Don Piper - 90 Minutes In Heaven

[TheStig]

Don Piper is a preacher who claims to have been dead for 90 minutes, visited heaven, and then came back. Unsurprisingly, he has written a book about it.

YouTube it, I can't post links yet. grrrrr.

I found very little online investigating this story, and what I'd like to know is...well...what do we know about this guy?

Do paramedics and police back up the story? Is there any corroboration at all?

Did he make up the whole thing?

This story has to be taken with a grain of "Dox or GTFO".

 

[blue sock monkey]

I'm feeling ripped off: My NDE lasted no more than 30 seconds, and I didn't even get to go to Wendy's.

 

[Agatha]

 

[SpuriusMaximus]

Indeed, unless he can produce any evidence that he's actually been clinically dead for 90 minutes... let's just say I've had weirder dreams than that at times. Like when I was chased by popup menus

 

[Foster Zygote]

Hey Stig, I saw you at Silverstone, or was that an impostor?

Reading up on Piper's death experience it occurs to me that he was pronounced dead prematurely by the paramedics on the scene. Piper and his supporters seem very anxious to believe their preferred interpretation of the event while ignoring the very simple possibility that he was not actually dead, but rather horribly injured and in shock. It sounds as though the paramedics saw the horrific nature of the crash and the severity of Piper's injuries and assumed that he must have died instantly. Even if they checked for a pulse they may not have been able to feel one. There just isn't any convincing evidence that the man was actually dead when he claims that his experience took place. His experience, assuming he didn't consciously fabricate it, may not even have even occurred while he was "dead". He may have assembled it from various dreams and hallucinations during his long and painful period of recovery.

 

[Marduk]

After receiving medical attention, Don began a long, grueling recovery and now has an entire ministry based around his near-death experience and "90 minutes in heaven."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don_Piper
Great, just what we need, another preacher milking the system


still fingers crossed, it seems from this charade that when we die we get exactly what we are expecting, I'm not going to post case file after case file of NDE's who all claim to have seen exactly what they were expecting, I'm just gonna keep my fingers crossed that I finally get that Scalextric set I wanted (and didn't get) since I was 6.

 

[Marduk]

He may have assembled it from various dreams and hallucinations during his long and painful period of recovery.

plain old wish fulfillment imo
http://medical-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/wish+fulfillment
I guess you can say that from this he at least sees himself as a moral person, so probably isn't all that nefarious. It could be worse, I have a friend who lives in Wichita who used to be a Lutheran, he seems to have strayed from the flock since a revelation over the alter ego activities of his Lutheran Deacon, A nice friendly genuine bible thumper called Denis Rader

 

[Foster Zygote]

Indeed, unless he can produce any evidence that he's actually been clinically dead for 90 minutes... let's just say I've had weirder dreams than that at times. Like when I was chased by popup menus

The possibility of fraud is also very real. There's a guy named Dannion Brinkley from a town near mine in South Carolina who claims to have died for 28 minutes as a result of a lightning strike while he was talking on the 'phone. He even claims that he was dead in the hospital morgue for some time before returning to life. Oddly, a local newspaper article published right after the accident quotes Brinkley as saying he was out for a few minutes until his wife pounded on his chest. His doctor reported that his claim of being dead in the morgue was untrue. It would seem Mr. Brinkley makes a habit of lying. He claimed in his book Saved by the Light that he had served as a CIA sniper in Laos during the Vietnam war. Investigation of military records showed that he served as a truck driver in Georgia when he claimed to be in Laos. He, of course, claims that this is a government cover up due to the classified nature of his mission, but actual special forces snipers who served in Vietnam report that his story is riddled with holes exactly as if it were written by someone who was pretending to know about a business that he really knows nothing about. He also fails to explain why the U.S. government has failed to press charges against a covert operative who is blabbing publicly about classified secrets.

Brinkley also claims to have had future events revealed to him while he was having his out-of-body experience. The fall of the Soviet Union, The disaster at Chernobyl and the first Gulf War were all predicted by Brinkley. Of course, he forgot to tell anyone other than Raymond Moody about these prediction until after the events happened, so he was left saying "I knew that was going to happen" a posteriori. Actual a priori predictions, a nuclear disaster in Norway in '95 and an economic collapse in the U.S. in the late '90s, proved somewhat less impressive in regard to accuracy.

 

[ExMinister]

He did say the people he met at the pearly gates were the ones responsible for making him a Baptist. So either he made up or hallucinated the whole experience, or out of all the thousands of religions in the world, it turns out the Baptists are the one true religion after all.

ETA: Let me rephrase: the Baptists have got it right after all.

 

[Marduk]

He did say the people he met at the pearly gates were the ones responsible for making him a Baptist. So either he made up or hallucinated the whole experience, or out of all the thousands of religions in the world, it turns out the Baptists are the one true religion after all.

or

A man dies and goes to heaven. St.Peter gives him a tour around the place. They proceed down a long hallway and come to a door. The man hears much laughter and clinking of glasses and pouring of wine. He asks St.Peter what is behind the door.
St.Peter answers, "Oh, that's just the Presbyterians."

They come to another door and the man hears singing, praises, and loud gospel music. "Oh, that's just the Protestants," he assures the man.

They proceed down the hall, and another door appears. However, when they reach this door, St.Peter warns the man to be very, very quiet.

"Why?" the man asks.

"Because," St. Peter replies, "that's the Baptists, and they think they're the only ones up here!"

 

[Beerina]

Baptist? So God let people keep going to hell for another 1500+ years after Jesus died?

 

[kurious_kathy]

Don Piper is a preacher who claims to have been dead for 90 minutes, visited heaven, and then came back. Unsurprisingly, he has written a book about it.

YouTube it, I can't post links yet. grrrrr.

I found very little online investigating this story, and what I'd like to know is...well...what do we know about this guy?

Do paramedics and police back up the story? Is there any corroboration at all?

Did he make up the whole thing?

This story has to be taken with a grain of "Dox or GTFO".

I have read this book and I believe this really did happen to Mr.Piper.

I also believe God can do anything in a persons life, unlike many of you here on this board. Scripture even tells us with God all things are possibe!

 

[Marduk]

I have read this book and I believe this really did happen to Mr.Piper.

so you're not going to heaven then, you not being a baptist

 

[joobz]

I also believe God can do anything in a persons life, unlike many of you here on this board. Scripture even tells us with God all things are possibe!

Except, of course, proving that he exists.

 

[ExMinister]

From Mr. Piper's web site:

How To Go To Heaven
The vast majority of people living today believe that there is another place beyond this world. There is. Don Piper experienced it.

In his book 90 Minutes in Heaven, Don made a decision to take a different route home from a church growth conference that he attended in 1989. It didn't seem like an important choice at the time, but it turned out to be one that changed his life. Waiting down an East Texas highway on his way back to Houston was a large truck that took his life.

In retrospect, the decision to take a different route might appear to be a crucial one. But the most important decision in Don's life occurred NOT on his drive home but when he accepted Christ as Lord at the age of sixteen. Deciding to accept Christ meant Don had an eternal home in Heaven no matter when he died. Acknowledging Christ as Savior guarantees that you will spend eternity with Him.

Oh well. But I think it's hard to tell if he is sincere or not. He definitely experienced a horrible accident. Perhaps he just had the same type of vision others have had across various cultures, in keeping with what he believed.

ETA: Kurious Kathy may have a shot at it after all, according to Mr. Piper's standards.

 

[CurtC]

I looked up this guy a year or two ago, when my son's baseball coach mentioned that he had just read it.

From my memory, there was a significant delay from this guy's accident and when he wrote this book - several years IIRC. I don't doubt that he's sincere, but knowing what I do about memories of traumatic events, I give his account zero credibility.

He was in an accident and had a near-death experience. He waited a couple of years before he mentioned to anyone else that he saw heaven, which is plenty of time for his already God-biased mind to fill in the details and conflate imagination with original memories. Then it was years later until he decided to write a book, lots more time for those details to be filled in. Everyone here knows, of course, that the more times you recall an event, the less reliable your memory becomes - that's because each time you recall it, it's mixed together with your interpretations of it at that time, and then the mixture is stored back into your memory.

I think Piper is honest, just because I'm aware of how easily this kind of stuff happens with normal human memory. On the other hand, that makes his story even less believable.

 

[aggle-rithm]

I'm feeling ripped off: My NDE lasted no more than 30 seconds, and I didn't even get to go to Wendy's.

During mine I had to work at Wendy's.

I must have been bad.

 

[aggle-rithm]

How To Go To Heaven
The vast majority of people living today believe that there is another place beyond this world. There is. Don Piper experienced it.

"Unfortunately, you don't get to go, you vile and disgusting sinner. But buy my book, anyway; it's a real page turner!"

 

[aggle-rithm]

I have read this book and I believe this really did happen to Mr.Piper.

That is a gigantic surprise.

 

[blue sock monkey]

During mine I had to work at Wendy's.

I must have been bad.

No no no. Had you been bad, your NDE would've featured you working at a barbecue joint, cleaning out the smoker. Ish.

My NDE was worth it, though, 'cause that's how I got into skepticism in the first place. Following the NDE, I read Moody's first book and a couple others-- but none of them could explain why I had certain experiences (e. going out-of-body, life review) but not others (no tunnel, no deity handing me minties and goat's milk, no dead loved ones). Eventually I came across Susan Blackmore's Dying To Live, which taught me there were non-supernatural explanations I needed to look at, before I decided that I didn't die because God thought I was so "special" the world couldn't get on without me.

Changed my life--skeptics have more fun.