What if I do not believe in the historical Jesus, but want to identify with the Christ inside me, my Higher-Self. Can I experience transformation of my mind, heart, and life this way? I do not believe Jesus has an ego problem. If He is in charge of your thoughts, your life, your actions; if unconditional Love is the ruler of your life, then you have accepted Him whether you are attracted to the historical account of Jesus of Nazareth or not.12
Committing to a historical or mythical Jesus is not an issue of religion. It is about your life being transformed by LOVE. Regardless of your approach to Christ, if it is sincere, I believe you will run into Jesus of Nazareth—the historical MAN—the Being of Light…anyway.
Definitions of Christ
The Dead Saints see Jesus as our Big Brother. The Son of God. The Living One. The Living God. The Great ‘I Am’:
Are you Jesus? I am the Great I AM. I come to you the way you want to see me. There is a golden thread in all religions and practices. I am the Blanket and you are the thread of it.13
One distinctive reference stands out among all other names for the personification of Christ in The Dead Saint Chronicles— the Son of God:
The very next moment the absolute impossible happened; a tiny pinprick of Light at the side of the bed began to grow brighter and brighter. At first not noticing the pinprick of Light, I thought it was a tiny night Light that was the room’s only illumination that was getting brighter.
But then I saw it was coming from beside the white bedside table at the head of the bed. It continued to brighten as I watched. It brightened to such an extent that had it been any ordinary Light I would most certainly have been blinded.
The next moment, there flooded directly into my mind the words, ‘Stand Up...you are now in the presence of the Son of God,’ whereupon out of the Light stepped what I could only describe as the most magnificent Being I have ever known.
Thankful at last for a little company in this strange situation, I joked, ‘That’s it! Just like that...I am with the Son of God...Isn’t there a reception area or something before we meet?
I felt a presence of Power and pure Love that was older than time but yet more modern than anyone I have ever met.14
Christianity refers to Jesus in John 3:16 as “The only Begotten Son of God,” but a more accurate translation is “The unique Son of God”—a Greek term meaning one of a kind. What made Jesus unique as a historical man is that He lived His life so perfectly to become identified with God the Father, the Living One, Living Love. In I Corinthians 15:20 Paul says, “But now is Christ risen from the dead, and become the first fruits of them that slept.”
While Jesus was the first to overcome death, we have been tasked as Sons and Daughters of God, to be part of a royal lineage to follow His example.
A Royal Lineage
Julie’s NDE describes our relationship with Jesus as our Brother. Other Dead Saint testimonies describe Him as Big Brother, or our Great Grandfather, and insist we are children of the most High God, a Royal lineage with the same spiritual blood running through us:
I looked at Jesus and asked if that was the way to Heaven. He smiled and said, ‘Yes.’ I then asked ‘Can I go there right now?’
Jesus said ‘Yes, you may go. God is ready for you anytime you are ready to go home.’
I said, ‘Yes, I’m ready.’
At that point I said, ‘I want my husband to go with me.’ Jesus smiled that forever patient loving smile of His and said, ‘God is not ready for Hugo yet. He can’t go with you.’
So I looked at Jesus and said, ‘I don’t want to go to Heaven without my husband, so I’m not going.’
We then walked over next to the river, then Jesus took both my hands turning my palms upward. While holding my hands He said, ‘I want you to remember something. You are of a royal lineage. You are a child of God, The Most High God. You live in the world, but are not of the world. Your rightful place is in Heaven with the Father.’
I said ‘Yes, I understand.’ The whole while He was telling me this I felt like I was the most precious, most loved, most beloved person in existence.
Next I asked, ‘Just what is your relationship to me?’
Jesus said, ‘I am your brother.’
I said, ‘I know that’s what the Bible says, so it’s true?’
Jesus said, ‘Yes, I am your brother. We have the same blood running through our veins. I will never leave you or forsake you. I will always be there for you. Never ever forget who you are.’ I just stood there looking around us for a while. He then said, ‘Now go back to your bed and wake up.’ 15
What Does Jesus Look Like?
The Dead Saints record dozens of after-death sightings of Jesus and describe His appearance. There are a few common denominators, a 2000-year-old robe clothing tied with a sash or rope, sandals, long brown hair, and blue/gray eyes—but it is never exactly the same. Even in my own dreams, Jesus fits the same stereotype described by the Dead Saints.
Chamisa found a pencil drawing of Jesus after her NDE that looked like the Jesus she saw during her experience:
A Holy Being so filled with Love and forgiveness. I searched afterwards, to find a picture of what I saw. I finally found a pencil drawing by Frances Hook of Jesus with the children. That is the closest image of a Holy Being to what I saw although I’d never seen that particular picture before my NDE experience.16
Jean reported nearly an identical response from Jesus:
The Light turned a magnificent blue and rolled toward me like an ocean wave. It was not really close to me, but nevertheless I could see the image of Jesus within the blue wave. Love poured out upon me, like warm water. Jesus looked just like He did on the poster in my Sunday school class. I had the thought that if I had been a Buddhist, perhaps he would look like Buddha, and I was told, ‘That is right. God appears in a familiar form.’17
So does this mean Jesus and Buddha are interchangeable? Yes, and No. Jesus is still the Man who is Love personified, the unique Son of God, the Being who sits at the right hand of the Father, and will appear this way to those who see Him that way. However, if a Buddhist dies and sees Buddha, there is no conflict. God appears to the faithful in familiar form.
A Chronicle of Christ
A day after the one-year anniversary of leaving Akio Botanical Gardens, November 13, 2014, Jesus came to me in a dream:
~I was traveling with a group of people who saw a man they thought was Jesus. I asked them if they had seen Jesus perform any miracles to prove He was Jesus. They said, ‘No.’ He seemed like an “average Joe” kind of guy.
“Jesus” invited me to fly with Him in His small, burgundy-blood red, beat up Cessna.
I said, ‘Sure!’
I climbed in and sat in the left side passenger seat behind Jesus. (I assume we were flying in a 4-seater Cessna) When we got up into the air, I climbed into the co-pilots seat. He showed me how to turn the aircraft to the right and, in many ways, was instructing me. Jesus said the small plane was used to get back and forth from country towns to Washington, D.C. (symbolic representation of the City of God or Holy City in Heaven). Jesus wanted me to fly the Cessna, but I asked Him to be my Instructor Pilot.
I joked with Him, ‘It’s what the piloting rules require!’ I knew I could fly the plane, but I didn’t know when and how to communicate with the flight control tower for takeoff and landing. (I have had one other approaching-death dream (ADD) about flying a Cessna to a tropical place, but was nervous because I didn’t know how to communicate with the flight control tower).
It was getting late and we needed to sleep. We landed the Cessna on the side of the road near a town with a small farm with garden supplies. We picked up two 50# bags of grass seed, each containing millions of seeds. I began looking for a hotel or restaurant for Jesus and me to stay overnight. I found a simple bed and breakfast, but before we could check in, we were approached by a coupl
e of Secret Service agents who were returning items—keys—they believed were stolen from me.
I remember thinking, ‘What nice guys! They were so honest to return them!’
Immediately afterward, we checked into our room, and instead of carrying luggage, I dragged in the two heavy bags of grass seed! Jesus laid down on a big king-sized bed, and covered Himself with an old granny-style thin white cover. I laid on top of it and slept at His feet.
The Secret Service agents stood watch over Jesus and me during our overnight stay. They had “ear communication” devices and seemed to be on-guard…as if they were protecting us. (Symbolic of God’s warrior angels?)
The next day, during our flight back to the US capitol, we were going to open the plane doors and spread the millions of grass seeds over the land. ~Chronicle 518
Fifty days later (symbolic of the Biblical Jubilee Year and the forgiveness of debt?)18 on January 1, 2015, I had another dream of Jesus. He simply said to me:
David, cherish the time you have left. ~Chronicle 558
Will the Real Jesus Standup?
Jesus was the most important person in my life as a young man, but I knew in my heart, something was missing in our understanding of Jesus in the Church. My explosive encounter with Jesus—in the form of a Bag lady in New York in 1981 and a similar, more powerful experience in October, 2011 (chapter 2)—are reminders that anyone who has touched his powerful Presence, never, ever forgets. It is indelible, permanent, and life changing.
I take a risk of alienating some non-Christian groups and individuals, as well as some orthodox Christian groups who are very passionate about their beliefs and what they believe is the “right” (and only) pathway to knowing God. However, since the Chronicles will make at least a small contribution towards our knowledge about Heaven and Jesus Christ, I will tell the truth as I see it.
My near-death research and my own experience taught me that Jesus is not interested in being worshipped. Instead, He wants us to strive to become a carbon copy, a Xerox, a perfect Bonsai representing His life. He has no need to be called Jesus or even to be recognized as Jesus of Nazareth, or even to be called by His Aramaic birth name, Yeshua.19 He has no interest in building large, ornate churches or temples to honor Him. I believe His wish for all Christians and non-Christians, and even those who do not believe in Him or in God, is to find a way to experience unconditional LOVE by touching His Holy Presence within and without.
How can we do this?
Experiencing Jesus Christ is not the same as believing in Jesus…though believing in Him prepares the ground for the experience. Without that belief, the experience of Christ may be less likely to happen, but by no means uncommon as non-Christians and even atheists have discovered in mystical experiences throughout history.
Often, children grow up believing in Jesus, only to reject the belief as teenagers or in early adulthood. He is put on the back burner for years, and then suddenly, in some extreme life crisis, the early belief will resurface, but this time as an experience. It happens neither through studying nor through some deliberate effort to re-establish the earlier belief. It is a life crisis, challenging them to find the power capable of dealing with their challenging difficulties, which opens the doorway for the new birth or born-again experience. An authentic encounter with the presence of Love, circumcises hate, anger, guilt and fear from the heart. While the process of going through the words of salvation is often an emotional experience, not all who do so are circumcised. An encounter with Christ rarely happens in a Sunday school church service where somebody is telling us how sinful we are, and what we must do to be saved.
So how do we invoke the power of Christ? Do we look for the historical Jesus in church? Or do we look for the Christ inside ourselves? Do we look for His Spirit in the lilies of the field, or do we look for His Presence in the eyes of a man freezing in the dead of winter? Dead Saint transformations describe, in Zen-like fashion, the realization that Christ’s Love dwells in our own heart. His spiritual blood runs through our veins. He is always there as our Inner Teacher, waiting to help, guide and instruct. We just need to let Him in.
Researching my Bible Class journal notes, I found a great lecture from Paul Solomon where he paraphrases Jesus’ swan song to His 12 apostles in the 14th chapter of John:
Jesus systematically through His lifetime took one law of nature at a time; mineral life, plant life, animal life, human life, and ultimately the weather, one at a time and proved all these things would obey Him. And they obeyed Him because of His teaching.
He said, ‘When you live in harmony with the Law—in absolute obedience of the Law, then the Law obeys you. You then become Master of all that is. But as long as I walk among you, then you are going to say, ‘He can do all of these things, but we cannot.’
But Jesus said, ‘I do not these things of myself, but the Father that is in Me, He does the works.’ Jesus wanted us to understand this: ‘If I am in the Father and the Father is in me, then He is doing the work. And if you are in me and I am in the Father, then that makes you and the Father one.’ None of the apostles understood what Jesus was talking about at the time. The only way Jesus could get His point across was to die. And when He died, Jesus overcame the last adversary—-death. And in overcoming death, He raised Himself up an incorruptible, spiritual body and said, “You can do this too.
Jesus came to show us how to love and how to forgive. We are made of the same Light as Jesus Christ. As Sons and Daughters of God, we are a part of God’s Royal Lineage. We can become one with Him. It is our commission from Him to do so, so we might better serve the Father. I believe the greatest testimony of Jesus Christ was his humility and honesty, and yet it is these very remarks that our Christian church sometimes likes to take away from Jesus. I mean it in this way:
First, we take away His humility by suggesting He was the only one who ever could accomplish the things he accomplished—that no other person could match what He did in the flesh. We take away His humility when we do, because Jesus didn’t say He was the only one who could do great works. In fact, He said quite the opposite. In John 14:12 Jesus said:
Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth in me, the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do; because I go unto my Father.
Here is His humility and His honesty. Jesus created the challenge for all who believe in Him to do ‘greater works’—healing, service, compassion, empathy, peace, saving the lost and even saving the world.
I believe this was core to Jesus’ teaching. He showed us this when He asked Peter to have faith to walk on water. When Peter realized what he was doing, he began to sink into the water’s stormy depths. Jesus admonished Him, “Oh, Peter, where is your faith?” The faith that has the power to move mountains.
Jesus Christ overcame death itself, and bore on His shoulders the cross of humanity, taking responsibility for every mistake and (every sin), any soul has ever committed or will commit for eternity. His life continues after His death and ascension when He was born-again into the hearts of his Apostles, disciples and Saints….and you.
There are at least a hundred authentic Dead Saint close encounters with Jesus Christ in the referenced in the NDERF archives. Sadly, I only have enough space to tell you a few of these face-to-face meetings. It is my hope these remarkable stories will help to inform you of the Man, the Personality, the Humor, the Love, the Light, and the Power He IS.
Dead Saint Encounters with Jesus
You may wonder, “Is Jesus real?” Regardless of our belief, since His crucifixion two thousand years ago, Jesus has continued to appear to the living, in waking or dream states, and to those temporarily dead—the Dead Saints. During my research for Dead Saint direct encounters with Jesus, I catalogued a fairly complete library of several—dozen, unique, fascinating, sometimes breathtaking accounts of Christ. Every account validated a very real, approachable Jesus.
Irene didn’t believe in Jesus Christ—until she was hit by a van while studying in medical school:
Everything around me was dark. I sensed that a figure approached in front of me. By some method, I received the impression I was unworthy of being there… Then, I saw the figure of a man who stood over a sort of stream. The water seemed to be made of the Light of liquid neon. I saw His feet, shod in some sort of sandals and [I saw] His attire. All was dazzling in Him. He seemed to be made of Light. I felt extremely good in His Presence; full of an unconditional [and] absolute Love.
I knew inside of me He was Jesus Christ (and I didn’t believe in Him). I was surprised.
I said, ‘But you exist…!’
He said, ‘Live.’ His voice sounded warm and sweet, but I didn’t want to return.20
Shalom, a conservative Jew, died during an operation, when his heart stopped. This was his second NDE and he was shown his “Book of Life:”
Then, suddenly I saw & sensed a very special man, standing over to the left of where I was standing. My heart recognized HIM before my eyes did.
I immediately walked over to Him & asked, ‘Are You the Being, called JESUS?’
And with a warm soft, sense of Love & Laughter, He replied back, ‘I am called by many names, however because of your background you can call me BIG BROTHER, and I will call you, My Little Prince of Peace’... He then went on to indicate I could either stay with HIM or return to Earth. However, if I did not return, many people would miss their connections, in order to complete their missions and purposes in life. Reluctantly, but with a deeper understanding of my Mission...I chose to return to help ALL of my assigned brothers & sisters, on our planet. JESUS instructed me I was to do this, “Without greed or ego getting in the way, I was to connect doctors, attorneys, priests, rabbis and peoples of ALL faiths, young and old alike, to help one another.
The Dead Saints Chronicles: A Zen Journey Through the Christian Afterlife Page 39
