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WHILE THE LORD RESURRECTED IN BODY, WE ARE GIVEN GLORIFIED ONES ON ENTRY INTO HEAVEN

We know -- from Mark and Luke and John -- that after He resurrected, Christ appeared to those who knew Him in a way they did not at first recognize.

See John 21:4 ("Jesus was standing on the shore, though none of the disciples knew it was Jesus") or Luke 24:16 ("Jesus approached and began to walk along with them. However, they were restrained from recognizing Him") or Mark 16:12 ("Later on, as two of them were walking along on their way to the country, He was revealed to them completely changed in appearance").

Now, with John one could argue that it was a matter at first of simple distance (from the shore). And with Luke that maybe it was an issue of spiritual blinders (they simply were blocked from knowing Who was with them).

But Mark dispels those arguments -- directly explaining that Christ now possessed a transformed, glorified appearance.

This brings to mind near-death experiences.

For many are those who have described an encounter with an incredible Light upon death (at the end of the "tunnel" or passage) that takes various forms and is revealed as the Light of Jesus. This Light encompasses all and is blinding but not really blinding: more intense than thousands of suns, some say, yet one is able to be stare at it.

He is literally what He said: the Light of the world (and the afterworld).

"The hair of His Head was white as snow-white wool and His Eyes blazed like fire," says Revelation 1:14-15. "His feet gleamed like polished brass refined in a furnace, and His Voice sounded like the roar of rushing waters."

"The Light Being, pure, powerful, all-expansive, was without form and it could be said that great waves of awareness flowed to me and into my mind," said a woman named Carol Parrish-Hara in a study of near death experiencers by Christian theologian Judith Creesy. "It seemed whole Truths revealed themselves to me. Waves of thought -- ideas greater and purer than I had ever tried to figure out -- came to me."

That's Christ.

What about us?

What about our bodies?

We know that Jesus resurrected in full corporeal form (as well as spirit); from near-death experiences, as well as Scripture, it seems the case that with us we are given a glorified form. "There are also celestial bodies, and bodies terrestrial: but the glory of the celestial is one, and the glory of the terrestrial is another," says 1 Corinthians 15:40-44. "It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body."

As Saint Teresa of Avila once said, "The Lord transforms a soul, so that it seems no longer to be itself, or even its own likeness."

And this too we hear from those many people who have been declared clinically deceased yet were revived or others who have related encounters with the other side (although the spiritual form does often resembled the physical one).

One man named Vern Swanson who saw his wife said "there was a light that came from within her so she glowed. It wasn't reflected light; it was almost as if there were a bright candle inside of her. In life, she was a good-looking woman, working as a model during college, but her earthly body was a poor shadow, an impoverished copy, when compared with that beautiful person before me -- yet it was her."

Said another (quoted in a book called The Eternal Journey by scholars Craig Lundahl and Harold Widdison): "It's hard to describe, but somehow the spirit body combined the youth and vigor of twenty-one-year-olds, with a sense of perfect maturity. All their faces looked fresh, like the faces of very health people who are out of doors all the time. It also seemed that the longer a being was in any of these realms, the closer they came in appearance to being around thirty or thirty-five years of age." (When we average thirty and thirty-five, we come about to 33, the age of Jesus!)

The Blessed Mother -- when she appears -- is described in similar luminosity; also, an unearthly beauty (and not the kind of beauty we attach to a model).

"To find out whether I had substance, I rubbed my hands together and I felt my face with my hands," said another near-deather.

"In both cases I found that I had form and substance. I could feel myself.

"Looking at my hands, I saw that they looked like my hands normally did, except there was a glow to them."

Thus, it is spirit in nature but can resemble our earthly appearance.

"Suddenly my body was tingling all over," said one person of the separation. "It felt like someone was pulling on me. My spirit began to come out of my body, starting at the head then working down to my feet. I remember slowly rising above my body, then turning over so I could look down on myself."

Dr. Lundhal and Dr. Widdison cite yet one other who told a third researcher that when he "died," he saw that his hands were composed of light with tiny structure in them. "He could even see the delicate whorls of his fingerprints," they said. Others see their bodies are somewhat transparent with a sparkling of energy. "I was the same in the spirit as I had been in the body," stated another. In other words, there are the boundaries of form and yet what seems like no limits to it.

On the other side, according to certain alleged witnesses, the earth and those on earth can be seen from a ledge-like part of a "countryside." It is like the "veil" scrolls up. One woman we know who had the experience of seeing her deceased husband there said he told her she could not yet approach to touch him.

"The area immediately in front of and below me scrolled back, as if a window were opening and I saw earth," said a famous near-death person of a journey to Heaven (as we discern all of it).

In 1975, a California man who had been overdosed during aesthesia for oral surgery found himself led in the afterlife by a woman who "had a veil to her back. It separated her world from mine."

Experiences vary in details but not essence and a common theme: darkness (the darkness of this world) turns to Light; pessimism turns to optimism.

There is no more fear of death, for as Christ showed, there is no death. There is transition. Of course, we always have to be vigilant against the enemy coming as an angel of light. But in many experiences it seems clear that the Light is a manifestation of the power of God. The Light is Jesus.

"This was different from a dream, and different than being on this physical planet," said one of three other subjects in Dr. Cressy's book. "So it was something other than what words can express on this planet for sure."

"Yeah, it was like -- it was such -- I've never had an experience like this. I mean, there's like no, no words to convey."

"There are not the words," agreed the last. "It can't be conveyed. And it cannot be fully understood."

Eyes have not seen -- not earthly ones, not yet.

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