preaching so-called that is not gospel preaching at all. As a result, the modern Church in American is mostly filled with a bunch of self-righteous conservative moralists bearing the Christian label with hearts still darkened by an unregenerate nature, blind, and ignorant to the truths of Christ and when they do hear the gospel, they despise it and consider it to be some foreign version of Christianity far removed from their worldly SS class.

It is assumed that “the man caught up into Paradise” was Paul himself. He says he does not know “whether he was in the body or out of the body” but “God knows.” He said “he heard inexpressible words, which it is not lawful for man to utter.” (Sorry, Paul, you do not have the permission to publish that story. You can only attest to the validity of your “infirmitites.”) “For though I might desire to boast, I will not be a fool.” Why a fool? Because a prophet who speaks in his own name runs the risk of being deemed a false prophet. In contrast, the infirmities that Paul recounts are known to others; their value as teaching lessons rests in their being known by others. A personal experience has no proven worth because it is subject to exaggeration and even self-deception. So many of these NDE rest upon experiences that contradict or go beyond Scripture. They are inconsistent with biblical revelation. They exalt the one who recounts them (not to speak of the commercial value of their stories), and they rest upon testimony that cannot be verified by other reliable witnesses. To verify the experiences the apostles had with Christ, they marshaled a host of eye-witnesses who had seen, heard, and touched Jesus with their own hands (1 John 1; 1 Cor. 15). The Gospels are a four-fold account of the life of Christ. The story of Lazarus had a multitude of witnesses. It is noteworthy that this authentic account of an after-death experience is not followed by any testimony or explanation from the lips of Lazarus concerning the afterlife. Jesus did not appeal to Lazarus’ testimony as reliable proof of the afterlife. The same is true of the other several raising-from-the-dead accounts in Scripture. It appears if God wanted us to have knowledge about the afterlife other than the rather general teachings of Scripture, He would have given us inspired revelation instead of leaving it to questionable and contradictory accounts that rest upon personal experiences that tend to blur other theological concepts. We have one, clear testimony about the afterlife, and that is the resurrection of Jesus Christ. He did not focus His teachings to the Apostles during those forty days before His Ascension on those three days in the tomb. He did not use that experience to provide any apologetic on immortality. He gave them careful instructions about the task that lay before them, i.e. the evangelization of the world.