The idea of avoiding death through some kind of belief in immortality is part of a primitive culture that some historians believe led the founding of our religions. Anthropologists believe that the earliest members of the homo sapien species conducted burial rituals. They buried their dead along with provisions, weaponry and arbitrary personal objects. The Neanderthals used decorative shells and bones in the graves with the deceased, hoping they too, would take those into the afterlife. Today our approach is different, but we still crave to know more about God. A soul surviving belief is what helps people get through their lives and a way we divert our concentration from death as much as we can, wrote William James of The Varieties of Religious Experience. "So that the world we recognize officially in literature and in society is a poetic fiction far more handsome and cleaner and better than the world that really is.”

In the Bible, Paul wrote "There are celestial bodies and there are terrestrial bodies, but the glory of the celestial is one, and the glory of the terrestrial is another. So it is with the resurrection from the dead. What is sown is perishable, what is raised is imperishable. It is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness, it is raised in power. It is sown in the physical body, it is raised in a spiritual body." Scientists try to explain near death experiences or people who were declared clinically dead, but they can't. According to the Human Consciousness Project, there are an estimated "10 to 20 percent of people who go through cardiac arrest or clinical death have lucid memories of their brush with death." There is more to life than what we can see. If our ancestors believed in the afterlife, why would this change today? Here are 4 deathbed accounts to make you believe that our souls will go on to live forever.

Debbie Cain

Debbie Cain was declared dead after her heart stopped during appendectomy surgery. “I started to feel a great love from within. It was warm and I saw a bright light that began to clean everything. I saw Jesus there. He looked at me and without saying a word, He spoke to me and said: ´Not now my child.´I can´t remember anything else and then I woke up in the Intensive Care Unit," she said. Many people describe a close encounter with God during an experience with death. Those having these experiences come from all walks of life, including practitioners, investigators and ordinary people from all around the world. "There are cases of blind people, who have been declared clinically dead, who lived again and left their bodies, who saw the light for the first time in their lives. These people describe in detail how they were brought back to life," neurosurgeon Michael Minotti said who heard accounts like this first hand. Minotti wasn't a believer, but he couldn't dispute the stories that he kept encountering such as Casin's remarkable description of Heaven.

Steven R. Musick

Jesus said that Heaven is an actual place that transcends all human understanding. He mentioned that this is a physical space. "In My Father’s house are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I am going there to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and welcome you into My presence." Musick discovered God's presence when his heart stopped and he entered the presence of Jesus. Heaven was vibrant with colors and words could not describe the love he felt when he found himself face-to-face with the risen Christ. Musick discovered that Christ was always the bridge to the Creator after the encounter. Now a financial planner, Musick travels the country to share the love of Christ that he experienced and also wrote the book Life After Heaven. "I began to see my life from the perspective of Heaven," he said.

Crystal McVea

Crystal McVea was clinically dead for 9 minutes when she battled pancreatitis. When she woke up, she saw 2 angels welcoming her into an astonishing presence and a blinding light. "This is the only way I can explain what I saw. I realized that I was in the presence of God in Christ and I believe in the presence of God the Father and the Holy Spirit.” She had a choice to remain or go home to raise her family. But God showed her a little girl playing and she felt that she was required back on earth. “I didn’t see the human form of God, I didn’t see hands and feet and a face, I just saw the most beautiful light,” she told the New York Daily News. “What I know now is that I experienced His presence.” She said that she grew up terrified of dying, afraid of the pain and afraid of the unknown. “But peace and love surrounded every moment of my death and now I know death is nothing to be afraid of.”

Tamara Laroux

As a teen, Tamara Laroux was depressed and suicidal. She then attempted to take her life by shooting herself in the chest. She felt the blood rushing to her lungs and started to feel death as she kept falling into an abyss. Laroux felt the fire of hell and recalled seeing a sea of people in torment. She was told: "Do not come here. Acknowledge that life is about Jesus Christ. Eternity is real," voices shrieked. She then saw the hand of God reaching down for her and observed an unimaginable peace. “I realized my soul had been transformed into a being of sin and death,” she told CBN. “I became everything the Father is not.” Loneliness enveloped her as she looked across the flaming pit and witnessed hundreds of souls languishing around her. “Each one was a formless being begging for another chance." The only thing that mattered was that Jesus Christ is Lord and that He rescued her from death. In Him, we have this hope of eternal life.

We can read according to Peter that we may die in the flesh, but we shall live in the spirit because Christ died for the just for the unjust. "So that He might bring us to God, having been put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the spirit; in which also He went and made proclamation to the spirits now in prison, who once were disobedient, when the patience of God kept waiting in the days of Noah, during the construction of the ark, in which a few, that is, eight persons, were brought safely through the water." The human mind can't understand spiritual things. Earth is only a temporary place for us but life doesn't have to end here. Although we are not exactly sure what really transpired during these visits. And yet, there are supernatural things that we will never be qualified to solve. Perhaps this is a good thing for humanity and for believers and non-believers alike.