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11 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A critical evalution of near death experiences, December 1, 2001
By A Customer
This review is from: Deceived by the Light (Paperback)
One reviewer below stated, "When Mr. Groothius has a detailed near-death experience of his own that he can use for comparison to Betty Eadie's, then I will take him seriously." Isn't this like saying, "If you've never experienced heroin, then you can't knock it"? Also, I wonder if that reviewer has had a NDE which he/she can use to determine if Eadie's experience is valid? Are all subjective/existential experiences beyond evaluation? If so, then anyone could claim anything, and all others would be forced to believe. Groothuis does a good job of cutting through this type of thinking and shows how truth-claims about NDE's can be tested, and evaluated.
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14 of 21 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Lights to Boot, November 3, 1999
By A Customer
This review is from: Deceived by the Light (Paperback)
Isn't it amazing, as Mr. Groothuis points out, the sheer number of NDEs that have cropped up in the past years? Why don't they occur evenly throughout time, instead of in convenient, sporadic clusters when such experiences are ... dare Groothuis say it ... popular? Dramatic! Beautiful! Uplifting! Hopebound! The truth? Well, let's see. Eadie, no doubt, believes every word she says -- that doesn't mean the person listening and looking into her bubbly face has to. There are several problems with simply nodding your head as someone proclaims they have had a NDE, and Groothuis points them out in this particular case of Eadie. He also highlights other issues in his book, including the subject of nirvana, new age cults, and other, in all fairness, a la mode movements that have gripped the "open-minded, yet gullible". Wrongfully accused of fundamentalism, Groothuis simply states the facts about the myriad of stories, cults, and various other paraphernalia barging down our doors.
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1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Arrogant Approach, But I Agree About Eadie, August 3, 2010
This review is from: Deceived by the Light (Paperback)
This is the kind of arrogant approach that is intended more as an anti-"Mormon" title than a fair critique of Eadie's book. In it, Douglas R. Groothuis makes the absurd claim that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is not Christian. Obviously he doesn't know the real name of the church or the fact that "Mormons" are Christian. (He also doesn't consider Catholics and Seventh Day Adventists to be Christian and who knows who else?) At any rate, being LDS myself, I know that the church is very Christ-centered. Groothuis chooses to use a very exclusive definition of "Christian" which is largely based on his view of the Trinity. In fact, he's unhappy with Eadie's observation that the Father and the Son are, in fact, two separate personalities. One can ask who Christ was praying to in the Garden, but that would be getting off point. Suffice it to say that this publication (which is quite small) is intended to criticize Eadie's religion. Now, having said all that, I, too, am critical of Eadie's book. It's small, poorly written and does present some theological problems. In her narrative, she meets Christ and reports, "And as our lights merged, I felt as if I had stepped into his countenance, and I felt an utter explosion of love." How does one step into one's countenance? Countenance has to do with the face, as an expression or smile. It's not something you can step into. I find Lance Richardson's book, THE MESSAGE, to be a much more detailed and theologically sound book. Of course Groothuis and evangelicals won't like it because it, too, speaks of man's premortal existence. (Jesus' disciples once asked him, "Master, who did sin, this man or his parents that he was born blind?" Jesus didn't say, "You do err, not knowing the scriptures...." Rather, he said it was for the greater glory of God.) Groothuis says premortality of the spirit was a "Greek" or "Gnostic" idea. Actually, the Greeks believed in reincarnation, so no, it's not the same. As for the Gnostics, yes, they too believed in premortality, but they also believed in a number of other Christian beliefs -- and at the time this idea was revealed (in 1830) the concept of premortality, Gnosticism was virtually unknown. Only with the discovery of crucial Christian texts in 1947 or 1948 in Egypt did we know anything substantial about the Gnostics. Just because they believed in premortality does not mean that the ancient Christians didn't believe in it. But getting back to Eadie's book, I can't say whether she saw what she claimed or not. I do find it suspicious that when she "died" in the hospital that she didn't report any alarms sounding. Even though she was hooked up to the medical monitors and what have you, she didn't say it attracted any attention when she passed. I find that suspicious. The book also doesn't tell us much that can't be taken out of a theological manual. Most of those whom she sees and interacts with are faceless beings with no personality. Even her description of Christ is very "New Age". Groothuis also blames Eadie's book for causing the death of a young lady who had read it. I saw nothing in Eadie's book that would encourage suicide, but many of the books in the life-after-life genre bring peace to those who fear death, and so any of them might cause unstable people to do rash things. That shouldn't be laid at Eadie's feet. It could have just as easily been any one of a dozen other books.
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