Learning to Recognize the Shape of a Real Encounter
Imagine this scene. Your brother-in-law calls you on a Tuesday afternoon. His voice is shaking a little. He tells you that three months ago, during an emergency surgery, he died on the table for about four minutes. He hasn’t told anyone about it. He isn’t sure he should be telling you now. But he says he left his body. He saw his surgeon from above. He went somewhere that was, in his words, “more real than anything here.” He met Jesus. He came back different. And now he’s not sure what to do with it.
What do you say to him?
For many thoughtful Christians, this question creates an uncomfortable tightness in the chest. Some of us have read books that made us suspicious of every near-death experience (NDE). Others of us have read books that made us believe every NDE. Neither posture is quite right. What we need is something the Bible actually equips us for: discernment. We need to know what a real encounter with God looks like, so that when one is described to us, we can recognize it and respond with warmth rather than reflex.
That is the work of this chapter.
The previous chapter laid out a seven-test framework for evaluating any NDE. The purpose of that framework was never suspicion for its own sake. It was clarity. When we apply those tests to most of the NDE accounts Christians actually encounter — from family members, from friends, from pastors, from trustworthy books — most of the tests come back clean. Most NDEs are not demonic. Most are not fabricated. Most are not even badly corrupted. Most are what they appear to be: genuine encounters with the real spiritual world, consistent with the Bible’s teaching, producing real fruit.1
This chapter walks us through what that positive verdict usually looks like. The goal is not to make us more suspicious, but more confident. When your brother-in-law calls, I want you to be able to hear his story and notice the marks of genuineness. I want the clouds in your chest to clear a little. I want you to be able to say, without rushing to approve every detail, “Brother, I hear you. That sounds like the real thing. Tell me more.”
Most NDEs contain recognizable positive indicators that align with biblical teaching about the spiritual realm, the character of God, and the state of the soul right after death. These indicators fall into five overlapping categories: phenomenological (what the experience looks and feels like), Christological (the presence and character of Jesus), biblical-theological (alignment with what Scripture teaches about the afterlife), moral-transformative (the fruit the experience produces in the person’s life), and structural (how the account is held and told). When several of these indicators cluster together in a single account, we have very good reason to believe we are hearing about something real.
A word about the five categories before we walk through them. No single indicator, taken alone, proves that an NDE is genuine. A person can report a tunnel of light without having had a real experience. A person can say they saw Jesus and be mistaken. What matters is the pattern — the way the indicators fit together, reinforce one another, and cluster across all five categories. Think of it like a fingerprint. Any one ridge could be matched by chance. The whole pattern, taken together, is unmistakable.
The biblical command that drives this whole book is John’s instruction to “test the spirits” (1 John 4:1). The Greek verb there is δοκιμαζω (dokimazō), which means “to test, examine, or prove” — the same word ancient metalworkers used for assaying gold to determine its purity. When we test a reported NDE by the indicators in this chapter, we are not doing something hostile. We are simply holding the gold near the touchstone to see what kind of gold it is. That posture — careful, honest, curious, attentive — is the posture of biblical discernment.
Another note before we begin. The Greek word πνευμα (pneuma, often translated “spirit”) is the word John uses in his command. It refers to non-physical, conscious beings — whether the Holy Spirit, angels, demons, or human spirits. When we “test the spirits,” we are testing whether the spiritual source behind a reported encounter is from God. That is exactly what we are doing when we evaluate an NDE. We are asking: what was the source? What was the being? What was its effect?
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The word “phenomenological” just means “having to do with the experience itself” — what the person saw, heard, felt, and noticed while it was happening. For over four decades, researchers have collected thousands of NDE reports from different countries, different religious backgrounds, and different medical settings. The accounts vary in their details, but certain core features appear over and over. Dr. Jeffrey Long’s large study of over a thousand NDEs identified twelve common elements that tend to occur in a consistent order.2 We’ll walk through the most diagnostic of these elements and notice, in each one, how remarkably well the feature fits with what Scripture says we should expect at the threshold of eternity.
The first feature nearly every genuine NDEr mentions is something they struggle to put into words: the experience was more real than real life. Colors were more vivid. Sounds were richer. Thought was faster and clearer. Everyday earthly life, by comparison, felt like a dream. One man put it this way: he had always believed there were three dimensions, but now he knew his teachers had been mistaken. “I have to describe it to you in words that are three-dimensional. That’s as close as I can get to it, but it’s not really adequate.”3
Randy Kay, who clinically died for over thirty minutes from pulmonary emboli, describes the same gap between earthly perception and heavenly perception: the senses are multiplied beyond the five senses we know here, and compared to heaven, “this world seems like it’s filmed in black and white.”4 That is not the language of hallucination. Dreams and hallucinations are less real than waking life, not more.
This hyper-real quality matters theologically, because it matches exactly what we should expect if the Christian view of the world is true. C.S. Lewis, in The Great Divorce, pictured heaven as more solid than earth — so solid, in fact, that the blades of grass would cut a ghostly visitor’s feet. Lewis was not making up that image from nothing; he was catching something the Bible itself teaches. The world we see now is the shadow. The world to come is the substance. When an NDEr says their experience was “more real than reality,” they are saying something deeply biblical without realizing it.
Paul makes this point explicitly in 2 Corinthians 4:18: “The things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.” The invisible is not less real than the visible. It is more real, because it is eternal while this world is passing away. The New Testament authors expected the world to come to be richer, denser, more vivid than this one. The NDErs’ consistent report matches that expectation point for point.
Notice the contrast with how the brain produces dreams and hallucinations. Dreams fade fast. Hallucinations are often jumbled, fragmented, incoherent. Genuine NDEs do the opposite. Decades later, experiencers describe their NDE with the same steady clarity. The memory does not dim. That stability is a positive indicator. Hallucinations are supposed to be less real and less memorable than waking life. NDEs are reported as more real and more memorable. That difference matters.
Most NDErs report leaving their physical body. They describe watching their own body from above — often with striking accuracy. They continue to think, perceive, remember, and reason. In Dr. Long’s NDERF survey, roughly three-quarters of NDErs answered “yes” to the question, “Did you experience a separation of your consciousness from your body?”5
This is exactly what substance dualism — the historic Christian view of human nature — predicts. Dualism holds that you are a body joined to an immaterial soul, and that your soul can continue to exist and be aware even when your body has shut down. John Cooper, in his careful biblical defense of this view, shows that Scripture consistently speaks of the person as capable of existing apart from the body in the time between death and resurrection.6 Paul says this in plain words: “We would rather be away from the body and at home with the Lord” (2 Corinthians 5:8). That sentence makes no sense if consciousness cannot function without the brain.
The apostle Paul, writing to the Corinthians about a heavenly experience of his own, says he did not know whether it happened “in the body or out of the body” (2 Corinthians 12:2-3). He treats both options as real possibilities. That little phrase tells us the New Testament authors assumed consciousness could, at least in some cases, operate apart from the body. An out-of-body experience in an NDE is not philosophically impossible. It is biblically anticipated.
The out-of-body experience (OBE, for short) carries even more weight when the NDEr accurately reports things they could not have perceived with their physical eyes. Dr. Michael Sabom’s careful medical research at Emory showed cases where cardiac-arrest patients described surgical procedures on their own bodies with a level of detail far exceeding what hospitalized cardiac patients typically know.7 When those verified perceptions line up with a real event outside the body’s line of sight, they strengthen the case that what is happening is not a brain-trick.
A small linguistic note is worth making here. In the Old Testament, the most common Hebrew word for “soul” is נֶפֶשׁ (nephesh), which has a wide range of meanings — sometimes “life,” sometimes “person,” sometimes the conscious inner self. Another important Hebrew word is רוּח (ruach), often translated “spirit.” In the New Testament, the corresponding Greek terms are ψυχη (psychē, “soul”) and πνευμα (pneuma, “spirit”). These biblical words assume that there is a conscious, immaterial dimension of the human person — not as an alien addition to the body, but as an essential part of who we are. Cooper, in his careful study, argues that the biblical usage consistently treats the person as capable of existing in a real, conscious state apart from the body between death and resurrection. When an NDEr describes being “out of the body” and still thinking, perceiving, and recognizing people, they are describing something the biblical vocabulary was built to accommodate.
The famous “tunnel” of popular NDE literature is not universal — only about a third of NDErs report an actual tunnel.8 But something more fundamental is almost always there: a transition. The NDEr describes moving through darkness into light, crossing a threshold, being drawn toward a presence, or traveling through a space between one world and another.
That picture of passage is deeply biblical. Scripture repeatedly treats death as a journey, not a blank. Jesus spoke to the thief on the cross about “today” being the day he would be with Jesus in paradise (Luke 23:43) — that little word “with” assumes travel, arrival, presence. The rich man in Jesus’ parable of Lazarus found himself in a specific location after death (Luke 16:22-23). Stephen, as he was being stoned, looked up and saw heaven opened, Jesus standing at God’s right hand (Acts 7:55-56). Across the New Testament, death is not the end of a line. It is a doorway.
So when NDErs describe a transition — whether a tunnel, a passage, a rising, a drawing toward light — we should not raise our eyebrows. We should nod. That is exactly what we would expect from the biblical pattern.
Light is the single most common feature of NDE reports. Around two-thirds of NDErs describe meeting a brilliant, radiant light.9 But the light is not just a visual phenomenon. In almost every genuine case, the light is personal. It is experienced as conscious, loving, knowing. NDErs do not say, “I saw a very bright lamp.” They say, “I was embraced by love.”
This pairing of light with personal love is saturated with biblical theology. 1 John 1:5 says flatly, “God is light, and in him is no darkness at all.” Moses came down from Mount Sinai with his face shining because he had been in God’s presence (Exodus 34:29-35). The transfiguration showed Jesus’ face shining “like the sun” (Matthew 17:2). Paul connects the gospel to God’s act of giving “the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ” (2 Corinthians 4:6). Paul also calls God the One who “dwells in unapproachable light” (1 Timothy 6:16). Revelation pictures the New Jerusalem with no need of sun or moon, because “the glory of God gives it light, and its lamp is the Lamb” (Revelation 21:23). Across Scripture, divine presence and blinding, loving, personal light belong together.
The Greek word for “light” in these New Testament passages is φωσ (phōs). John uses this same word extensively in his Gospel: “In him was life, and the life was the light of men” (John 1:4); “I am the light of the world” (John 8:12). Notice what John is doing. He is not saying Jesus is associated with light or gives light from somewhere else. He is saying Jesus is the light. The light of a genuine NDE, when it is encountered as personal and loving, is not merely near God. It is the very presence of God in Christ. That is why encountering the light, for so many NDErs, feels like meeting a Person rather than like seeing a thing.
When an NDEr says, “I saw a light, and it loved me,” they are reporting something the Bible has told us to expect.
In genuine Christian NDEs, the experiencer often meets people who have gone before — and they recognize those people. Deceased family members, pastors, childhood friends, sometimes even pets — the NDEr knows them. The loved ones are recognizably themselves. They are not melted into some anonymous cosmic oneness; they are still the particular people they were on earth, only whole and joyful.10
This also matches Scripture. Hebrews 12:1 speaks of a “great cloud of witnesses” surrounding us. Jesus promised that children of Abraham would recline at table “with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob” in the kingdom of heaven (Matthew 8:11) — names, not a blur. The saints in Revelation are distinct, named, worshiping as individuals (Revelation 6:9-11; 7:9-14). The biblical picture of the communion of saints is not absorption but reunion.
Notice the specific theological importance of this. One of the central errors of Eastern religious frameworks is the teaching that the individual self dissolves into a cosmic whole at death. “The drop becomes the ocean,” as the saying goes. If that were true, we would expect NDErs to report loss of individual identity and melting into an impersonal totality. But that is overwhelmingly not what NDErs report in genuine cases. They report the opposite: more individuality, not less. More personhood, not less. Deeper selfhood, not less. The dead are still themselves. The NDEr is still themselves. God is still the distinct, personal God of Scripture. The Christian vision — not the Eastern vision — is what the NDE data overwhelmingly supports.
I should add a word of caution, though, because this feature will get a fuller treatment in Chapter 15. Not every figure in an NDE who looks like a deceased relative necessarily is one, and discerning believers need to watch for cases where the “reunion” carries strange theological content. But for the vast majority of reports, the simple joy of meeting family again, recognizing them, being embraced by them, is a positive indicator — exactly what the Bible has promised.
Many NDErs describe reaching a point where they understood, without being told in words, that they could not go any further — that if they crossed this line, they would not return. About a third of NDErs report this boundary.11 Sometimes the boundary is a literal feature of the landscape (a river, a fence, a wall). Sometimes it is simply a knowing.
This fits the biblical picture that death is a threshold, not an ordinary door. Hebrews 9:27 says, “It is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes judgment.” Once crossed fully, the line is not easily re-crossed. The NDEr who reports being told, “You have to go back; it is not your time,” is reporting something consistent with Scripture’s weighty treatment of death’s threshold.
NDErs who return very often return with a sense of purpose. Sometimes Jesus or an angel tells them directly, “You have more to do.” Sometimes they simply wake up knowing that their life here is not over and that it has meaning they did not see before. Many emerge with a specific calling: to love their family better, to speak about what they have seen, to stop wasting their life, to come home to Christ.
This is the biblical pattern of divine encounter. Isaiah sees the Lord in the temple and receives a commission (Isaiah 6). Jonah is called, runs, is called again (Jonah 1-3). Saul of Tarsus is knocked to the ground by Christ and sent to the Gentiles (Acts 9). Moses meets God at the burning bush and is sent to Pharaoh (Exodus 3). Gideon is called in the winepress and sent against the Midianites (Judges 6). The apostle John, exiled on Patmos, is given a revelation and told, “Write what you see in a book and send it” (Revelation 1:11). In Scripture, a real meeting with God almost always produces a vocation. It does not leave the person the same.
When an NDEr says, “I was sent back to tell people,” we are not hearing something strange. We are hearing a familiar biblical rhythm. And the specific mission matters. If the NDEr is sent back to love their spouse better, to raise their children with faith, to serve their local church more faithfully, to tell the people in their life about Jesus — these are ordinary Christian callings. The extraordinary experience produces the ordinary response of discipleship. That is a very good sign.
Here is perhaps the most diagnostic feature of all, from a medical point of view. NDErs consistently describe their thinking during the experience as faster, clearer, and more comprehensive than normal waking thought. One NDEr said he felt he understood everything at once. Another said she knew things she had no way of knowing.
This is striking because it occurs during medical conditions — cardiac arrest, massive blood loss, brain injury — that should produce the opposite. A brain that is starved of oxygen does not generate clearer, faster thought; it generates slurred speech, confusion, unconsciousness. After his decades of research as a practicing oncologist, Dr. Long concludes flatly that with a flat EEG, electrical activity in the lower parts of the brain cannot account for the ordered, lucid experience NDErs describe. “Lucidity coupled with the predictable order of [core] elements establishes that NDEs are not dreams or hallucinations, nor are they due to any other causes of impaired brain functioning.”12
Biblically, this fits with 1 Corinthians 13:12: “Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.” The Christian expectation is that cognition beyond the body will be fuller, not lesser. Enhanced cognition during clinical crisis is exactly what substance dualism predicts and what Scripture implies. When an NDEr says, “I thought more clearly than I ever have,” this is a strong positive indicator.
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For Christian discernment, the central question about any NDE is not just “Did something spiritual happen?” but “Was Jesus there, and was it really Him?” This question gets a full statistical treatment in Chapter 13 and a deep criteriological treatment in Chapter 14, so I won’t repeat all of that material here. But I do need to sketch the Christological indicators briefly, because they sit at the heart of what makes a Christian NDE a genuinely Christian one.
In a truly Christian NDE, the experiencer meets a figure they identify as Jesus, and the figure matches the biblical portrait. Marks of crucifixion in the hands, feet, and side. Radiant, glorified humanity. Authority combined with deep love. A specific Person, not a generic principle. An explicit identification, not just a hopeful projection.13
This matters because the New Testament is unsparing in its warnings about counterfeit spiritual beings. Paul tells the Corinthians that Satan “disguises himself as an angel of light” (2 Corinthians 11:14). John commands us to “test the spirits to see whether they are from God” because “many false prophets have gone out into the world” (1 John 4:1). The test John gives is Christological: every spirit that confesses Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God; the spirit that does not is not (1 John 4:2-3). Notice how concrete that is. Not a spirit that speaks kindly of some “Christ-energy.” Not a spirit that mumbles about love. A spirit that confesses the specific, historical, incarnate Jesus.
When an NDEr says, “I saw Jesus, and He had wounds in His hands,” we are listening to something that passes the apostolic test. Jim Woodford, Howard Storm, Ian McCormack, Dean Braxton — each of these NDErs describes meeting a Person who identified Himself as Jesus, who carried the marks of the cross, and whose identity was not vague but specific.
In a genuinely Christian NDE, Jesus is not one luminous figure among many. He is the center toward whom everything else arranges itself. The NDEr’s attention is drawn to Him. The other features of the experience — the deceased loved ones, the beauty of the landscape, the mission, the light — are oriented around His presence.
This matches what Scripture teaches about the worship of heaven. Revelation does not describe the saints in heaven contemplating a variety of spiritual teachers. It describes them singing, “Worthy is the Lamb who was slain” (Revelation 5:12). Jesus is at the center. He is always at the center. Colossians 1:16-17 says that all things were created “through him and for him. And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together.” That phrase “for him” is important. The entire created order, including the heavenly reality NDErs visit, is arranged around Christ as its purpose. A genuine NDE reflects this center-of-gravity reality. Christ is the center of the universe; He is also the center of any real encounter with the universe’s Maker.
Be cautious with any NDE in which Jesus is absent, or in which He is just one figure in a group of spiritual masters, or in which He is demoted to being one path among many. That is a warning sign the experience has been corrupted or misidentified, and those concerns will be taken up fully in Chapters 19 through 25. For now, the key point is that a genuine Christian NDE has Christ at the center — not because Christians impose that pattern on the experience afterward, but because Christ really is the center of the heavenly reality, and a real encounter with that reality shows it.
When the Jesus of an NDE speaks, His words cohere with the Bible. He calls the experiencer to faith, repentance, love, and service. He speaks of sin and grace. He calls them to share what they have seen. He does not teach reincarnation. He does not say “all religions lead to Me.” He does not dismiss the cross. He does not tell the NDEr they are divine.
The Jesus of the Gospels said very particular things, and the risen Jesus continues to speak in continuity with what He said in His earthly ministry. When J. Steve Miller worked through the NDE literature systematically, he found that the specific doctrines of Eastern religions — reincarnation, the divinity of all souls, universalism — do not actually show up in the core NDE content itself nearly as often as popular critics suppose. Where they appear, they are far more often the experiencer’s interpretation than the content of what Jesus said.14 When the Jesus of an NDE sounds like the Jesus of the Gospels, that is a powerful positive indicator.
The Jesus of genuine NDEs is relentlessly loving. Almost every NDEr who meets Him comes back weeping about the love. But the love is not therapeutic sugar. It is the love of a holy King. It includes a call. It produces awe, not casual familiarity. It sends the person back with a deepened conviction of sin and a deepened assurance of mercy — both at once.
When the “Jesus” of an NDE is only a comforting presence with no holiness, no authority, no moral weight, we should slow down. The biblical Jesus is both Lamb and Lion (Revelation 5:5-6). When the NDEr describes being loved deeply and at the same time humbled, undone, or called to repentance, we are on solid ground.
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Beyond the presence of Jesus, a genuine NDE typically has a content that lines up with broad biblical teaching about the spiritual realm. Let me name four of the most important of these indicators.
The NDEr’s description of heaven — its beauty, its peace, its joy, its light, its worship, its fellowship — fits the broad biblical picture of paradise. There are many legitimate differences in what NDErs see. Paradise is vast. Two Christians who visited different “places” of the intermediate state may describe very different landscapes, just as two visitors to the United States might describe very different countries depending on whether they saw California or Nebraska. Differences in detail are not a problem. What matters is the overall shape: a real place, presided over by a personal God, filled with worship, populated by conscious persons, radiating love.
J. Steve Miller’s systematic survey of the NDE research concluded that there is very little in the core NDE material that actually disputes or criticizes Christianity. His documentation shows NDEs consistently reporting content that is compatible with biblical teaching rather than hostile to it.15 That is a remarkable finding, and it should shape our default posture. When your brother-in-law describes a beautiful place filled with light and love and worship, he is almost certainly describing something recognizably biblical.
Sometimes NDErs report content that closely parallels specific biblical passages without their having consciously drawn on them. Ian McCormack, before he was a Christian, saw a meadow with a crystal-clear stream winding through it and trees on either bank — a landscape that mirrors Revelation 22’s river of life flowing from the throne of God and Lamb.16 Jim Woodford has described the Lamb of Revelation 5 in detail. Mary Neal likened her welcoming committee to Hebrews 12:1’s “great cloud of witnesses” — and she was a surgeon, not a theologian.17
When these parallels emerge — especially when the NDEr was not steeped in Scripture before the experience — they strengthen the case that the experience is touching real spiritual territory.
This one functions as a negative test applied positively. A genuine NDE does not include the experiencer being taught things that contradict the Bible. No message that all religions lead equally to God. No teaching about reincarnation. No Lucifer-was-misunderstood. No instructions to begin channeling or consulting the dead. No claim that humans are divine.
Most NDEs pass this test. They do not contain anti-biblical teaching. Where such content appears, it is disproportionately concentrated in a relatively small number of well-known accounts — the same accounts the later chapters of this book will address specifically. The ordinary NDE — the kind your brother-in-law is describing — does not include any such content, and that absence is itself a positive indicator.
What does the NDEr come back believing matters? Love. Service. Humility. Faith. Repentance. Forgiveness. Perseverance. The core Christian virtues. If the takeaway of the NDE lines up with the fruit of the Spirit (Galatians 5:22-23) and the great commandments (Matthew 22:37-40), that is a deeply positive indicator. The Spirit of God does not lead people to rearrange the moral vision of Christ. He confirms it.
Michael Sabom’s Atlanta Study, documented in Light and Death, followed Christians who had experienced NDEs during cardiac arrest. What he found was striking. Most of these NDErs did not become strange afterward. They did not quit their churches. They did not start new religions. They became more devoted Christians. Their faith deepened. Their prayer life grew. Their love for their families expanded. Their commitment to Scripture strengthened. This is the quiet, unspectacular pattern of most real Christian NDEs — and it is one of the most underreported facts in the NDE literature.18
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Jesus said we would know false prophets by their fruits (Matthew 7:16). The same principle applies to NDEs. An experience cannot be fully evaluated by looking only at the experience itself. We also need to watch what it produces over time. Does the NDEr’s life, months and years later, display the fruit of the Spirit? Are they closer to Christ or further from Him? Do their marriage, their parenting, their service, their character mature in a biblical direction?
The Spirit’s fruit is the clearest test of His work. Let me name five specific moral-transformative indicators that typically accompany a genuine NDE.
This is perhaps the most evidential outcome of all. When an atheist, an agnostic, or a lukewarm nominal believer has an NDE and becomes a committed, church-involved, Scripture-reading, gospel-loving Christian, that is hard to explain on any skeptical account.
Consider the pattern: Howard Storm, an avowed atheist art professor, became a pastor.19 Ian McCormack, an atheistic surfer who had dabbled in Eastern spirituality, became a Christian evangelist.20 Jim Woodford, a Canadian businessman and pilot with only nominal faith, became a devout, Christ-centered disciple.21 If NDEs were demonic deceptions on the scale some critics suggest, we would not expect them to keep producing this outcome: lost people coming home to Christ, and existing Christians growing more serious about Him. But that is exactly what we find over and over in the Christian NDE literature.
This matters because Jesus Himself gave us the principle. “A diseased tree bears bad fruit,” He said. “A healthy tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a diseased tree bear good fruit” (Matthew 7:17-18). Genuine conversion to Christ, sustained over decades, with accompanying fruit — that is not a diseased tree’s output. Satan does not spend his energy producing Christians. When we see an atheist-to-Christian trajectory that holds up across a lifetime, the natural inference is that God has been at work. That same principle is what the church has applied throughout her history. It is what we should apply to NDEs.
I should add that existing Christians who have NDEs and deepen in faith — people who were already believers and then became more passionate, more serious, more loving — are also part of this pattern. Michael Sabom’s Atlanta Study, as we noted earlier, documented that Christians who have NDEs typically come back with deeper biblical faith, not drifting spirituality. Sabom’s patients were largely churched evangelicals, and their NDEs served to confirm and intensify what they already knew to be true.
Galatians 5:22-23 names it: “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.” A genuine NDEr grows in these over time. Their marriage is strengthened, not shattered. Their parenting deepens. Their friendships are marked by grace. They love people they once dismissed. They are slower to anger. They are kinder to strangers. They are, in Paul’s word, “faithful” — stable, reliable, committed.
This is a long-haul test. A person may tell an inspiring story after their NDE; what matters is whether, twenty years later, they are still walking with Jesus, still loving their spouse, still serving quietly. The best NDErs pass this test with flying colors.
After a genuine encounter with the living God, a person wants more of Him. They want the Bible open in front of them. They want to pray. They want to be with God’s people in worship. They do not replace the ordinary means of grace with some exclusive NDE-based spirituality; they integrate their experience with the life of the church.
Be attentive to the opposite pattern. If an NDEr comes out of the experience feeling that they no longer need Scripture, or that church is beneath them, or that the “real” spiritual life is their own private experience, something has gone wrong. A real encounter with Christ drives a person toward His body, not away from it.
Almost every genuine NDEr loses the fear of dying. They have seen enough of the other side to know that death is not the end, and that removes a weight they may not have even known they were carrying. But here is the important part: the best NDErs do not then become cavalier about earthly life. They do not stop treating their bodies carefully. They do not stop investing in their work, their families, their communities. They hold earthly life with deeper seriousness, not less, because they now see it as a stewardship for eternity.
A flattened carelessness about earthly life — or, on the other side, a kind of death-wish longing to return to the other side — would be a warning sign. Sober, joyful investment in this life for Christ’s sake is a positive one.
A genuine NDEr tends not to build their whole identity around their experience. They do not demand a platform. They do not claim special spiritual authority. They are willing to submit their experience to the judgment of Scripture and of the church. They recognize their NDE as a gift, not a credential.
When an NDEr becomes a guru, claims to speak for God in a unique way, demands that you accept what they say as authoritative, or builds an empire around their story, something is off. The best NDErs are ordinary Christians who had an extraordinary experience and remain, above all, ordinary Christians.
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Finally, there are certain structural indicators — features not of the experience itself but of how the NDEr relates to it afterward. These are often overlooked, but they are surprisingly diagnostic.
Genuinely astonishing experiences are hard to talk about. Most NDErs were reluctant to tell anyone for years — sometimes decades. They feared being thought crazy. They did not rush to write books. Pim van Lommel’s research found that NDErs almost never tell their stories unless directly asked.22 Jeffrey Long notes the same pattern: his NDERF database includes thousands of accounts submitted by people who were not paid, did not benefit financially, and took close to thirty minutes to complete the questionnaire.23
That reluctance is strong evidence of authenticity. People who fabricate stories tend to rush them into the public. People who have had something genuinely overwhelming tend to guard it.
A genuine NDE account tends to stay the same across retellings. The core details remain stable over years. There may be minor variations — what any human memory produces — but the basic content does not radically shift, grow more elaborate, or pick up suspiciously new details as the NDEr becomes more famous.
When a teacher’s story grows over time — when new visions keep being added, when the original experience expands to cover more and more theological territory, when the account changes as the teacher’s theology shifts — that is a red flag. Genuine memories are stubborn. Ian McCormack’s account has been told consistently for over four decades, with the same core content. That stability is a positive indicator.
The genuinely discerning NDEr reads their experience in light of Scripture, not the other way around. When something in their experience seems to conflict with Scripture, they adjust their interpretation of their experience — not the Bible. They treat their NDE as subordinate to the written Word of God.
This is a deeply important test. The Bible is the final standard (see Chapter 8 for the full treatment of this principle). An NDEr who uses their experience to override Scripture — to rewrite doctrine, to challenge what Jesus said in the Gospels, to propose new revelation — has crossed a line the church has always guarded. An NDEr who quietly submits their account to Scripture’s judgment is operating as a faithful believer should.
Not every genuine NDE has external corroboration. Some do. When an NDEr accurately reports things they could not have perceived through normal means — the layout of the emergency room from above, specific words spoken by relatives in distant rooms, the color of a shoe on a high ledge — those verifications strengthen the case.24 When medical records confirm the timing and severity of the clinical crisis, that too is supportive. Witnesses who heard the NDEr’s account fresh from the hospital and can attest that the story has not grown also add weight.
None of this is required. Many genuine NDEs have none of it. But when corroboration is present, it is evidence, and we can rightly take it into account.
A trustworthy NDEr is connected to a local church. They have a pastor. They are under spiritual authority. They are accountable to believers who know them and can speak truth to them. They are not operating as independent spiritual authorities.
When you hear about an NDEr who has no church, no pastor, no accountability, and who has built a stand-alone ministry around their own experience, be careful. The New Testament pictures Christian life as bodily — that is, embedded in the body of Christ, the local church. An NDEr who is walking with a congregation is walking on solid ground.
It is important to hold these indicators loosely. No checklist can replace the work of the Spirit in discernment. A genuine NDE does not require every indicator on every list. Some NDEs are simpler. Some lack a life review. Some do not involve Jesus speaking directly. Absence of a particular feature does not disqualify an experience. What matters is the overall pattern — whether the experience, taken as a whole, fits the biblical expectation in its main features and does not include content that contradicts Scripture. Use these indicators as clues, not as a verdict machine.
· · ·
Principles only come alive when we see them at work in actual cases. Let me walk us through three NDE accounts that display positive indicators richly. Each of these three experiencers has a well-documented story, a decades-long track record of Christian discipleship, and has submitted their account to church accountability. Each also illustrates different facets of what “genuine” looks like in practice.
Ian McCormack was a twenty-year-old New Zealand surfer in 1982 when his life changed forever. He had been traveling through Australia, Africa, and Indonesia for two years, living the carefree life of a young man chasing waves. He had drifted into practical atheism and some Eastern spirituality along the way. One night, night-diving off the island of Mauritius, he was stung four times by box jellyfish — and a single sting is typically fatal.25
In the ambulance on the way to the hospital, with the venom already killing him, Ian’s life began to replay before his eyes. He suddenly saw a clear vision of his mother speaking words she had told him long ago: no matter how far from God he was, if he cried out from his heart, God would hear him. He did not know how to pray. But the Lord’s Prayer came back to him in pieces, and he prayed what he could remember.
What is striking about this first scene is what Ian did not see. He had spent years steeped in Eastern religious thought. He knew about Buddha, Krishna, and other deities. In his extremity, his mind did not conjure any of those figures. He saw his mother — a simple, faithful Christian woman — and he prayed the prayer she had taught him from the Christian tradition. This is one of the many small signs that what happened next was not a projection of his worldview. His worldview would have projected something quite different.
Ian clinically died at the hospital. What followed was a distressing opening to the experience — a descent into a dark, cold place where he heard voices yelling at him, “Shut up!” and “You deserve to be here!” and “You’re in hell.” He cried out to God:
I’d prayed [in the ambulance] just before I died, and asked God to forgive me for my sins. I was weeping by now and I cried out to God, “Why am I here, I’ve asked you for forgiveness, why am I here? I’ve turned my heart to you, why am I here?” Then a brilliant light shone upon me and literally drew me out of the darkness.26
He was lifted out of that place by the light — and met the Person of Jesus. Ian describes the experience with tears even decades later: Jesus loving him, embracing him, revealing Himself as the One Ian’s mother had always followed. Jesus showed him a paradise beyond a tunnel-like opening: meadows, a crystal-clear stream winding through them with trees on either bank, mountains in the distance. Ian asked Jesus if he could stay. He had no reason to return, he said — no wife, no kids, no one who really loved him. Then he saw his mother’s face — and his father, brother, sister, friends, and a multitude of people who did not yet know Christ. Jesus told him if he returned, he must see things in a new light.27
Ian came back to his body in the morgue, alive. Let’s walk through how his account displays the positive indicators we have developed.
I’d prayed [in the ambulance] just before I died, and asked God to forgive me for my sins. I was weeping by now and I cried out to God, “Why am I here, I’ve asked you for forgiveness, why am I here? I’ve turned my heart to you, why am I here?” Then a brilliant light shone upon me and literally drew me out of the darkness.26
He was lifted out of that place by the light — and met the Person of Jesus. Ian describes the experience with tears even decades later: Jesus loving him, embracing him, revealing Himself as the One Ian’s mother had always followed. Jesus showed him a paradise beyond a tunnel-like opening: meadows, a crystal-clear stream winding through them with trees on either bank, mountains in the distance. Ian asked Jesus if he could stay. He had no reason to return, he said — no wife, no kids, no one who really loved him. Then he saw his mother’s face — and his father, brother, sister, friends, and a multitude of people who did not yet know Christ. Jesus told him if he returned, he must see things in a new light.27
Ian came back to his body in the morgue, alive. Let’s walk through how his account displays the positive indicators we have developed.
Phenomenological indicators: hyper-real quality (Ian describes the light and the paradise as more real than earthly experience); separation from the body; transition through darkness into light; encountering the light with overwhelming love; a boundary beyond which he was shown he could not fully go without returning; being sent back with a mission. Six of the eight phenomenological markers, cleanly present.
Christological indicators: Jesus specifically present, identified as Jesus (not a generic light-being); Jesus at the center of the experience; Jesus’s words consistent with the biblical gospel (calling Ian to faith, sending him to tell others); Jesus’s love overwhelming but demanding (He gave Ian a task). All four present.
Biblical-theological indicators: the landscape of paradise echoes Revelation 22’s river and trees; no teaching contrary to Scripture; biblical virtues (love, witness, service) reinforced. Three of four present (specific scriptural parallels are strong for someone with almost no biblical background).
Moral-transformative indicators: profound conversion from atheism to Christianity; fruit of the Spirit over more than four decades of ministry; deep engagement with Scripture, prayer, and the church; fear of death lost but earthly life taken seriously; humility (Ian does not claim special authority but preaches the ordinary gospel). All five present.
Structural indicators: reluctance to share initially (Ian took time before going public); consistency over time (his account has not substantially changed in forty-plus years); submission to Scripture; Ian is embedded in Christian community and has functioned as an evangelist under accountability. Four of five present, with corroborating medical detail about the jellyfish envenomation and clinical death.
When we tally Ian’s account against the indicators, the pattern is overwhelming. Very nearly every positive marker is present. This is what a genuine NDE looks like in a richly developed case. And the fruit — decades of faithful gospel preaching — is the best possible confirmation.
Don Piper was already a Christian when his NDE happened in January 1989. He was a Baptist pastor, husband, and father, returning from a pastors’ conference, when an eighteen-wheeler lost control on a rainy bridge and drove directly over the top of his car. When paramedics arrived, Don was pronounced dead at the scene. For ninety minutes, his body lay trapped in the crushed vehicle while rescuers waited for the Jaws of Life.28
During those ninety minutes, Don describes being instantly in heaven. He was enveloped in a light of brilliance “beyond earthly comprehension or description.” When his awareness returned, he was standing near an ornate gate, surrounded by a joyful crowd of people he recognized — his grandfather Joe Kulbeth, his childhood friend Mike Wood, his high school classmate Barry Wilson, teachers who had invested in him and pointed him to Christ. Every person was smiling, shouting, and praising God. The air was filled with worship — heavenly music Don describes as unlike any earthly sound.29 Eventually another pastor, riding past the accident scene, felt compelled to stop and pray over what everyone else believed was a dead body. Don came back.
What is particularly striking about Don’s account is the specificity of the people he recognized. Grandfather Joe Kulbeth appeared “exactly as I remembered him, with his shock of white hair and what I called a big banana nose.” His friend Mike Wood, who had been killed in a car wreck at nineteen, was there, still recognizably himself. His classmate Barry Wilson, who had drowned in a lake, was there. Teachers who had loved him and pointed him to Christ were there. The specific personhood of every one of them was preserved. This is not the generic cosmic oneness of Eastern religious imagination. This is the particular, bodily, re-united communion of saints that the New Testament anticipates.
Don’s account displays many of the positive indicators:
Phenomenological indicators: hyper-real quality (the light and joy described as beyond earthly experience); separation from the body (Don recognized the transition from the crushed car into heaven); transition into light; encountering light paired with love; reunion with deceased loved ones, recognizably themselves; heavenly worship and music. Most of the eight markers are present.
Christological indicators: this is a point where Don’s account differs from Ian’s, and it deserves care. Don does not describe meeting Jesus face-to-face during his time in heaven; he mentions not seeing Jesus in the initial moments at the gate. The account is focused on deceased loved ones and worship. Some readers have found this troubling; others have pointed out that heaven is vast and that a legitimate visitor to the intermediate state might not encounter every Person immediately. Don’s theology is fully Christ-centered, his ministry is explicitly focused on the gospel of Jesus, and the overall content of his experience is consistent with Christian hope. So the Christological indicators are present in his theology even if not as directly in the specific content of the ninety-minute experience.
Biblical-theological indicators: the heavenly gate, the reunion with the saints, the worship, the music all line up with biblical imagery (Revelation 21’s gates, Hebrews 12:1’s cloud of witnesses, the worship scenes of Revelation 4-5). No teaching contrary to Scripture. Biblical virtues reinforced.
Moral-transformative indicators: Don’s existing Christian faith deepened significantly. His ministry expanded, not collapsed. He has continued preaching the gospel for over three decades. Fruit of the Spirit evident. Humility and accountability intact.
Structural indicators: Don did not write his book for seven years after the accident — a meaningful reluctance. His account has been consistent over time. He submits to Scripture and pastoral authority. He is ecclesiastically embedded.
Some critics have raised reasonable questions about specific features of Don Piper’s account — particularly the 90-minute timeline and other details. How should Christians hold this? With both honesty and charity. Don’s overall account is biblically coherent, his life and ministry have displayed Christian fruit, and the medical documentation of the accident is real. A genuine NDE can still have elements that prompt legitimate questions. Not every detail in every NDE will be bulletproof. The discerning Christian asks: does the whole pattern look like a genuine encounter? In Don Piper’s case, the pattern is overwhelmingly positive, even if individual details invite conversation.
Dr. Mary Neal is an orthopedic spine surgeon. In 1999, she was on a whitewater kayaking trip in Chile when she plunged over a waterfall. Her kayak became lodged between two boulders beneath ten feet of cascading water, trapping her fully submerged. She was under the water for approximately fourteen minutes. Every medical indicator says she should have died. At a point when her body was bending at the waist and her ligaments tearing, Mary surrendered the outcome to God’s will.30 She describes what happened next:
The very moment I turned to Him, I was overcome with an absolute feeling of calm, peace, and of the very physical sensation of being held in someone’s arms. . . . I knew with absolute certainty that I was being held and comforted by Jesus, which was initially surprising . . . as I am just an ordinary person.31
Jesus held her through the event, walked her through a review of her life, and — when her body finally broke free — Mary felt her soul release “as if I had finally shaken off my heavy outer layer.” She then encountered a welcoming committee, which she herself likened to “the great cloud of witnesses described in Hebrews 12:1.” The beings were “absolutely exploding with a pure, pure love.” Mary knew, without being told, that they had known and loved her as long as she had existed. She began to glide along a path and understood she was going home. Then she looked back, saw her friends on the riverbank calling her back, asked her heavenly companions to wait, and returned to her body to take a breath.32
Let’s apply the positive indicators:
Phenomenological indicators: hyper-real perception (Mary describes the encounter as “far greater than anything I have ever experienced on earth”); separation from the body with continued consciousness; transition; light and love together; reunion with loved and recognizable beings; awareness of a boundary; being sent back with a mission (she later learned specific things about the future she was to use for God’s purposes). Most markers present.
Christological indicators: Jesus specifically identified as Jesus, not a vague being; Jesus at the center of the experience as the holder who carries Mary through the crisis; Jesus’s words consistent with biblical teaching (when Mary later asks Jesus why all people do not receive the same experience she did, Jesus repeats to her the words He spoke to Thomas in John 20:29: “Because you have seen Me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.”);33 Jesus’s love overwhelming but paired with appropriate theological depth. All four present.
Biblical-theological indicators: the welcoming committee explicitly parallels Hebrews 12:1 in Mary’s own words; no teaching contrary to Scripture; biblical virtues reinforced. Strong alignment.
Moral-transformative indicators: deepened Christian faith and practice; Mary has continued her surgical work (she did not abandon her ordinary calling); Christian writing and speaking ministry; long-term fruit; humility about her experience.
Structural indicators: Mary delayed publication for years; account has been consistent; submits to Scripture; ecclesiastically connected. Strong positive.
I should note honestly that some evangelicals have raised questions about specific passages in Mary’s writing where she describes receiving messages about the future or where her theology is more charismatic-leaning than some readers expect. The overall trajectory of her account and ministry is Christian, though, and the pattern of positive indicators is strong. This book’s chapters on trustworthy authors (Chapter 29) engage these kinds of nuances more fully, and Chapter 18 treats the ways even a genuine NDEr’s interpretation can include some rough edges that the community of faith helps to smooth.
The point of walking through these three cases is not to say any of them is flawless. It is to illustrate what a rich, well-indicated NDE looks like in practice. Ian McCormack’s is perhaps the cleanest example. Don Piper’s is the most familiar to many readers, with a few features that prompt reasonable conversation. Mary Neal’s is the most professionally credentialed, told by a credentialed orthopedic surgeon whose whole life work requires rigor and honesty. Together, these three represent the kind of NDE accounts most Christian readers will encounter in trustworthy books and in the testimonies of fellow believers. When we hear them, we should recognize what we are hearing. We should rejoice.
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What do we do when an NDE has some of the positive indicators but not others? Most accounts will not display every marker on every list. That is normal. Not every NDEr meets Jesus face-to-face. Not every NDE includes a life review. Not every experience has external corroboration. Some of the most simple, clean Christian NDEs — the dying Christian saint who sees Jesus briefly in their final hours — do not involve elaborate tunnels, extensive vistas, or mission-giving.
The rule of thumb is this: a genuine NDE does not require every indicator, but it requires an overall pattern that fits the biblical expectation in its main features and does not include content contrary to Scripture. The more indicators cluster together, the more confident we can be. But the absence of any single indicator is not disqualifying.
Think of it the way a good pastor evaluates a conversion testimony. You do not require every person to describe their conversion the same way. You look for the fundamental marks of regeneration: turning from sin, faith in Christ, love for God and His people, ongoing transformation. Some testimonies are dramatic, some are quiet. Some recount a single moment; some recount a long drawing. Neither is required for the work of God to be real. The discerning pastor looks at the overall pattern over time. The same wisdom applies to NDEs.
Here is the kind of question a Christian listener can ask themselves as they hear an account:
If the answers are yes to most of these, the posture should be warmth. If there are concerning elements, the posture should be patient discernment — which brings us to the next question.
This is a real situation, and we will treat it fully in Part IV of this book (Chapters 17 through 22). Some NDEs have a genuine core — recognizable presence of Christ, real fruit, clear positive indicators — alongside specific elements that are theologically concerning. Perhaps the NDEr received a message that “all paths lead to God.” Perhaps they came back teaching some doctrine that contradicts Scripture. Perhaps they have drifted toward occult practices.
These are what I call hybrid accounts. The chapter on hybrid NDEs (Chapter 17) will walk us through how to handle them. For now, the important point is this: the existence of hybrid accounts does not mean we should default to suspicion. It means we should do exactly what this chapter has developed — recognize the genuine first, then attend to the concerning elements carefully. Discerning the good from the troubling is easier when we have a clear picture of what genuine looks like.
A genuine NDE is not guaranteed to produce a perfectly biblical theology in the mind of the experiencer. The experience may be real; the interpretation may still be affected by the person’s background, reading, emotional state, or cultural assumptions. This is the experience-interpretation distinction taken up fully in Chapter 9. Recognizing that an NDE is genuine does not mean accepting every theological claim the NDEr builds on top of it. Receive the genuine. Evaluate the interpretation by Scripture. That two-step discernment is what loving, faithful Christian response looks like.
· · ·
This chapter is the doorway into the whole second part of the book. The chapters that follow build on what we have developed here.
Chapter 12 addresses deathbed experiences (DBEs) specifically, and shows why DBEs deserve an even higher default posture of trust than NDEs — approximately 95% genuine by our working estimate. Chapter 13 takes up the statistical picture of Jesus’s prominence in NDE reports, drawing on J. Steve Miller’s careful research. Chapter 14 develops the full criteria for identifying a genuine Jesus encounter, expanding the brief Christological indicators we touched on here. Chapter 15 looks specifically at angelic escorts and reunions with the dead — areas where further discernment is especially helpful. Chapter 16 treats the fascinating and often beautiful phenomenon of life reviews.
Each of these chapters presupposes what this chapter has developed. When we apply the seven tests of Chapter 10, when we recognize the indicators of this chapter, we are putting ourselves in a position to hear NDE and DBE accounts with confidence. We will know how to rejoice at what is genuine and how to identify what is mixed or concerning.
Let me close with the posture this chapter is trying to form in us.
The reader who takes this chapter seriously will begin to notice that most of the NDE accounts they encounter — from family members, from Christian friends, from trustworthy books — display many of these positive indicators. Most accounts will cluster well in the phenomenological, Christological, biblical-theological, moral-transformative, and structural categories. Most of the time, discernment will lead to the glad conclusion: this one is real.
When that is the conclusion, the right response is not cross-examination. It is rejoicing. Discernment is not hostility. The discerning Christian looks for genuineness first and concerns second. When the genuineness is clear, the discernment task is to receive and celebrate, not to search for flaws.
Back to the scene where we began. Your brother-in-law is on the phone. He is trembling as he describes his experience. What do you say? Here is what I would say: “Tell me everything. Take your time. I want to hear it.” Listen for the indicators. Listen for Jesus. Listen for the fruit beginning to appear. Listen for the note of awe that every real encounter with God produces. If those things are there, say so. Rejoice with him. Hand him a Bible. Walk him into a good church. Pray over him. The Lord has met him. Your job is not to prove his experience wrong but to help him walk forward with it in a way that honors Christ.
There is a kind of Christian who hears an NDE account and reaches immediately for suspicion. That Christian may mean well. But they are not obeying 1 Thessalonians 5:19-21: “Do not quench the Spirit. Do not despise prophecies, but test everything; hold fast what is good.” Notice the order. Do not quench. Test everything. Hold fast what is good. The test is in service of holding fast to the good, not in service of rejecting everything unfamiliar. The goal is not to minimize God’s work but to recognize it cleanly and respond to it well.
We live in a world where God still meets people at the threshold of death. Children in hospice beds see angels. Atheist professors call out to Jesus and come home. Surgeons are held by Christ under ten feet of water. Ordinary Christians sit up in their last hours and say, “He’s here.” These are not embarrassments to our faith. They are consolations. They are evidence that the God who made us, and who has promised to bring His people home, is still at work at the hinge between this life and the next.
When we learn to recognize the shape of His work, we can rejoice without naivety and discern without cynicism. That is the narrow path this book is trying to teach us to walk. And that path begins — practically begins — when we can hear an NDE account, notice the positive indicators, and smile with warm recognition. Yes. That sounds like Jesus. That sounds like Him.
We began this chapter with the problem of what to say to a brother-in-law who calls to tell us he died on an operating table and met Jesus. We end it with a way to hear him well.
Most NDEs are genuine. We have seen that the core phenomenological features — hyper-real perception, out-of-body awareness, transition, light joined with love, reunion with loved ones, a boundary, a sent-back mission, and enhanced cognition — line up with biblical expectations in ways that cannot easily be explained by hallucination or deception. We have seen that when Jesus is truly present in an NDE, He is present as the biblical Jesus — specific, wounded, central, demanding love. We have seen that genuine NDE content does not typically contradict Scripture, even when the experiencer was not a Christian before the experience. We have seen that the fruit of a genuine NDE, over months and years, looks like the fruit of the Spirit. And we have seen that the way NDErs hold and tell their accounts — with reluctance, with consistency, with submission to Scripture, with ecclesiastical embedding — provides further evidence of authenticity.
Ian McCormack, Don Piper, and Mary Neal are not isolated cases. They are representative of a much larger cloud of believers whose encounters at the edge of death fit the biblical pattern and produce Christian fruit. The ordinary Christian NDE is not scandalous. It is a gift — to the experiencer and, through them, to the church.
I want to close with one more observation. The indicators we have walked through in this chapter are not really indicators of strangeness. They are indicators of ordinariness — ordinary, that is, on the Christian map of reality. If the Bible is true about the nature of the human person, about the reality of the spiritual world, about the character of God in Christ, about the present state of the blessed dead, and about the future hope of the resurrection, then NDEs of the kind we have described in this chapter are exactly what we should expect to find occasionally happening. They are not an embarrassment to Christian belief. They are a modest, partial, humble confirmation of it.
Secular researchers have noticed this too. J. Steve Miller’s careful work on NDE compatibility with biblical teaching, the systematic studies of thousands of NDEs on NDERF, the cross-cultural consistency of core features, the weight of verified veridical perceptions — all of it fits far more naturally into a Christian picture of reality than into a materialist one. The critics who tell us that NDEs undermine the Christian faith have simply not read the data carefully. The data, honestly engaged, points the other way.
In the next chapter, we will turn from NDEs to deathbed experiences (DBEs) specifically. There, the evidence for genuineness is even stronger, and the posture the Christian should take is even warmer. But first, let us hold this chapter’s gift firmly: a clear picture of what a real encounter with God at death looks like. With that picture in hand, we are ready to move through the rest of this book with clarity, charity, and hope.
And the next time your brother-in-law calls, you will be ready.
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