Love Encounters of the Fifth Kind
By Ian Todd
Do accounts of near-death experiences support God’s amipotence?
Many people are familiar with the film ‘Close Encounters of the Third Kind’—or will have heard of it even if they haven’t seen it. This classic sci-fi movie, written and directed by Steven Spielberg and released in 1977, is about human contact with extra-terrestrial beings (aliens) who arrive on Earth in UFOs. The ‘close encounters’ classification was popularized by the astronomer J. Allen Hynek in his book The UFO Experience: a Scientific Inquiry.[1] Close encounters of the first and second kind refer to near sightings, and observing the effect of UFOs. Close encounters of the third and fourth kinds involve sightings of, and interactions with, extra-terrestrial beings. Direct communications with extra-terrestrial beings are termed ‘close encounters of the fifth kind.’
You are probably wondering what discussion of contact with aliens from outer space has to do with God’s love. So let me explain….
In his book The Death of Omnipotence and the Birth of Amipotence, Thomas Jay Oord addresses the issue of the nature of God’s character and being. In particular, Oord asks whether God’s essential power is that of being ‘almighty’ (omnipotent) or ‘all loving’ (amipotent). He argues convincingly for the supremacy of God’s amipotence. But how can we know this? Or, more directly, how do we encounter God’s love?
Oord states that “… we cannot perceive an invisible God with our five senses. We may infer the Spirit’s activities, however, from what we observe in the world. And we can directly detect the Spirit’s activity through non-sensory perception.”[2] This could be applied equally to our perception of God’s love as well as any other of God’s activities.
Inferring God’s love—what we might call ‘Love encounters of the first and second kind’—could include witnessing the loving behavior of our fellow human beings—particularly those who claim to be motivated themselves by God’s love. Non-sensory perception of God’s love (‘Love encounters of the third and fourth kind’) would include a personal sense of God’s love flowing through us—perhaps as when John Wesley referred to his ‘heart being strangely warmed.’ But what about ‘Love encounters of the fifth kind’—feeling the full force of God’s love in a transcendent encounter and communication with the Divine? Is this something that cannot happen, at least in this life? After all, as Oord reminds us, John wrote that ‘No one has ever seen God’ (John 1:18a). This verse then continues, ‘The only Son, who is the same as God and is at the Father’s side, he has made him known’ (John 1:18b).
However, in the centuries since Christ’s ascension following his resurrection (Luke 24:51), there have been few recorded reports of people claiming to have seen Jesus ‘in person’. That is, until the last fifty years or so, which has witnessed a remarkable rise in reports of near-death experiences (NDEs). A broad definition of NDEs is that they are vivid, memorable, highly meaningful and transformative spiritual experiences that occur during an episode when a person comes close to death (or can be defined as ‘clinically dead’), but with subsequent recovery.
The reasons for this abundance of recent NDE reports include the advances in medicine since the 1960s, which mean that many people who would previously have slipped irretrievably into death can now be revived (e.g. following cardiac arrest). Also, the systematic collection and study of NDE testimonies began in the 1970s with the investigations by the psychiatrist Raymond Moody, published in his book Life after Life.[3]
Since then, many thousands of NDE accounts have been recorded from all over the world. As I have recently written elsewhere, the overwhelming conclusion of these accounts is that the ultimate purpose of everything, including our own lives, is love.[4]
Before going into the evidence for this, it’s worth asking why we should believe that NDEs are true encounters with a spiritual reality rather than imagined events generated by the neural pathways within a dying brain. At least thirty different materialist hypotheses have been proposed to support the latter possibility (that NDEs are a ‘figment of the imagination’), but none of these have come close to explaining satisfactorily all the features of NDEs. More directly, some NDEs start with an out-of-body experience (OBE) in which the person finds themselves seeing the scene around their lifeless body from an external viewpoint. Following recovery, they accurately recall sights and sounds from this time that are verified by those who were also present (e.g. medical staff). The simplest explanation for this is that the person’s ‘spirit’ (which alternatively could be called their mind, consciousness or soul) left their clinically dead body and continued to function.
For many of those who undergo NDEs (we’ll call them ‘NDErs’), the OBE is followed by their passage to a ‘spiritual realm.’ Here, they frequently encounter other beings, including deceased relatives and friends, and angelic beings. However, many NDErs report that the most intense and memorable feature of their experience in encountering a ‘Being of Light’ who radiates an intense (but not blinding) light and from whom emanates absolute, unconditional love and acceptance. Some NDErs acknowledge this ‘Being of Light’ to be the ‘source of all being,’ ‘ultimate reactive force’ (or similar), and many specifically recognize this Being as God or Jesus. But what is most significant are the terms used by NDErs to describe the love they feel being extended to them—terms such as ‘unconditional,’ ‘overwhelming,’ ‘amazing,’ ‘pure.’ In other words, it’s a love far greater and deeper than anything they’ve previously experienced or can fully comprehend or explain.
Many NDErs report undergoing a ‘Life Review’ as part of their transcendent experience in which they are shown scenes from throughout their life—not so much to remind the NDEr what they’d done during their life, but to show how they’d treated other people. Indeed, in many cases, NDErs report that, not only did they witness the things they did and said to others, but also experienced what these others felt in response to their actions and words. In this way, NDErs judge themselves, whereas God or Jesus act as a source of constant support and unconditional love.
In contrast to the majority of NDEs that are ‘positive’ or ‘heavenly,’ a small proportion could be described as ‘negative’ or ‘hellish’ in nature and, at least in some cases, the NDErs are able to connect the experience with inappropriate (e.g. self-centered) behaviors or attitudes in their lives. Furthermore, in numerous cases, the NDEr finds that the experience is turned around from ‘hellish’ to ‘heavenly’ by appealing to God. For example, Ian McCormack reported that when he called out to God for help and forgiveness during his distressing NDE, “… a brilliant light shone upon me and literally drew me out of the darkness. A voice spoke to me from the center of the light: ‘Ian, you must see in a new light.’…So, this was God! To my amazement, a wave of pure unconditional love flowed over me. Instead of judgment, I was being washed with pure love. Pure, unadulterated, clean, uninhibited, undeserved, love. It began to fill me up from the inside out. This love was healing my heart, and I began to understand that there is incredible hope for humankind in this love.”[5]
So, what these direct encounters of NDErs with God show us is that God is, first and foremost, a God of love. Indeed, as the NDEr Crystal McVea testified, “He is a loving God. I realized I didn’t just love God. I realized He IS love.”[6] In other words, NDErs do not report that they were overwhelmed by God’s power, omnipotence or judgement, but rather by God’s amazing, unconditional love—God is, indeed, amipotent!
This view of God is supported not only by NDE testimonies collected over the past fifty years or so. We can look back at least as far as 1373 CE, when Julian of Norwich experienced what she came to call her Revelations of Divine Love. In May of that year, Julian, aged thirty, was on her deathbed in the English city of Norwich. In anticipation of her imminent death, a priest gave Julian the last rites. He held a crucifix before Julian as her senses started to fade but, at this point, she saw the figure of Jesus start to bleed.
Over the succeeding hours, she had sixteen visions of Jesus, during which she learnt many things about God’s nature and purposes. Five days later, Julian recovered and spent the rest of her life (possibly forty to fifty years) living as an anchoress—that is, alone in a cell attached to St Julian’s Church in Norwich. It was here that she wrote two accounts of her transcendent experience—the earliest surviving writings in (Middle) English by a woman.
This is how she concludes the second, longer account in which she interprets the meaning and significance of her experience:
So I was taught that love was our Lord’s meaning. And I saw most certainly in this and in everything, that before God made us, he loved us, and this love has never abated nor ever shall. And in this love, he has done all his works; and in this love he has made everything for our benefit; and in this love, our life is everlasting. In our making we had our beginning, but the love in which he made us was in him from without beginning, and in this love, we have our beginning. And all this shall be seen in God without end, which may Jesus grant us. Amen.[7]
Bio: Ian Todd, PhD, was formerly Associate Professor and Reader in Cellular Immunopathology at The University of Nottingham, UK. In addition to his publications in the field of Immunology, he is author of the book Why Are You Here? The Spiritual Reality that Reveals Your Purpose in Life (SacraSage Press, 2022). Ian lives in Derbyshire, England with his wife, Sue.
OORD’S DRABBLE* RESPONSE
Ian Todd examines accounts of near-death experiences to support the view of uncontrolling love. After carefully exploring what we mean by love and omnipotence, he turns to this fascinating body of evidence. Reports of near-death experiences are extensive and diverse, yet they overwhelmingly reveal a God whose defining characteristic is love. Those who encounter the divine in such moments do not describe being overpowered but rather embraced by compassion. Todd concludes that Amipotence—the power of uncontrolling love—offers a more coherent and healing framework for understanding out-of-body and near-death experiences, aligning divine action with freedom, intimacy, and transformative care.
For more on Oord’s view of life after death, see this article.
* A drabble is an essay exactly 100 words in length.
[1]. Allen J. Hynek, The UFO Experience: A Scientific Inquiry (Da Capo Press, 1998).
[2]. Thomas Jay Oord, The Death of Omnipotence and Birth of Amipotence (SacraSage Press, 2023).
[3]. Raymond Moody, Life After Life (40th Anniversary Edition) (Ebury Publishing, 2001).
[4]. Ian Todd, Why Are You Here?: The Spiritual Reality that Reveals Your Purpose in Life (SacraSage Press, 2022).
[5]. Jenny Sharkey, Clinically Dead – I’ve seen Heaven and Hell (Gospel Media, 2012).
[6]. Crystal McVea and Alex Tresniowski, Waking Up In Heaven (Authentic Media, 2013).
[7]. Julian of Norwich, Revelations of Divine Love, Barry Windeatt, trans. (OUP Oxford, 2015).