18. Experiential Evidence

So far, we have examined objective evidence supporting the truth of the Bible and God's existence. Such evidence, mainly historical and scientific, has strong objectivity but cannot serve as experiential evidence.

This is not to say that the aforementioned "objective evidence" is incomplete or meaningless. It is strong evidence, but it is not evidence that I can feel directly enough to gain a real sense of it.

Once we understand rationally and directly experience it, we can finally strongly believe that it is true in a practical sense. If we can directly experience God's existence and power in our actual lives, not through empty philosophy or theoretical verification, there could be no more direct and powerful evidence, right?

Is this type of powerful experiential evidence non-existent outside of the times when the Bible was written? Can't you, the reader of this text, or ordinary people around you have this kind of powerful experiential evidence? Absolutely not.

God's existence and power are manifested to "people who believe in God" today in the same way as in the times when the Bible was written, and this is something we can actually experience. However, before explaining in detail, I want to first mention that this "experiential evidence" is highly subjective and has room for controversy in interpretation. Therefore, it must be acknowledged that its "reliability" is inevitably lower than the objective evidence we examined earlier.

Nevertheless, if such experiential evidence supports what the objective evidence indicates in the same way, experiential evidence serves as a powerful buttress to reinforce objective evidence as a more "practical" and "concrete" "actual fact." Then what kinds of "experiential evidence" are there that support God's existence?

18.1. Life Transformation

Such evidence largely includes "life transformation, character transformation," "answered prayers," "near-death experiences," and so on.

Let's examine the first evidence of "life transformation, character transformation."

You have probably directly witnessed or heard stories of people around you who lived like derelicts but "turned over a new leaf" due to some event and began living a completely new life. Such stories clearly have some turning point. There are no cases where a person's life dramatically turns in the opposite direction without any reason or motivation.

There are various motivations here. Being shocked upon realizing one's own miserable state one day is one motivation. Experiencing a change of heart due to the shock of a specific event is another. Advice or counsel from people around you and unchanging trust and love are also important motivating factors.

Among these motivations, a very important one is "personally experiencing God." When a person who did not believe in God comes to sincerely believe, their perspective on life, values, and direction in life are completely upended, often leading them to live a totally different life.

A derelict addicted to alcohol and drugs may completely break free from addiction and live a healthy life. A person who thought money was everything in life may give up all their wealth and go out as a missionary to serve others. There are also cases of envied elites with the highest social status and educational background giving up all worldly values and dedicating themselves to serving the poor and needy. There are so many such anecdotes that it would be impossible for me to introduce them all.

If you are skeptical or unsure about the Bible and God, there are surely some of you who will raise doubts, saying:

Where are such testimonies? Even if they exist, they are either very rare or all fabricated among Christians.

There are certainly cases of such fabrication, but the fact that must be acknowledged is that there are also many truly sincere testimonies that cannot be refuted at all, no matter how skeptically you look at them. Indiscriminately denying countless pieces of evidence without any basis, simply because you don't want to believe, is not a rational attitude.

Even if I don't introduce any special testimony cases, if you just enter "Christian testimony" in an internet search, an enormous number of testimony cases pour out.

Countless testimonies consistently attest that transformation occurred in truly dramatic situations where change would be impossible without the intervention of a divine being. Of course, the evidence of "dramatic life and character transformation" can certainly also occur due to factors other than the intervention of a divine being such as "God." Therefore, this alone cannot be 100% affirmed as direct evidence of God.

However, at least in the cases limited to those who experienced a life transformation through God's intervention, the sole driving force behind their change is God's intervention. Because such cases are impossible to explain without God's existence, they can be considered experiential evidence suggesting God's existence.

18.2. Answered Prayers

A second piece of evidence is "answered prayers." The Bible records that God is someone who answers our prayers. It states that if we earnestly seek God, we can meet Him.

If the Bible and God are true, the conclusion is that if we pray earnestly to God, God must answer our prayers. If there were absolutely no cases of experiencing answered prayers, we could conclude that God does not exist or the Bible is false. Then, do the so-called "answered prayers" actually exist?

In reality, these cases too are "innumerable." As I mentioned earlier regarding Christian testimonies, in the process of believing in God and having one's life transformed, there are also countless experiential anecdotes of such answers actually occurring while praying. Of course, this "answered prayer" also cannot completely avoid the problem of "subjectivity."

I acknowledge that there are certainly cases of mistaking something that occurred through natural phenomena or factors as God answering prayers.

Nevertheless, we must not deny the fact that there are also a great many cases of people claiming to have received "miraculous experiences" or answers that could never have occurred without the intervention of a "divine being," not just this kind of ambiguous answered prayer. There are numerous cases of terminal cancer patients who had been completely given up on by hospitals being completely cured of cancer purely by relying on God and praying. And very rapidly within a short period of time at that.

In such cases, the confounding variable of medical intervention is absent. No matter how much physiological healing mechanisms are activated, medically, cancer cannot completely disappear within a short period. Thus, it cannot be explained without the intervention of a divine being. The "experiential evidence" I am referring to does not include the kind of ambiguous evidence that can be interpreted this way or that way.

Even from an extremely skeptical perspective, there exist cases that are utterly impossible to explain without the intervention of a divine being. The fact that there are so many such cases worldwide that they are innumerable signifies what? One or two cases can be forcibly fabricated, but the mathematical probability of countless cases all being fabricated despite being untrue is extremely low, right?

In conclusion, experiential evidence of "supernatural answers to prayer" or God's working through divine intervention can certainly be used as evidence supporting God's existence.

18.3. Near-Death Experiences

The final evidence is evidence such as "near-death experiences." A "near-death experience" is an experience in which a person's soul separates from their body near the point of death and experiences the "afterlife."

In the past, such experiences were dismissed as "mysticism" or unconscious mental activity similar to "dreams." However, as reports of near-death experiences increased, attempts emerged to objectively approach the phenomenon of near-death experiences from a medical perspective as well. Currently, near-death experiences have reached the point of being covered in medical journals.

The Bible records that when a person dies, the body and soul separate. Ultimately, believers in God go to "heaven" while those who deny God or lived wickedly are cast into "hell."

In fact, there are a great many people in the world who have actually experienced this afterlife. Of course, this element of "near-death experiences" also has strong subjectivity and cases of mistaking dreams.

However, excluding these ambiguous cases, there are also many cases of near-death experiences that are completely distinct from dreams.

Overall, the overall contents they describe about the afterlife have slight differences in detailed descriptions but are almost identical. This description matches the image of heaven and hell recorded in the Bible. Accordingly, the evidence of near-death experiences can also be seen as evidence supporting the existence of "heaven and hell."

If we combine the consistent contents from the various near-death experiencers' testimonies, excluding conflicting information, we can draw the following conclusions:

When a person dies, the soul separates from the body.

The separated soul leaves the body at an extremely rapid speed and moves to a different dimensional world.

The place where the soul ultimately arrives is one of two: a world filled with extreme light, beauty, and eternal happiness (heaven), or a world that is the exact opposite, filled only with extreme pain, fear, eternal frustration, and terror (hell).

The detailed descriptions of heaven and hell include parts not mentioned in the Bible, but at least the descriptions of heaven and hell in the Bible match their experiences.

Heaven has twelve pearl gates, transparent pure gold paving the streets, an extremely clear and transparent crystal sea, nature incomparably beautiful and vast compared to earth, and is filled with the light of God's glory. Heaven is a place of extreme happiness without pain, tears, suffering, or fatigue.

Hell has actual burning sulfur that is unimaginably hot. Those who denied God or lived according to their own desires groan in unending pain for eternity. They are endlessly tortured in unimaginably horrible ways. Even when burned by fire, they never die. One second of pain in hell is greater than all the strongest pains on earth combined.

In the process of experiencing heaven and hell, they realized God's existence. During that process, they heard God's voice and received the command to proclaim that heaven and hell actually exist.

If we combine the characteristics that consistently match from these various testimonies, excluding conflicting information, we can draw the conclusion that the afterlife of heaven and hell "actually exists" and this afterlife matches the heaven and hell mentioned in the Bible.

If anyone would like to see more specific cases, please refer to https://heavenvisit.com/.

18.4. Are Near-Death Experiences False?

People who have a skeptical view of such "visions" or "afterlife experiences" sometimes argue as follows:

Such experiences are mere illusions, like dreams or hallucinations where the unconscious mind is powerfully manifested, not an actual world.

However, there are problems with this argument.

The first problem is that these near-death experiences were experiences of a completely different dimension from "dreams." They are phenomena vividly experienced in a state where the individual is conscious and the body and spirit have separated, not dreams had while sleeping. Some people testify that after experiencing hell, they could not sleep for over a week due to fear and could not even eat due to nausea.

The second problem is that if this afterlife were a product of personal unconsciousness or imagination, the descriptions of that world should vary widely from person to person. However, the experiences of many near-death experiencers worldwide are astonishingly consistent in their descriptions. If such a world did not actually exist, the mathematical possibility of random dreams all coincidentally matching is extremely low.

The third problem is that among those who became convinced of God's existence through such experiences, some gave up their livelihoods and dedicated their entire lives to spreading the experiences of "heaven" and "hell."

The fourth problem is that the number of these testimonies is too numerous to be dismissed as fabricated falsehoods.

In this sense, near-death experiences serve as powerful evidence supporting the actual existence of the afterlife, heaven and hell.

18.5. Evidence and Faith

In conclusion, this kind of experiential evidence is evidence that people who sincerely believe in and follow God can actually experience. It is evidence that faithful people around you are actually experiencing even now. You too can directly experience this evidence if you believe in God.

Do you perhaps understand it rationally but think you can't believe because you haven't experienced it directly?

In that case, what you need now is not endless additional rational arguments, but believing in God with your heart and actually accepting Him. I have already presented a lot of rational and objective evidence supporting God's existence. I have informed you of philosophical, scientific, mathematical, logical, historical, and indirect experiential evidence from others.

Nevertheless, if you still think you can't believe without experiencing it directly, there is a way. You can directly pray to God to show you His existence.

Shall I tell you about an interesting case? In Korea, there is a pastor named Ki-ung Lee of Youngkwang First Church. This pastor was an unbeliever who did not believe in Jesus and persecuted Christians. However, due to some event, he thought he needed to verify whether God actually existed. And he began praying that if God really exists, He would show him evidence.

Every night at 12 a.m., he prayed a very short prayer without fail for 100 days: "God, if you really exist, show me evidence of you." Then on the 97th day, he directly experienced the living God through a supernatural vision. Afterwards, he ended his sinful life and became a pastor. (Click)

If you think about it seriously, this method was not actually "ridiculous." That person had earnest faith that wanted to know whether the god called God actually existed, even if it meant doing that. If you truly have even faith as small as a mustard seed and the will to seek God, God will surely reveal His existence to you.

I still can't believe. The evidence is insufficient. Show me more evidence.

A person who endlessly demands more and more evidence, saying this, is actually someone who consciously refuses to believe and fears it, not because of a lack of evidence. For this person, the pleasures of life that must be given up to believe in God are too precious.

If you still have a heart that can't believe despite being shown this much evidence so far, what you need now is not more rational and additional evidence. What you need is earnest prayer.

God, I really want to verify whether God exists and believe. Shatter the last doubt in my heart and if God truly exists, let me know of your existence.