#225 - Dustin Sees Jesus, Deer, Rabbits & More.

0:00 One of life's greatest questions is what happens to us after we die? Is death the end or a new beginning? Welcome to the Round Trip Death Podcast. In this show, we listen to firsthand accounts of people who have gone beyond the veil and return to talk about it. I am so pleased we have with us today, Dustin Warnke. I hope I said that correctly. Yes, you did. Awesome. Happy to be here. Dustin's in Texas. What part of Texas are you in? I'm in Leander, Texas, which is just northwest of Austin. Well, I hope it's as beautiful there as it is up here in Utah today.

0:42 Yes, it is beautiful. It's nice and sunny outside. The birds are singing. Everything's awesome. I know you are really an outdoorsman. We had a great talk the other day. Yes. How did you get into it? Is it just a family thing? It is kind of a family thing. Basically it is something that I have been involved in for a long time trying to not only learn what I've learned about the outdoors, but also teaching it to other people and basically helping other people become good at the outdoors and good at what they're trying to do, hunting, fishing, camping, lifestyle, the whole nine yards.

1:27 I had a podcast for many years. You can still find it on the internet called the Best of the Outdoors podcast. It was when I was with Texas Fishing Game Magazine, who is one of the largest magazines in the state of Texas. I was the associate publisher there for a short time and basically had a great opportunity to share my knowledge, what I learned. I've been fishing all my life, but I didn't get into hunting until in my early 20s after I graduated college. I'm a fan of the History Channel show called Alone. Can we see you on that? No, you cannot see me on that. I've heard of that show. I haven't watched it myself. There are a lot of things that History Channel has done, such as Top Shot, which is all about the history of firearms and those kinds of things.

2:12 There's one of my friends that I have for Dustin Ellerman, another Dustin, that was winner of season three of that. That came out back in 2012. You can probably see the rerun somewhere of it or the past show. He calls himself Top Shot Dustin on Instagram. Check him out. He does a lot of firearm stuff. The History Channel, I bring that up because the History Channel has done a great job with showcasing the outdoors and so has other different, Nat Geo and so on and so forth with the different reality shows and true life stories that they tell on that. Alaska, The Last Frontier was one of my favorites that I watched there for a while when I still had cable.

2:57 Well, I bring that up because that figures into the experience that you had a little bit. Before we get into it, our podcast here is primarily about near death experiences. To be specific, people that have actually died flatlined, seen something on the other side, had an experience and then came back to tell about it. There are a lot of other experiences that are very similar. These called STEs, spiritually transformative experiences, co-death experiences and others. Rather than label everything today, let's just throw labels out the window and let's talk about the amazing experience that you had.

3:42 Would you go ahead and take us back a few years and tell us what happened? Sure, absolutely. Basically, when I was 15 years old, I had what they considered not their labels at this, but an STE or spiritually transformative experience, which goes into the NDE community as far as an experience with the other side, with the divine. What it basically was, was I was doubting my faith. I had just recently become a confirmed Christian in the Christian faith and the Lutheran faith at my Lutheran church. I had a lot of questions. I was going through a lot of, I found out later, were just not true thoughts that I was having about my faith and about my salvation, all these things that I had with Jesus.

4:31 I finally prayed one night, God, if you have a sign for me, send it to me. I just had my doubts that I'm really truly, I hate to use the word saved, but basically one of your children. That night I had a visitation and it happened in kind of a dream state, but it happened basically while I was asleep, but it wasn't a dream at all. It was as vivid today as I remember it back then. It was a vision of Jesus Christ himself surrounded by wildlife. We're talking about flora and fauna. We're talking about beautiful flowers and plants. I don't even remember all the colors and everything.

5:11 I just remember focusing on Jesus and he was glowing, kind of radiating white light in a white robe. He was very telepathic with me. He did not speak directly to me, but he spoke. I saw around him deer and rabbits and all kinds of different small game creatures, as well as creatures like we would see here, but the particular deer that I saw had spots on it. I'm guessing it was either a fawn or what we have here in Texas we know as axis deer. An axis deer and Indian deer that's very popular here that grow up and have spots on them.

5:56 You can look up axis deer online and see what I'm talking about. I remember seeing that deer and that kind of related to me later in life of doing what I do in the outdoors and those kinds of things. The words that Jesus spoke to me, this is the meat and potatoes here, were kind of around about a way of saying that he was with me. The words were, I am neither ahead of you nor behind you. I am neither ahead of you nor behind you were his words. I woke up with this feeling of peace that goes beyond all human understanding. The peace that I had never felt before.

6:38 It was a piece of the divine. It was a piece like I had never understood. The peace was that everything was going to be okay and I was one of his children. Then I was a little confused by the words and then I thought about it a little bit more. No, he's saying that he is with me. He's saying I'm neither ahead of you or behind you. I'm beside you. It was just a beautiful, beautiful experience for me and forever changed my faith walk with the divine, with my relationship with Jesus Christ and with my relationship with God the Father, the greater of the heaven and the earth. Okay, tell me more detail. You talked about flowers.

7:18 I interviewed someone recently and they told me about the smell that was so wonderful. Did you have any of those senses or was this too fast? That's a good question. That's a really good question. This was a fast experience where I just had the vision. I didn't get any of the smells really that I remember at least, but I did get this vision of, it was a void around Jesus, but it was the radiance of all things living. Other people have come back from near-death experiences or spiritually transformative experiences and said that they felt like everything was praising God.

8:03 Every animal, every flower, everything was praising the creator, was praising Jesus, was in worship of that. I felt like that's what was going on with the things that I did see during my short experience. I didn't have any smell so to speak to answer your question, but I did have the radiance and the colors were just amazing. The colors were unlike anything that we have here. They were just the most vibrant things that I've ever seen and the most incredible clearness of Jesus. I can still see his face and still see what he looked like in the white robe.

8:47 That's what a lot of people say that they see Jesus in a white robe. The white robe to me represents the purity of heaven and all that is love. Can you describe his face? It was a common Jewish face. I mean, it wasn't anything, it was definitely Jesus. You just knew it was him, but I can't say that I can describe the features because he was so radiating of white light and so radiating of love and just this positive energy. That's a very good question. I don't have any exact descriptions of his face. It was kind of brown to blackish.

9:28 I guess you would say shoulder length hair. Some people have described him in other NDEs with short hair, short brown hair and everything like that. Some of the pictures that are out there of Jesus, not some of the old ones, but some of the new artists renderings of people that believe they've seen Jesus, I believe that was what he looked like, the best that I can recall. But his face was radiating of light and love and peace and joy. And it was hard to make out details in that respect. Yeah. That's interesting that you mentioned the colors that are really hard to describe. In a recent episode we had on Russell Ricks, who's an artist, full-time professional artist, and he said that he tried and tried and could not paint what he saw because there weren't the colors in his palette.

10:20 Yeah, that's a good example. I can agree. I can resonate with that. It's hard to paint something that's of the other side. I mean, it's so different from what's here in the respect of what we experience here in life. It's otherworldly. Yeah. So tell me, it seems like, well, everybody has a different experience in their NDESTE, whatever we want to call it today. Everybody's experience is a little bit different. There are definitely some commonalities. Do you think that your experience was formed to you as a 15-year-old boy who grew up in the outdoors?

11:02 I do. I really do. I enjoyed nature back then, but I wasn't really in nature. I had a dad that taught me how to, and I still have a dad that he's still alive, that taught me how to fish and go out on lake trips and all those kind of things. Didn't really get into the wildlife part of things, off the water and into the woods, until I, like I said, was a little bit later in life and a college graduate and everything, and really had an interest in being part of the ecosystem. When I say that, I know some of your listeners, because other podcasts I've done where there's NDEE experiencers and NDEE listeners and people that are interested in NDEE come down on me as a hunter.

11:48 When I did Lee Whitting's show, NDEE Radio with Lee Whitting, I had people that were saying, oh, this guy wrote books and does this and that and the other, but he kills animals. I'm like, I don't really look at it like that. I look at it as being part of the ecosystem and being part of nature and being a predator in the respect that these animals are there for us to eat. The reason why I say that is all the animals that I saw in my experience were prey animals, rabbits and I saw birds and all kinds of different things. If you notice the way that God created those things, they have their eyes on the peripheral sides of their head, on either side of their head like peripheral vision.

12:29 Predators have their eyes, like we are humans, we are predators, we have our eyes here in the front of our head for distance so we can see things better, so we can see longer. Prey animals have their eyes so they can see peripheral vision so they can see animals coming to them to eat them. Something I saw in my experience was a prey animal and that showed again peace, love, joy, everything like that in the experience now that I reconsider it. The reason I got into hunting was because I wanted to source my own food and I wanted to do it organically and I wanted to eat healthy and so on and so forth.

13:11 Most everything that we eat now is wild meat, but I'm very, very, very considerate of the animals that I do harvest and I do not take harvesting these animals lightly or for fun or trophy sport, so I want to make sure that's very clear before anybody comes out of me for that. It did shape my experience and I think it was shaped towards what my future would become to answer your question. Well, and this is a non-judgmental place where you are right now and we're not here to argue whether hunting is good or bad or right or wrong or anything else. We'll let somebody else deal with that. But I think it's safe to say that you love animals and wildlife.

13:51 I do and I have a respect for the way that they are designed and their purpose here in life and that I think folded into my experience because I've not heard a near-death experience or a spiritually transformative experience yet with the animals in there. So I get the question a lot of times when I tell my story, does that mean that animals somehow are reincarnated or somehow come back like my past pet? Will I see my past pet again? I believe you will. I believe those animals are waiting for us across the rainbow bridge like the poem says. I really do believe that animals and stuff like that that we've had in the past are waiting for us in heaven just based on my experience seeing the animals that I did.

14:38 And I've talked to a lot of people about their NDEs now and prior to that read lots of accounts and I can think of a few that yes saw their former pets that had passed on and others that did see wildlife. And I'm thinking one specifically of a gentleman who saw, I forget if it was a lion or tiger, I believe it was a lion that actually peacefully came up next to him and he was able to pet it. Oh wow. And so that again represents peace. It represents love. It represents the thing. That's what I've also learned about the other side is take out all the different things that you've learned about in the Bible or learned about about war and anger and all these other things that are not in heaven.

15:27 God is not sitting there on the throne nailing us down about all the different things. God's a forgiving, loving God. And that's one thing I learned because I had thought back at 15 years old that it was too late for me that I had done something and I didn't do anything too bad. It was all in my mind, but I had thought that I wasn't worthy of Christ's salvation of God's love. And I was quickly told by that and I've had experiences since then not the same magnitude that this one was where I wake up with that same peace that I felt when I was 15 and I recognize that because it's a piece not of this world. It's a piece that goes beyond all human understanding.

16:08 And I'd also like to talk about in 2021, I have a heart defibrillator right underneath my left arm that was implanted back in February of 2021. And because I have heart failure, it's not a major condition. It's just something they have in place for me for for taking care of my my heart in case I do have a heart failure incident of a heart attack or defibrillation. So anyway, long story short there, I was they were testing the device the second time after they had installed it or implanted it rather. And basically, they they lost me. They put me in an arrhythmia that caused me to die, I believe, for a very, very, very short time.

16:56 And I had what I believe was a veiled NDE. So I didn't recognize what was happening to me, but I had a vision on the other side of Jesus's face on a bronze plate. And this this plays into my previous story that I just told about seeing Jesus when I was 15. I woke up after they had to shock my heart three times with the paddles to get the my heart working again. They almost weren't able to resuscitate me. But I woke up with that same peace and that same feeling I had when I was 15 years old, that feeling that I recognized as Jesus's visitation. And in my mind, I had a vision of Jesus's face on a bronze plate, like it was it was like a coin almost or somehow stamped into this bronze plate.

17:46 And it felt like it was burned in my in my vision. It felt like it was that I had been staring into a light. But it wasn't a bad light that I was staring into. It was just it was just a light that felt like I had just been staring at something. And that was a vision that was still in my head. And when I did Lee's show, I literally our associate producer of that show came back to me and basically sent me a picture of Jesus's face on a bronze on a bronze plate. And I was like, yes, that's that's almost exactly what I saw. And I don't know why I saw that, but I felt like it was another visitation from Christ through a veiled end to eat that I don't necessarily remember details of.

18:32 But I do remember waking up with that vision and that feeling that Jesus's love goes beyond all understanding and that his love was with me and that the bronze plate represented to me firmness and the fact that he wasn't going anywhere. OK, let's talk about some of these terms. What's a veiled end to eat? OK, very good. Veiled end to eat is an experience with heaven that has been veiled because we were not supposed to come back to remember the details of it. So this is a culture of indie community that basically has that saying of veiled end to eat that we have had an experience, but we don't remember it.

19:15 That's basically the definition of it. Yeah. And that sounds a little weird that we can remember something we don't remember. But let me let me put it like this, as I've had a couple of people explain it to me. One person told me they they know that during their NDE, they saw what was going to happen for the rest of their life on Earth, but then they couldn't remember what they saw when they came back. So they remember they saw it, but not what they saw. Is that kind of what you're talking about? How many experiences have we heard about in your show and other shows that have been out there and other videos and accounts and everything like that where people have come back and said, I learned all the knowledge of the universe, but I can't remember any of it.

20:00 You know, so I mean, it's the same idea, I think, that basically that basically, you know, considered to consider the fact that we're not supposed to know everything down here and we're not supposed to have all the answers down here. And I don't think we ever will. I think NDE's open up a world of light and a world of understanding to different things about life that we don't necessarily, you know, you know, know otherwise without NDE experiences. And that's what I value about NDE experiences. But I'm going to give you two examples of NDE's that that that definitely have helped shape my experience and understanding NDE's.

20:43 Is that OK? Yes, please go ahead. Just just short examples. One was was a YouTube video and I believe it was on the 700 Club or one of these. It's a very well known YouTube video. And I don't remember the lady's name, but she said when she went to the other side, she saw the future of what she would be like. Life would be like she was trying to take her own life and and commit suicide with an overdose of medication. And I talk about this a lot in the speeches that I give. But she basically saw her life and saw the future without her life in her life and without her life in her kids life. And you know, saw how hard that would be on them if she did go through with killing herself.

21:26 So she comes back and and and sees that. And you know, Jesus asked her in her experience, do you want this? And she says no. And he said life was not designed to be easy. This was not supposed to be a cakewalk. This was not supposed to be simple. And that tells me if that's true and if her experience is true, and I believe that it is that that makes me want to take life by the horns. That makes me want to just be as powerful and empowered in this world that I want that I need to be to be strong for other people and be strong for myself because I realize that life was not by design to be easy. One experience, Yolaine Stout, atheist, tried to kill herself with some psychic practice or whatever.

22:14 And basically, she comes back with an experience of Jesus telling her, don't waste your life thinking you're not loved. Don't waste your life thinking you're not loved. And that is a profound experience to me because so many people go through life thinking that they are not loved. And one of the speeches that I give called the new normal to a group of soldiers twice a year at Crosswater Outfitters, which is my fishing ministry that I work with, not mine, but a fishing ministry I belong to. And here in central Texas, I give that talk and I talk about those two experiences because basically they help me recognize the truth and the ultimate universal truth of life.

22:59 And the fact that life is not supposed to be easy and we are loved, those two things being the most important thing. And the reason from another near death experience, I learned that we are here in life experiencing all these things is to acquire knowledge and to learn to love and care about each other. So there's some profound wisdom I've learned from NDE's for you. Oh, absolutely. Now, I have my own thoughts on this and think I have some pretty good answers on it. But let me ask you, why do you think life is not meant to be easy? Because by the challenges and the struggles that we have, we are meant to grow. And our growth process is part of the human experience.

23:40 That's the reason why we don't remember the painful thoughts as much as we do the positive thoughts in the past. How many times have we gone through life and we said that was a worst experience that could have happened to me? And then we come out of it years later and go back and say, that's the best thing that could have happened to me. How many times has that happened? Absolutely. I mean, it's happened in our lives a lot of times. And so I make that point not to say that, you know, I say that to take the bull by the horns, so to speak, don't run away from your problems, get in front of them. And I write about that on my books is just pull yourself up by your bootstraps, fight hard and just keep on going for the power of God, for the power of Christ, whatever your belief system is, for the power of your life spirit, you know, finishing what it is started in you.

24:36 And I believe we all have a purpose. I believe we all have a destiny and a destination and a time on earth that is numbered. And to make the best of what we have. And as I say in my books, the cards that you're dealt is to make the best success of your life. Can I interject this too? Of course. I hear people asking from time to time, you know, why are we even here? Why are we here on this earth? And I think what you're touching on is one of the reasons why life is not meant to be easy. I like to stay in those hard trials that just suck. I like to just take a step back sometimes and say, what am I supposed to learn here?

25:19 And especially if that's why the trial is on me, if I can learn that thing quickly, maybe the trial will get over with a little bit sooner. But I think that's a big one of the reasons why we're here in the first place is there's things that we are learning here that we just can't couldn't learn anywhere else. A lot of people will say that we are all expressions of God. Neil Donald Walsh, who I've listened to his conversations with God's books and a lot of his videos and that kind of stuff. A lot of people don't like his theology, whatever, but he believes that he's experienced God, talking to him directly. And what he says is that we are all expressions of the divine, which most people, Christian or otherwise, can probably agree with.

26:03 We're the hands and fingerprints of God and we're expressions of God's love because we're created by love and we're created for love and to love. So we can establish that. Bottom line is that we are always needing to ask ourselves, even in the good times, what am I learning here? What is the lesson that life is trying to teach me right now? And I think a lot of people miss that and just go, oh, woe is me, this is awful and so on and so forth and just kind of go through life. And all they're doing is just attracting more heartache and pain in their life by not putting forth a positive attitude and a positive outlook because I think that's what God calls us to do.

26:46 And I'm not going to get religious or spiritual here or spiritual, yes, but not religious, but Thessalonians chapter five talks about rejoicing, always giving thanks in all circumstances because this is your will through Christ Jesus. This is God's will through Christ Jesus. And it's one of my favorite verses of the Bible, I believe it's Thessalonians 513, that basically talks about rejoice in all circumstances. Paul, who wrote that, was at an awful circumstances trying to spread the Christian church world and trying to start early Christian churches. And he was writing a lot of his letters from prison, but rejoicing in all circumstances and giving thanks in all circumstances, regardless of what the circumstances are.

27:32 I think that's a secret sauce. Very, very well said. Thank you. Thank you. What are some of the other terms that we use to describe some of these experiences? We've talked already about NDEs, STEs, and veiled NDEs. Do you know what some of the others are? So shared death experiences, which are basically where someone has gone over to the other side and there's been a connection there. I'm trying to remember all of them, but out of body experiences, OBEs, where my aunt actually had one when she was having a heart procedure done and she actually didn't have a divine experience, but she was out of body.

28:14 And she actually saw in an OBE, heard the doctors talking about her care while she was on the operating table and she could see herself from the corner of the room, like from the ceiling. And so an out of body experience is one that a lot of people talk about. Steve Gardipie, who I hope to help you get on the show soon, had an out of body experience and an NDE where he basically could go into the cells of a plant and see the molecular workings of the plant of this bush next to him where he can actually see the molecules going up and creating photosynthesis and those kind of chemical reactions, which he saw in 1970 when a lot of that wasn't even, there was no YouTube back then that would show you what photosynthesis did.

29:04 So it's just those kinds of things that out of body experiences are one that that's a big one and very relational to NDE. Sometimes with NDE, sometimes just OBEs by themselves. So there's another term for you. Okay. For those that are new to hearing about NDE near death experiences, there's some other terms for you to swallow. These shared death experiences, we haven't had anybody on the show yet to talk about those, but at the recent INS conference, we learned some things about those, especially from hospice workers, and I found it fascinating and actually relatively common that these kinds of things can happen. So what other message do you have for our listeners that you've learned through all of this?

29:48 I would just like to say that don't give up if you're going through a hard time. Life is worth living well and worth living towards your purpose. And the thing that I try to teach about in the two books that I wrote, Empowering Resilience, which I just released, and Intentional Optimized Life are basically about living with meaning, hope, and significance. And one of the things that I watched on YouTube the other day, I try to watch a lot of inspirational, feed my mind a lot of inspirational motivational things so I can live a more positive and meaningful life, was about finding the fulfillment in life.

30:33 And the story was about a gentleman that came in and was an architect of a very old Roman temple. And so basically the architect comes in and he sees three guys that are hammering on rocks. He asks the first guy, okay, what are you doing? And he said, I'm hammering rocks. I'm basically breaking rocks. That's what I'm doing. It's hard work and it's thankless and I'm not enjoying it and so on and so forth. Second guy goes to, I'm building part of a wall. I'm building part of a wall and that's what I'm doing to break these rocks. I've got my purpose. I'm breaking the rocks to make the wall. Third guy goes to, I'm building part of the wall that will be part of a cathedral that people will come to for many, many decades to come.

31:19 And I will have been a small part of the purpose of this rock. Which one do you think was the most successful in life? And which one enjoyed his job the most? Exactly. And he said, I could do other things. I could, you know, he told the architect, I do other things. I could, you know, but I'm being part of a purpose greater than myself was basically what he was saying. I have a purpose greater than myself. And Harvard has done studies of people that they've, you know, hired to dig holes and then the people that had no holes to dig finally gave up and quit. And the people that knew they were digging a hole for a reason and a purpose, you know, succeeded and went on to do great things. And so, you know, it's not just about digging holes or breaking rocks.

32:02 My point is to be part of something that is bigger than yourself, part of something that is greater than you. And for me, that's my fishing ministry, Crosswater Outfitters, fishing ministry here in central Texas. We minister to soldiers, we minister to international students at times. And then we also minister to friends and neighbors that need help and encouragement. And we have several events a year that do those kinds of things. And I'm not plugging crosswaters. I know I've said this a couple of times, but I'm just saying that's one thing I'm involved in that's greater than me, that helps serve the greater good of my life in God's love. And by giving love, we become the source of all the love that we want to receive.

32:44 So two things I'll leave with here is basically be the source of what you need. If it's money that you need, find a worthy cause to give some money away and become the source of that. And if it's hope you need, find somebody to encourage and give hope to because that hope will come back to you. And I'm not a big believer, I'm a believer in the law of attraction, but not that you sit in a field and think about something and it magically appears. I am a believer in positive thinking and the power of positive thinking and the fact that things will happen well if you think well. You become what you think about most of the time. So the other thing is being part of something that's bigger than yourself and giving abundantly to it.

33:27 And that's where you find fulfillment in life. There's a lot of suicidal millionaires that I know that have everything they could ever want or need. Their needs for the rest of their lives are met, but they have no purpose because they're not giving of their time, talent, and ability and treasure to something bigger than themselves. And that's just sad. That's just sad that people become depressed and suicidal and so on and so forth because they have no fulfillment because you can find fulfillment in the work that you do outside of just having a job and a nine to five and going to work and punching a clock and so on and so forth, in ministry and volunteer opportunities in so many different ways.

34:11 And so I would leave that as a way to spread hope and inspiration to other people to receive that in your life as well. Thank you. A friend once told me when he starts feeling down, depressed, whatever, he's learned just go serve somebody and then he feels and then he feels better, puts a smile on his face. That's exactly what I'm saying. Yes. And his whole day turns around. Hey, Dustin, thanks so much for being with us today. Thank you so much for having me. Thanks, Greg. Can I plug my website here at the end? Do you mind? Please do. And we're going to put it in the show notes to your books and your website. Go ahead. So I have several outdoor industry that are ebook versions that are out there that I've written over the last 10 years or so.

34:58 The latest two books that I have and I've released both of them within the last year's time is called an intentional optimized life. It's available on Amazon and Kindle and paperback and also I have an audio book version of it on my website. And then I also have empowering resilience, which I just released at the beginning of this month, empowering resilience, putting out lives fires and winning one day at a time. And a lot of that is based around the serenity prayer and living with peace and confidence and the joy that God offers us. And it's kind of both books are kind of part success and part spirituality. So there's a lot of that and then relationship management and all that other fun stuff too.

35:40 And my website to find all of this is really easy. It's dustinsprojects.com. That's dustinsprojects.com. And thank you so much for having me on the show. And if you're lucky, there may even be a link to this podcast on there. Oh, there will be. I'll be excited to put that on there as well. My podcast appearances. It's been a pleasure. This has been a great conversation and I really enjoyed connecting with your listeners and I hope that they've received a lot out of this as listeners as well. Thanks again, Dustin. If you have had a round trip death experience, we would love to hear about it. Send an email to eric at roundtripdeath.com. And lastly, if you have found this program uplifting, if it's given you just a little more hope in the future, share it with a friend, hit that follow button and take a few seconds to write us a review.

36:29 Until next time, I wish you everything good that you're looking for in this life and the next.