DCP Accuses NDE Reportees of Lying

[Tom]

Interesting that the proprietor seems to have added a few sentences to his original comment:

Permit me to just comment here that, although more than a few accounts of near-death experiences mention encountering Jesus, I’m inclined to think that, in almost all of these experiences, the personage who is met is not Jesus. Worldwide, there are something on the order of 335,000 deaths per day, which means that there are approximately 14,000 deaths per hour and not quite 250 deaths per minute. I understand that time may function rather differently in the next world, but I still doubt that Jesus is personally present in even a significant percentage of deaths. Indeed, most NDE accounts don’t report encounters with Jesus, though a fair proportion do mention a “being of light” who often remains unidentified but, when named, is sometimes variously identified (often with the name of a prophet or holy personage from the religious background of the person relating the experience). There are vanishingly few cases in which the personage identifies himself as Jesus. (There may well be some but, off hand, I can’t think of any.) I expect that, in very many of these cases, the dying individual who feels strong love and acceptance emanating from a glorious person simply identifies that person as the most holy figure he or she can name (e.g., Jesus, Muhammad, Krishna, etc.). Doctrine and Covenants 1:38 may be apropos here, with the Lord declaring that “my word shall not pass away, but shall all be fulfilled, whether by mine own voice or by the voice of my servants, it is the same.”

The proprietor has edited his comment again:

Permit me to just comment here that, although more than a few accounts of near-death experiences mention encountering Jesus, I’m inclined to think that, in almost all of these experiences, the personage who is met is not Jesus. Worldwide, there are something on the order of 335,000 deaths per day, which means that there are approximately 14,000 deaths per hour and not quite 250 deaths per minute. I understand that time may function rather differently in the next world, but I still doubt that Jesus is personally present in even a significant percentage of deaths. Indeed, most NDE accounts don’t report encounters with Jesus, though a fair proportion do mention a “being of light” who often remains unidentified but, when named, is sometimes variously identified (often with the name of a prophet or holy personage from the religious background of the person relating the experience). There are relatively few cases in which the personage explicitly and verbally identifies himself as Jesus. (Are there any? Probably.). I expect that, in very many of these cases, the dying individual who feels strong love and acceptance emanating from a glorious person simply identifies that person as the most holy figure he or she can name (e.g., Jesus, Muhammad, Krishna, etc.). Doctrine and Covenants 1:38 may be apropos here, with the Lord declaring that “my word shall not pass away, but shall all be fulfilled, whether by mine own voice or by the voice of my servants, it is the same.”

Nice to see that the proprietor has revised his claim. We’re making progress.

[Tom]

Did he formally introduce himself to Dr. Neal? If he didn’t, it may very well have been someone else. Using the proprietor’s scientific criterion, I characterize the following as a borderline account: Jesus or not Jesus? You make the call.

In the canonized First Vision account, which figure identifies himself as Heavenly Father, and which as Jesus Christ?

That’s an interesting point. Neither personage in the 1838 account explicitly and verbally identifies himself as Heavenly Father or Jesus.

When the light rested upon me I saw two Personages, whose brightness and glory defy all description, standing above me in the air. One of them spake unto me, calling me by name and said, pointing to the other—This is My Beloved Son. Hear Him!

[Doctor Scratch]

Lol. I knew from the second I posted the OP that DCP would object to my choice of word: “lying.” Well, okay—sure. But how would he characterize it? “Imagining”? “Inventing”? “Hallucinating”? The point, as I understand him, is that people are falsely thinking that they are meeting the actual Jesus Christ during their NDEs. He’s basically saying that most of the people who claim to be meeting Jesus Christ during their NDEs are wrong, and that whoever they’re meeting is not actually Jesus.

He’s free to clarify, of course. But I think he’s painted himself into a corner here.

[malkie]

In the canonized First Vision account, which figure identifies himself as Heavenly Father, and which as Jesus Christ?

That’s an interesting point. Neither personage in the 1838 account explicitly and verbally identifies himself as Heavenly Father or Jesus.

When the light rested upon me I saw two Personages, whose brightness and glory defy all description, standing above me in the air. One of them spake unto me, calling me by name and said, pointing to the other—This is My Beloved Son. Hear Him!

I've raised this point here in the past - If I recall correctly, with MG - and have seen no satisfactory answer.

Considering that Joseph states elsewhere that Satan can appear in the guise of a heavenly messenger, this seems to me to be a near fatal flaw in the official FV story. How can we possibly know, from Joseph's account, who or what these personages were, even assuming that he really saw them.

Later, Joseph says that there is a key (attempted handshake) to distinguish different types of apparitions. Unfortunately, in the FV story, he was ignorant of this test, and partly as a result, he appears to have made completely unjustified assumptions about whom he was conversing with.

I've also seen it claimed that the FV confirms that both Heavenly Father and the post-mortal Jesus have physical bodies, but I don't see any confirmation of that in the official account.

[Father Francis]

In this very same book, the author, Mary C. Neal not only sees Jesus, but has a rather long dialogue with Jesus.

bzzt. Jesus wouldn't appear to a woman. The way it would work in the corporate church as it extends beyond the veil is that the being would need to be her husband representing the local low-level authority of that part of the spirit world. If her husband was either still alive, or dead but hadn't converted to the Church, then she'd most likely be out of luck, but perhaps she could be granted a meeting with either the low-level local authority, or another deceased male relative who had converted to the Church and holds the priesthood(perhaps in the spirit world), who had been cleared by the local low-level authority to have the meeting. But even that would only be possible if she was married and acting in the capacity of a mother in this life, such that if her husband were deceased and also converted and active in the Church, that he would then be cleared to meet with her. If she wasn't married then she'd have to have a Sheri-Dew level of an excuse as to why not in order to qualify for any meeting. In Mormonism there is a ton of red tape and you have to go through all of these counterfactuals to understand why someone like DCP might hesitate to believe certain aspects of the story.

This sounds like something Kafka would write a book about. The Trial comes to mind.

[drumdude]

I find it rather strange that Mormon God would deceive the dying with visions of false or incorrect religious figures or doctrines.

A true NDE, it would seem to me, would look like the experiences that Joseph Smith had. Visions of the angel Moroni. Of two personages. Maybe a nice warm feeling of revelation that all of the churches except the Mormon church aren’t true.

Instead the trickster Mormon God gives some people visions of Mary. Some of them visions of Muhammad. Buddha, Vishnu, Thor, Johnny Carson, their neighbor’s cat. It’s almost like these NDEs are indistinguishable from the mental images people come up with in their dreams every night they go to sleep…

Wake me up when DCP finds someone who hovers above their body enough to read the hidden messages above the cabinets placed there to test this ridiculously stupid idea.

[Marcus]

In what is alarmingly becoming more and more frequent, the proprietor of SeN is forced to issue yet another addendum to one of his articles.

ETA: On the other hand, as a friend writes to remind me — I read both of Dr. Neal’s books quite some time ago, and am only now extracting my notes from this one — her own description of her experience seems clearly to indicate an encounter with Jesus. (I don’t have the book with me at the moment to look.) I have no reason to believe that such encounters don’t occur. In fact, I think they probably do. On a slightly different front, at least two other people claim that I’m now admitting that NDEs are all purely subjective or imaginary, but that isn’t my position at all. Quite the contrary. I’m simply saying that, when encountering a being of glorious light, perfect compassion, and supreme holiness, it’s entirely to be expected that near-death experiencers from Christian backgrounds would be inclined to identify that being as Jesus. And that there is actually sound theological reason (in the principle of divine investiture) for the “error.” ...

So, there is sound theological reason for the witnesses of the Book of Mormon 'plates' to be in "error." According to Peterson.

[Kishkumen]

All of this is so interesting. These experiences are of course subjective. They couldn’t be otherwise! Who is Peterson to say that these people did not see Jesus? What does it mean to see Jesus anyway? Does everyone perceive this visitor in the same way? Did all of the witnesses of the Book of Mormon perceive exactly the same things? I rather doubt it.

It seems like DCP is saying that unless someone looks at the one resurrected body of Jesus, they can’t be seeing Jesus, or that Jesus could not or would not appear to them in any other way. That strikes me as a very narrow way of thinking about the possibilities here.

[Fence Sitter]

Worldwide, there are something on the order of 335,000 deaths per day, which means that there are approximately 14,000 deaths per hour and not quite 250 deaths per minute. I understand that time may function rather differently in the next world, but I still doubt that Jesus is personally present in even a significant percentage of deaths.

Lol.
Why even mention the difficulty of a personal appearance to every person who dies?
Once you have bought into a system that requires your God to consistently violate the basic principles of physics, why is this even a problem?

By the way, it's ironic how adults can easily see how it is impossible for Santa Claus to visit every house in one night but not see a similar problem with God. Maybe our problem is we just don't have enough faith in St. Nick.

[drumdude]

How close to the Sacred Grove do you think Jesus parked his space ship? He must have been nervously glancing at his watch over and over. It’s a long flight from Kolob, and he knew Heavenly Father was already there waiting.

If he parked too close, Joseph might see the space ship. If he parked too far, the walk would take too long and Joseph would only see one personage instead of two.

The limitations of being an embodied deity are just so frustrating! All of this because Heavenly Father didn’t want to carpool.