Sermon Illustrations on Near Death Experience

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Turning from Anger to Peace

Author

Keywords

Scripture

Isaiah 26:3, Psalm 34:4, John 11:25-26, 2 Corinthians 5:17, Ecclesiastes 7:9, Proverbs 16:18

An atheist professor delighted in tearing down the Christian faith of zealous freshmen. By his own admission, he was arrogant, selfish, and intolerant of anything that didn’t measure up to his standar...

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The Hunter’s Crisis

Author

The Guardian

Keywords

A couple of hunters are out in the woods when one of them falls to the ground. He doesn’t seem to be breathing. The other whips out his mobile phone and calls the emergency services. He gasps out to t...

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Who to Reach for In Death

Author

Max Lucado

Keywords

Scripture

Genesis 22:6–14, Exodus 14:21–22, Isaiah 41:13, Matthew 14:30–31, John 11:25–26, Psalm 23:4

The story of young Matthew Huffman came across my desk the week I was writing this chapter. He was the six-year-old son of missionaries in Salvador, Brazil. One morning he began to complain of fever. ...

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The Sense of an Ending

Author

James Bryan Smith

Keywords

Scripture

Colossians 3:23-24, 1 Corinthians 3:6-9, Matthew 6:19-21, 1 Corinthians 15:58, Galatians 6:9, 1 John 3:2, Romans 8:18, 2 Corinthians 4:17-18

Life is short, and we can accomplish only so much. Much of what we do will remain unfinished. For now. In one of my favorite short stories of all time, “Leaf by Niggle,” author J. R. R. Tolkien provid...

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A Deeper Understanding of Death to Self

Author

Richard J. Foster

Keywords

Carrying our Cross

Scripture

Galatians 2:19

A Lutheran pastor friend—the Reverend Bill Vaswig—and I once were discussing Galatians 2:19 and wondering what it means to be crucified with Christ. I mean, what are we actually talking about? Bill sa...

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Vance Vanders and the Witch Doctor

Author

Timothy R. Jennings

Keywords

Scripture

Jeremiah 29:11, Romans 12:2, Ephesians 4:22-24, Colossians 3:10, Ephesians 3:20, Philippians 2:13, Philippians 4:13, Philippians 4:6-7

In The God-Shaped Brain , Timothy R. Jennings tells a well-attested story about how belief can affect the body. Late one night in a small Alabama cemetery, Vance Vanders had a run-in with the local...

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The Soft Curtain Between This Life and the Next

Author

Phillips Brooks

Keywords

Scripture

Revelation 20:12

The life which we are living now is more aware than we know of the life which is to come. Death, which separates the two, is not, as it has been so often pictured, like a great thick wall. It is rathe...

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Death is a Biological Event

Author

Matthew McCullough

Keywords

Death

Death is a biological event—the end of the heart’s beating, the lungs’ breathing, and the brain’s processing—but it is also far more. There’s no confining death to the moment at which your life ends. ...

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The Love of God Wrapped About Him

Author

Thomas Kelly

Keywords

Scripture

Psalm 4:1-3, Psalm 30:5, Romans 8:28, 2 Corinthians 4:16-18, Psalm 34:18, Isaiah 43:2, Psalm 23:4, Job 1:, Job 2:, Job 42:, 2 Samuel 11:, 2 Samuel 12:, Genesis 37:12-36, 1 Kings 17:8-24, Daniel 6:, Psalm 34:18

The sense of Presence! I have spoken of it as stealing on one unawares. It is recorded of John Wilhelm Rowntree that as he left a great physician’s office, where he had just been told that his advanci...

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Surprising Peace in Times of Crisis

Author

Edward T. Welch

Keywords

Scripture

2 Timothy 1:7, Philippians 4:6-7, Matthew 6:34, Isaiah 41:10, Psalm 56:3

In his book, Running Scared, Pychologist Edward Welch illustrates how the fear of an event is often worse than the event itself. To demonstrate this, he provides two examples of people whose lives are...

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The Aroma of that Room

Author

Dallas Willard

Keywords

Scripture

Exodus 3:1-6, Isaiah 6:1-8, Acts 9:1-9, Matthew 4:18-22, 1 Samuel 3:1-10

Sometimes, of course, the sense of God with us becomes much more distinct. My oldest brother, J. I. Willard, served for over thirty years as a minister under the blessing of God. But his entry into th...

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The Impact of a Heart Attack

Author

Bob Benson

Keywords

Scripture

Romans 8:28

In Bob Benson’s book “See You at the House” he recounts the story of a friend who had a heart attack. At first it didn’t seem like the man would live, but eventually he would recover, Months later, Bo...

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Preparing for Death

Author

John Robinson

Keywords

Scripture

Psalm 90:12, 2 Corinthians 4:16-18, Philippians 1:21-23, Deuteronomy 30:19-20, Isaiah 40:6-8

When I was told that I had six months, or perhaps nine, to live, first reaction was naturally of shock -though I also felt liberated, because, as in limited-over cricket, at least one knew the target ...

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Do not Believe I Have Died

Author

The Pastor's Workshop

Keywords

Scripture

Job 19:25-27, Isaiah 25:8-9, Daniel 12:2-3, John 11:25-26, 1 Corinthians 15:51-55, Psalm 23:4-6

Near the end of his life, the American evangelist Dwight L. Moody made a striking remark: “One day soon, you will hear that I am dead. Do not believe it. I will then be alive as never before.”

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I’m Just Sleeping!

Author

The Pastor's Workshop

Keywords

Scripture

Isaiah 53:5–9 , Jonah 1:17 – 2:10 , Zechariah 12:10, John 19:31–37 , Luke 24:36–43 , Psalm 16:10

I remember growing up in the ’80s (yes, that dates me) when all kinds of fears and phobias seemed to be in the air—fear of the dark, snakes, scorpions, spiders. Someone in my own close circle was afra...

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Christ, Too, Experienced Death

Author

Matthew Y. Emerson

Keywords

Scripture

John 11:25-26, 1 Thessalonians 4:13-14, Romans 6:4, 1 Corinthians 15:20-22, 2 Corinthians 4:14

What, as Christians, can we say to those who face death, either their own or that of their loved ones? We certainly can give them the hope of Christ’s resurrection, if they or their loved one has trus...

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God with the Professor

Author

John Ortberg

Keywords

God's Power (Omnipotence)

The offer of this with-God life has not expired in our day. When my friend Kim was a young girl, her dad pulled the car off the road one day to help a woman change a flat tire. While he was lying unde...

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Death and Life in Your Hands

Author

Harold L. Senkbe

Keywords

Let’s call her Roberta; she was clearly near the end of a very long journey toward death’s door. Roberta’s cancer was a particularly nasty variety; by now it had eaten its way into most of her vital o...

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The Deadline

Author

Max Lucado

Keywords

Death

He didn’t look omniscient. He looked intelligent, with his horn-rimmed glasses, gray-flannelled suit, and stack of documents. He was smart, prepared, and every bit the statistician his profession dema...

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Thinking about the Life to Come

Author

Timothy Keller

Keywords

The manner in which Christians have thought about life after death, or about the world to come, has varied considerably from century to century and from place to place. It is easy enough to understand...

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The Poor in Spirit at an Oregon State Correctional Institution

Author

A. J. Swoboda & Nijay K. Gupta

Keywords

In June 2024, I (A. J.) had the opportunity to visit the Oregon State Correctional Institution in Salem, Oregon, to meet with a group of inmates who had read one of my recent books. The experience was...

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A Glimpse of Eternal Life

Author

The Pastor's Workshop

Keywords

Scripture

Matthew 25:35-40, James 1:27, Philippians 2:3-4, John 13:3-5, Micah 6:8, Isaiah 58:6-7, 1 John 3:18

An ancient legend tells of a well-respected rabbi who would vanish from his synagogue for a few hours each Sabbath. His mysterious absences sparked curiosity among his students, who wondered if their ...

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Not Wanting to Let Go of This Life

Author

The Pastor's Workshop

Keywords

Scripture

Hebrews 2:15, Psalm 16:9–11, 1 Corinthians 15:51–57 , 1 John 11:1–44 , Daniel 12:2–3, 2 Kings 2:1–12

Ted Williams—often called the greatest hitter in Major League Baseball history—has spent the years since 2002 not in a hall of fame or resting beneath a headstone, but inside an unassuming warehouse n...

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Life in Reverse: Short Term Spiritual Memory Loss

Author

Casey K. Tygrett

Keywords

Scripture

Joshua 4:6-7, 2 Peter 1:12-13, James 1:23-25, John 14:26, Revelation 2:5

In the film Memento , we meet Leonard, who is searching for the man who killed his wife. He appears to be the typical Hollywood hero of the early 2000s. The hair is right; the jaw line, the atmospher...

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Being Born Again

Author

Rudolph Otto

Keywords

Journeys

This being born again is no longer the active transfer of our will from the realm of inclination into that of obedience. It is, in the sense of the third chapter of the Gospel according to St. John, t...

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Surprise Me!

Author

The Pastor's Workshop

Keywords

* This story is likely untrue, but a funny anecdote nonetheless It’s difficult sometimes to think we won’t live forever. A wealthy man who had made his fortune and spent many years in New York p...

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The Experience of Knowing a Person

Author

Mark Galli

Keywords

Intimacy

You never really know a person until you know how that person perceives himself. I’m sure you have had experiences like I’ve had when you were sharing with another person, and that sharing became dee...

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Unlikely Providence

Author

Jerry Gifford

Keywords

“When the plane leveled off at 14,500 feet, Joan Murray took a deep breath and jumped out the door. The bank executive from Charlotte, North Carolina, was enjoying her free fall through the air until ...

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It is Just so Good it Must be True

Author

Phillip Yancey

Keywords

Scripture

Isaiah 25:6-9, Daniel 7:13-14, Zechariah 8:4-5, Luke 24:36-43, Revelation 21:1-5, Psalm 16:11

One day when George MacDonald, the great Scottish preacher and writer, was talking with his son, the conversation turned to heaven and the prophets’ version of the end of all things. “It seems too goo...

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A Pastor’s Experience of Trauma

Author

Pete Greig

Keywords

Pastor and leader of the 24/7 Prayer movement Pete Greig reflects on the initial moments of realizing his wife, only in her late twenties, needed to have surgery to repair a orange-sized tumor from he...

Sermon Illustrations on near death experience

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