Every Christian will tell you that they want to go to heaven when they die. However, there have been some people who’ve gone through near-death experiences and say that they’ve seen heaven. Now, they have someone who can help them understand these claims and help others understand them. John Burke, a pastor and author who has studied and analyzed over 1,000 accounts of near-death experiences, has been on a mission to help people better understand these assertions. Burke, author of the bestselling book, “Imagine Heaven: Near-Death Experiences, God’s Promises, and the Exhilarating Future That Awaits You,” recently told “The Pure Flix Podcast” he’s a firm devotee of evidence and reason and believes accounts of near-death experiences have credibility.

Burke said, “I’ve been to seminary, I’ve studied the Bible, I’ve taught it for 30 plus years and, at the same time, I’ve always been curious. So, I have collected and studied over 1,000 of these near-death experiences, and I’ve always been trying to put it together, ‘How does it fit with the heaven of the Bible and the God of the Bible?’”

The preacher said he wrote “Imagine Heaven” to explore the parallels and commonalities seen in near-death experience cases across the globe, saying, “These people have an experience that I’ve come to believe is truly beyond our four dimensions of time and space.” Burke also said that people who go through near-death experiences find themselves struggling to explain something that transcends our current world, all while being restricted to the experiences and semantics of this realm.

Burke compared our current existence to a flat, two-dimensional, black and white picture. People who’ve gone through a near-death experience are ripped from that black and white photo and brought into three dimensions of color. Suddenly, these people attempt to explain this new dimension to people who only know the two-dimensional space. Burke believes near-death experiences are essentially a “gift from God” in a time when modern medical resuscitation can now allow people to come back from the brink of death.

Burke said hundreds of scholarly articles had been written about near-death experiences in medical journals, with researchers looking at those who have detailed their ventures, claiming, “[Researchers recorded] all the observations [among those with near-death experiences] claim to have outside their bodies and then a control group that did not claim to have a near-death experience and what they imagined might have been happening in the room of their resuscitation. The control group got almost none of them right.”

The control group got 10 to 15 percent of their proclamations right. Still, the near-death experience group was reportedly 92 percent correct, with six percent being at least somewhat accurate with their details. Burke calls this phenomenon uncanny, saying that this is what has convinced so many skeptical doctors. In his book, Burke also examined three people who are blind who claim they saw incredible sights during their near-death experiences, although they never saw beauty with their own eyes. According to Burke, his biggest hope for “Imagine Heaven” is bringing people closer to God.