The following "Question" was asked by a member of the congregation at Grace Community Church in Sun Valley, California, and "Answered" by their pastor, John MacArthur Jr. It was transcribed by Kathy Shortridge of Billings, Montana from the tape, GC 1301-P, titled "Bible Questions and Answers Part 18."  A copy of the tape can be obtained by writing, Word of Grace, P.O. Box 4000, Panorama City, CA 91412 or by dialing toll free 1-800-55-GRACE. ©1981. All Rights Reserved.

Question

What do you believe about people who die and come back to life? What do you think about that?

Answer

What do I believe about people dying and coming back to life? I think they didn’t die. Hebrews 9:27, "It is appointed unto a man ONCE to die," and after that you don’t come back--it's judgment. There have been few exceptions in history and those are indicated to us in scripture.

But I was on a debate on CBS some years ago, with a London psychiatrist, a medical doctor, and a weird guy who came back from the dead who was just a really a far out guy. A lot of people are doing that now, its the new thing. In fact this guy I wrote in my Charismatic book, Dr Eby (sp?) who died and went to heaven and came back. In order to balance it off, he said, "That when he went to heaven and came back, heaven was so wonderful that he lost all fear of hell and since he’s Arminian and believes that you can loose your salvation, God had to send him to hell to put the fear back in him so he’d stay saved. So he had a second deal, he died and went to Hell and came back.

Well, you know, its like flying saucers, if one guy says he died and went to heaven and came back, then everyone who goes into some kind of an operation and wants to get on some kind of deal and talk about it or write a book, says they died and came back. They all talk about this flashing light: this guy, this London doctor who was a very, very brilliant guy said that that can be explained as some of the nerve reaction in the brain that causes a sparking. There may be also that very satanic involvement, where when a person goes into that, they always come back feeling that everything was peaceful and everything was good and everything was fine and that’s exactly what the devil would like people to believe and would like people to propagate…right, that everything is fine.

I don’t think they died. If you want to get technical about it, this doctor said there is no case on record ever of someone dying that he knew of and coming back. They may lapse into something where they have a flat EKG, that is an electrocardiogram. But what they are starting to do now, I think and I was just reading this the other day, is that they are defining death, and this came out of Houston
recently, they are defining death now as the absence of a brain wave movement. In other words an electroencephalogram. When you have a flat brain wave deal you don’t come back! You can come back from a heart that stops, but most of these people don’t even get to that level. They just go into surgery and so forth and then they, by having so much exposure to out of body talk and all of this, they sort of dream that those things are happening and things like that. I think its fantasy and it’s prompted by the desire to...it's just like seeing little green men. Thousands of people have talked to little green men. You know, and told us about it.

Added to Bible Bulletin Board's "MacArthur’s Questions and Answers" by:

Tony Capoccia
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