A Quick Reference for Evaluating Any NDE or DBE
A friend calls you, breathless. Her grandmother just died last night, but the day before, she sat up in bed, smiled at someone across the room, and said, "Daddy! You came." Your friend wants to know if that was real — was it Jesus? Her father? An angel? A hallucination? She is not asking for a seminary lecture. She is asking for help, right now, in a hospital chapel.
Or: a coworker hands you a paperback over lunch. He says it changed his life. The cover shows a beautiful tunnel of light. The author was clinically dead for forty minutes and met "the Source." Your coworker wants to know what you think. You have ten minutes before you both head back to your desks.
This appendix exists for those moments. It is a single, structured checklist that operationalizes everything the rest of the book has developed — especially the seven-test framework introduced in Chapter 101 — into a tool you can actually use under time pressure. The checklist is not a substitute for prayer, the Holy Spirit, or the slow work of discernment over time. It is a scaffold. It helps you make sure you have asked the questions that need to be asked before drawing a conclusion you might later regret.
Walk through the seven stages in order. Some questions will not apply to every account; skip them. By the time you finish, you should be able to place the experience in one of the five "Final Verdict" categories at the end. If you cannot, that itself is useful information: hold the account loosely, keep watching, and pray.
Before you spend energy evaluating an account, ask whether the account is even worth evaluating in detail. Many NDE stories on the internet are fragments, rumors, or third-hand summaries that have been re-told so many times that the original details are lost. A foundation check filters out reports that cannot be evaluated responsibly because the source itself is unreliable.
If the account fails this stage badly — anonymous internet post, no verifiable source, contradictory details — you can stop here. You are not obligated to evaluate every story you hear. Tabatt rightly notes that a great deal of what circulates as NDE content online is unverified, sometimes deliberately exaggerated for clicks.2
This is the heart of the checklist. The seven tests are developed in full in Chapter 10; what follows are the diagnostic questions in compact form. For each test, ask yourself: does this account give me reason for confidence, reason for concern, or mixed signals?
Does the experience point toward or away from the specific, incarnate, crucified, risen Jesus Christ of the New Testament?3
Does the content cohere with the core doctrines of biblical Christianity as summarized in the ancient creeds?
Does the experience call the experiencer toward holiness, repentance, and moral responsibility — or toward moral relativism and self-divinization?
Does the experience lead the experiencer toward the church — the body of Christ, the worshipping community, ordinary means of grace — or away from it?
Over the long run, does the experience produce the fruit of the Spirit (Galatians 5:22–23) in the experiencer's life? Jesus Himself anchored discernment in this test: "you will recognize them by their fruits" (Matthew 7:16, ESV).5
Does the experience fit the patterns of genuine biblical encounters with God, or the patterns Scripture associates with deception?
Considering the experiencer's overall trajectory — belief, practice, relationships, witness, long-term fruit — does the experience belong to the kingdom of God, or to something else?
Most NDE accounts will pass some tests cleanly and raise concerns on others. This is the hybrid pattern discussed in Chapter 17. A mixed result is not a license to dismiss the experience or to embrace it uncritically. It is a call to evaluate each element separately rather than the experience as a single yes/no package.
Some content categories appear so often in problematic NDE reports that they deserve their own quick scan. If any of the following appear, evaluate carefully with reference to the indicated chapters before drawing a conclusion.
The presence of one of these elements does not automatically mean the entire experience was demonic or fabricated. As Miller carefully argues, even genuine encounters can be filtered through the experiencer's worldview and produce mistaken interpretations.6 But these elements are red flags. They demand scrutiny rather than acceptance.
Just as there are red flags, there are green flags. Positive indicators do not prove an experience was genuine, but they raise the probability significantly. Walk through these and note which apply.
Genuine NDErs and DBErs are often the last people to want a platform. They are reluctant. They puzzle over what happened. They cry. They want to follow Jesus more, not become an NDE celebrity. Sabom's Atlanta Study patients are a good example: deeply marked, but rarely seeking the spotlight.8 Watch for this kind of humility. It is one of the most reliable positive indicators.
If the account comes from a known teacher or published author, the seven tests can be applied not only to the original experience but to the author's body of work over time. Many NDErs whose original accounts were broadly biblical have drifted theologically in the years since. Others were problematic from the start.
An author who once wrote a beautiful, Christ-centered NDE testimony but now teaches that "all religions lead to the same light" should be evaluated as they are now, not as they were thirty years ago. The opposite is also true: an author who began under suspicion but has demonstrably grown into biblical maturity should be received accordingly.
Most NDE accounts are not fabricated. But some are. This stage is a quick scan for the warning signs developed in Chapter 32. Fabrication is not the most common problem with NDE literature, but it is the most damaging because it discredits genuine experiences when it is exposed.
The Alex Malarkey case remains the canonical example of fabrication exposed. Malarkey himself eventually said publicly that he had not died, had not been to heaven, and had said what he said because he wanted attention.9 Every Christian engaging this literature should know that case and apply its lessons charitably to others.
The previous stages are largely cognitive — they evaluate content. This stage asks a different kind of question: what is my relationship to this person, and what is the loving thing to do with what I have concluded?
The checklist is most often misused when it is wielded against a grieving person. A bereaved widow who says her husband saw Jesus in his last hour does not need a doctrinal interrogation. She needs the comfort of Christ. The checklist is for your evaluation, not for hammering the experiencer. Apply it inwardly. Speak with gentleness outwardly. Truth and tenderness travel together.
After working through the seven stages, you should be able to place the account into one of five categories. None of these is a final pronouncement on the experiencer's eternal state — only God reads hearts. They are working judgments about the experience and the way to engage it.
This checklist is a tool, not a verdict machine. It cannot read hearts. It cannot replace the Holy Spirit. It will not turn an inattentive Christian into a discerning one, and a careful Christian does not need the checklist for every conversation — they are already running it internally.
Spiritual discernment is finally a gift of the Spirit (1 Corinthians 12:10) given to a praying, Scripture-saturated, humble heart. The checklist structures the evaluation; it does not replace the evaluator. As Cooper and other careful theologians have insisted, the Christian's confidence in evaluating extraordinary experiences rests not on technique but on the sufficiency of God's revelation in Scripture and the indwelling presence of the Spirit who illumines it.11
Use this checklist as a friend uses a map: as a guide that helps you not to get lost, while remembering that the territory itself is what you are walking through. The territory is the actual story of an actual person who has, perhaps, glimpsed something most of us have not yet seen. Treat them with care. Test the spirits. Hold fast to what is good (1 Thessalonians 5:21). And trust the Lord — who is more committed to His people's discernment than we are — to lead you through the conversation in front of you.
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Soli Deo gloria.
Burke, John. Imagine Heaven: Near-Death Experiences, God's Promises, and the Exhilarating Future That Awaits You. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 2015.
Cooper, John W. Body, Soul, and Life Everlasting: Biblical Anthropology and the Monism-Dualism Debate. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2000.
Farris, Joshua R. An Introduction to Theological Anthropology: Humans, Both Creaturely and Divine. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2020.
Long, Jeffrey. God and the Afterlife: The Groundbreaking New Evidence for God and Near-Death Experience. New York: HarperOne, 2016.
Miller, J. Steve. Deathbed Experiences as Evidence for the Afterlife, Volume 1: A Groundbreaking, Scientific Apologetic. Acworth, GA: Wisdom Creek Press, 2021.
Miller, J. Steve. Is Christianity Compatible with Deathbed and Near-Death Experiences? The Surprising Presence of Jesus, Scarcity of Anti-Christian Elements, and Compatibility with Historic Christian Teachings. Acworth, GA: Wisdom Creek Press, 2023.
Sabom, Michael. Light and Death: One Doctor's Fascinating Account of Near-Death Experiences. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1998.
Tabatt, Shaun. The NDE Conspiracy. Shippensburg, PA: Destiny Image, 2025.