I am Liz Wright. Welcome to Live Your Best Life. The only thing that matters now is living
by the power of this wonderful new creation life. We're going to become an undefeatable
force of radiating glory and we are rising up strong now in this hour.
Hi family, thank you for tuning in to this week's episode of Live Your Best Life with
Milla's Wright and I honestly am so excited. I've been so looking forward to today's conversation.
My special guest joining me is the publishing executive or in a publishing executive at
Destiny Image Publishing. He's also the host I should say. I'm jumping ahead on myself
there. He's the host of Sean Tabbitt Show. He's also co-author now of literally one
of the most outstanding books I think I've ever read. It's called Near Death Experiences,
101 stories that help us understand heaven, hell and the afterlife. And honestly, I could
not put the book down. It's so interesting. The content in there is so faith enhancing
and just compelling. Anyway, you're going to hear more from my special guest joining
me today who is the co-author of the book. As I said, Sean Tabbitt, Sean, welcome.
Well, Liz, thank you so much for inviting me to your podcast and for all of your kind
words about the book. This is a book that was birthed out of an interesting and difficult
time in my life. And so it's just, it's been fun to get reports of how it's touched people
and just how it's been impacting people. So I always appreciate any level of feedback.
So thank you for that kindness. I just love it. I mean, it's clearly, it's
obvious to me that in writing it, you, you seriously do have a mission. Like you really
do want to bring comfort and through uncertainty through trying to help us gain an understanding
of what happens when we leave this earth, right? And that was the thing that came across
to me as I was reading it. It was just hope, hope, hope. There's a ton of evidence out
there now, guys. Hope, hope. And the stories that you share is like, oh my gosh, I have
to talk to this man. So tell me just in beginning, just how did you end up working on the research
and putting that book together? Because it's such a brilliant and fascinating subject.
I thought everyone has a journey, don't they? So what was a bit of your journey? How did
you end up writing it? Yeah, I kind of haphazardly fell into the near death experiences space.
The first two books I read were John Burke's book, Imagine Heaven, which almost everybody
in our circles have, they've read that one. And then I had worked with Randy on his book,
Dynamite Jesus. And as Providence would have it, we did a podcast interview about that
book about three and a half years ago, and it went viral. And then we just started doing
content of him and me interviewing other people who'd had these near death experiences.
And that was really in the midst of the turmoil with the lockdowns and church closures and
COVID and everything crazy that was going on. And all of a sudden, we sort of fell into
this space where we started getting testimonies of people saying, I watched your interview
with so and so, and I've been distant from the Lord and I've rededicated my life, or
I watched this interview with that person. And I got healed during, we're just watching
the interview. And so we just started getting hundreds and hundreds of testimonies through
Randy's ministry of, you know, people just watching an interview and their lives being
transformed. Now, I've been interviewing people for 10 years, Randy's done tons of content
through the years as an author. And we'd never been in this space where we saw the Holy Spirit
drop on something so significantly. And it wasn't anything, we were just using the skill
sets we've used for years. And so that's really how we fell into this space of putting out
these books about the near death experiences because of what we saw God doing in the midst
of our YouTube videos and our podcasts. Yeah, so you could see that it was really,
really needed information. It was the right time, wasn't it, for this message to come
out. And it impacted me as well, how you were sharing how there are many, many thousands
more people that have actually had these experiences then have been willing to previously share,
you know, for perhaps fear of being seen as a religious extremist or whatever, whatever,
you know, do you mean the negative potential negative impact of people coming and sharing
these stories. But now so many people are, it's like God's up to something big, you
know, and it's really restoring hope. Okay, I want to dive into some of the research,
some of your findings, which is just fantastic content. So questions that I can ask you that
I know people you guys out there would probably want to ask as well. So number one, what happens
in your experience having interviewed hundreds of people, probably more than hundreds of
people, but certainly for the book, you've got 101 selected testimonies from people you've
interviewed. What have you found that has that happens at the point we die at the point
we leave our bodies?
That would tip in terms of the verbiage or the language that we would use. And that that
I'll just go in a little bit of a side trail hormone. That's one of the things we really
hope to do with this book is give people vocabulary around how to effectively discuss the afterlife
and also give them a framework because that's that's really lacked in near death experience
books in the Christian space. But typically when somebody is entering into a near death
experience, they've had some kind of a catastrophic accident or some kind of a health event, an
emergency of sorts, and they enter into what we would typically refer to as an out of body
experience where their spirit is leaving their body. What that feels like for different
people, some people will say that they feel like their spirits being pulled out of their
body. I think when Randy shares his story, he talks about how it felt like his spirit
like left his stomach of all things. Other people will describe they all of a sudden
are kind of confused. They don't even realize they're out of their body. Jim Woodford's
account where he is, he drives out to check on a field that he was about to sell on his
property and he dies in his truck and he he all of a sudden is like, man, I haven't felt
this good in years. Oh my gosh, like I've been so sick for so many years and he walks
out into his field and is looking around and he turns around and he he sees a guy sitting
in his truck and he's like, what the heck? Why? Why is there he's like, he's getting
angry. He's like, there's a man sitting in my truck and so he starts moving back in that
direction. And suddenly he realized it's him sitting in his truck and he's dead. And so
you know, people often have this temporary timeframe where they actually are inner kind
of interacting with their day to day environment where they'll try to turn on the light switch
or touch a wall or what have you and their hands go through things. So it's often a period
of initial disorientation as they enter into that out of body experience. And usually that
proceeds with a floating upwards heading towards a light that sort of a thing. But that initial
out of body experience varies from person to person. But a lot of times has a few of
those consistent markers of the disorientation and a little bit of time to interact with
the environment.
Gosh, it's fascinating, isn't it? And then the other thing that I thought was just incredible
was how you've been able through the research to identify nine specific things that seem
to be consistent across everybody's testimonies, even though everybody's testimony is unique
and specific and profound for them, because each person clearly has come back having had
this experience. But there are nine consistent pieces that happen in the story to everybody.
Can you go there? Can you share with us what you found? Because I was reading this going,
whoa, my God.
I don't think I have a list of nine in my notes in front of me. But let me talk through
that too. Like again, that's one of the things that just it hasn't existed in the Christian
space for these sorts of books. A lot of times we'll share people's testimonies and their
stories. But we don't have a framework, which I feel like empowers people to talk about
these, to tell a story. The framework also really helps people who've had these sorts
of experiences process them on the more mainstream secular side of this publishing space. There's
a lot of different frameworks. And so in the research, we looked at a bunch of different
frameworks and just tried to break them down into something a little more concise. We'll
see how many of them I can remember off the top of my head. But it effectively is going
through each of the steps. So we started out talking about like, how does somebody cross
that threshold? You know, what does that look like? Again, as we talked about earlier, that
accident, that catastrophic health event, whatever that might be, typically past that you're
entering into some kind of an out of body experience, you might have a very minimal
amount of time to interact with the environment that you're in. Sometimes people, they just
start rising out of their body instantaneously. Past that point, you're often going towards
some kind of a bright light, you know, be it a portal or it's usually round, interestingly
enough, some people will describe doors, but typically some kind of a bright light. Once
they rise into that bright light, there's usually some kind of a threshold. Some people
talk about they'll get in this space that looks like it's kind of between heaven and
hell, like they'll look one direction and it's kind of stark and the grass is parched
and there's usually a pit and smoke and other things and they look to the other side and
it just looks more of a heavenly landscape. The grasses green things look a lot nicer.
If it's not that kind of in between space, other people will talk about coming to a gate
that's very typical where somebody will came to the gate of heaven or some kind of a gate.
Often with that, people who aren't staying in heaven, they're going to go back. They're
not allowed to go past that gate. Other people, even though they don't stay, they're taken
on a tour of heaven. So they do get to go past the gate, how God works out, who gets
the tour and who just goes home. I haven't quite been able to figure that out yet.
We also look at people meeting different kind of supernatural beings, be it angels or encountering
different members of the Trinity. Not as many encounters with the Holy Spirit in the near
death experience stories, but very typical that somebody would either encounter Jesus
or the Father. A lot of times what that encounter looks like is very much tied to how they need
to experience God. So somebody who doesn't have a good relationship with their father,
father issues, problems at home, they'll encounter God the Father and maybe like a child be sitting
in God's lap, interestingly enough. And so just really filling that need. A lot of times
the encounters with Jesus can, it's either one of two things. It seems like almost like
a big brother kind of experience or just you are just pressed to the floor in Jesus's amazing,
glorious presence. So yeah, we've got heavenly landscapes, you know, all kinds of different
buildings and structures. Probably one of the ones that has had the biggest impact on
people from some of the previous books we've done and some of the ministry events that
we've done. There is this common thread of people who see some kind of a nursery in heaven.
And it kind of varies what the structure looks like and what the kids are doing. But I know
at least four or five near death experiences where they saw a nursery in heaven where all
the lost and aborted children, kids who died before their time go. And so that's been a
consistent theme. There's another testimony of a gentleman who talks about how not only
did he see kind of that nursery or that place where these children go, he also saw parents
arriving in heaven, getting to encounter their children in like the stages that they needed
to see them because they didn't see them grow up. And so that that is consistent in a lot
of testimonies. And I've even had the opportunity to see that shared from a stage at a ministry
event and just talk to some of the different people in the audience after the fact is people
were done praying with some of the speakers and such. And that testimony alone was life
changing for people who'd lost children just to hear that and to pray through that. People
see mansions in heaven, all when Matthew's as a gentleman, we talk about his story in
the book, and he doesn't see his own personal mansion. He he's taken to the city that has
what he called sort of mansions for like churches and ministries. And so you're seeing like the
somehow structurally the impact of what his his ministry and his church had on earth thus
far, almost like it was kind of it was very unique because a lot of times people will
have a life review, which is another one of the stages where God will show them the different
stages, different stages of their life and how he showed up and maybe even experience
how they'd heard other people and go through those sorts of things. Alwin actually in in
encountering this this mansion saw basically a life review for their church and their ministry
and their effectiveness and where they kind of fell short. And that sort of a thing. So
all that to say, there's a lot of variability. People meet a welcoming committee. Often,
probably 80 to 90% of time, it's people you would know. So like your grandparents, a lost
parent or sibling or friend. So as you kind of get to that crossing that gate entering
into heaven, you'll see people that you know. Gosh, I think I'm remembering all about almost
all these very impressed animals in heaven. It is another concept that comes up. Randy
and I joke about it because I'm like, I don't think there's cats in heaven. But because
people usually like horses have come up. People often talk about meeting their lost dogs in
heaven. You know, people see lions and other animals in heaven. So that's another consistent
theme. And then there's just the kind of what I call reentry, where, you know, you're, you're
told you're going back or you start kind of reversing and heading back down the tunnel,
if you will. Some of those are peaceful. Some of those are jarring. I think Heidi Barr talks
about how when she was put back in her body, it was like her spirit didn't fit anymore.
After being in heaven, and it felt kind of chaotic and reentering her body. And then
past the reentry, I think the last stage is just the ongoing effects. You don't have
a near death experience without being dramatically impacted. You know, some people have only
hell experiences. Some people have both a hell experience and then a heaven experience.
And so the impact varies. But on average, it takes somebody about seven years to wrestle
with what they encountered. I often like to think of it as our physical minds can't deal
with just the grandeur of everything that they, they encountered in heaven, but it takes about
seven years to really come to terms and process. There's ongoing revelation. I have different
authors I've worked with where they saw something in heaven 15 years ago. And for whatever reason,
the Holy Spirit didn't reveal what it meant until a year ago or, or that sort of a thing.
So yeah, I think, I think that's most of the stages. Thank you for that challenge. Someday
I'll have that in my notes on the screen above here. But yeah, so again, it's just that framework.
I feel like it gives people structure to talk about and process these stories. And again,
something that I've felt is really lacking in our Christian space for these sorts of books.
Yeah. And it gives so much hope. And I love the fact that you're looking at it all and
you're then looking at the scriptures and you're trying to find the compatibility between the
stories and the Word of God and have done so successfully. I love what you said. Because
that was one of my questions to you as was, have you seen how profoundly it's impacted
the people that you've interviewed? I mean, are their lives dramatically changed because
of the experience? Do you find that's consistent? Yeah, absolutely. A lot of people end up in
ministry. Yeah, that's interesting. Which if it was imagination, you wouldn't have that
kind of transformed life, would you? So, right. Well, and I think the difficult thing is people
don't realize the not the risk, but a lot of these experiences, these are sacred experiences
with God and like it's one of their most precious things. So to share it publicly is almost
painful because they feel a real heaviness and a weight of not wanting to taint the experience,
not wanting to share it improperly, that sort of a thing. People go undergo dramatic personality
shifts. Randy Kay, I've heard his testimony 50 plus times just because of all the work
we've done together. He's actually in an earlier part of his career was a corporate trainer
and they would do these four quadrant assessments about personality and varying things. And what's
really fascinating about his journey is earlier, he did not rank as empathetic. Wherever that
point, whatever quadrant that fill in, he was not an empathetic, super kind guy. And
I can say Randy is one of the nicest, most kind men I've ever met in my entire life.
He did that same evaluation on himself in the midst of doing some training at some point
after his near death experience. And he actually ranked completely differently than he did
before the experience. So he all of a sudden ranked in a quadrant that said he was empathetic
and just very kind and personable. And so, not can't quite say it's scientific proof,
but his personality shifted that dramatically. A lot of people, some of them were not believers
before the experience and in the midst of the experience, they become believers or shortly
thereafter. A lot of the folks who have near death experiences become very hardcore sold
out evangelists where their primary concern is, do you know Jesus? There are people who
wake up in the hospital from their near death experience and the nurse or whoever they encounter
first, they'll be like, ma'am, I just need to ask you, have you encountered Jesus? Do
you know Jesus as your Lord and Savior, that sort of thing? So just a real burden for the
gospel. Now, that's not to say everybody has those experience. Some people who have more
of a hell experience or disturbing NDE kind of experience, they will deal with some level
of PTSD or it can be difficult. So not all of the experiences are always positive. I
think a lot of that though can vary by the worldview of the person. And so not all NDE
books are created equal. Like if you're reading books that are more of the Christian space,
they're going to be more scripture honoring and maybe even gospel oriented. But if you
read more broadly, you know, there's new age stuff and a lot of different perspectives.
And this was something I didn't even realize falling into this space. You know, I just
encountered Christian books in this space because I work in Christian publishing. And
as we interviewed other people and I started reading more widely, I was amazed at kind
of the some of the pitfalls and other materials that is that are in this space, you know,
interesting to understand how people process and what they think about their experiences.
But it's not everything in the spaces is God honoring or maybe even helpful to read. So
there's a lot of different levels of material out there.
Yeah. So I mean, your book is a very welcome and needed contribution, I think, because
it's I mean, you've clearly done an enormous amount of research and you've waded through
lots and lots and lots of different testimonies, you know, and you've been very clearly very
careful to make sure that what you're communicating in the book is authentic. These are authentic
stories that where their lives, like you say, have dramatically changed. I love as well
how you say in the book that people describe when they go into heaven, it's a place of
overwhelming love. Right.
Yeah. That's really massively impacted people and they and how many of them meet Jesus as
well.
Yeah. What's fascinating about when people talk about love, they talk about that love
and light are the two things that they see permeate everything in heaven. It's in the
it's in the grass, it's in the trees, what it's it's in the water, what everything they
encounter just permeates light. Even even the animals, Jim Woodford's in his story, horses
have always been an important part of his life and he encounters horses in heaven and
he reaches out and touches one of the horses and his hand kind of goes into it. And as
he pulls his hand back, like there are aspects of light that are radiating out from the horse.
So everything in heaven reflects the love and the glory of God to to a degree that people
can't help but be transformed in the midst of that experience. And so yeah, that that
is another consistent theme, the light and the love, even music and singing. I've had
different people talk about how it's almost like the grass sings, the trees sing, everything
they encounter. It's almost like they're singing praises to God. And so yeah, just everything
praise, light, love, it's all there.
Amazing. And your wife, she experienced this as well, didn't she? I was very moved that
you included that in the book. Will you share with us what happened to your wife?
Yeah, well, my wife, my wife's actually still with us. We're in the latter stages of her
of her hospice journey. But what's been interesting, and I feel like this was a real divine setup.
We didn't know my wife was going to be diagnosed with cancer 16 months ago. And yet I'd been
on this journey for a couple of years, meeting and interviewing all these people who've been
to heaven. And so we've had so many great productive conversations as we've just been
grieving and processing and walking this journey out. And so I feel like on the one hand, God
was preparing me to be able to minister to my wife as she's been going through her cancer
journey. But actually she had two different experiences. And I don't share about these
specifically in the book. I don't think I'd have to go back and check that part. But there
was one night, I'm pretty sure that my wife had what I would call an out of body experience,
just based on what she described, seeing in the room and almost like she was seeing me
from above sort of a thing. And then another thing that happened is she had this open vision
of meeting her welcoming committee in heaven. And this was probably about four or five months
ago that she had this experience where she just had this very detailed open vision of
encountering her, her father and her grandparents and her brother who are who have all all gone
home to heaven previously. And so, you know, I would say just from being able to walk this
journey out in hope and confidence and just being able to minister to her, having met
all these people who've been to heaven and just really having a deep understanding at
least of the process that people have gone through when they've died and cross that threshold.
It's just been an amazing tool to, you know, just walk this out and just have great conversations
and you know, we're grieving and it's difficult. But at the same time, because of this immersion
in this heaven space, we just have this great hope. And this is what I hope long term is
Randy and I do more books in our space because, you know, in a charismatic ministry space,
we believe in healing, we pray for healing, we've seen people healed, but sometimes people
don't get healed and sometimes it's time for them to go home to heaven. And so, long term,
as we do more content in this space, we just really hope that these sorts of testimonies
and these sorts of conversations can just help us to have more of a comfort and maybe
build a theology around just a solid worldview around dying in heaven and the afterlife.
And you know, yes, I think we should always go after healing and pray and we're going
to see that sometimes. But when we don't, we need to just embrace that hope of heaven
and know that it's a real place and our Savior is waiting for us to take us home. So just
this immersion in this space has just been a real blessing to our family in these last
16 months.
Absolutely. And to countless numbers of people who are going to read the book and also the
books that you've already put out there in your podcast, they're amazing because people
do need to know, they really do need hope, hey, that there is, this is one chapter of
life that goes on and he really is real. You know, I was, I was just remembering when you
were speaking then, it when my mom passed into glory, I of course was in tremendous grief
because she died suddenly. And the six days after she went home to be with the Lord, I
went into an open vision. I was worshiping in the car, went into an open vision and I
saw the moment that she went into heaven and I saw her in the meadow. And then I saw my
grandpa walking to meet her as part of the welcoming committee. Now, in my understanding
at that time, I wouldn't have scripted it that way. I would have had other members of
the family meeting her, you know, for various reasons. But anyway, but it wasn't and I watched
this beautiful moment and I heard through Holy Spirit inside me, I heard my mom speak
and she said, I'm young and I'm free, live your life to the full. And then all the, as
I saw this, Holy Spirit lifted all the grief off me. And I literally went into just such
gratitude and joy that she was there and she was happy and she was free and she wasn't
sick anymore, you know. And then a few days later, I received a card from a friend of
mine who'd been in New York airport and had heard my mom had passed and she wrote me just
an encouraging card to say she was praying for me. And in the card, it said, Liz, your
mom is in the meadow in heaven. She's young and she's free, live your life to the full.
So just what a treasure. It's all real, hey.
One comment, just to piggyback off the comment of her being young, that's another interesting
aspect in terms of seeing other people and encountering other people in heaven. People
seem to be the age of about 25 to 30. I don't know why that is, but that's another consistent
theme where the loved ones they encounter, the people they encounter that have already
gone to heaven before them, they look to be about what they look like in permaise 25 to
30.
Yeah, mom, I said the same thing. Mom looked about 30. She was just gorgeous, like living
her best life literally. But oh my gosh, it's brilliant talking to you. I'm so excited that
this book's out and it's just, yeah, it's going to get all across the nations of the
earth. I have no doubt because it's time for this kind of hope. Thank you for coming on
and sharing all this amazing research. It's really good to talk to you.
Truly my pleasure. Randy's in my heart is that this book just goes around the world
and it gives people a framework to process their own near-death experience if they have
one. And if they are passionate about sharing these stories, that it really just gives them
a structure to be able to effectively communicate these stories to others. Because as you said,
these stories give people a lot of hope for what's going to happen when they cross over
into the afterlife. And that's an appointment all of us have at some point in the future.
Yeah, absolutely. And I do believe that it is intentional on the Lord's part. He's sending
these people back with powerful testimony that gives us a glimpse, hey, of what's ahead.
So thank you so much. And guys, thank you for joining us for today. It's a bit different,
but extremely powerful conversation. Have the most amazing week so full of renewed hope
and faith and every need met through his riches in glory. He's a very big God, hey, have an
amazing, amazing week and look forward to being with you again next week. God bless.
As we consecrate ourselves, giving all that we are to Jesus, we will experience his love.
We will experience freedom. The more we lean into him, the more we surrender, the more
power comes through us. God's going to encounter you.