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4888
qualitative
book
Long, Jeffrey. God and the Afterlife. HarperOne, 2016. Chapter 3. Thelma S.
God and the Afterlife - Thelma S. - Chapter 3 - 2016
2016
F
Thelma S. was camping with her children in California when she was violently attacked by an assailant in a bushy area of the campground. She had always warned her daughters never to go anywhere alone, and this advice flashed through her mind as she was dragged into the bushes by a man she knew. She was beaten with brass knuckles and left for dead in a brutal assault that nearly ended her life.
As she lay near death, Thelma experienced something far beyond ordinary light. She described it as vast, shimmering, and "a cloud of warm love." She felt as if she was in love with the whole world, and everyone loved her back. The feeling was so glorious that she did not want to return to her body. She gained the understanding that life is a gift and that we make of it what we want. She encountered what she could only call love, recognizing it as God. The experience brought about a profound transformation in Thelma. She returned with something "very nice and loving" inside her, leaving all negative feelings behind. Everyone noticed the change in her, with some thinking she had become more Christian, though she described it as a more boundless and loving belief than what her father had taught her as a child. She expressed that if every person who experienced an NDE could stand together, they would have such a force of love that everything on Earth would be moved by it. The NDE permanently changed Thelma's spiritual understanding and capacity for love. Years later, she still struggled to find adequate words to describe the experience but remained convinced of its transformative power.
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Other
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7
Weak Evidence
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Beaten with brass knuckles and left for dead. Life-threatening assault.
Spiritual experience of divine love. No specific verifiable observations of physical world.
written_account
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Physical assault trauma
8/1/2025
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