Quigg Lawrence - Blinded by the Light

Blinded by the
LIGHT

Blinded by the
LIGHT

RAYMOND QUIGG LAWRENCE, JR.

Exposing the Truth About Near-Death Experiences

Copyright 1996 by Word, Incorporated All rights reserved. No portion of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form by any meanselectronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or any otherexcept for brief quotations in printed reviews, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

All Scripture quotations in this book, except those noted otherwise, are from the
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Other Scripture quotations are from the following sources:
The New International Version of the Bible (NIV),
copyright 1983 by the International Bible Society.
Used by permission of Zondervan Bible Publishers.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:

Lawrence, Quigg
ISBN 0-8499-4004-4
[cip data to come]
ISBN 0-8499-1313-6

Printed and bound in the United State of America

6 7 8 9 BVG 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

To the seven martyrs

Bruce Spain (my mom)
Quigg Lawrence, Sr. (my dad)
Leslie Downs (my twin sister)
Annette (my bride)
Fleet (my son and best male friend)
Ann Preston (my daughter)
Mary Wynne (my younger daughter)

Contents

Foreword

Bibliography

Thank you to my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, who has defeated death and reconciled me to the Father. Thanks to my long-lost friend Mo Gill, M.D., for sharing Christ with methat took a lot of courage!

Gerald McDermott, Assistant Professor of Religion at Roanoke College, took time out of his busy writing and teaching schedule to help a green author through the process. He has been and is a dear brother in the faith. Without his help and encouragement Blinded by the Light would never have been written.

I must give special recognition to Kathy Decker, my copy editor. She took an unwieldy, disjointed doctoral dissertation and breathed life into it. Her keen insight, sharp legal mind, and ability as an assisting author were essential to producing this book.

Thank you to Richard Lovelace, Richard Peace, and Gwenfair Walters, my professors at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, who encouraged me to have my dissertation published in popular form.

Thank you to Steve Wike for getting my manuscript into the hands of an acquisitions editor who would actually read it.

Thank you to my parish leaders at Church of the Holy Spirit for encouraging me to pursue a doctorate and to my staff and church family for humoring me when I ranted on and on about the NDE and the book.

Thank you to my secretary, Arline Hearn, for typing over 900 pages of notes during my doctoral studies and for keeping my study time free of non-emergencies. You are a godly woman.

Thanks to my twin brothers, Dave Fuller and Dave Anderson, for your encouragement and help.

Thank you to Robert Williams, M.D. and Paul Frantz, M.D., faithful brothers in my church who helped with the medical section.

A Special thanks to my brother in Christ, Doyle Lawson, the best bluegrass singer/musician in the world, whose CDs accompanied me in the midnight hours.

I gratefully acknowledge the sacrificial financial assistance given by Joseph and Laura Anna Adams and William L. Andrews. Without your help, I would be facing tremendous debt.

A debt of gratitude is owed to all who have attempted to analyze and interpret the NDE from a biblical perspective. Specifically, Tal Brooke and the staff at Spiritual Counterfeits Project in Berkeley, Doug Groothuis, Richard Abanes, Maurice Rawlings, Bill Alnor, John Ankerberg, John Weldon, and George Gallup, Jr.

Thank you to my friends at Word Publishing, David Moberg, Terri Gibbs, and Lara Lleverino for being longsuffering with a rookie author.

Finally, I thank and gratefully acknowledge the major sacrifices of my wife, Annette, and children, Fleet, Ann Preston, and Mary Wynne. You showed extraordinary grace and love to me, especially when I was grouchy and preoccupied. Next to the Lord, you are the joy of my life! I love you. Annette, I know this project was a real sacrifice for you, and I promise I will never again try to be a student, senior pastor, parent, and author simultaneously. If I do, you can give me a near-death experience!

Quigg Lawrence

Its amazing that people can live with a serious problem yet be unaware of its danger. Parade magazine ran an article from Pravda some years back that recounted the story of a six-year-old Russian girl. This young girl went out into her familys garden to pick tomatoes. She fell asleep and rested peacefully. When she awoke, she suddenly became aware of a serious problema snake had slithered into her throat while she lay sleeping. The girl was gripped with fear as she realized the reality of her situation.

Just as the snake worked its way into the throat of the unsuspecting Russian girl, so the insidious Serpent, Satan, is working his way into our culture through the phenomenon of the modern-day near-death experience (NDE).

The NDE is pervasive. In his 1990 statistical study of the NDE phenomenon, the pollster George Gallup estimated that 12 percent of all adult Americans, or almost twenty-three million people, have had a verge of death or temporary-death experience, and of that number about eight million have experienced some sort of mystical encounter along with the death event. vast amounts of literature and media attention has been given to the subject of the NDE.

Books and articles on the subject aboundautobiographical accounts by people who have had NDEs (NDErs), researchers studies of NDEs, and all manner of interpretations of the causes and effects of the NDE. In 1990, NDE researcher Terry Basfords annotated bibliography of books and articles on the NDE included over seven hundred sources. A recent trip through my local librarys computer card catalogue and periodical index revealed almost five hundred titles on the NDE, and this in a small rural community.

Articles on the NDE appear in such diverse periodicals as: Golf, Publishers Weekly, Discover, People Weekly, Essence, MaCalls, Redbook, The Washingtonian, Psychology Today, Ladies Home Journal, Life, The American Legion, American Health, Readers Digest, and The National Inquirer.

Secular bookstores offer a plethora of books on the NDE, and there is no denying peoples appetites for these books. Moodys Life After Life has surpassed an unbelievable twelve million copies in print. In August of 1994, two books on the NDE appeared together on the New York Times Best Seller List. In first place was Betty Eadies Embraced by the Light. In sixth was Dannion Brinkleys Saved by the Light. The popularity of the NDE has given rise to fictional novels such as Peter James Twilight and even to a spate of satirical titles like Embarrassed by the Light and Purring in the Light: Near Death Accounts of Cats.

The print media, of course, has not been alone in capitalizing on the popularity of the NDE. The movie and television industries have played their parts. Hollywood has contributed such movies as Flat Liners, Ghost, Fearless, Always, and Blown Away. Secular talk shows, Unsolved Mysteries, and even morning news shows have featured those who claim to have had an NDE. Recently, QVC, the national home-sales television show, featured a live segment with Eadie, where over 100 copies of