President Ezra Taft Benson believed in Steve and that he would fulfill the above promise from the Lord. President Benson knew all about his near death experience with Angel Moroni and called him to be a “judge of Israel” and a prominent church leader just before he gave his famous “pride” talk – condemning members for not reading and understanding the warnings found in the Book of Mormon about the condition of the “church” at the time of the Millennium (commencing April 6, 2000). Gordon Hinckley and Tom Monson, who became Presidents of the Mormon Church, also signed Steve’s Bishop’s Certificate, authorizing him to be a special witness for the Lord in 1989.
BYU Bishop Steven Davis worked very closely with Richard G. Scott at the BYU. Steve had the total authority to kick anyone out of the BYU who was practicing polygamy and attending the university. Over 350 BYU students were exposed and their leader, Mark Zambrano (Argentina returned missionary, Thousand Oaks, CA who believed he was one of the 3 Nephites) confessed to Bishop Davis and repentance commenced.
Steve’s mother, Anna Belle Rust Davis, wrote her life history in 2000 and gave a detailed account of her three straight nights of dreams and instructions for her to act upon and know about Steve’s special mission just before her husband, H. Clyde Davis, accidently shot Steve in the head with his 30/40 caliber rifle. Guardian angels have protected Steve all his life to enable him to restore the original words of the Prophet Mormon and other ancient prophets who dwelled within the borders of the United States of America.
Steve has been examined and researched by many national and international groups concerning his knowledge and ability to communicate with God. Between 1/2007-1/2008 Steve almost single-handedly removed Mitt Romney as a candidate for President by exposing how he obtained his wealth and his blind obedience to Mormon leaders. Steve did this by supplying information to many entities that Mitt was going to give Presidential Pardons to many Mormons (and associates) who were involved in illegal money-laundering activities with the CIA in domestic and foreign lands. This exposure caused D. Kyle Sampson, Chief of Staff for US Attorney General Alberto Gonzales to resign in March, 2007. Back in October, 2001 Romney, Sampson, and other influential Mormons claimed to Interpol/FBI/CIA that Steve was a terrorist affiliated with Osama bin Laden and was going to bomb seven buildings in Salt Lake City during the 2002 Winter Olympics. Congress allocated $300 Million for law enforcement protection of this event through many false reports like that against Steve! He was totally cleared by the FBI and enjoyed the Olympics while his adopted son, Cameron Tyler Davis, participated in the Opening and Closing events at the University of Utah. These deliberate false claims happened the same time Florida Governor Jeb Bush wrote Steve a letter recommending he send his resume to US Attorney General John Ashcroft and apply for a job because of the information he had supplied him and the FBI connecting a Chile, South America gold mine to a $117 Million Florida investment scam, involving Saudi investors. Steve had also successfully sued Zions First National Bank (formerly wholly-owned by the Mormon Church) in 1993 and discovered fraudulent double books, which information was supplied to the SEC causing the failed merger of Zions and First Security Banks for fraudulent financial dealings. This highly advertised, but subsequently failed merger resulted in multi-million dollar stock market losses.
Gordon Hinckley served on the Zions bank Board of Directors between 1968-1990 and was being investigated by the FBI through evidence supplied by Steve Davis. Hinckley was directly involved in illegal money laundering tithing funds in fraudulent stock manipulations and company take-overs through Mitt Romney and others. Mitt Romney lost his bid as the Republican nominee for President and shortly thereafter, in desperation and sought devine assistance from the Lord, President Hinckley committed suicide on January 27, 2008 when he put his life in the Hands of the Lord and attempted to get a chemotherapy treatment which never had been successfully applied for a person his age or even many years younger.
The importance of the Original Book of Mormon and how the Prophet Mormon was the key person for the Lord for the 1,000 year history of the Nephite Nation. At the age of ten, Mormon was called by Ammaron, the Prophet of the Lord about 322 AD, to be in charge of all the Nephite records.
All of Steve’s Life is very well documented and he has several websites detailing truths he learned during his Near Death Experience:
Elder Scott is the “Alma” of today. He can and hopefully will stand up against the “King Noah’s” who believe in many gods, as warned by the Prophet Abinadi. Mosiah 15:1-5 states the truth about the identity of God:
“And now Abinadi said unto them: I would that ye should understand that God himself shall come down among the children of men, and shall redeem his people. And because he dwelleth in flesh he shall be called the Son of God, and having subjected the flesh to the will of the Father, being the Father and the Son—The Father, because he was conceived by the power of God; and the Son, because of the flesh; thus becoming the Father and Son—And they are one God, yea, the very Eternal Father of heaven and of earth. And thus the flesh becoming subject to the Spirit, or the Son to the Father, being one God, suffereth temptation, and yieldeth not to the temptation, but suffereth himself to be mocked, and scourged, and cast out, and disowned by his people.” (also see Alma 11:22-40)
Sincerely, ATLAS Cities of Commerce
Wednesday, September 17, 2008
Dr. Kurt Rowley PhD
1351 S. 4185 W.
Syracuse, UT 84075
Dr. Jeffrey R. Holland PhD
Quorum of the Twelve Apostles
Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day-Saints
47 E. South Temple Street
Salt Lake City, Utah
Dear Brother Rowley and Elder Holland,
I have known many “learned and educated LDS men” during my 58 years on this earth. Like the doctorate Jeff Holland received from Yale University, subject matter and contents are controlled by other learned men! These LDS brothers and sisters all have been warned by the Lord through His message to King Benjamin (1st Nephite/Mulekite King – bringing forth the bloodline of Joseph and Judah together 150 BC) about being a “natural man”: “For the natural man is an enemy to God, and has been from the fall of Adam, and will be, forever and ever, unless he yields to the enticing of the Holy Spirit, and putteth off the natural man and becometh a saint through the atonement of Christ the Lord, and becometh a child, submissive, meek, humble, patient, full of lover, willing to submit to all things which the Lord seeth fit to inflict upon him, even as a child doth submit to his father.” (Mosiah 3:19)
On Saturday, September 13th Dr. Rowley claimed on the LDS-Last-Day Yahoo Discussion Group: “The LDS prophet today .... And it is not just the president, also the apostles are prophets.”
Do both of you agree that a person needs to prove to members of the LDS Church that they are truly a “prophet” of the Lord through their own personal actions and inspiration from heaven? Over the years I have met with apostles of the Lord and taught them about my near death experience and my direct conversation with the Lord, Angel Moroni and others concerning prophesies, future events and interpreting scripture of Prophets of old and latter days. The Lord warned all “apostles” in D&C 64 and 112 claiming they will be replaced in the Lord’s timeline and most of the apostasy within the church will begin with them. Hasn’t this happened? The last Apostle excommunicated was Richard Lyman. Elder Harold B. Lee was given the assignment to investigate the allegations against him. In September, 1971 President Lee (with Elder Howard W. Hunter present) met with me at the Church Offices and told me that several apostles had mistresses at the same time Elder Lyman was removed from the records of the LDS Church. In that meeting I proved to President Lee and Apostle Hunter that the Church had been cursed for many reasons including having a “King” position with counselors making up a 1st Presidency and that only a Quorum of the 12 and a Presiding Bishopric was all that was needed and that the Church had been cursed because of it. I also showed them that there had been no “prophecy” given since the first years of Joseph Smith, including the Manifesto by President Woodruff in 1890.
It wasn’t my choice but I spoke with God and was given knowledge of things to come concerning the restoration of the plain and simple truths found in the 1830 Original Book of Mormon. The Prophet Nephi wrote in the beginning of the history of the Nephites: “For it came to pass in the commencement of the first year of the reign of Zedekiah, king of Judah, (my father, Lehi, having dwelt in Jerusalem in all his days); and in that same year there came many prophets, prophesying unto the people that they must repent, or the great city Jerusalem must be destroyed.” (1 Nephi 1:4)
Because of deliberate sin caused by members of the Lord’s Church, many prophets are called to preach repentance. I have never given that up since my near death experience and I accepted my mission from the Lord.
On November, 1973 Fast Sunday just seven weeks before the mysterious heart attack death of President Harold B. Lee (FBI investigation because a drug store was burned down which had prescribed a drug for him, destroying all the records), he was attending his home ward. “According to ward member, Sister Elaine A. Cannon (latter Church Relief Society President), who recorded his statements in her journal, he spoke there unforgettable words as he remained standing at the rear of the chapel: ‘Brothers and Sister, beloved friends and neighbors, members of my ward family, and those in my own little flock over whom I have stewardship: I’m sorry to disturb you, but I know that it would be disturbing to my Father in Heaven if I don’t say something to you at this time. By way of testimony I want you to know that I know that God lives, that Jesus is the Christ and our Redeemer, and he is at the head of this Church; I am not. I know that he operates in all the affairs of his church and I say this by way of testimony that you may know that I know he lives. And then, after a long pause, he uttered these remarkable words: I say this to you by way of a serious warning, that I also know that the adversary lives and operates in the affairs of man. And he is determined to cause a downfall of men. If he can’t get to us, he will try to get to those closest to us, for he is in a mighty battle with the work of the Savior. And I must tell you these words of warning. So keep close to the Lord. Don’t be discouraged. The Lord will take care of his own. If you are prepared, you need not fear, if you are on the Lord’s side.’ This was a powerful, most unusual testimony, not alone because it came from the prophet of
God to his own neighbors, friends, and relatives who had often heard him bear witness to the reality of the Savior Jesus Christ, but also because he had never before borne such a fervent witness to the reality of Satan. It was his last message to the members of his ward, for seven week later he was taken in death.” HAROLD B. LEE, PROPHET & SEER, Chapter 32, Page 564. President Spencer W. Kimball, who followed President Lee didn’t allow this book to be published while he was alive, nearly twelve years. President Ezra Taft Benson approved it.
What a hypocrite and a natural man you are, Dr. Rowley! A Prophet of the Lord will have pure revelations from God and not “intuitive hunches.” What “prophet” since Joseph Smith Jr. has the members of the LDS Church accepted as a “prophet” who actually has prophesy from the Lord? One in 1976. D&C 138 was added to the Doctrine & Covenants from a dying President Joseph F. Smith from a series of dreams he announced on October 4, 1918. He died on November 19, 1918 at 62 years old. President Smith had never served in the Quorum of the 12. He was always in the First Presidency since July 1, 1866. I openly voted against D&C 138 showing deliberate alterations by learned men from the exact words of President Smith. Webster’s Dictionary claims a “prophet” to be: 1. One who prophesies, or foretells events; a predicter; a foreteller. 2. One inspired or instructed by God to speak in his name, or announce future events, as, Moses, Elijah, etc. 3. An interpreter; a spokesman.
S. B. wisely responded to the bias and stupidity of Dr. Rowley stating:
“Anyone who has the testimony of Jesus is a prophet; "President of the Church" is a better title. Depend not ever on borrowed light. Read Heinlein's Revolt in 2100 if you still can't see the problem with the definite article.
And minor nitpick: it's "LdS". Brigham Young added the hyphen, lowered the case of the 'D' in "Day", and added the leading capitalized "The" to the corporate name upon learning James Strang had rights to the other form of the Church name. The intellectual dishonesty of altering the Doctrine and Covenants in accordance with the corporate change troubles me.
Prophet Mormon was much more than ‘abridger,’ scholar says
SANDY, Utah -- Regarding the prophet Mormon as merely an "abridger" of the Nephite record hardly does justice to what he did, a Book of Mormon scholar affirmed at the closing session of the Foundation for Apologetic Information and Research (FAIR) conference Friday at the South Towne Expo Center.
"It would be much more akin to what Mormon did to say that (someone) went back through every one of the royal records of the kings of England and tried to discover how it is that the Magna Carta alters human nature," said Brant Gardner, author of an acclaimed six-volume commentary on the Book of Mormon.
Mormon was both "active" and "intentional" in his role, Gardner said, selecting from extensive source material the very content that fit his "meta-message" -- that Jesus, as the Messiah who in a resurrected state visited the Nephites, "is the Eternal God, the Messiah who will come."
Gardner presented several clues in Mormon's text "that he had at least created a full outline of his work before he began the task of committing it to the plates."
"Perhaps the most obvious evidence," Gardner said, "is the chapter head notes, which were physically written on the plates prior to the chapters they synopsize." He added that the extant portion of the original Book of Mormon manuscript dictated by Joseph Smith shows that the head notes were part of the original record and were not added later by Joseph Smith or his scribe Oliver Cowdery in preparing the book for publication.
The head notes reflect that Mormon wrote them prior to writing the respective chapters and therefore had to know the content of the chapters in order to write the head notes, Gardner explained. They indicate Mormon "had some clear plan of what he was going to include in each book he edited. When Mormon switches to his own record, it's no longer part of the planned text, and therefore does not have a synopsis in a head note."
Although there is evidence for an outline, Gardner said, "there is also evidence that Mormon did not simply copy a previously written text." He added, "We often see Mormon divert from his outline on a tangent occasioned by thinking about the material that he was writing." When Mormon did this, he often employed a device, sometimes used in the Old Testament, called "repetitive resumption," wherein a key word or phrase of the foregoing narrative is repeated after Mormon has inserted his commentary and is returning to the narrative. An example of this, he said, is in Alma 17:17.
Other clues Gardner said indicate Mormon was working from an outline include apparent chapter divisions in the original record. He cited Royal Skousen, a linguistics professor at Brigham Young University who studied the original Book of Mormon manuscript. Skousen determined that "evidence suggests that as Joseph Smith was translating, he apparently saw some mark, perhaps some extra spacing, whenever a section ended but was unable to see the text that followed. At such junctures, Joseph decided to refer to those endings as chapter breaks and told the scribe to write the word 'chapter' at these places" without specifying a chapter number, as Joseph saw neither a number nor the word "chapter."
"Therefore," Gardner reasoned, "in the 1830 edition of the Book of Mormon, the chapters represented Mormon's conceptual breaks into chapters." Those chapter breaks are not in later editions of the Book of Mormon, because in 1878, church apostle Orson Pratt revised the chapter divisions, Gardner noted.
Guardian Angels Are Here, Say Most Americans
Time, Thursday, Sep. 18, 2008
More than half of all Americans believe they have been helped by a guardian angel in the course of their lives, according to a new poll by the Baylor University Institute for Studies of Religion. In a poll of 1700 respondents, 55% answered affirmatively to the statement, "I was protected from harm by a guardian angel." The responses defied standard class and denominational assumptions about religious belief; the majority held up regardless of denomination, region or education — though the figure was a little lower (37%) among respondents earning more than $150,000 a year.
The guardian angel encounter figures were "the big shocker" in the report, says Christopher Bader, director of the Baylor survey that covered a range of religious issues, parts of which are being released Thursday in a book titled What Americans Really Believe. In the case of angels, however, the question is a little stronger than just belief. Says Bader, "If you ask whether people believe in guardian angels, a lot of people will say, 'sure.' But this is different. It's experiential. It means that lots of Americans are having these lived supernatural experiences."
Sociologists may need further research to determine how broadly the data should be interpreted. The Baylor study tested other statements that might indicate a similar belief in the supernatural intruding into everyday personal experience — "I heard the voice of God speaking to me"; and "I received a miraculous physical healing." But far fewer people claimed to have had those experiences. This raises the possibility that guardian angels, which famously support an industry of sentimental accessories, are just so darned attractive that they exist in a charmed belief niche of their own.
But other factors may be in play. On one end of the spectrum of American religion are the analytical churches, on both the right and the left theologically and politically, which are primarily concerned with establishing Biblical principles to live by — and are suspicious of any modern-day irruption of the supernatural into religious life. Their miracles all took place in the Bible. At the opposite end of the spectrum are the more experiential churches, like many African-American denominations and those in the Pentecostal movement, that lay heavy emphasis on the workings of the Holy Spirit, where the supernatural, through gifts like healing, prophesying and speaking in tongues, makes regular visits in the pews. In the middle are sacramental faiths like Roman Catholicism, where the supernatural has a regular place on the altar (after all, the Eucharist is said to be the literal body and blood of Christ) but one that occurs only within the restrictions of very specific ritual.
What's interesting about the Baylor findings on guardian angel experiences is that they cross all boundaries. They have scriptural writ (in Psalm 91 and elsewhere). They are clearly experiential. And guardian angels are a prominent part of Catholic belief that happens to float freely outside of a sacrament. The cross-spectrum legitimacy of the notion of angelic interventions may free Americans to engage in the kind of folk faith that is part of almost any religious system but is not always officially acknowledged.
Randall Balmer, chairman of the religion department at New York's Barnard College, says that the Baylor angel figures are one in a periodic series of indications that "Americans live in an enchanted world," and engage in a kind of casual mysticism independent of established religious ritual, doctrine or theology. "There is," he says, a "much broader uncharted range of religious experience among the populace than we expect." Just possibly, Baylor has begun to chart it
What Happens When We Die?
Time Magazine, September 19, 2008
A fellow at New York's Weill Cornell Medical Center, Dr. Sam Parnia is one of the world's leading experts on the scientific study of death. Last week, Parnia and his colleagues at the Human Consciousness Project announced their first major undertaking: a 3-year exploration of the biology behind "out-of-body" experiences. The study, known as AWARE (AWAreness during REsuscitation), involves the collaboration of 25 major medical centers through Europe, Canada and the U.S., and will examine some 1,500 survivors of cardiac arrest. TIME spoke with Parnia about the project's origins, its skeptics, and the difference between the mind and the brain.
What methods will this project use to verify people's claims of "near-death" experience?
When your heart stops beating, there is no blood getting to your brain. And so what happens is that within about ten seconds, brain activity ceases - as you would imagine. Yet paradoxically, ten or 20 percent of people who are brought back to life from that period, which may be a few minutes or over an hour, will report having consciousness. So the key thing here is, are these real, or is it some sort of illusion? So the only way to tell is to have pictures only visible from the ceiling and nowhere else, because they claim they can see everything from the ceiling. So if we then get a series of 200 or 300 people who all were clinically dead, and yet they're able to come back and tell us what we were doing and were able see those pictures, that confirms consciousness really was continuing even though the brain wasn't functioning.
How is technology challenging this perception of death as a moment?
Nowadays, we have technology that's improved so that we can bring some [cardiac-arrest survivors] back to life. In fact, there are drugs being developed right now - who knows if they'll ever come out to the market - that may actually slow down the process of brain-cell injury and death. Imagine, you fast-forward ten years down the line and you've given a patient whose heart has just stopped this amazing drug, and actually what it does is it slows everything down so that the things that would've happened over an hour, now happen over two days. As medicine progresses, we will end up with lots and lots of ethical questions.
How does this project relate to society's perception of death?
People commonly perceive death as being a moment - you're either dead or you're alive. And that's a social definition we have. But the clinical definition we use is when the heart stops beating, the lungs stop working, and as a consequence the brain itself stops working. When doctors shine a light into someone's pupil, it's to demonstrate that there is no reflex present. The eye reflex is mediated by the brain stem and that's the area that keeps us alive; if that doesn't work then that means that the brain itself isn't working. So at that point I'll call a nurse into the room so I can certify that this patient is dead. Fifty years ago, people couldn't survive after that.
But what is happening to the individual at that time, what's really going on? Because there is a lack of blood flow, the cells go into a kind of a frenzy to keep themselves alive. And within about 5 minutes or so they start to damage or change. After an hour or so the damage is so great that even if we restart the heart again and pump blood, the person can no longer be viable because the cells have just been changed too much. And then the cells continue to change so that within a couple of days the body actually decomposes. So it's not a moment, it's a process that actually begins when the heart stops and culminates in the complete loss of the body, the decompositions of all the cells. However, ultimately what matters is, What's going on to a person's mind? What happens to the human mind and consciousness during death? Does that cease immediately as soon as the heart stops? Does it cease activity within the first 2 seconds, the first 2 minutes? Because we know that cells are continuously changing at that time. Does it stop after ten minutes, after half an hour, after an hour? And at this point we don't know.
What was your first interview like with someone who had reported an out-of-body experience?
Eye opening and very humbling. Because what you see is that, first of all, they are completely genuine people who are not looking for any kind of fame or attention. In many cases they haven't even told anybody else about it because they're afraid of what people will think of them. I have about five hundred or so cases of people that I've interviewed since I first started out more than ten years ago. It's the consistency of the experiences, the reality of what they were describing. I managed to speak to doctors and nurses who had been present and said these patients told them exactly what had happened and they couldn't explain it. I actually documented a few of those in my book What Happens When We Die because I wanted people to get both angles - not just the patients' side but also get the doctors' side - and see how it feels for the doctors to have a patient come back and tell them what was going on. There was a cardiologist that I spoke with who said he hasn't told anyone else about it because he has no explanation for how this patient could have been able to describe in detail what he had said and done. He was so freaked out by it that he just decided not to think about it anymore.
Why do you think there is such resistance to studies like yours?
Because we're pushing through the boundaries of science, working against assumptions and perceptions that have been fixed. A lot of people hold this idea that well, when you die you die, that's it. Death is a moment, you know you're either dead or you're alive. All these things are not scientifically valid but they're social perceptions. If you look back at the end of the 19th century, physicists at that time had been working with Newtonian laws of motion and they really felt they had all the answers to everything that was out there in the universe. When we look at the world around us, Newtonian physics is perfectly sufficient. It explains most things that we deal with - except if you go to the really low level beyond the atoms.
But then it was discovered that actually when you look at motion at really small levels - beyond the level of the atoms - Newton's laws no longer apply. A new physics was needed, hence, we eventually ended up with quantum physics. It caused a lot of controversy, even Einstein himself didn't believe in it. Now, if you look at the mind, consciousness, and the brain, the assumption that the mind and brain are the same thing is fine for most circumstances, because in 99% of circumstances we can't separate the mind and brain, they work at the exactly the same time. But then there are certain extreme examples, like when he brain shuts down, that we see that that this assumption may no longer seem to hold true. So a new science is needed in the same way that we had to have a new quantum physics. The CERN particle accelerator may take us back to our roots. It may take us back to the first moments after the big bang, the very beginning. With our study, for the first time, we have the technology and the means to be able to investigate this. To see what happens at the end for us. Does something continue?
Near-Death Experiences: What Really Happens?
By LiveScience Staff 12 September 2008
Many reports of near-death experiences sound the same: a welcoming white light and a replay of memories. But now scientists aim to study what really happens to the brain and consciousness when someone is on the verge of dying.
In a new study called AWARE (AWAreness during REsuscitation), doctors will examine patients in hospitals in Europe and North America who reach a state called cardiac arrest.
"Contrary to popular perception, death is not a specific moment," said leader of the study Dr. Sam Parnia of the University of Southampton in the U.K. "It is a process that begins when the heart stops beating, the lungs stop working and the brain ceases functioning - a medical condition termed cardiac arrest, which from a biological viewpoint is synonymous with clinical death."
Science has long struggled to define death, and to determine when the precise moment of death occurs. Now though, most doctors consider death more of a process than an event. A person is thought to have died when he stops breathing, his heart stops beating, and his brain activity ceases.
"During a cardiac arrest, all three criteria of death are present," Parnia said. "There then follows a period of time, which may last from a few seconds to an hour or more, in which emergency medical efforts may succeed in restarting the heart and reversing the dying process. What people experience during this period of cardiac arrest provides a unique window of understanding into what we are all likely to experience during the dying process."
Previous research suggests about 10 to 20 percent of people who live through cardiac arrest report lucid, well-structured thought processes, reasoning, memories and sometimes detailed recall of events during their encounter with death.
One study found that people who reported peaceful feelings, bright light and out-of-body experiences during a brush with death are more likely to have had difficulty separating sleep from wakefulness in their everyday lives. Both before and after their near-death experiences, these people often have symptoms of the rapid-eye movement (REM) state of sleep while awake.
The AWARE researchers want to find out what happens to the brain when a person's body has started to shut down, whether it is possible for people see and hear during cardiac arrest, and what's going on during out of body experiences.
The launch of the AWARE study was announced at an international symposium at the United Nations Sept. 11
Near-Death Experience: Find Out if You're a Candidate
By Robert Roy Britt, LiveScience Managing Editor 11 April 2006
Experiences you have in the here and now could hint at whether you'll see a light at the end of the tunnel when you're close to the hereafter.
A new study finds that people who have had near-death experiences are generally more likely to have difficulty separating sleep from wakefulness.
Researchers surveyed 55 people who'd had a near-death experience (NDE) and 55 who had not. The experience was defined as a life-threatening episode such as a car accident or heart attack when the person experienced a variety of feelings, including:
a sense of unusual peace
alertness
being outside their bodies
seeing intense light
For 60 percent of those who had been through an NDE, the rapid-eye movement (REM) state of sleep intrudes into their regular consciousness while awake, the study found. Both before and after their traumatic event, these people had experiences that include waking up and not being able to move, sudden muscle weakness in their legs, and hearing sounds that no one else hears upon waking or falling asleep.
Only 24 percent of people who had not had an NDE report this REM intrusion.
Inside your mind
The human arousal system is activated from the brain stem, a primordial control system that manages other vital functions like heartbeat and breathing. We all have a switch there that regulates between REM sleep and being awake, explained study leader Kevin Nelson, a neurologist at the University of Kentucky in Lexington. In people who have had an NDE, the switch is more likely to blend those two states.
"These findings suggest that REM-state intrusion contributes to near-death experiences," Nelson said. "People who have near-death experiences may have an arousal system that predisposes them to REM intrusion."
The results are detailed in the April 11 issue of the journal Neurology.
Near-death experiences are seen by some as evidence for the paranormal, as a link to the world beyond. Not everyone who recovers from being near death or declared clinically dead describes the same eerie sensations, however. Nelson says that about 10 percent of cardiac arrest patients who survive had an NDE during the event.
In a Dutch study of 344 cardiac patients who had been resuscitated after clinical death, 62 of them, or 18 percent, reported an NDE.
What's going on
During REM sleep, many body functions are known to change. Muscles lose their tone, for example.
In a crisis, if the REM-state intrudes on an otherwise awake person, the lack of muscle tone "could reinforce a person's sense of being dead and convey the impression of death to other people," Nelson said. "REM-state intrusion during danger and brain impairment from lack of blood flow or oxygen could contribute to the experience of near death."
The intrusion might also explain the vivid scenes described by some NDE survivors, such as seeing their own bodies from above during surgery.
"One of the basic features of REM state is activation of the visual system," Nelson said. "REM-state intrusion could promote the prominent visual phenomena of near-death experience."
NDEs appear not to be dreams, however.
"Most dreaming occurs in REM sleep and despite the possible contribution to NDE by REM-intrusion, NDE and dreams fundamentally differ," Nelson explains. "Near-death experiences are recalled with an intense sense of realness that contrasts sharply to dreams. Furthermore, NDEs lack the bizarre characteristics of dreams."
The new study does not answer the question of whether near-death experiences have a biological rather than paranormal basis, Nelson told LiveScience, but he plans further research in an effort to settle that issue.
For now, there are hints that biology and the paranormal might converge. Our emotions are controlled by the brain's limbic system, which is strongly active during REM sleep.
"REM-state intrusion provides a mechanism for robust activation of the limbic system, which is expected to underlie many of the paranormal, transcendental and emotional aspects of NDE," Nelson said.
Posthumous Poses: Corpses Donated for Art and Science
Sleep Deprivation: The Great American Myth
Prophet Mormon was much more than ‘abridger,’ scholar says
SANDY, Utah -- Regarding the prophet Mormon as merely an "abridger" of the Nephite record hardly does justice to what he did, a Book of Mormon scholar affirmed at the closing session of the Foundation for Apologetic Information and Research (FAIR) conference Friday at the South Towne Expo Center.
"It would be much more akin to what Mormon did to say that (someone) went back through every one of the royal records of the kings of England and tried to discover how it is that the Magna Carta alters human nature," said Brant Gardner, author of an acclaimed six-volume commentary on the Book of Mormon.
Mormon was both "active" and "intentional" in his role, Gardner said, selecting from extensive source material the very content that fit his "meta-message" -- that Jesus, as the Messiah who in a resurrected state visited the Nephites, "is the Eternal God, the Messiah who will come."
Gardner presented several clues in Mormon's text "that he had at least created a full outline of his work before he began the task of committing it to the plates."
"Perhaps the most obvious evidence," Gardner said, "is the chapter head notes, which were physically written on the plates prior to the chapters they synopsize." He added that the extant portion of the original Book of Mormon manuscript dictated by Joseph Smith shows that the head notes were part of the original record and were not added later by Joseph Smith or his scribe Oliver Cowdery in preparing the book for publication.
The head notes reflect that Mormon wrote them prior to writing the respective chapters and therefore had to know the content of the chapters in order to write the head notes, Gardner explained. They indicate Mormon "had some clear plan of what he was going to include in each book he edited. When Mormon switches to his own record, it's no longer part of the planned text, and therefore does not have a synopsis in a head note."
Although there is evidence for an outline, Gardner said, "there is also evidence that Mormon did not simply copy a previously written text." He added, "We often see Mormon divert from his outline on a tangent occasioned by thinking about the material that he was writing." When Mormon did this, he often employed a device, sometimes used in the Old Testament, called "repetitive resumption," wherein a key word or phrase of the foregoing narrative is repeated after Mormon has inserted his commentary and is returning to the narrative. An example of this, he said, is in Alma 17:17.
Other clues Gardner said indicate Mormon was working from an outline include apparent chapter divisions in the original record. He cited Royal Skousen, a linguistics professor at Brigham Young University who studied the original Book of Mormon manuscript. Skousen determined that "evidence suggests that as Joseph Smith was translating, he apparently saw some mark, perhaps some extra spacing, whenever a section ended but was unable to see the text that followed. At such junctures, Joseph decided to refer to those endings as chapter breaks and told the scribe to write the word 'chapter' at these places" without specifying a chapter number, as Joseph saw neither a number nor the word "chapter."
"Therefore," Gardner reasoned, "in the 1830 edition of the Book of Mormon, the chapters represented Mormon's conceptual breaks into chapters." Those chapter breaks are not in later editions of the Book of Mormon, because in 1878, church apostle Orson Pratt revised the chapter divisions, Gardner noted.
Near-Death Experiences: What Really Happens?
By LiveScience Staff 12 September 2008
Many reports of near-death experiences sound the same: a welcoming white light and a replay of memories. But now scientists aim to study what really happens to the brain and consciousness when someone is on the verge of dying.
In a new study called AWARE (AWAreness during REsuscitation), doctors will examine patients in hospitals in Europe and North America who reach a state called cardiac arrest.
"Contrary to popular perception, death is not a specific moment," said leader of the study Dr. Sam Parnia of the University of Southampton in the U.K. "It is a process that begins when the heart stops beating, the lungs stop working and the brain ceases functioning - a medical condition termed cardiac arrest, which from a biological viewpoint is synonymous with clinical death."
Science has long struggled to define death, and to determine when the precise moment of death occurs. Now though, most doctors consider death more of a process than an event. A person is thought to have died when he stops breathing, his heart stops beating, and his brain activity ceases.
"During a cardiac arrest, all three criteria of death are present," Parnia said. "There then follows a period of time, which may last from a few seconds to an hour or more, in which emergency medical efforts may succeed in restarting the heart and reversing the dying process. What people experience during this period of cardiac arrest provides a unique window of understanding into what we are all likely to experience during the dying process."
Previous research suggests about 10 to 20 percent of people who live through cardiac arrest report lucid, well-structured thought processes, reasoning, memories and sometimes detailed recall of events during their encounter with death.
One study found that people who reported peaceful feelings, bright light and out-of-body experiences during a brush with death are more likely to have had difficulty separating sleep from wakefulness in their everyday lives. Both before and after their near-death experiences, these people often have symptoms of the rapid-eye movement (REM) state of sleep while awake.
The AWARE researchers want to find out what happens to the brain when a person's body has started to shut down, whether it is possible for people see and hear during cardiac arrest, and what's going on during out of body experiences.
The launch of the AWARE study was announced at an international symposium at the United Nations Sept. 11
Near-Death Experience: Find Out if You're a Candidate
By Robert Roy Britt, LiveScience Managing Editor 11 April 2006
Experiences you have in the here and now could hint at whether you'll see a light at the end of the tunnel when you're close to the hereafter.
A new study finds that people who have had near-death experiences are generally more likely to have difficulty separating sleep from wakefulness.
Researchers surveyed 55 people who'd had a near-death experience (NDE) and 55 who had not. The experience was defined as a life-threatening episode such as a car accident or heart attack when the person experienced a variety of feelings, including:
a sense of unusual peace
alertness
being outside their bodies
seeing intense light
For 60 percent of those who had been through an NDE, the rapid-eye movement (REM) state of sleep intrudes into their regular consciousness while awake, the study found. Both before and after their traumatic event, these people had experiences that include waking up and not being able to move, sudden muscle weakness in their legs, and hearing sounds that no one else hears upon waking or falling asleep.
Only 24 percent of people who had not had an NDE report this REM intrusion.
Inside your mind
The human arousal system is activated from the brain stem, a primordial control system that manages other vital functions like heartbeat and breathing. We all have a switch there that regulates between REM sleep and being awake, explained study leader Kevin Nelson, a neurologist at the University of Kentucky in Lexington. In people who have had an NDE, the switch is more likely to blend those two states.
"These findings suggest that REM-state intrusion contributes to near-death experiences," Nelson said. "People who have near-death experiences may have an arousal system that predisposes them to REM intrusion."
The results are detailed in the April 11 issue of the journal Neurology.
Near-death experiences are seen by some as evidence for the paranormal, as a link to the world beyond. Not everyone who recovers from being near death or declared clinically dead describes the same eerie sensations, however. Nelson says that about 10 percent of cardiac arrest patients who survive had an NDE during the event.
In a Dutch study of 344 cardiac patients who had been resuscitated after clinical death, 62 of them, or 18 percent, reported an NDE.
What's going on
During REM sleep, many body functions are known to change. Muscles lose their tone, for example.
In a crisis, if the REM-state intrudes on an otherwise awake person, the lack of muscle tone "could reinforce a person's sense of being dead and convey the impression of death to other people," Nelson said. "REM-state intrusion during danger and brain impairment from lack of blood flow or oxygen could contribute to the experience of near death."
The intrusion might also explain the vivid scenes described by some NDE survivors, such as seeing their own bodies from above during surgery.
"One of the basic features of REM state is activation of the visual system," Nelson said. "REM-state intrusion could promote the prominent visual phenomena of near-death experience."
NDEs appear not to be dreams, however.
"Most dreaming occurs in REM sleep and despite the possible contribution to NDE by REM-intrusion, NDE and dreams fundamentally differ," Nelson explains. "Near-death experiences are recalled with an intense sense of realness that contrasts sharply to dreams. Furthermore, NDEs lack the bizarre characteristics of dreams."
The new study does not answer the question of whether near-death experiences have a biological rather than paranormal basis, Nelson told LiveScience, but he plans further research in an effort to settle that issue.
For now, there are hints that biology and the paranormal might converge. Our emotions are controlled by the brain's limbic system, which is strongly active during REM sleep.
"REM-state intrusion provides a mechanism for robust activation of the limbic system, which is expected to underlie many of the paranormal, transcendental and emotional aspects of NDE," Nelson said.
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Higher Education Fuels Stronger Belief in Ghosts
The Odds of Dying
2 Nephi 3:24: “And there shall rise one mighty among them, who shall do much good, both in word and in deed, being an instrument in the hands of God, with exceeding faith, to work mighty wonders, and do that thing which is great in the sight of God, unto the bringing to pass much restoration unto the house of Israel, and unto the seed of thy brethren.”
