Near-Death Experience

At the heart of the Christian message stands the proclamation of the resurrection: the good news that God raised Jesus from the dead. In Resurrection: The Origin and Goal of the Christian Life, Frank Matera explains why the resurrection was so important to the early church and why it remains important for Christians today. Beginning with the gospels, then moving to the Acts of the Apostles, the Pauline Epistles, and concluding with Hebrews, 1 Peter, 1 John, and the book of Revelation, Matera provides a comprehensive overview of how the different writings of the New Testament proclaimed the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Written in a clear and accessible manner, Matera presents readers with a way to understand the central message of the New Testament and of Christian faith: God raised Jesus from the dead. Building on this message, he shows that the resurrection of Jesus enables and empowers believers to live in the world today and provides them with the assurance that God will raise them from the dead as well.

Moody explores what he calls “shared-death experiences” — cases where people who are not dying temporarily enter the perceptual field of someone who is.

These witnesses report elements identical to near-death experiences:
– expansion of awareness
– perception of a luminous presence
– panoramic life review of the dying person
– dissolution of ordinary time
– sensations of traveling with the departing consciousness

The book demonstrates that the boundary between one person’s awareness and another’s dissolves at the moment of transition.

This suggests that consciousness is not confined to the brain and that the “death moment” opens a field of shared perception — a portal traditionally associated with mystical initiation.

Moody gathers hundreds of testimonies from people who experienced clinical death and returned with consistent descriptions: separation from the body, panoramic life review, presence of a luminous consciousness, and a dissolution of fear.

The book shows that when the physical body collapses, awareness does not disappear. Instead, a deeper layer of being becomes visible — one that is free from personal identity, time, and narrative.

These accounts echo the initiatic formula “die before you die,” offering empirical glimpses of what traditions describe as the death of the ego and the revelation of the immortal field.