The Occult Crossover
A woman I will call Marie almost died in a car accident. During the long minutes when her heart was stopped, she felt herself rise out of her body, travel through a tunnel, and enter a place of overwhelming love and light. She came back changed. She began to pray more. She hugged her children longer. She told her husband she loved him in ways she hadn't for years. By every visible measure, her near-death experience (NDE) had been a gift.
Two years later, Marie was teaching classes on mediumship. She had discovered, she told her friends, that she came back from the other side with "gifts." She could feel the presence of the dead. She could deliver messages from departed mothers to grieving daughters. She had been called, she said, to help people heal from loss. She was no longer attending her small Baptist church. She had found a more accepting community at the local Center for Spiritual Living. When her pastor called to check on her, she told him she had grown beyond the narrow categories of traditional Christianity. The love she had encountered on the other side, she explained, was too big for any one religion.
Marie is not a real person, but her story is composed of real patterns I have seen repeated over and over in NDE literature and NDE communities.1 A genuine and life-changing encounter, followed by an unintended drift into occult practice, followed by a quiet exit from biblical Christianity. This chapter is about that drift. It is about what Scripture calls us to do when an NDE — even a beautiful one — starts carrying someone into practices the Bible has explicitly and repeatedly forbidden.
My thesis for this chapter is straightforward. A real stream of NDE literature and practice blurs into occult territory — mediumship, channeling, communication with the dead, "after-death communications" sought deliberately through spiritual intermediaries, psychic development, and related practices. Scripture prohibits these activities. The prohibition is not a minor caution tucked away in one verse. It runs from Moses to John, from Leviticus to Revelation, with unusual clarity and force. Regardless of how compelling the experience that leads someone in this direction may be, Christians must reject occult practices as inconsistent with biblical faith. My aim is to equip you to see the crossover when it appears, understand why Scripture takes such a firm stand, and respond with both clarity and pastoral tenderness.
Most NDErs are not drawn into the occult. Many live out their experience within biblical faith, sometimes for the first time in their lives. But a meaningful minority move from the NDE itself into psychic work, mediumship, channeling, or "sensitive" practice — often without realizing they have crossed a line Scripture has drawn. This chapter is for those situations.
Let us begin by describing what I am actually talking about, because the word "occult" can feel dramatic and a little embarrassing in modern conversation. We imagine candles, pentagrams, and dark hooded figures. The truth is much more ordinary than that, and much more dangerous for being ordinary.
After their experience, many NDErs report what they describe as "gifts." These gifts may include the ability to sense the presence of deceased loved ones, receive psychic impressions about people they meet, hear the voices of spirit guides, read energy fields or auras, or perform mediumistic readings. Sometimes these abilities emerge unbidden in the weeks or months following the NDE. Sometimes they are cultivated deliberately inside NDE community settings where such cultivation is normalized. Sometimes the experiencer builds a teaching ministry, podcast, or professional practice around them.2
Shaun Tabatt, host of the Destiny Image podcast and author of The NDE Conspiracy, has described what he encountered at a recent national conference of the International Association for Near-Death Studies (IANDS). "It seemed like there were psychics and mediums everywhere," he writes. Attendees could consult a "pet psychic" in the exhibit hall to discover what their dog had been trying to tell them. They could book one-on-one readings. They could attend a packed session led by a medium who specialized in helping parents reconnect with deceased children — for a fee.3 The point is not that every NDE conference is like this, nor that every NDEr who attends such a conference becomes a medium. The point is that the infrastructure for drift is in place. A person with a genuine experience, looking for community, steps into rooms where occult practice is treated as the logical next step.
J. Steve Miller, in Is Christianity Compatible with Deathbed and Near-Death Experiences?, recounts a conversation with a grieving widower who had read his first NDE book. The man wrote to ask whether it would be acceptable for him to consult a medium in order to contact his deceased wife. After all — the man reasoned — if NDEs and deathbed experiences really do show that the dead are conscious on the other side, why not try to talk with them? Miller, who had lost his own first wife to cancer, felt the weight of the question. He still urged against it, strongly and with tears. The story captures the logic that pulls many into occult practice after an NDE: the spiritual realm is obviously real, my loved one is obviously there, and I am obviously longing to hear from them again.4
That longing is honest. I am not dismissing it. Anyone who has lost someone they love understands it. But the Bible has something to say about whether that longing may be acted upon — and what it says is not quiet, not nuanced, and not optional.
Scripture does not have one or two verses that nervously caution us about occult practice. It has dozens of verses across both Testaments that repeatedly and unanimously forbid it. The ground is not contested. From Moses to Paul, the Bible treats necromancy and related practices as a fundamental violation of covenant with God. Let us walk through the central texts together.
The clearest and most comprehensive passage comes as Israel is about to enter the Promised Land. Moses sets out how Israel is to live differently from the nations whose place they are taking:
"When you come into the land that the Lord your God is giving you, you shall not learn to follow the abominable practices of those nations. There shall not be found among you anyone who burns his son or his daughter as an offering, anyone who practices divination or tells fortunes or interprets omens, or a sorcerer or a charmer or a medium or a necromancer or one who inquires of the dead, for whoever does these things is an abomination to the Lord. And because of these abominations the Lord your God is driving them out before you. You shall be blameless before the Lord your God, for these nations, which you are about to dispossess, listen to fortune-tellers and diviners. But as for you, the Lord your God has not allowed you to do this." (Deuteronomy 18:9-14, ESV)
Notice how comprehensive this is. Moses does not leave a back door. He lists, one after another, every major category of what we would today call occult practice. The Hebrew gives precision to his sweep. The phrase translated "practices divination" is קֹסֵם קְסָמִים (qosem qesamim), a verbal form built on the root qasam, meaning to obtain hidden knowledge by supernatural means — the broadest Hebrew word for what diviners and fortune-tellers do. "Medium" translates שֹׁאֵל אוֹב (sho'el 'ov), literally "one who inquires of an 'ov" — the 'ov being a ghost or ancestral spirit, or sometimes the pit or pot from which such a spirit was summoned. "One who inquires of the dead" is דֹּרֵשׁ אֶל־הַמֵּתִים (doresh el-hammetim), a phrase that captures necromancy in its plainest possible form.5
Moses sweeps every corner of the pagan spiritual landscape and marks the entire thing off-limits. Child sacrifice, divination, fortune-telling, omen reading, sorcery, spell-casting, mediumship, necromancy — all of it. And he gives a reason: "for whoever does these things is an abomination to the Lord." The Hebrew word here is תּוֹעֵבָה (to'evah), which we usually translate "abomination." It is the strongest moral word in the Old Testament vocabulary. It is used for idolatry, for ritual uncleanness of the most serious kind, for practices that make a land itself unclean. Occult practice is not placed by Moses on a scale of lesser and greater sins. It is placed at the top.
Moses does not prohibit occult practice because it is fake. He prohibits it because it is real — real contact with real spiritual beings who are not safe. If he thought necromancy was imaginary nonsense, he would have scolded Israel for wasting their time. Instead, he describes these practices as an "abomination." The force of the prohibition implies the reality of the danger.
Leviticus adds two more verses, each adding weight to the Deuteronomic prohibition:
"Do not turn to mediums or necromancers; do not seek them out, and so make yourselves unclean by them: I am the Lord your God." (Leviticus 19:31, ESV)
Two Hebrew words for forbidden spiritual intermediaries appear here — אוֹב ('ov, "medium") and יִדְּעֹנִי (yidde'oni, "necromancer" or "familiar spirit"). The ESV's "necromancer" here captures the sense of yidde'oni as one who has, or who consults, a "knowing spirit." God's name is attached to the prohibition — "I am the Lord your God" — giving it the weight of covenant identity. Israel's relationship with the Lord is being compromised by any turn to these intermediaries.
The language intensifies at Leviticus 20:6:
"If a person turns to mediums and necromancers, whoring after them, I will set my face against that person and will cut him off from among his people." (Leviticus 20:6, ESV)
Two details deserve attention. First, the verb "whoring" לִזְנוֹת (liznot) is marital language. Turning to mediums is likened to spiritual adultery — a betrayal of the covenant bond between God and His people. Second, God says He Himself will "set my face against" such a person and "cut him off." This is not a casual warning. It is the language of divine exclusion from the covenant community.6
In Leviticus 20:27, the practitioners themselves were to receive the severest possible sanction: stoning. Without softening the text, we should note that this capital sanction belonged to Israel's civil law under the theocratic covenant and does not translate directly into Christian civil ethics. The moral prohibition, however, is carried forward into the New Testament without any weakening.
The most famous narrative passage on mediumship is King Saul's visit to the medium at Endor.7 Saul, facing the Philistine army and no longer able to receive a word from God by legitimate means, disguised himself and sought out a medium to summon the prophet Samuel from the dead. The passage is striking on several counts.
First, Saul himself had previously "put the mediums and the necromancers out of the land" (1 Samuel 28:3). He knew the law. The medium he sought recognized this fact and feared for her life when Saul asked her to perform a seance. This was a capital offense under Torah, and she was not ignorant of it.
Second, when the apparition appears, the medium herself is startled — she cries out with a loud voice, as though she did not expect the spirit to come. This is often read as evidence that something unusual happened. Her usual "familiar spirit" routine had been interrupted by something she did not control. Whether what appeared was genuinely Samuel (permitted by God as a judgment against Saul), or a deceptive spirit impersonating Samuel, has been debated for centuries. The narrator of 1 Samuel calls the appearance "Samuel," but narrators often report things from the perspective of the characters without endorsing their interpretation.8
Third — and this is what matters for our purposes — regardless of what actually appeared, Saul's act was condemned. The narrator of 1 Chronicles 10:13-14 states this plainly: "Saul died for his breach of faith. He broke faith with the Lord in that he did not keep the command of the Lord, and also consulted a medium, seeking guidance. He did not seek guidance from the Lord. Therefore the Lord put him to death and turned the kingdom over to David the son of Jesse." The consultation itself was part of what destroyed him.
Let me say a word about the interpretive options on what actually appeared at Endor, since readers naturally wonder. Three major positions have been held across Christian history. The first — held by Tertullian and many of the early fathers — is that the apparition was not Samuel at all but a deceptive spirit who successfully impersonated the prophet. On this reading, necromancy in principle cannot reach the righteous dead, who are in God's keeping; what the medium actually summoned was a familiar spirit (a demon) playing the role. The second position — defended by Justin Martyr, Origen, and a strong tradition of medieval and Reformation exegetes — is that what appeared genuinely was Samuel, permitted by God (not the medium) to deliver a judgment oracle against Saul as a kind of closing word. The narrator's repeated identification of the figure as "Samuel" supports this reading, as does Samuel's delivery of accurate prophecy that came to pass the next day. The third position is an agnostic one: the text does not decisively tell us, and either reading is compatible with the passage's theological point — which is the condemnation of Saul, not the vindication of necromancy.
I incline toward the second view — that it was genuinely Samuel, permitted by a sovereign act of God for His own purposes — but I hold that view without dogmatism, and I want to stress that the ethical point is the same on either reading. God permitting Samuel to appear on this one occasion as part of His judgment against Saul does not underwrite mediumship as a legitimate practice any more than Pharaoh's dream in Genesis 41 makes divination legitimate. A sovereign exception is not a general permission. The categorical prohibitions of Deuteronomy 18 and Leviticus 19-20 remain intact. What happened at Endor is one of those places in Scripture where God uses the forbidden action of a human being to accomplish His own purposes, without endorsing the forbidden action — a pattern we see elsewhere in the canonical narrative, from Joseph's brothers (Genesis 50:20) to the betrayal of Christ (Acts 2:23).
Shaun Tabatt summarizes the point well: "Of all people among the Israelites, King Saul most certainly knew that God forbade consulting witches and mediums." Yet Saul, desperate for a word from God that God had refused to give, took matters into his own hands and "chose an alternate and forbidden path." Tabatt's pastoral reading is apt: Saul "would have been better off going after repentance and restoration with God, rather than consulting a medium."9
The lesson for our chapter is hard to miss. Even when God is silent, the answer is not to turn elsewhere for the voice. Silence is not an invitation to find a different source.
The prophet Isaiah confronts a generation already dabbling in necromancy:
"And when they say to you, 'Inquire of the mediums and the necromancers who chirp and mutter,' should not a people inquire of their God? Should they inquire of the dead on behalf of the living? To the teaching and to the testimony! If they will not speak according to this word, it is because they have no dawn." (Isaiah 8:19-20, ESV)
Isaiah's rhetorical questions carry the weight of the passage. "Should not a people inquire of their God?" The answer is obvious. "Should they inquire of the dead on behalf of the living?" The absurdity is built into the question. The dead do not have authority over the living. The living belong to God and are to seek Him.
Isaiah's reference to mediums who "chirp and mutter" is telling. The Hebrew verbs suggest low-pitched whispering sounds, the kind of ventriloquizing performance traditionally associated with necromancers across the ancient world. Isaiah is not intimidated by them. He is dismissive. They "have no dawn" — no light, no truth to offer. The test is simple: "To the teaching and to the testimony!" Whatever spiritual communication comes to us must be measured against God's revealed Word. If it does not square with Scripture, it is not from God.
This is the same test that shapes the entire book you are reading. Experience is real. Spirits are real. But the standard by which we measure what they say is not the impressiveness of the communication — it is the teaching and the testimony. The Word of God.
The New Testament does not soften the prohibition. In Acts 16, Luke tells us that Paul encountered a slave girl in Philippi who had "a spirit of divination" and brought "her owners much gain by fortune-telling" (Acts 16:16, ESV). The Greek is illuminating. Luke calls her spirit a πνεῦμα πύθωνα (pneuma pythōna), literally a "spirit of Python."10 Python was the mythological serpent associated with the oracle at Delphi, and the term became a technical name in the ancient world for the kind of spirit that possessed and spoke through fortune-telling women.
Three things in this account deserve emphasis. First, the girl told the truth about Paul: "These men are servants of the Most High God, who proclaim to you the way of salvation" (Acts 16:17). This was not a lying spirit giving false information. It was a spirit delivering accurate content. Second, her fortune-telling was apparently accurate enough to support a commercial enterprise; her owners were making "much gain." Third — and this is the part we must not miss — Paul, "greatly annoyed," commanded the spirit to come out of her in the name of Jesus Christ. The spirit left. Her fortune-telling gift evaporated with the spirit's departure.
Luke's evaluation is built into the structure of the story. The source of the girl's ability was a demonic spirit. The ability itself was not morally neutral. It was not something Paul appropriated, endorsed, or considered harmless because it sometimes produced true statements. He cast it out.
The accuracy of spiritual information does not establish its legitimacy. A true statement spoken through a forbidden channel is still spoken through a forbidden channel. The apostles treated such spirits as things to be cast out, not consulted.
In Ephesus, where magic and occult practice were widespread, the response of new Christian converts shows us what repentance from the occult looks like:
"Also many of those who were now believers came, confessing and divulging their practices. And a number of those who had practiced magic arts brought their books together and burned them in the sight of all. And they counted the value of them and found it came to fifty thousand pieces of silver." (Acts 19:18-19, ESV)
Fifty thousand pieces of silver was an enormous sum. These new believers did not sell the books, or donate them to the library, or quietly set them aside. They burned them — publicly, together, with an awareness that the choice had real cost. Luke records this approvingly. True Christian conversion required a decisive break from occult practice. Half-measures were not on the table.
Paul lists sorcery, the Greek φαρμακεία (pharmakeia), among the "works of the flesh":
"Now the works of the flesh are evident: sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these. I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God." (Galatians 5:19-21, ESV)
Pharmakeia is the Greek word from which we get our English "pharmacy." In ancient usage it referred to the preparation of drugs and potions, often for occult purposes, and by extension to sorcery in general. Paul locates it squarely among practices that exclude their unrepentant practitioners from the Kingdom of God. This is not a secondary concern for him. It is covenant-level.
The New Testament closes with the same testimony. In Revelation 21:8, John sees those excluded from the New Jerusalem: "sorcerers" (pharmakoi) appear in the list, alongside the cowardly, faithless, detestable, murderers, sexually immoral, idolaters, and all liars. In 22:15, John repeats the warning. Sorcerers stand "outside" the city. The occult practitioner who will not repent does not enter the New Creation.
Taken together, these passages form a unanimous witness. From Moses to John, the Bible treats consulting mediums, practicing divination, communicating with the dead, channeling spirits, fortune-telling, casting spells, and related practices as forbidden. Not merely unwise, not merely ill-advised — forbidden. Across different historical settings, different genres, different cultures, different authors inspired over more than a millennium, the witness does not waver. This is one of those cases where the Bible speaks with unusual clarity, and clarity of this kind calls for listening.
· · ·
Having established the biblical ground, let us look at how an NDEr can move, often unintentionally, from a genuine spiritual experience into forbidden practice. I have found that the progression typically unfolds in five stages. Not every NDEr passes through every stage. But when the crossover happens, it usually follows this rough arc.
The experience opens the door. For many NDErs, this is the first time they have been forced to take the spiritual realm seriously. Perhaps they were nominal Christians. Perhaps they were secular. Perhaps they were "spiritual but not religious." Whatever their starting point, the NDE persuaded them, from the inside out, that reality includes far more than the material world they had been living in. Everything from this point forward is shaped by that conviction. They know — not merely believe — that a spiritual dimension is real, that consciousness survives bodily crisis, and that there are beings and places on the other side. This alone is not a problem. In fact, it is usually a good thing. It is the first step, for many NDErs, toward taking faith seriously.
Many NDErs report a heightened spiritual sensitivity after their experience.11 They describe feeling "more attuned" to unseen realities. Sometimes this shows up as increased empathy — they can sense what other people are feeling with unusual accuracy. Sometimes it shows up as sensing the presence of deceased loved ones. Sometimes as meaningful coincidences that feel charged with significance. Sometimes as unusual dreams, flashes of intuition, or a feeling of "knowing" things they could not normally know.
At this stage, interpretation matters enormously. A Christian who understands these sensitivities through a biblical lens may receive them as a deeper openness to the work of the Holy Spirit in the ordinary Christian life — the kind of spiritual discernment and attentiveness to God that is available to every believer. But an NDEr without biblical discipleship may interpret the same sensitivity as evidence that they possess new "psychic gifts." The raw experience is ambiguous. The interpretation is everything. This is why solid pastoral care matters so deeply at this stage, and why the absence of it can be disastrous.
Some NDErs, not being directed into biblical discipleship, explore. They read. They attend conferences. They join online NDE communities. They watch YouTube channels, listen to podcasts, and follow teachers. Much of this content is produced by people outside historic Christianity — by New Age teachers, self-identified psychics, past-life regressionists, energy healers, and NDE teachers whose own theology is syncretistic or post-Christian.
The explorer encounters a coherent framework. Those teachers tell them: your sensitivity is a gift. The gift is normal for people who have crossed the veil and returned. You are among the awakened. Other awakened people have developed their sensitivity into practice — mediumship, channeling, psychic reading, energy work. You could too. The framework is welcoming, affirming, and offers both identity and community.
A Christian reader might pause here and ask, "But wait — where is the church in all this?" That is precisely the right question. The tragedy is that too often the NDEr, sometimes badly received by their own church, sometimes told their experience was a hallucination or demonic, sometimes simply not encountering any pastor who knows what to do with the NDE category at all, finds themselves embraced and understood by the New Age community in a way they were never embraced by the church.12 The church's failure to receive the NDEr well is one reason the occult crossover happens as often as it does.
Exploration becomes practice. The NDEr begins to do what the teachers have been teaching. They sit in a meditation circle. They try a "channeled writing" exercise. They receive a reading from a medium. Perhaps they have experiences that seem confirmatory — a sense of the deceased loved one's presence, a piece of information that feels specific and "real." They try their hand at delivering messages for friends. The friends react with awe and gratitude. The NDEr has now stepped into the occult not as observer but as participant.
At this stage, the biblical prohibitions we walked through earlier are fully engaged. The "inquiry of the dead" has begun. A familiar spirit is being entertained, perhaps addressed by name, perhaps even welcomed as a personal guide. Whatever the subjective experience of the NDEr, the theological category is clear: this is the territory Deuteronomy 18 named as abomination.
Some NDErs turn the practice into a vocation. They become professional mediums, psychic readers, conference speakers, or teachers of these practices. They write books. They open centers. They open YouTube channels and gather followers. The original NDE becomes the origin story of a practice Scripture forbids. Marie, at the beginning of this chapter, is at this stage. The spiritual gift that once led her to hug her children has become the engine of a teaching practice that has separated her from the church of Jesus Christ.
What began with genuine light has ended somewhere Scripture warned about. This progression — from a real encounter to forbidden practice — is the primary pattern I want readers of this book to recognize and name. Not every NDEr walks it. But enough do that the church must know what it looks like and what to say when it sees it.
A hospice chaplain I know walked alongside a woman whose NDE had included a profound encounter with "the light." After her recovery, her daughter (a believer) brought her to a Bible-teaching church. Over several years, she came to understand the light she had encountered through the vocabulary of Christian faith and began naming the being of light as Christ. Her "sensitivity" she now interprets as a prompting to pray for people who come to mind. The progression toward the occult was interrupted by a community that knew how to receive her well. That interruption is available. It is what the rest of this book exists to make possible.
I want to name specific NDE teachers whose trajectory illustrates the occult crossover. My aim is not to attack persons but to evaluate the teaching — charitably, with documentation, and with acknowledgment of where I may be inferring rather than quoting. Where I cannot see into someone's heart, I will say so. What I can do is read their books and evaluate the practice they promote.
Dannion Brinkley is best known for his 1994 book Saved by the Light, which chronicles his NDE following a lightning strike, and his subsequent turn to hospice work, "future visions," and psychic ministry. Brinkley's NDE itself, as he describes it, contains many features familiar from broader NDE research — a tunnel, a being of light, a life review, and a sense of returning with a mission. Those elements, taken in isolation, need not be problematic. Many Christian NDErs describe similar features.
The difficulty with Brinkley's account lies in what he has built on it. He reports that the "beings of light" he encountered in the afterlife gave him specific information about future world events — some of which he claims have come to pass. He has developed a decades-long ministry oriented around psychic impressions, future telling, and mediumistic practice.13 Regardless of how one reads the NDE itself, the subsequent practice falls squarely under the Deuteronomy 18 prohibitions. Fortune-telling, reception of information from spirit beings identified as guides, and public delivery of that information to others all belong to the categories Moses listed.
A charitable reading is this: Brinkley has not obviously set out to deceive. He may well believe that the beings who gave him this information were benevolent and that his work is helpful. The question, however, is not whether Brinkley is sincere but whether the practice he advocates is biblically permitted. Scripture answers that question clearly. The fact that an NDE was the starting point does not change the verdict on the practice that followed.
Robert Monroe was not, strictly speaking, an NDEr. His experiences began in 1958 as spontaneous out-of-body experiences (OBEs) during sleep. He chronicled them in Journeys Out of the Body (1971) and founded the Monroe Institute, which has trained tens of thousands of participants in deliberate OBE techniques, astral projection, and what it calls "hemispheric synchronization" or "Hemi-Sync" — a proprietary audio technology designed to induce altered states of consciousness.14
The Monroe Institute's "Gateway" program has been influential across both the NDE community and broader New Age spirituality. I include Monroe in this chapter because many NDErs become interested in his work after their experience. The NDE, they reason, showed that consciousness can operate outside the body. Monroe's methods offer a way to explore that further, intentionally. From a biblical perspective, deliberate OBE cultivation is a form of seeking contact with the spiritual realm outside the means God has ordained. The practices are explicitly occult in their goals and methods. Whatever happens subjectively during these exercises — and participants often describe vivid experiences — the framework is one Scripture consistently forbids. Christians should reject it.
A number of NDErs have built teaching platforms that combine genuine NDE testimony with channeling, mediumship, or psychic instruction. Mellen-Thomas Benedict, whose 1982 NDE produced extensive cosmic teachings he continues to share, integrates NDE material with teachings about consciousness, spiritual evolution, and metaphysical science that draw heavily on New Age categories.15 Sandra Champlain, author of We Don't Die, hosts a long-running podcast that platforms mediums and explores mediumship as a natural extension of the afterlife questions NDEs raise.
None of these teachers stop with their own story. Each builds outward from the story into a teaching framework, and each framework includes elements Scripture has forbidden. My critique is not of their sincerity but of the framework. A compelling personal story does not exempt subsequent teaching from the tests of Scripture.
Evidential mediumship — the modern mediumistic movement that emphasizes verifiable details of the "evidence" a medium can produce about the deceased — has grown rapidly in the last two decades. James Van Praagh, John Edward, Tyler Henry, and a rotating cast of popular practitioners have built followings on the claim that what they do produces information no cold-reader or con-artist could generate.16
Tabatt describes watching Tyler Henry's Netflix series Life After Death with Tyler Henry, which frames mediumship as a compassionate ministry of hope and healing for the bereaved. Many of the people who come to Henry for readings are suffering, grieving, and desperate. Their suffering is real. Henry presents his service as a genuine gift offered to heal genuine pain. The packaging is sympathetic and the outcomes are sometimes emotionally powerful.17
The biblical evaluation, however, does not hinge on whether the grief is real, whether the medium is sincere, or whether the information produced is accurate. The prohibition applies regardless. Scripture does not forbid mediumship because it is fake — it forbids it because it is real contact with spirits, and the spirits contacted through forbidden practices are not safe.
Mediumship does not stand alone. It sits in a broader family of practices, all of which share the core feature Scripture forbids: the deliberate solicitation of information or presence from spiritual entities outside the channels God has ordained. Several related practices come up often enough in NDE literature and NDE communities that they deserve brief treatment here.
"Channeling" is a term popularized in the latter half of the twentieth century to describe the practice of serving as a conduit for the voice or writing of a spiritual entity — often an "ascended master," a "spirit guide," or a "higher self." The channeler may speak in an altered state, produce written material thought to originate outside themselves, or relay messages to an audience. From A Course in Miracles (dictated, according to its author Helen Schucman, by an inner voice she identified as Jesus) to Jane Roberts's "Seth" material, to Esther Hicks's "Abraham," to dozens of post-NDE figures who have taken up the practice, channeling has become a staple of New Age spirituality.36
Channeling is sometimes distinguished from mediumship on the grounds that the channeler claims to be in contact not with deceased humans but with "higher beings." From a biblical perspective, this distinction does not rescue the practice. Scripture does not limit its prohibition to contact with the dead alone. Deuteronomy 18 forbids anyone who "interprets omens, or a sorcerer or a charmer or a medium or a necromancer or one who inquires of the dead." The list is comprehensive. A spirit guide is still a spirit contacted through forbidden means. "Ascended master" is an occult category, not a biblical one. The biblical test is the same test Isaiah gave: "To the teaching and to the testimony!" If the channeled content contradicts Scripture — and uniformly it does, rejecting the uniqueness of Christ, the reality of sin, the need for atonement, or the final judgment — the source is not the Lord.
Some NDErs begin to channel after their experience. They report being contacted, in waking or dream states, by the being they identified during their NDE, who continues to offer teachings for them to share. Eben Alexander, whose 2012 book Proof of Heaven made him one of the most famous contemporary NDE voices, has in later work moved toward channeling and "consciousness research" framed in explicitly New Age categories.37 His post-NDE trajectory illustrates how a respected professional's genuine experience can become the entry point to teachings Scripture has not authorized. Christian readers who want to benefit from what is true in Alexander's account must exercise care as they evaluate what he has gone on to say and do.
The Ouija board — patented in 1890 and marketed as a parlor game — is probably the most common introduction to occult practice for ordinary Americans. It is sold in toy aisles and carried home by teenagers for sleepover entertainment. Exorcists and deliverance ministers across traditions have noted with near-unanimity that Ouija use is among the most common "entry points" for subsequent demonic oppression in the people who come to them.38 Tabatt names Ouija boards, tarot cards, and psychic consultation together as "common gateways" to demonic infestation.39
Tarot cards, runes, pendulum-reading, and automatic writing similarly function as tools by which the practitioner invites information from spiritual sources outside the biblical channels. The particular tool matters less than the intent. Someone playing with a tarot deck for fun, trying to discern the day's horoscope, or asking a pendulum yes-or-no questions is engaging — often without realizing it — in the class of practices Scripture calls divination. A Christian who has flirted with any of these should renounce them in prayer, dispose of the physical tools, and ask the Lord to close whatever door may have been opened.
The casual framing of Ouija boards as party-game fun has probably opened more spiritual doors in suburban America than any other occult practice. Scripture does not grade by intent. The practice itself is what is forbidden. If you or your children have used a Ouija board casually, it is worth asking God to close that door — not with panic, but with simple prayer and renunciation.
A rapidly growing movement in contemporary spirituality centers on the use of hallucinogenic substances — ayahuasca, psilocybin, DMT, peyote — for the purpose of spiritual experience and "entity contact." What was once the province of indigenous shamanic traditions has become a widely marketed Western practice, with retreat centers, "journey facilitators," and an entire industry of "plant medicine" tourism. Some NDErs, after their experience, explore hallucinogens as a way to access the states they experienced during their near-death episode. Others encounter the hallucinogen movement through the broader NDE community and are drawn in by shared interest in altered states of consciousness.40
Miller has written pointedly on this intersection. He notes that hallucinogen users routinely report encounters with sentient beings during their experiences — often benevolent-seeming beings who impart teachings. Advocates of "plant medicine" insist these beings are safe, wise, and helpful. But Miller presses a biblical question: how would you know? If Scripture is correct that deceptive spirits exist and that such beings habitually disguise themselves as benevolent teachers, the hallucinogenic doorway into "entity contact" is no safer than the mediumistic one. The Christian cautions Miller offers against hallucinogens include their illegality in many jurisdictions (Romans 13:1), the frequency of terrifying "bad trips" that diminish quality of life for years, the lack of biblical or creedal warrant for such practices, the biblical teaching that our bodies are "the temple of the Holy Spirit" (1 Corinthians 6:19-20), the absence of "good fruit" (Galatians 5:22-23) in the lives of committed hallucinogen advocates, and the fact that no responsible hallucinogen teacher warns participants that the entities they may encounter could be lying to them.41
A secular reader may object that hallucinogenic experiences are "just brain chemistry" and therefore harmless. Perhaps. But the same reader, if honest, will acknowledge that a great many experienced users of ayahuasca, DMT, and similar substances describe their encounters as far more vivid and "more real" than ordinary reality — and report ongoing relationships with the entities they met. You cannot have it both ways. Either these experiences are just chemistry, in which case the claims of spiritual wisdom from the journeys are empty; or they are genuine encounters with spiritual beings, in which case Scripture's warnings apply. Most of the popular framing of the movement wants the benefits of the latter interpretation without the cautions of the latter interpretation. Christians should not accept that inconsistent deal.
Finally, some NDE teachers promote specific meditative techniques designed to induce altered states and facilitate "spirit guide" contact. The Monroe Institute's "Hemi-Sync" audio programs are one widely used example. Various NDE-adjacent teachers offer guided visualizations in which the participant is instructed to meet and converse with a "spirit guide" or "ascended being." Such practices share the fundamental issue we have been discussing: they are deliberate attempts to open the practitioner to contact with spiritual beings outside any biblical framework for discernment. Whatever entities respond to such invitations are, by biblical definition, not safe.42
Christian meditation is a different practice entirely. The Christian who meditates on Scripture (Psalm 1:2), contemplates the character of God, or dwells in prayerful silence before the Lord is not opening herself to undefined spiritual contact. She is exercising disciplines directed toward the specific God who has revealed Himself in Christ. The distinction is not a matter of technique (slow breathing, quiet room, extended silence) but of object and orientation. Christian meditation has a definite target: the living God known through Scripture. The "spirit guide" meditation has an indefinite target: whatever wishes to speak. The first is a means of grace. The second is the occult crossover in gentle packaging.
This is the question I am asked most often on this topic. A grieving friend has gone to a medium. The medium produced specific, verifiable details about the deceased — Grandma's favorite song, the color of Dad's toolbox, the nickname only the family used. How could she have known? Isn't this evidence that the practice is good?
The question is serious, and it deserves a serious answer. My answer is a firm no, and the reasons are threefold.
Scripture consistently teaches that deceptive spirits exist and that deceiving human beings is one of their primary activities. "Even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light" (2 Corinthians 11:14, ESV). If Satan can impersonate an angel, his servants can certainly impersonate a deceased grandmother. Such beings have had, in many cases, extensive access to the family — their history, their habits, their emotional triggers. The "evidence" a medium produces may come from a spirit that has observed the family for years, not from the actual relative.18
Dr. Richard Gallagher, a board-certified psychiatrist on the faculty of Columbia and one of the most credentialed academic observers of demonic phenomena, has noted that in cases of possession "evil spirits are known for sowing as much confusion as they can." They habitually lie about their true nature. In his clinical experience, he has seen entities claim to be angels, then claim to be dead souls, and only eventually admit to being demons.19 Miller draws the direct implication: "Could that channeled spirit, claiming to be your deceased loved one, actually be a lying demon?"20
A Christian reader may say, "That seems too convenient — how can I know for sure?" The honest answer is that you cannot know for sure. And that is precisely the point. The person seeking to communicate with a deceased loved one is in no position to verify the identity of the being they are contacting. They are asking for information, not giving a polygraph test. The asymmetry is built into the transaction. If the spirit is a liar, the client is in no position to catch the lie.
Now suppose, for the sake of argument, that in some rare case the actual deceased person is somehow permitted to communicate. Let us grant the extreme minority case. Tabatt notes that the Samuel-at-Endor account may be exactly such a case — a genuine prophet permitted by God to return, not at the medium's initiative but by a sovereign act of God for His own purposes. Outside of such rare exceptions, he estimates that "99.9 percent of the time" the entity channeled through a medium is a demon masquerading.21
But even if some particular case were the 0.1 percent — what would that change? Scripture forbids seeking the dead regardless of mechanism. The Isaiah 8 text does not say "do not inquire of the dead unless you're confident it's really them." It says the practice is itself wrong. God's command is not contingent on the metaphysics of the encounter. This is a moral boundary, not a technical one. Even the success of the operation does not justify it.
There is also a great deal of natural information-gathering happening in professional mediumship that clients do not notice. "Cold reading" — the technique of making probabilistic guesses, asking leading questions, and reading subtle cues from the sitter — has been studied extensively. A skilled cold reader can produce startlingly "accurate" hits without any supernatural component at all. Miller summarizes the research from the Society for Psychical Research and more recent medium studies: professional mediums have sometimes been "outed as frauds" who used clever techniques, while other mediums, even under controlled conditions, produced hits no better than a modest margin over chance. Researcher Richard Hodgson, a serious and patient investigator, concluded "that nearly all professional mediums are a gang of vulgar tricksters who are more or less in league with one another."22
Miller notes that even the most famous mediums of the modern era, whose accuracy exceeded chance in controlled studies, were nowhere near reliable. "If I were to try to communicate with my deceased wife through a medium," he asks, "how could I possibly know if the communication was accurate?"23 A 2021 meta-analysis of medium studies since the year 2000 found, at best, mediums correctly identifying the right reading in about 60 percent of cases — only 10 percent above chance guessing.24 Would any jury convict on witnesses proven wrong 40 percent of the time?
Demonic impersonation, the biblical prohibition regardless of mechanism, and natural information-gathering each independently render mediumship an unreliable and forbidden practice. Together, they form a cumulative case against consulting mediums. A Christian does not need to settle which of the three applies in a given case to know that the practice itself is closed.
Before we move to the pastoral section, I want to address a related phenomenon that is often confused with mediumship but is usually something quite different. I am talking about what researchers call "after-death communications" (ADCs).
An ADC is typically described as a spontaneous experience in which a grieving person feels they have received some form of communication from a deceased loved one. The grieving wife wakes in the night sensing her late husband sitting on the edge of the bed. The grieving son has an unusually vivid dream in which his deceased mother appears and tells him she is well, and the dream carries a quality of realness he has never experienced in any other dream. The grieving daughter, walking in her deceased father's favorite woods, feels for a moment an overwhelming sense of his presence and peace. Such experiences are widely reported, including among many Christians whose theology does not otherwise make room for communication between the living and the dead.25
Are these occult? The honest answer is, "It depends on what is happening and how the person responds to it."
ADCs that come unsolicited — a sudden sense of presence, a vivid dream, an inexplicable comforting moment — are not the same as mediumship. They are not sought. They are not cultivated. They are not part of a practice. They happen to the grieving person, not through their agency. Such experiences may be genuine gifts orchestrated by God to comfort the grieving (compatible with what we read in Scripture about angelic ministry at the edges of death and mourning). They may be psychological — the mind's natural way of processing grief by generating vivid imagery of the lost loved one. They may be random events that grief reads as meaningful.26 Miller's own pastoral counsel on this is measured: "A brief goodbye experience that passively came to you, or 'I'm okay on the other side,' seems to me to be potentially encouraging and legitimate. But beware of continued conversations with the deceased, which may be demonic."27
I agree with Miller's framework. The unsolicited, brief, comforting experience should not be treated as an occult event. The person who has had such an experience should not be told they have dabbled in necromancy. They have been a passive recipient of something that may well be a mercy of God.
Where ADCs become problematic is when they are sought, cultivated, or systematized. When a person begins deliberately attempting to contact deceased loved ones, performs rituals to induce communication, consults a medium to mediate, or invites "ongoing conversations" with the departed — the biblical prohibitions apply. The category has shifted from receiving something unsought to seeking something forbidden. Tabatt's observation is apt here: a common gateway to the demonic is "consulting a psychic/medium, or some other common gateway."28 The active pursuit changes the moral landscape.
If you have received an unsolicited ADC after losing someone you love, you have not sinned. You may give thanks and set it aside. What Scripture prohibits is the pursuit — the ritual, the medium, the deliberate attempt. The grieving widow who felt her husband's presence once on a difficult morning is in a very different category than the one who begins paying $250 for monthly psychic readings.
I want to pause briefly to address a distinction some readers will want to press. Charismatic Christians affirm the present-day operation of prophetic and discernment gifts described in 1 Corinthians 12-14 and elsewhere. Cessationist Christians do not. But both agree that the Holy Spirit speaks to believers, at minimum through Scripture, prayer, and the inner work of the Spirit in the conscience. The question sometimes arises: aren't psychic "gifts" and prophetic Christian gifts basically the same phenomenon, just interpreted through different frameworks?
Tabatt tells a striking story about interviewing a psychic medium on his podcast. After the interview, he noted that some of the subjective bodily experiences the medium described while receiving communications sounded "oddly close" to what Christians operating in the prophetic experience when receiving a word from the Holy Spirit. Tabatt's reflection on this, after much consideration, was that both he and his guest were "operating under common grace principles of how God created the world." There seems to be, he concludes, "a specific way in which humans, via their spirit and another intermediary spirit so to speak, are able to connect with the supernatural." The crucial difference is the intermediary. For the Christian operating in the prophetic, the intermediary is the Holy Spirit. For the psychic medium, the intermediary is an entity the Bible identifies as demonic.29
I find Tabatt's distinction useful. The subjective experience of being attuned to unseen reality may be one natural human capacity, variously put to use. But the channel matters utterly. The Christian who prays for a brother and feels prompted to say a specific thing that turns out to be exactly what the brother needed to hear is operating within the revealed will and Spirit of God. The medium who channels a spirit guide delivering messages from the dead is operating through a different channel entirely — a channel Scripture forbids.
Readers who differ on cessationism versus continuationism can still agree on this much: nothing in the biblical framework for legitimate Christian spiritual experience includes consulting the dead, inviting spirit guides, or offering oneself as a medium for entities claiming to be departed souls. Whatever one's view of charismatic gifts, the line between them and mediumship is absolute.
A sobering note must be added here. Many Christian exorcists and deliverance ministers — from Catholic priests like Fr. Vincent Lampert to evangelical ministers to psychiatrists like Gallagher — note that consulting psychics and mediums is one of the most common entry points for demonic oppression in a person's life.30 This is not a claim that every person who ever visited a medium becomes possessed. It is a pattern observed in those who later seek deliverance: somewhere in their history, a door was opened.
Tabatt cites several former mediums and psychics who came to Christ and reported that, after conversion and repentance, the activity of the entities they had been channeling diminished significantly. Jenn Nizza, a former psychic medium, recognized after conversion that the beings she had been communicating with were demonic; after turning to Christ, the demonic activity in her life subsided. Marcia Montenegro, a former professional astrologer and psychic, reported the same pattern.31
I hesitate before writing this because I do not want to fall into the opposite error of seeing demonic infestation behind every raised eyebrow. C. S. Lewis put the balance memorably: "There are two equal and opposite errors into which our race can fall about the devils. One is to disbelieve in their existence. The other is to believe, and to feel an excessive and unhealthy interest in them. They themselves are equally pleased by both errors and hail a materialist or a magician with the same delight."32 What I am saying is this: the testimony of those who have walked this path and come out speaks of real spiritual danger, not merely theological abstraction. Taking Scripture seriously on the occult crossover is not paranoia. It is sanity.
Let us move now to the practical question. Someone you love — a friend, a family member, a fellow church member, maybe even a pastor — has had an NDE and is beginning to move toward mediumship, psychic practice, or occult-adjacent NDE teaching. What do you do? I offer five principles, each informed by pastoral practice and Scripture.
Do not play along. Do not pretend you do not see what is happening. Do not look away from the shift in your friend's bookshelf, language, or community. At the same time, do not open with a lecture. The tone of the first conversation sets the tone of many subsequent conversations.
A good first move is simply to notice out loud, with care. "Sarah, I've noticed you've been reading a lot of Dannion Brinkley lately, and I saw you mentioned you were going to a mediumship workshop. I love you, and I'm wondering if we could talk about what drew you there." A question opens the door. An accusation closes it.
When the conversation deepens, Scripture comes out — not as a hammer but as a lamp. Open your Bible to Deuteronomy 18 and read it together. Ask, "What do you think God is saying here?" Let the text do its work. Scripture has an unusual capacity to speak for itself when a believer is willing to read it honestly.
This is one of the most important moves in the conversation. Your friend's NDE may well have been genuine. The encounter with light may have been a real encounter with something from God. You are not calling her experience into question. What you are questioning is the practice her experience has been used to justify.
Naming this distinction frees the conversation. It is not an attack on her story. It is an attempt to help her see that the practice she has entered is not the only possible response to her story. The story can be honored; the practice can be repented of. Separating these two makes repentance possible without requiring the person to disown a defining experience of her life.
This is not a trite suggestion. Spiritual deception is a spiritual matter, and no amount of clever argument substitutes for prayer.33 Pray specifically. Pray for the light of Christ to break into the framework they have adopted. Pray for God to remove any spiritual entity that has attached itself. Pray for the Holy Spirit to convict, draw, and heal. Pray without their knowing you are praying, and pray with them when they will let you.
Paul reminds us that "we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places" (Ephesians 6:12, ESV). The conversation you are having with your friend is also a spiritual conversation with powers that do not want to let her go. Wrestle accordingly.
Point your friend toward the means of grace that God has actually given His people. Prayer. Scripture. The gathering of the saints. The Lord's Supper. The living community of a faithful local church. Wise pastoral counsel. A mature Christian friend who will walk with her.
One of the reasons people drift toward mediumship in their grief is that ordinary church life has not been presented to them as an actual, sufficient answer to their deepest longings. The widower Miller wrote about was not asking an idle question. He really wanted to hear from his wife. If the church has nothing to say to him except, "Stop that, it's wrong," we have failed him. If we can say, "I understand your longing. Here is what God actually offers: a living relationship with Him, who holds your wife's soul in His hand, and who promises you reunion with her at the resurrection. Here is how to pray through your grief. Here is how to receive Him in the Supper, where the communion of saints is made real. Here is the assurance of faith that is deeper than any medium's information" — now we have something to offer. The offer has to be a real offer, not a scolding dressed up as counsel.
Do not soften the biblical prohibition to preserve the relationship. At the same time, do not be harsh. Truth with love is the instruction (Ephesians 4:15). Most people who eventually come out of occult practice do so slowly. They often require several honest conversations over months or years. They often need to try other things first. They often need to see, in ways they could not initially see, that the path they were on was harming them or those around them. Patience does not mean compromise. It means staying in the conversation, being honest every time, and trusting God to do the deep work in His time.
I have known Christians who walked alongside a friend in this situation for ten years. They never agreed with the friend's practice. They never endorsed the teachers the friend was following. But they kept showing up, kept praying, kept being trustworthy. Eventually the friend returned. Eventually the door opened. Not every story ends that way, of course. Some people harden. But the posture of patient clarity, held for the long haul, is the posture Christ calls us to.
If your friend is the one drifting, you may feel helpless. You are not. Prayer, faithful Scripture reading together when they will let you, and the steady integrity of your own Christian life are spiritual weapons with real power. You are not fighting this alone. The Holy Spirit is at work. Your friend is on His agenda, not just yours.
I want to close this chapter the same way Scripture closes its treatment of occult practice — with a loud reassertion of what God has given to those who are His. The Christian is not being told "no" without being told what is instead available. The closing of the relevant passages is always positive.
Isaiah 8:19-20 did not merely forbid consultation of mediums. It said, "Should not a people inquire of their God?" The "inquire of God" is the positive answer. The Christian has access to God Himself. Not to a medium. Not to a spirit guide. Not to the dead. To God.
What does that access look like in practice? It looks like prayer — direct, unmediated communication with the Father through the Son in the Spirit. Jesus tore the veil when He died. The holy of holies is open to us. We do not need a professional intermediary to reach God, because Jesus Himself has become our Great High Priest, and through Him we "draw near with confidence to the throne of grace" (Hebrews 4:16, ESV). The medium's offer of a paid-for communication with the dead is staggeringly small compared to what God has given freely: communication with Himself.
It looks like Scripture — God's own direct revelation, preserved through the centuries, always available, always inerrant, always wise. "Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path" (Psalm 119:105, ESV). Many of the specific questions that drive people to mediums — Where is my loved one now? Are they at peace? Will I see them again? Does death end everything? — are questions Scripture answers. Not always with the detail we crave. But with the essentials we actually need.
It looks like the communion of saints — not in the sense of direct communication with the dead, but in the sense of shared life in Christ with all who have believed, across time and space. We are part of "the church of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven, and… the spirits of the righteous made perfect" (Hebrews 12:23, ESV). There is a real, though mystical, bond between the living and the faithful dead in Christ. That bond is not fed by mediumship. It is fed by worship — the worship in which the whole Church, visible and invisible, is joined together around the throne of the Lamb. When we gather on Sunday, we are not alone. The communion is real, and it is given as gift.
It looks like the ordinary means of grace: preaching, baptism, the Lord's Supper, the gathered fellowship of believers, prayer in the Spirit. These are not flashy. They are not custom-made for the individual's grief. They are what God has given. And they are sufficient.
It looks like the living hope of the resurrection. The deepest Christian answer to grief is not that we can talk to the dead now. It is that we will see them again. Our faith is not that the veil between the living and the dead can be parted by a skilled medium for a fee. Our faith is that the veil will be torn down altogether, at the bodily resurrection, when Christ returns to raise the dead and make all things new. "The last enemy to be destroyed is death" (1 Corinthians 15:26, ESV). Until then, we grieve — but as Paul says, we "do not grieve as others do who have no hope" (1 Thessalonians 4:13, ESV).
The grieving widower does not need a medium. He needs the hope of the resurrection and the God who guarantees it. That is what the church is supposed to offer him. If we offer it well, many will not need to turn elsewhere.
The medium offers a transactional, uncertain, forbidden attempt to speak with one specific departed person — for a fee, with no guarantee of authenticity, through a channel Scripture prohibits. The Christian gospel offers permanent, certain, free access to the living God, who knows where your loved one is, who is preparing a place for His people, and who will raise the dead at the last day. The two offers are not close to the same thing. They are not even in the same universe.
Let me address the most common pushbacks I hear from thoughtful readers who may find this chapter's stance too strong.
This is the classic modernist objection. It assumes that the biblical writers forbade necromancy because they mistakenly believed spirits were real, and that once we know spirits are not real, the prohibition is pointless. But the evidence runs the opposite direction. The very fact that NDErs describe encounters with entities, that mediums produce occasionally accurate information that cold-reading alone cannot explain, that exorcists in serious clinical studies observe phenomena resistant to naturalistic explanation, and that believers and unbelievers alike across cultures have reported demonic experiences — this evidence, taken seriously, pushes us toward the biblical framework, not away from it.34 Carl Sagan titled his book Demon-Haunted World as a skeptical gesture. But the data on the other side of that debate has not disappeared. The prohibition is not pre-scientific. It is a moral response to a reality science has not dispelled.
I take this seriously as a first-person report. Here is what I would say in response. The person making this claim is in no position to verify it. They have experienced something vivid. They have received some accurate information. They have drawn the conclusion that the source must be their grandmother. That conclusion is the part I am contesting.
How would you know, in principle, that the being contacted was your grandmother and not an intelligent spirit impersonating her? The being knew things? A spirit that had observed the family for years would also know those things. The being felt like her? Deceptive spirits are capable of producing experiences that feel right. The being delivered a comforting message? Deceptive spirits have every reason to deliver comforting messages if the long-term goal is to keep the client coming back. The experience was emotionally overwhelming? Emotional intensity is not evidence of identity. It is only evidence of emotional intensity.
I am not trying to be cruel. I am trying to be honest. Scripture's warnings about deceiving spirits exist precisely because such experiences are convincing. If they were easily seen through, there would be no need to warn us.
This is true in the narrow sense that the theocratic civil penalties of Leviticus 20:27 (stoning) do not apply to Christians today. But the moral prohibition of mediumship is not merely theocratic. It is moral, and it is carried directly into the New Testament. Paul lists sorcery among the works of the flesh that exclude from the Kingdom (Galatians 5:19-21). Paul exorcises the spirit of Python from the Philippian girl rather than leaving her to her trade (Acts 16:16-18). Luke reports the Ephesian converts burning their occult books as the appropriate response to conversion (Acts 19:18-19). John places sorcerers outside the New Jerusalem (Revelation 21:8; 22:15). The witness of the New Testament on this question is continuous with that of the Old.35
This is a modern liberal instinct. It assumes that all spiritual content is safe if approached with good intentions, and that the language of prohibition is itself the problem. But the biblical authors did not write as frightened provincials. They wrote as people who had observed both the pull and the consequences of occult practice across generations. Their prohibition was not reflexive fear. It was considered pastoral wisdom shaped by divine revelation. To dismiss that wisdom as oppressive, when we ourselves have spent a few decades at the frontier and already accumulated a sizeable library of casualties, seems to me to reflect an overconfidence modernity has not earned.
I answered this earlier, but it is worth reiterating. The text neither endorses Saul's act nor implies that necromancy is legitimate. What happened at Endor, on the most plausible reading, was a sovereign act of God that used the occasion of Saul's forbidden act to deliver a judgment — exactly as, elsewhere in Scripture, God sometimes uses the disobedience of others to accomplish His purposes without endorsing the disobedience. The narrator of 1 Chronicles 10 explicitly calls Saul's consultation a breach of faith and part of what destroyed him. Whatever else the Endor account does, it does not underwrite mediumship. It is, if anything, a warning.
I hear this one often from NDErs who do not identify as mediums but who have quietly begun to operate in a psychic space. The question I would ask is: what are you actually doing? If you are praying for people and asking the Holy Spirit to give you insight in order to serve them, that is within the biblical frame. If you are opening yourself to impressions from unspecified spiritual sources, if you are "tuning in" to spirits around a room, if you are receiving information from beings you think of as guides, if you are delivering messages that claim origin in the afterlife — the practice has crossed into occult territory regardless of what you call it. The label matters less than the practice. A Christian seeking the Spirit of God for discernment is different from a sensitive open to whatever spiritual entity wishes to speak. Scripture's prohibition applies to the latter.
· · ·
The occult crossover is one of the most common ways a genuine NDE goes wrong after the fact. The experience itself may have been real. The drift into forbidden practice is a separate matter. The tragedy of the drift is that it almost always carries the experiencer away from the very God whose light they encountered.
Scripture's voice on this question is unanimous. From Deuteronomy to Revelation, the Bible treats divination, mediumship, necromancy, fortune-telling, and sorcery as practices God's people must reject. The prohibition is not a cultural artifact. It is a moral boundary that Christ did not relax. The prohibition is given not because spirit contact is fake but because it is real and unsafe. Deceiving spirits exist. They have every reason to impersonate the dead, to flatter the living, to produce accurate information when accuracy serves their purposes, and to lead the sincere step by step out of the Father's house.
I have walked the reader through the five stages of the typical NDE-to-occult progression, from the original experience through the quiet drift into professional practice. I have named specific figures — Dannion Brinkley, Robert Monroe, evidential mediums — not to attack persons but to illustrate patterns. I have addressed the most common objection ("what about accurate information?") with three interlocking responses: the possibility of demonic impersonation, the biblical prohibition regardless of mechanism, and the substantial natural explanations from cold reading and related techniques. I have distinguished unsolicited after-death communications from cultivated mediumship, since the two belong to different moral categories. I have offered five pastoral principles for walking with a loved one in the drift: name the issue, distinguish experience from practice, pray, offer alternatives, and be patient but clear. And I have closed with the positive: what God has actually given His people in place of mediumship, which is nothing less than Himself.
I want to be careful, in closing, not to leave the reader with the impression that every NDEr is one step from mediumship. They are not. The great majority of NDErs never take that path. Many find their way to Christ through their experience. Many others, raised in the faith, deepen their discipleship in response to what they encountered. The crossover is real but not universal. Our discernment must be proportionate.
At the same time, I want to be honest. The drift is real and common enough that the church must know what it looks like, must know how to speak about it without hysteria, and must know how to receive NDErs in a way that gives them a home in the body of Christ before they wander off looking for one elsewhere. Many in the church have not done this well. The cost has been high. The answer is not panic; it is faithful, patient, clear, and loving biblical pastoring. In the next chapter, we will turn to another distinct stream of NDE-adjacent phenomena — encounters with so-called "star beings," alien contact, and cosmic spirituality — and apply the same framework of charitable but clear discernment to that territory as well.
For now, what Scripture says on the subject of this chapter is what it has said for three millennia: "Should not a people inquire of their God?" The question is rhetorical. The answer is yes. That is what we are invited to. And that is enough.
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