Meet John Burke: From Agnostic to Believer Through NDEs | Intro to Afterlife | John Giftah Podcast

0:01 Speaker 1: Do you ever look around and think, Wow, the world is a crazy place and it just seems to get crazier and crazier. Ease your mind and take a break. This is Fuel for the Soul with John GIFTA. We're a hub for inspirational Christian sermons, practical keys for Christian living, and Christian discussions and interviews. You'll be inspired to live the life that you were created for. Your host is a top ranking podcaster, best selling author, world record holder, aerospace engineer, life coach, evangelist and founder of John GIFTA International.

0:41 Speaker 1: Welcome to Fuel for the Soul with John GIFTA.

0:49 Speaker 2: Hey, God, Vichuel, it has a joy for me to be with all of you today. Thank you so much for dropping by. I have a very special special session today and you'll be a pastor John Bug all the way from the United States of America who's joining with us. And some of you might have already heard about him, seen him, and you know, he's been a great voice and he's been such a blessing in my life. I'm going to talk about it in just a minute. He's not only a best selling author, including a New York Times best selling book which just came out imagine the God of Heaven, and he's been an important voice, especially in near that experiences people who have literally died and seen heaven or hell and come back if you didn't know what that is all about.

1:32 Speaker 2: And he also has a growing podcast and YouTube channels through which he shares these messages. And the best thing about him is that not only do we share the same first name, John, both of us had the same first name, but both of us are engineers. I'm an aerospace engineer and he's also an engineer and minister of the gospel. So it's so awesome to have you with us. Fastor, thank you so much for joining in.

1:57 Speaker 3: Hey John, I'm so glad that you invited me because I love India, have been there many times and we have very good friends in India.

2:08 Speaker 2: That's so good. Can't wait to have you here in person again. Pastor, thank you so much. And I just want to quickly start off by sharing a quick testimony on how I came to know you in the first place. The Lord uses me a lot in the aspect of, you know, the political situation in the United States of America to intercede. Have had a lot of encounters like there were moments when the Lord took me in the spirit into the White House to pray over President Trump, and you know, he let me lay my hand on his right shoulder and pray.

2:40 Speaker 2: And two days later I came to know there was another profits in India who had the same encounter on the same day as I did. You know, a lot of these kind of encounters where the Lord was clearly leading me in the prophetic to intercede. Even recently we had the elections in the US and the Lord led me to intercede, raised and says a spray. And because of that, I came to know of something that I was actually dealing with for the past a couple of months where I would suddenly wake up in the night and I would have panic attacks.

3:13 Speaker 2: I'm just sharing this because this is a personal testimony where even though I'm a minister of the Gospel, I've seen glimpses of Hell. I've had a lot of encounters and miracles out of the blue that were these attacks, panic attacks in the middle of the night where I would wake up with that fear of like what if everything I believed was wrong? What if Christianity was not the truth? Like people in apologetics would just say that you know what, this is the truth because I'm a Christian, or somebody else would say the same about Islamic apologists.

3:44 Speaker 2: But that was the moment when I was having these panic attacks and I was like, God, if I tell somebody else, they'll say you're not fit to be a preacher. But that was when I was like, God, I want you to reveal yourself to me because I know that my heart is in the right place. I want to minister to you through you. And while I was doing that, and I was following the situation about the US political scene, I came to know about your interview with Sean Ryan. And I don't usually watch such long episodes.

4:18 Speaker 2: That was a four hour long episode. And I'm telling you a pastor, God is my witness. Ever since then, I didn't have any panic attacks. I've been completely free, like I knew without a shadow of doubt that what I preach is not theory or I've been more convincing in the preaching of the gospel now talking about heaven and Hell, and now more people are getting saved through my ministry now because I've been more fervent in preaching about Heaven and Hell. So that's the way what you shared in that interview really changed my life.

4:54 Speaker 2: And that's why I was determined to have you here because I believe there are so many people who have these quests since or they may even have these kind of panic attacks. So I'm so glad that your ministry and your words helped me, and it is helping so many people today. And I believe that, you know, as you continue to walk in this calling, it's going to be a blessing to more people. I think you also have a story of being an agnostic where you doubt it, you know, if you were on the right track. Can you just speak a word to somebody who may be in a similar spot, maybe they're anagnostic or they may be having these kind of doubts like am I really following the right path?

5:35 Speaker 2: Or is this you know, just because I'm a Christian I believe in Christianity.

5:40 Speaker 3: Yeah. Well, first of all, what a blessing to hear that. John. Wow, you know, sometimes you just you just never know, right. Sean and I have become friends, and you know, he just became a follower of Jesus, Yes, you know, and just the way the Lord is connecting us all over the world. And that is why I'm doing what I'm doing now. But I didn't start there, like you said. And I'll just give you a little background. So I was trained as an engineer. I worked in engineering for a number of years. I was, but my mind has always been very analytical, you know.

6:24 Speaker 3: So you know, I grew up in the United States hearing about Jesus, just like if you grew up in India, you grow up hearing about Vishnu or Kali or Durga or you know, you know, many many others. Right, But I always ask a question, well, how do you know? You know? How do you know Jesus is the son of God? How do you know there is a God? I mean? And I would ask people, and I wasn't getting good answers. I wouldn't get much of any answers, I think because not enough people really search, really seek. And I concluded, you know, you just can't know.

7:03 Speaker 3: And I was an agnostic, so I believe Jesus was probably just a legend, you know, maybe a good teacher. But the whole son of God thing is just like mythology and that God. You just can't know if there's a god or not. And then my dad was dying of cancer and someone gave him This is almost four decades ago, and someone gave him the very first research on what is now called near death experiences. And this is when someone clinically dies so literally their heart stops beating, they have no brain waves, and yet either modern medicine or just miracle resuscitates them.

7:45 Speaker 3: They come back, and they come back talking about being more alive than they've ever felt before, in a place more real than this has ever been, and many times in the presence of this God of light and love that they never wanted to leave his presence. And I see this book on his bedside table and I start reading it and I couldn't put it down. And by the end of the night, I'd finished the book, and I said, oh, my gosh, maybe this is the evidence I've been looking for that this is real. And because so many of them were talking about this God of light and love, and many of them saw Jesus and knew he was Jesus, like he was this man of light, brighter than the sun.

8:38 Speaker 3: And because of that, it opened my mind to consider and I started to read the Bible, and I ended up coming to faith in Christ a year after that or so, but I was always still wanting to understand, Okay, well, what are these near death experiences and how do they relate to the Bible, and how do they relate to the other world's religions. So over the last I mean, it's been thirty five forty years that I've studied close to fifteen hundred, one thousand, five hundred near death experiences. I've interviewed people from all over the globe.

9:19 Speaker 3: I ended up leaving my career in engineering because of what I was learning as I was studying the Bible and studying these and how it fits together. And I ended up leaving my career in engineering to go into ministry. And my wife and I started a church, Gateway Church twenty seven years ago, four skeptics so and we've seen people from every religious background come and explore faith, and when they're open to really seeking, they find And so in twenty fifteen, I wrote a book, like you said, called Imagine Heaven.

9:59 Speaker 3: In Imagine Heaven, what I was doing is I was taking these at that time, over over a thousand near death experiences i'd studied, and you know, the way my engineering mind works, I would I would hear another or interview someone and I'd go like, oh, I heard that over here, and I heard that over and I started to map the commonalities and then look at how how has that been revealed through the Bible throughout history. And I found about forty commonalities of what people having these near death experiences described in the Life to Come.

10:34 Speaker 3: And this is on every continent. And so I was writing about those commonalities and what the life to come is going to be like. That's Imagine Heaven. And then recently I actually passed the baton of leadership of the church that my wife and I founded, and I wrote, I wrote a new book called Imagine the God of Heaven. And that's where I interviewed seventy new people from all over the planet in India. You know, on every continent literally except Antarctica, there are no penguins having near death experiences, but every other continent.

11:16 Speaker 3: And I'm showing that the God they are encountering in their near death experience is the God of history who revealed himself through the Jewish prophets and ultimately through Jesus. And interestingly, you know, I trace how in the Old Testament all the way back, you know, four thousand years ago, before the founding of any of the of the world's religion sacred scriptures. God says that this isn't recorded in Genesis twelve. He raises up two people, Abraham and Sarah, and he says, I'm going to make you into a nation, and through you, I'm going to bless all nations.

12:00 Speaker 3: And that is a common theme you see throughout the Jewish prophets. What Jesus said. The last thing he said after his death on the cross and his resurrection, he said, tell this message to all the nations. There's forgiveness offered in my name. And then the very last book of the Bible, John, one of jesus disciples, who was taken in a vision to heaven, sees people from every every nation, tribe, language, and people group. They're around the throne of God, worshiping God. So if you look at and I have now studied and read a good portion of much of the world's sacred scriptures, in the world's religions, you won't find another deity who is consistently speaking to all people, to all nations.

12:59 Speaker 3: This is the God of all nations, and that's what near death experiencers are revealing. That's what they're testifying to, that that they are experiencing, not the God necessarily that that they would have expected, but this God of light and love, who is personal, knows them intimately, and so I'm tracing that in imagine the God of heaven.

13:25 Speaker 2: Okay, okay, it's so good, like because like you said about you know how God can X. First of all, it's amazing because I don't know if you heard of someone called Megan Kelly.

13:38 Speaker 3: I was on her show.

13:40 Speaker 2: You were on her show too? Yeah, okay, okay, yeah.

13:44 Speaker 3: I just I just sent I just sent her my new book.

13:51 Speaker 2: So I was following her and it was Sean Dryana was interviewing her and told her to take out your videos and because he was doubting or something like that. And then that see see the way God connects right like like you just shared about how you know God has been so consistently speaking and how God is connecting. It's it's amazing because guys, even if you do have doubts or questions, don't feel bad on yourself. You may go through seasons like that. Like the reason I wanted Pastor to share his stories.

14:25 Speaker 2: I want you to understand that you know there is a lot of evidence. There is a lot of proof, but even if you go through questions and doubts, don't feel bad on yourself. You know you can be a minister, you can be a Christian, you can go to church, but you can still go through questions and doubts. So so that's why you're here, and that's why I want you to stay.

14:45 Speaker 1: To Youned you've been listening to Fuel for the Soul with John Gifta, we hope you were blessed and inspired to live the life that God has for you. Make sure to subscribe to the John gifted YouTube channel for regular uploads of sermons, skits, interviews and more. Follow John Gifta on Instagram for regular inspirational posts, and don't forget to check out the best selling books written by John Gifta, Who Am I which will help you understand your identity and the latest number one best seller Unveil your Purpose, helping you discover your purpose and to start walking in it.

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