Althoughtherewillalwaysbethe occasional opportunistic prankster, more and more Near Death Experiences (NDEs) are being reported by professionals including doctors, lawyers, community leaders, and academic scholars—people who have extensive visibility and interaction within the public square. These individuals, it would seem, are much more dependent upon their credibility than others in the general population. Of such people, it can reasonably be said that they have much to lose and very little to gain by reporting a false NDE. Therefore, it is quite reasonable to believe that their testimony concerning what they experienced during a NDE is most likely reliable and trustworthy. In particular, NDEs by atheists in which they encounter what they interpret to be either Jesus or God and lead to a life-changing conversion are very powerful stories indeed. One such story comes from the “fierce atheist” John Wren-Lewis (1923-2006).
John Wren-Lewis is a curious case on many accounts not the least of which is that his NDE did not follow the generally reported sequence of separation for the body, travelthroughadarktunneltoward a bright light, arrival in a heavenly realm attended by angelic beings and relatives who have already passed away, followed by a life review and instruction to return to their mortal body. No, Wren-Lewis experienced none of these sensations duringhisdrug-inducedNDE. Not to say that he did not actually experience these things; by his own admission, Wren-Lewis said he could not positively deny having these classic sensations, only that he did not remember anything after becoming drowsy on a long bus ride. Wren-Lewis and his wife Ann, to their great misfortune, were the victims of a petty thief who had poisoned John with morphine-laced Cadbury’s Toffees (a common happening in Thailand) on a bus ride in southern Thailand in 1983. Thanks to Ann, John eventually reached a hospital and doctors who were not optimistic about his survival. Later that night, however, John did come aroundandregainedconsciousness. And that is when he noticed something delightful, and incredibly strange. John, who had said belief in the supernatural was “a neurotic escape into fantasy,” woke up with a radically altered consciousness; what he termed a “mystical consciousness” that brought about within him a mystical awakening. Of this awakening, John claimed his consciousness of himself and of everything else had changed in a tangible way. Not only in that moment in time but in every moment after that, as an acute awareness of thepresenceofamysticalrealmand a Supreme Being at the center of it all, showering him with “the peace of God that passeth all understanding.” Wren-Lewis would struggle to describe his heightened consciousness, saying that “Words like ‘bliss’ or ‘joy’ are inadequate and far too limited” to describe such a thing. Oddly, and pleasantly so, these feelings that he termed “God-like consciousness” remained present to him for the rest of his life. Of it all, he said, “I suppose my NDE must have somehow shocked me into recognizing the Supreme so that my forgetfulness of ‘who I really am’ is now spasmodic rather than chronic.” And it is herein, I must say, that the power of John Wren-Lewis’s NDE lies because it was, in his own words, an awaking of “God Consciousness” that he described as being “thrust upon” him without desiring it, looking for it, or even believing in it. That, you might say, is a gross understatement.
John, along with a small group of like-minded scholars, was a major exponentofthe“DeathofGodMovement” of the 1960s which had taken Frederich Nietzsche’s philosophical argument that “God is Dead,” (exactly what this column argues against) and developed around it what came to be known as “Death of God Theology.” God is dead theology made the argument that society had “outgrown” the concept that God actually exists, and that modern society has outgrown the ChristianconceptofGod,alongwith anything and everything of a mystical nature whatsoever. In its place, Death of God theologians argue for a faith based upon the potential of mankind and the realization that God is not needed, or so they say. At any rate, John Wren-Lewis, the renowned Death of God theologian, now found himself face to face with not only “God Consciousness,” but anundeniableconsciousnessofGod. The same John, who to this point had thought NDEs to be “exercises in vivid imagination,” was now so utterly convinced to his core that he wondered how he would undo all that he had written and spoken against God. Wren-Lewis recalls after his NDE, “I envisaged making public recantation of my antimystical views and joining the formerly despised ranks of spiritual seekers.” Not only did he recant all he had written about the death of God and what he had thought might be appropriate substitutes for orthodox theism, he spent the remainder of his life lecturing and teaching about therealityofthemysticaldimension where the “Consciousness of God” calls out from the mystical dimension to all human beings, “I Am He, and I Am not dead!”
Gloria in excelsis Deo!
Ty B. Kerley, DMin., is an ordained minister who teaches Christian apologetics, and relief preaches in Southern Oklahoma. Dr. Kerley and his wife Vicki are members of the Waurika church of Christ, and live in Ardmore. You can contact him at: dr.kerley@isGoddead.com.