Death and Dying – Program 3

By: Dr. Kenneth Barker, Dr. Don Wilkins, Dr. Daniel B. Wallace, Dr. James White, Dr. Samuel Gipp, Dr. Thomas Strouse, Dr. Joseph Chambers; ©1984

Is it possible some near-death experiences are actually spiritual deception? Do some people actually have or develop special powers?

Age Regression and Hypnosis

Program 3

Ankerberg: Welcome. We’re glad that you’re with us tonight. We have three distinguished guests—world famous Dr. Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, Dr. Maurice Rawlings, and Mr. Dave Hunt. These three people are experts in their field and we have a very interesting conversation going on concerning life after death. What is the scientific evidence? What is the theological evidence? What does research evidence show? What does it tell us? What conclusions can we draw? Dr. Ross, in the conversations that we’ve been having, I’d like you to start it off to either of your two friends that are next to you there. Let’s listen in on your conversation. What would you like to ask the men that are sitting next to you? Gentlemen, I’d like you to get your questions ready to ask Dr. Ross or each other.

Kubler-Ross: With Maurice I have no qualms. So far I agree with him. But with David I have lots of problems. One of them is that he said, “When you age regress, for example, your delivery and you have all the memory and that is physiologically, medically speaking, impossible.” I agree. But you have to differentiate that in research. I did an age regression to verify scientifically as much as you can. How much is illusion? How much is real? I needed to know that.

Ankerberg: Okay, for folks that just tuned in, what we’re talking about are so-called regressions back into the birth experiences. Dave, you correct me if I’m wrong. Elisabeth, you, too. But, Dave, you brought up the fact that intellectually a child back there after birth does not have the capability to have memory to go back to find it out. Elisabeth, you agreed. So now continue.

Kubler-Ross: I checked all this out myself. I have to know that myself. I can’t just believe in all, these people who have this birth dramas and stuff. I happened to be born as a triplet. I had my age regression and I was squashed by my other two triplets who were on my back. It was very traumatic, trying to find the tunnel towards the hand, towards the light, which is very similar to the death experience. But that’s not a memory. My parents told me forever how they expected one child and then a second one came and then a third one. The whole drama was not what I remembered but the stories you hear from your parents over and over and over again, when you expect one child and not triplets.

Well, if you just accept the fact, what was on the tape recorder, what I shared emotionally, physically, verbally, you would believe that this is reality. But that’s not reality. That’s a secondary memory. If you take babies from mothers who give their babies away immediately after delivery and you’re able to check the delivery record and you regress such a baby who is raised somewhere else away, that child has no memory. So I just want to set the record straight. Those are things that you can verify.

My other thing I’m much more bothered with is that if I listen to you, I’m not sure if I really hear you right, is that all these findings of 20,000 cases from all over the world that are sharing, both of us now shared, sounds to me that you’re saying is kind of a negative master mind in the universe that impinges on us that all this knowledge is now coming forth. You said it comes from, you didn’t use outer space, but it certainly comes from outside somewhere. If that’s a negative force, I would like to know why when I melted literally into that light and was wrapped in total, absolute love which I would like to reach in this lifetime—and I think that’s the goal of human life, to learn to love that way—why was I healed, physically healed? Lots of people are healed. I had almost complete bowel obstruction. It lasted a few seconds and my bowel obstruction was gone. I’ve had more people than I can count who have had not only spiritual rebirth almost, a spiritual experience that changes your whole life. All you want is to love.

Ankerberg: Okay, you’re talking, just for folks that have tuned in, you’ve got to remember….

Kubler-Ross: And I’m also talking about physical healing.

Ankerberg: Right. But I want to bring them up to date. What Elisabeth is talking about is an out-of-body experience that was very instrumental in your life in changing thinking, in bringing new ideas, as well as physical healing. So that’s what we’re talking about. Keep going.

Kubler-Ross: That’s where I want him to respond to that.

Ankerberg: Okay, David, respond to that. How in the world do you deny that?

Hunt: Okay, well, she’s going to like my answer even less, but…

Kubler-Ross: That’s okay.

Hunt: I’ve talked with many people who have had such experiences. For example, let me tell you of one person on a drug trip. The universe, Miss Universe—not the beauty contest winner—but the universe appeared to him as a woman, offering herself for sex. And this was to be the ultimate union between him and Brahman—the absolute, the all. I’ve talked to too many of these people who ultimately have realized that this was a deception that was literally leading them down a primrose path.

Ankerberg: Who was doing the deception, then?

Hunt: I believe it’s demonic. I believe it is the same person that brought these lies in the Garden of Eden to the human race. He doesn’t appear as a red-suited guy with horns. The Bible says that Satan transforms himself into an angel of light. [2 Cor. 11:14] This could very well be this being of light. So it’s part of a pattern of deception that I have gotten from many different people who have not talked to one another.

Let me give you an example now that I know Elisabeth would find interesting. We’re not talking about a force now. That was the number one lie—that God is not personal, but a force. You can run all the force you want through one of those light bulbs up there for eternity. I don’t care—billions of years—you’ll never get a computer readout, you’ll never ever get a television image, and it will never ever evolve into an IBM electric typewriter, because there’s no intelligence in a force. God is not a force. That’s a lie. We would like to think of God as a force because then He won’t hassle us with morals, being impersonal, and we can, you know, get what we want out of this. So it’s not that this is a Force. But there is a common deception here that is aimed at teaching men that there is no death, that we’re not really sinners.

You see, my Bible tells me that the only way you can qualify to be saved is if you’re a sinner. Go to the Bhagavad-Gita. I mean, one of the stories I wrote that I went to India to research was a Hindu in his village, and he was trying to follow his guru to read the Bhagavad-Gita and to lift himself up by his bootstraps and be a better person. And it came to chapter 4 in the Bhagavad-Gita where it says, “From time to time,” and it’s my understanding that this is what she meant, that Christ has come forth at times. The Bible says that that’s a classic definition of the Antichrist. Those who do not believe, 1 John 4, that Christ came, the one and only Messiah came once and for all in the flesh; that He has come time and time again. He got to the Bhagavad-Gita and it said, “Vishnu comes forth from time to time in times of crisis to save the righteous and to destroy the wicked.” And he just wrapped that holy book up in his closet and put it on the shelf. I mean, who needs a savior but a sinner? Then, a few days later comes one of these despised missionaries, stands right in front, opens a little black book—the New Testament—preaches from a verse that says, “This is a faithful saying and worthy of all acceptation that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners.” [1 Tim. 1:15] He said, “That’s the Savior I need. I need one who saves sinners. I can’t become righteous enough.” There’s a big difference.

Ankerberg: Dave, I think you’ve lost some of our viewers out there. And I’m going to switch categories on you for an illustration out of your books. It goes back to what they are doing at Stanford and some other places in rolling dice. Now, I think many of our viewers will understand then just a little better what we’re talking about, okay? You roll the dice, and they tell the person to think what the number ought to be. Now, you said if there are just one or two dice in there, you might see how some kind of force from our mind might be able to change that. But you were saying that they were dealing with 14 pairs of dice.

Hunt: Well, there’s too many dice rolling too fast for the human eye to follow.

Ankerberg: Well, tell us about the experiment that they checked out and what happened and what conclusions you drew.

Hunt: This was Dr. Rhine at Duke University who began these experiments. And he was trying to verify psychokinesis. And they would have a person sit and think of a number, and they would roll the dice, roll the dice, roll the dice—maybe 20 of them at once. And statistically, amazingly, they came up, there was a statistical bias in the direction of the number that the person was thinking. And he thought, “Well, mind over matter, terrific.” And then he thought, “Whose mind?” The guy wasn’t even looking at the dice. There were too many rolling too fast for his eye to follow. He obviously wasn’t controlling them. He was thinking a number. Is there some universal mind that was tuned in? When Uri Geller, at Stanford Research Institute, said, “You know the psychologists….

Ankerberg: Who is Uri Geller, for people who don’t know?

Hunt: Uri Geller is the Israeli psychic who bends metal with his mind and so forth, which is becoming very common today. He said, “You know, the psychologists and the psychiatrists, they talk about my mind, my subconscious. It’s not my mind, it’s other minds. They are in control of me 24 hours out of the day. I have to do their bidding. They channel this power through me.” He thinks they’re ET’s from a planet called Hoova and he’s their ambassador to this earth. I believe from my research that they are demons and they are leading the human race down the same primrose path that Satan started us on with these four basic lies.

Ankerberg: One more, Dave, illustration for our people; and that has to do with a legal case that happened in California where they hypnotized the witness and then they threw the case out of court after he gave the right answer. What happened and why did they actually even change the law courts in California concerning hypnosis?

Hunt: Well, the Supreme Court in the State of California has now outlawed all testimony by witnesses who have been hypnotized, because they know you can lie under hypnosis, you come out with self-serving, deceptive memories. That once you’ve been hypnotized, you can never ever thereafter differentiate between a true memory of the event and what may have been wittingly or unwittingly implanted by the hypnotist. Now, one of the cases, and there are a number of cases where this person was a witness to a murder, but he couldn’t consciously… this was a Freudian invention, the conscious and subconscious. Nobody can tell you what the subconscious is and how it works. It’s a theory. But he couldn’t consciously remember. So they hypnotized him. He identified the murderer and the murderer would have been convicted, but the defense attorneys introduced ophthalmologists and other experts in court who proved beyond a doubt scientifically that at that hour of the night when the murder took place, it was physically impossible for the human eye to identifiably resolve an image beyond 30 feet. And the murder took place a hundred yards away. So here again he came up with a memory that never existed. Now, it was a good thing, because Satan doesn’t always do bad things. But behind it all, is the ultimate purpose, that we have the power within ourselves; that there is no death; that we can ultimately become gods; that the way to go is by becoming ever better ourselves by gaining enlightenment and knowledge;” which is the exact opposite of what the Bible teaches. Now, you can believe whatever you want, but there are two definite alternatives here.

Ankerberg: Elisabeth, you realize this book on children and death, which is a new book, isn’t it?

Kubler-Ross: Yes.

Ankerberg: Very good. In this book you had a warning that you put in there, and I want you to tell me why. “One more word needs to be said about shopping around for proof of survival,” you have said. “Many parents are so desperate that they would pay any price to get a message”—you’ve got that in quotes—“from their dead children. They visit psychics, have life readings, and go to any expense and travel to fulfill this wish.” Then you said, “There are too many charlatans around willing to recommend someone for communications with their deceased child.” In another article that I have right here, you say that, concerning psychics levels being manipulated by humans, “I am very opposed to teaching such things, including techniques, that help one autogenicly induce an out-of-body experience. Now, I don’t feel this way because psychic energy is in itself bad. It is not bad. But people misuse it dreadfully. I’d say that anybody who fools around with psychic energy has a 90 percent chance of becoming a phony. But you understand, I also am a burned child. I’ve seen people misuse their psychic gifts.” Now you went on to say that people should not go looking for that. Tell me why you said that, first of all, if you will be personal enough again to share with us some of your own experiences that you went through.

Kubler-Ross: I work about 95 percent with parents of murdered children, parents of children who have committed suicide, and dying children. And a lot of parents just can’t stand not to be able to see their children again. And a neighbor or a friend says, “Why don’t you go to this and that psychic that can connect you with your child.” And in almost all cases—I have noticed that you can’t have a statistic on that—but almost all of them are very able to connect them with their child, and they say generalities that are true probably for most children. And they have hopes, and it’s just cheap making a living. I am very opposed to that.

I have tried hypnosis, I have had my own out-of-body experience; I have had my own cosmic consciousness experience, but the blessing of those experiences was always that I had the experience, and then three or six months later on down the line I realized what it was and that in the beginning I had to go to California, you know, to find out. Because I could just describe what happened to me, so my head was kind of limping behind. You understand how I mean that? But once you start experimenting with it, I wanted to know, for example, that the thousands of patients who have had such a near death experience, what is it like to be able to be in a sphere where there is no time and space? Can you verify this in a laboratory? And I am very much in favor of researchers who know what they are doing and to stick their neck out and to experiment with that. But to lay people who don’t need to do that for research reasons and for finding the truth, I would really warn them not to fool around with psychic energy.

Ankerberg: Okay, let me come back, because in the beginning you said you didn’t believe and you wanted to get the proof, and so you had the experience. And I can’t help but think of all the people that are listening in tonight. You just said 90 percent might be charlatans and you’ve warned them not to go that direction. And yet they’re probably saying the same thing that you did: “I want to prove it, because if there is this experience, if there is this life after death, shoot, I want it!” So how do you counsel them?

Kubler-Ross: There is a universal law, as I call it, that you always get what you need. You don’t get what you want, but you always get what you need. But you have to ask for it. You pray for what you need or you just think of it and ask to be given it, and if you really need it, you get it. And I tell parents that if you really need to know—for example, that your murdered child is alive and well and in the presence of Jesus, or whatever the case may be from whatever background they come from—ask for it, pray for it, and if you really need it, you will get it. And a lot of parents then get the experience. But they don’t have to take drugs, they don’t have to have a medium, they don’t need a psychic. All they have to do is to pray for it.

Ankerberg: Dave? Maurice? Comment?

Rawlings: Comment, yes. “We always get what we need,” and yet the dying patient never gets what he needs. In all the hospices I’ve visited, the Bible is discarded as poison; because there is some fear there when the dying patient wants to know, “Is there life after death?” And we’ve had the experience of interviewing patients, nobody tells them. The minister plays games, the family plays games, the dying patient never wanted to know about dying before, about this book, is programmed against it. And all the hospices I have visited are programmed against it, including the ministers. And that’s a strong statement.

Ankerberg: Why do you think that they are?

Rawlings: I don’t know why. Afraid of offending the patient? He wants to know. Now, he doesn’t want to know from you, John, because you’re a minister; you’re not a sinner. I’m a sinner in their eyes, and he wants to hear it from you and I, the audience here, that don’t sell this book for a living. We’ve got nothing to gain; you do. But if we believe what God says in this Book, that there is life after death and how to get it, he wants to hear it now like he never did before and nobody tells him. And none of the hospices that I’ve visited had this as their primary aim. Their primary aim is putting them in the arms of Morpheus and let them go out the door in space and comfort.

Ankerberg: Elisabeth, is there a reason that you would think that in hospices…?

Kubler-Ross: Did I hear you right? You say hospices don’t use the Bible?

Rawlings: The ones that I’ve seen….

Kubler-Ross: Oh, I have to strongly object!

Rawlings: I’ve even argued with ministers and asked them why he doesn’t tell the patients about Jesus Christ. And the minister that I’m thinking about doesn’t preach hell because he doesn’t believe there is a hell. And I believe the only time he says “Jesus Christ” is when he slams his fingers in the car door.

Ankerberg: David, have you got a comment on this before we go on?

Hunt: Yes. You see, as I have read with very great interest, and I must commend Elisabeth for her selfless concern for others, the long hours…

Ankerberg: Seventeen hours a day, seven days a week, right?

Hunt: …and, you know, everything that she has poured into this. But as I read her writings and listen to her tapes, she’s coming from a point of view that is entirely alien. Let me give you, from my background….

Ankerberg: Alien to what?

Hunt: Alien to Christianity. And let me explain why. For instance, 1 Thessalonians 3 talks about the hope that Christians have. and it says that they do not sorrow in the face of death like others who have no hope. Now, as I read her writings, she is talking about people who are angry with death, who are afraid of death, who can’t accept death. And she’s teaching workshops in order to get these people to the point where they can accept this. I held in my arms my father when I knew he was dying and carried him into his bed and sat there holding his hand and talking to him, as I did with my mother sometime earlier. I’ve seen a few people die. I’ve seen Christians die. And there is not the sorrow, there is not the fear, there is not the anger that she is talking about. But the Bible says that Christ has given us a hope. And I knew when my father, when I saw the light go out in his eyes, that he was “absent from the body, present with Christ, which is far better.” [2 Cor. 5:8] Not because he went through some workshop or he came to accept something, but because he believed that Jesus Christ died for his sins, paid a debt that he could never pay, that he was forgiven, that he had a home in Heaven, not based on his righteousness, but on the forgiveness that God gives by His grace. Now, when you have this hope, why is this not offered? I don’t read of it in her writings.

Now, just one thing to add to this. It’s my understanding, and you have to kind of read between the lines—and maybe Elisabeth can clarify this—but as I read the Plowboy interview that she first had the experience of materializations of entities in 1976 in California. Yet at the introduction of that article it indicates that someone there betrayed her. She says she was a “burned child” later on, and that she has broken off all her relationship with this. I come from Los Angeles, and in the LA Times there were articles about people who were pretending that they were spirit entities who were not spirits. They were having sex and so forth. It’s my feeling that Elisabeth has been deceived in the past by people that she thought were spirit guides, or what she thought were spirit guides. Yet she continues to preach the same message that these deceivers gave her. And I would like to know how she can be certain now, because she said Jay Barnham is—you know his integrity—she was 100 percent sure, and yet it seems to me that turned out to be a fraud. Now, how can she be sure right now?

Ankerberg: That’s very personal. Do you want to talk about that?

Kubler-Ross: Well, you know, he’s jumping around so many things. I never have a chance to respond to him. But, yes, I have been burned, and I think anybody who sticks their neck out and experiments with every level of kind of research will be burned once or twice. And I’m glad, in a way, that this happened to me, because if that had not happened to me, I would probably go and teach quadriplegics how to have out-of-body experiences, how to, by a method that Monroe used, to teach you how to have an out-of-body experience. If you are a quadriplegic you will be very grateful to go to a football match and watch it—you don’t even need a ticket. And there are all sorts of secondary benefits to teaching those things. And because I know how very clever some of the channels are and I’ve “been had,” very much so, I am more skeptical than I have ever been. But I have also learned an incredible amount of it. But when you are in the presence of Jesus and you are in that love, I mean no channel, no psychic, no Guru, or Baba, or whoever—and I’ve never had drugs so I don’t know about drugs—but no outside being or person can ever fake that. And I don’t think a negative force or a fraud can let you experience that light and that incredible unconditional love, and come out of it a few minutes later totally healed. I mean, if that’s not reality, then I don’t know what reality is anymore. I think we have to investigate it and there are a few people who have to stick their necks out. And I’m willing to continue to stick my neck out.

Ankerberg: I really appreciate your being that open. Dave, do you have a response?

Hunt: Well, you know, Jesus warned that the last days prior to His return would be characterized by the greatest deception that the world has ever seen. You’ve got that in Matthew 24:4, 11, 24. And He said that this deception would involve three specific things: false christs, false prophets, and false miracles. And the Jesus of the Bible is the One who died for our sins and resurrected. He’s not a reincarnation. And if somebody comes and claims to be Jesus, whether it is in this world or in the spirit world, whether you are in your body or you are out of your body, Jesus warned about that. If they don’t have the marks of Calvary, they didn’t die for your sins and resurrected but is some reincarnation of some positive force or something that’s offering you to find the solution within yourself, then no matter how real the experience is, I believe that it is another deception and you’ve “been had” again, in my opinion.

Ankerberg: How strict do you take the Bible? Because there are things about going to spiritualists, to people that call up the dead, or talk to the dead and so on. What do you do with those verses? Any of you can comment.

Hunt: I believe God absolutely forbids it. Deuteronomy 18. A necromancer is a person who allegedly communicates with the dead. Now, I don’t think you can communicate with the dead. They are either in heaven or in hell. And I take the Bible literally where it’s obvious that it should be taken literally.

Read Part 4