Chapter 26

When the Experience Is Real but the Interpretation Is Wrong — Correct Visions, Incorrect Theology

Imagine you are standing in a dark room. Suddenly, a brilliant beam of light floods through the window. You see it. You feel its warmth on your skin. The light is real — there is no question about that. But what is the source? Is it the sun? A searchlight? A fire? You might guess wrong about the source, but your experience of the light is still genuine. You really did see it. You really did feel it. The light was not a hallucination. But your explanation of where the light came from? That's a separate question entirely — and you could easily get it wrong.

This simple illustration captures one of the most important principles in the entire field of near-death experience research. And I believe it is the key that unlocks many of the puzzles that confuse both Christians and skeptics when it comes to NDEs. The principle is this: there is a critical difference between the experience itself and the interpretation that the experiencer places on it. An NDE can be a genuine spiritual encounter — a real glimpse of a real spiritual world — while the theological conclusions the person draws from that experience can be partially or even completely wrong.

Why does this matter? Because it resolves what many people see as an impossible tension. On the one hand, we have a mountain of evidence suggesting that NDEs are real encounters with a genuine spiritual realm. Veridical NDEs — where patients accurately report information they had no normal way of knowing — powerfully support this conclusion (see Chapter 6). The evidence is strong enough that dismissing all NDEs as mere hallucinations requires ignoring a great deal of carefully documented data.

On the other hand, some NDErs return with theological claims that clearly conflict with the Bible. One experiencer says, "All religions lead to the same place." Another says, "I am God — we are all God." Still another says, "I have lived many previous lives." If we take these theological claims at face value, they contradict the clear teaching of Scripture. So what do we do?

Many Christians feel forced to choose between two unsatisfying options. Option one: accept everything in every NDE as true, including the problematic theology. Option two: reject all NDEs as demonic or hallucinatory, ignoring the powerful veridical evidence. But neither extreme is correct. The experience-interpretation distinction gives us a third option — a biblically grounded, intellectually honest middle path. We can say, "Yes, this person genuinely encountered the spiritual realm. And no, their theological interpretation of what they experienced is not necessarily correct." This is not a dodge. It is the responsible, discerning approach that Scripture itself models for us.

Why Experiences and Interpretations Are Not the Same Thing

Let's start with a basic observation that applies to all human experience, not just NDEs. Every experience we have involves two distinct components. First, there is the raw experience — what we actually see, hear, feel, and perceive. Second, there is the interpretation — the meaning we assign to the experience, the conclusions we draw, the framework we use to understand what happened to us.

Think about it this way. Two people stand outside on a dark night and see a bright light streaking across the sky. Both of them see the same thing — a bright, fast-moving light. That is the raw experience, and it is the same for both of them. But one person says, "That was a meteor." The other says, "That was a UFO." They had the same experience. They drew very different conclusions. One of them is right; the other is wrong. But neither of them hallucinated the light. The experience was real for both of them. It is the interpretation that differs.

This distinction is not controversial in everyday life. We apply it all the time. A patient feels a sharp pain in their chest. The experience — the pain — is real. But the patient's interpretation ("I'm having a heart attack!") might be wrong. It could be acid reflux, a pulled muscle, or anxiety. The pain is real; the diagnosis might be incorrect. A good doctor takes the patient's pain seriously while still running tests to determine what is actually causing it.

The same principle applies to spiritual experiences. In fact, the Bible itself illustrates this principle repeatedly.

Biblical Precedents: When God's People Got the Interpretation Wrong

One of the clearest examples comes from the book of Acts. The apostle Peter — a leader of the early church, personally chosen by Jesus, filled with the Holy Spirit — had a powerful vision from God. In Acts 10:9–17, Peter saw a large sheet descending from heaven, filled with all kinds of animals, including ones that Jewish law declared unclean. A voice said to him, "Rise, Peter; kill and eat." Peter refused: "By no means, Lord; for I have never eaten anything that is common or unclean" (Acts 10:14, ESV).

The experience was undeniably from God. Peter was not hallucinating. This was a genuine divine vision. But notice what happened: Peter misunderstood what the vision was about. He initially thought it was about food — about dietary laws. He was confused. The text tells us plainly: "Now while Peter was inwardly perplexed as to what the vision that he had seen might mean" (Acts 10:17, ESV). It was only later, when the messengers from Cornelius arrived, that Peter finally understood. The vision was not about food at all. It was about people. God was teaching Peter that Gentiles — those Peter considered "unclean" — were now welcomed into the family of God.

Here is the point: a genuine vision from God was misinterpreted by one of the greatest apostles in the history of the church. Peter had a real experience. His initial interpretation was wrong. And it took additional revelation and further events before he understood what God was actually communicating.

If the apostle Peter could misinterpret a divine vision, how much more might ordinary people — people without theological training, without knowledge of the Bible, without the guidance of the Holy Spirit — misinterpret their near-death experiences?

We could multiply examples. The disciples heard Jesus speak about the temple being destroyed and rebuilt in three days. Their experience of hearing His words was genuine. Their interpretation — that He was talking about the physical temple in Jerusalem — was wrong. He was talking about His own body and His resurrection (John 2:19–21). The crowds heard Jesus say, "I am the bread of life" and interpreted it as a claim about literal food (John 6:35, 52). Even the disciples sometimes needed Jesus to explain what His own parables meant because their initial interpretations missed the mark (Mark 4:10–13).

The point is clear: human beings routinely experience genuine encounters with divine truth and then misunderstand or misinterpret what they have experienced. This is not a failure of the experience. It is a limitation of human understanding. And if this happened regularly with the prophets, apostles, and earliest followers of Jesus — people who had direct access to divine instruction — we should fully expect it to happen with NDErs who often have no theological training at all.

How Interpretation Goes Wrong: The Filters We All Wear

Why do people misinterpret genuine spiritual experiences? The answer is that all human beings process experience through a set of filters. These filters are not bad in themselves — they are the inevitable result of being human. But they shape how we understand what happens to us. And sometimes those filters distort the picture.

The first and most powerful filter is cultural and religious background. We all grow up immersed in a particular culture, with particular assumptions about God, the spiritual world, death, and what comes after. Those assumptions form the lens through which we interpret everything — including powerful spiritual experiences. A Hindu who encounters a being of brilliant light will naturally interpret that being through the lens of Hinduism. A Buddhist will use Buddhist categories. An atheist will resist any interpretation that involves a personal God. A Christian will look for Christ.

The second filter is personal worldview and philosophy. Even within the same culture, people hold very different assumptions about reality. A materialist who has always believed that consciousness is just brain activity may experience something profoundly spiritual during an NDE and still try to squeeze it into a materialist framework — perhaps concluding that "universal consciousness" exists rather than a personal God. The experience pushed against their worldview, but the worldview did not fully break. They bent the interpretation to fit what they already believed.

The third filter is theological training — or the lack of it. Most NDErs have no formal theological education. They do not know the Bible well enough to evaluate their experience against its teaching. They do not know the difference between pantheism and theism, between Hades and Gehenna, between general revelation and special revelation. So when they try to put their experience into words and draw theological conclusions from it, they often lack the categories they need. A person who has never been taught the distinctiveness of Christ's claims may encounter Him and not know who they are encountering. A person who has never studied the Bible's teaching about reincarnation may be shown scenes from other people's lives and conclude that they have "lived before."

The fourth filter is emotional intensity. NDEs are overwhelmingly powerful experiences. The love that NDErs describe is often unlike anything they have ever felt. And powerful emotions can overwhelm careful thinking. When you have just experienced the most intense love of your entire existence, it is natural to conclude, "A God this loving would never judge anyone." The conclusion feels right because the experience was so overwhelming. But feeling something strongly does not make the conclusion correct. A God of infinite love can also be a God of perfect justice — the Bible teaches both, and neither cancels the other.

Four Illustrative Examples: Same Experience, Wrong Interpretation

Let me walk through four detailed examples that show how the experience-interpretation distinction works in practice. These are not taken from specific individual NDE accounts but represent common patterns documented extensively in the NDE literature.

Example One: The Hindu and the Being of Light

A Hindu man in India suffers a cardiac arrest. During his NDE, he encounters a being of overwhelming light and love. The being radiates warmth, compassion, and total acceptance. The man feels known and loved. The being communicates without words — directly, mind to mind. The man returns to life profoundly changed.

When he describes the experience, he says, "I met Brahman" — the ultimate reality in Hinduism — or perhaps he identifies the being as Krishna or Vishnu. This makes sense from his perspective. The being he encountered displayed divine qualities — infinite love, radiant light, transcendent power. The only framework he has for a divine being like this is Hinduism. He has never read the Bible. He has never heard the claims of Christ. He interpreted the encounter through the only religious lens available to him.

But consider: what if the being was Christ? The NDE data from researchers like Jeffrey Long, John Burke, and J. Steve Miller consistently shows that the being of light in NDEs displays characteristics remarkably consistent with the biblical God — personal, loving, knowing, communicating, holy.¹ Miller's research on the NDERF database found that Jesus appears with surprising frequency across NDE accounts, including among people with non-Christian backgrounds.² The being's characteristics match biblical descriptions of Christ far more closely than they match the impersonal Brahman of Hindu philosophy.

The experience was real. The man genuinely encountered a divine being. But his identification of the being was shaped by his cultural and religious framework — not by anything the being actually said about its identity. The experience was genuine; the theological label was the man's own interpretation.

Example Two: The Atheist and "Universal Consciousness"

An atheist professor suffers a near-fatal accident. During her NDE, she finds herself in a realm of breathtaking beauty — light that seems alive, colors she has never seen, a sense of peace and knowledge that surpasses anything she has ever known. She experiences a transcendent reality beyond the physical world. She returns to life forever changed.

When she describes the experience, she says, "There is no personal God. What I experienced was universal consciousness — the fabric of reality itself is aware." She is careful to reject any notion of a personal deity. She does not want to "go religious." She interprets her encounter through the lens of her pre-existing philosophical commitments.

But look at what she actually experienced. The "universal consciousness" she describes communicated with her. It knew her. It loved her. It made decisions — she was sent back against her will. These are personal qualities. An impersonal "consciousness" does not communicate, know, love, or decide. What she experienced has all the hallmarks of a personal being — but she resisted that interpretation because it conflicted with her atheistic worldview.

Again, the experience was real. The interpretation — "not a personal God, just universal consciousness" — was filtered through her philosophical commitments. The data of her own experience actually contradicts her interpretation, if you listen carefully.

Example Three: The Christian and "Religion Doesn't Matter"

A nominally Christian woman has an NDE during surgery. She encounters Jesus — she recognizes Him, feels His love, is overwhelmed by the depth of His compassion. She also sees people from different religious backgrounds — a Buddhist, a Muslim, a Hindu — all present in the heavenly realm, all seemingly at peace. She returns to life and declares, "Religion doesn't matter. God loves everyone equally. All paths lead to the same place."

What was her experience? She genuinely encountered Christ. She genuinely experienced His unconditional love. She genuinely saw people from other backgrounds in what appeared to be a heavenly setting. All of this may well be real.

But her conclusion — "all paths lead to the same place" — does not follow from her experience. It is a logical leap. She assumed that because God loves everyone equally, all truth-claims must be equally valid. But this is a non sequitur — a conclusion that does not follow from the premises. A parent can love all of their children equally while still insisting that only one of them needs to take a specific medicine. A doctor can love all of their patients while still maintaining that only one treatment will cure the disease. Unconditional love does not equal indifference to truth.

Furthermore, the presence of non-Christians in a heavenly realm is not proof that "all religions are equal." It may simply demonstrate that God's love and grace extend further than we expect — which is entirely consistent with the author's own position on postmortem opportunity for salvation (see Chapter 23). God can be reaching people from every background without endorsing every religious system as equally true.

Example Four: The Experiencer and "Past Lives"

A woman with no particular religious beliefs has an NDE during which she is shown vivid scenes from other people's lives — lives set in different time periods, different countries, different cultures. She sees these lives as if she were living them. She feels the emotions of the people in them. She returns to life convinced that she has "lived many previous lives" and that reincarnation is real.

What was the raw experience? She was shown information about other people's lives. She saw vivid scenes that felt intensely real. That much may be entirely genuine.

But the interpretation — "these are my past lives" — is her own conclusion. Nothing in the experience itself requires it. She may have been shown the lives of ancestors. She may have been shown the lives of people her current life has affected, or will affect. She may have been given a broader perspective on human history. The experience of being shown other lives does not logically require that she lived those lives.

As we explored in detail in Chapter 24, the Bible firmly rejects reincarnation. "It is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes judgment" (Hebrews 9:27, ESV). There is no cycle of death and rebirth. Each person lives one life, dies once, and faces the living God. The experience of being shown other people's lives is one thing; the conclusion that you have been reincarnated is a very different thing — and it is the experiencer's interpretation, not a necessary implication of the experience itself.

Miller's Krishna Study: A Test Case for Cultural Interpretation

One of the most illuminating pieces of evidence for the experience-interpretation distinction comes from Miller's careful study of Krishna sightings in the NDERF database. If the "cultural expectation" theory of NDE interpretation is correct — if people simply see what their religion tells them to expect — then we would predict that Hindu NDErs would report seeing Krishna or Vishnu at roughly the same rate that Christian NDErs report seeing Jesus. After all, there are roughly 1.2 billion Hindus in the world and approximately 2.4 billion Christians. If NDErs are simply projecting their pre-existing religious expectations onto a generic "being of light," we would expect the ratio of Krishna sightings to Jesus sightings to roughly mirror the ratio of Hindus to Christians in the NDE population.³⁹

Miller tested this prediction by searching the entire NDERF database — which at the time contained over 5,000 NDE accounts — for mentions of Krishna. The results were striking. Out of the entire database, only four NDErs claimed to have actually seen Krishna during their NDE. By contrast, Miller's earlier research had found that approximately one in five NDErs on the NDERF site reported seeing Jesus.⁴⁰

The imbalance is dramatic. If the cultural expectation theory were correct, we would expect a substantial number of Krishna sightings. We do not find that. What we do find is a massive overrepresentation of Jesus — far beyond what cultural demographics alone would predict — and a tiny, almost negligible number of sightings of other religious figures.

What does this mean for the experience-interpretation distinction? It suggests that the "cultural lens" explanation, while real, is not the whole story. Yes, some NDErs may interpret the being of light through their pre-existing religious framework. But the data suggests that something more is going on. Jesus appears in NDE accounts with a frequency and consistency that cannot be fully explained by cultural expectation. This is consistent with the hypothesis that many NDErs are genuinely encountering Christ — and that some non-Christian NDErs, encountering the same being, are misidentifying Him through their cultural lens.

In other words, the experience-interpretation distinction cuts both ways. Some Christians may be correctly identifying the being of light as Jesus. And some non-Christians may be encountering the same Jesus but calling Him by another name — or no name at all — because their cultural and religious framework does not include Jesus as a category. The experience is the same. The identification is the interpretation. And the data suggests that the Christian identification — "this is Jesus" — has considerably more empirical support than any alternative identification.

The "Not Really Jesus" Hypothesis Versus the "Real Jesus" Hypothesis

Miller helpfully frames this discussion in terms of two competing hypotheses. The first is what he calls the "Not Really Jesus" hypothesis: when NDErs report meeting Jesus, they are not really meeting Jesus. Instead, they are projecting their preconceived beliefs onto a generic "being of light" and interpreting it as Jesus because that is what their cultural background leads them to expect.⁴¹

The second is the "Real Jesus" hypothesis: when NDErs report meeting Jesus, at least some of them are really meeting Jesus — the risen, glorified Christ of the New Testament, who remains active and present in the spiritual realm.

Both hypotheses involve the experience-interpretation distinction, but they draw very different conclusions. The "Not Really Jesus" hypothesis says the experience is real but the identification of the being is always wrong — no one is actually meeting Jesus, because the being of light is either an impersonal force or some other entity that people misidentify as Jesus. The "Real Jesus" hypothesis says the experience is real and the identification is at least sometimes correct — the being really is Jesus, and NDErs who recognize Him are interpreting their experience accurately.

Which hypothesis fits the data better? Several lines of evidence favor the Real Jesus hypothesis. First, Jesus is identified far more frequently than any other religious figure — by a wide margin — even in an international database with many non-Christian contributors. This is hard to explain if people are merely projecting cultural expectations. Second, NDErs who identify the being as Jesus often do so even when they were not previously Christian or had no strong expectation of encountering Jesus. Third, the characteristics of the being — radiant light, overwhelming love, personal communication, authority, holiness — are remarkably consistent with the biblical portrait of the risen Christ. And fourth, the fruit produced by encounters identified as Jesus is often precisely what we would expect from a genuine encounter with Christ: deepened faith, increased love, moral transformation, enhanced prayer and church involvement.⁴²

None of this proves beyond doubt that every NDE encounter identified as Jesus is genuine. As we discussed in Chapter 25, discernment is always needed. But the data strongly suggests that the "Not Really Jesus" hypothesis is insufficient. The Real Jesus hypothesis — that the risen Christ is genuinely present and active in at least some NDEs — provides a much better explanation for the overall pattern of the evidence.

The experience-interpretation distinction, then, is not a tool for dismissing all identification of Jesus in NDEs. Rather, it is a tool for careful evaluation. In some cases, an NDEr who identifies the being of light as Jesus may be interpreting correctly — they really did meet Christ. In other cases, an NDEr who identifies the being as Brahman or "universal consciousness" may be interpreting incorrectly — they encountered a personal being but lacked the framework to identify Him. And in still other cases, the being encountered may not have been Christ at all — it may have been an angel, a deceptive spirit, or some other entity. The point is that each case must be evaluated individually, using the tools of biblical discernment.

A Deeper Look: Why Emotional Intensity Skews Interpretation

I want to spend a little more time on one of the filters I mentioned earlier, because I think it is particularly important and often overlooked. The emotional intensity of the NDE is almost impossible to overstate. NDErs routinely describe their experience as more real than anything they have ever known. The love they felt was beyond anything earthly language can capture. The peace was absolute. The joy was overwhelming.

This emotional intensity has a profound effect on interpretation. When you have just experienced the most intense love of your entire existence — love that makes every earthly love feel like a shadow by comparison — it is extraordinarily tempting to draw sweeping theological conclusions. "A God who loves like this would never send anyone to hell." "A love this all-encompassing means that every religion must be equally valid." "If I felt this kind of acceptance, then nothing I have done can really be wrong."

These conclusions feel absolutely true in the moment. They are emotionally compelling. They resonate with the deep longing of the human heart for unconditional acceptance. But emotional intensity does not guarantee theological accuracy. The heart can be "deceitful above all things" (Jeremiah 17:9, ESV) — not because emotions are bad, but because emotions by themselves are not a reliable guide to truth. Emotions need to be checked against revelation. The love the NDEr experienced may be entirely real — a genuine reflection of God's character. But the theological conclusions drawn from that emotional experience may be partially or entirely wrong.

Consider a simple analogy. A father takes his young child to the ocean for the first time. The child is overwhelmed — the vastness of the water, the roar of the waves, the taste of salt, the feel of sand. The experience is absolutely real and intensely powerful. Now imagine the child returns home and tells everyone, "The whole world is water!" The child's experience of the ocean was genuine. But the conclusion — that the whole world is water — is based on the overwhelming intensity of the experience, not on accurate knowledge. The child experienced something real and drew a wrong conclusion from it, because the intensity of the experience overwhelmed the child's ability to interpret it correctly.

NDErs are like that child in many ways. They have experienced something real and overwhelmingly powerful — the love and reality of God. But the intensity of the experience can overwhelm their ability to interpret it accurately. They may conclude that "nothing can be wrong" because the love was so all-encompassing that it seemed to eliminate the very concept of wrongness. But this is the emotional force of the experience talking, not a carefully reasoned theological conclusion. The Bible teaches that God is both infinitely loving and perfectly just. These attributes do not cancel each other out. They exist in perfect harmony in God's nature. An NDE may reveal the love in a way that momentarily overshadows the justice — but that does not mean the justice is not real.

What the NDE Research Actually Shows About Interpretation

Here is something fascinating that many people do not realize. The professional NDE research literature actually supports the experience-interpretation distinction quite strongly. When researchers study what NDErs actually experience — the core elements of the NDE — there is remarkable consistency across cultures, religions, and time periods. But when researchers study what NDErs conclude from their experiences, the theological interpretations vary wildly and often reflect the experiencer's pre-existing beliefs.³

Miller made a crucial observation in his research on NDEs: experiencers who report receiving long theological lectures during their NDEs are "so rare as to be anomalous."⁴ The core NDE experience is about love, light, and the reality of the afterlife — not about systematic theology. There seems to be, as Miller memorably put it, "some gag order from the other side to the angels and deceased relatives, 'Don't get into theological discussions!'"⁵

This is a remarkable observation. If NDEs were designed to communicate a specific theology — say, that all religions are equal, or that reincarnation is real, or that there is no judgment — you would expect this theology to appear consistently and clearly in the experience itself. But it does not. The core experience is strikingly simple: God is real. The afterlife is real. Love matters above all else. You are known. You are loved. That is the message. Everything beyond that is typically the experiencer's own theologizing — their attempt to make sense of an experience that far exceeds anything their worldview had prepared them for.

When NDErs return with detailed theological systems — "all religions are equal," "there is no hell," "karma determines your next life," "we are all God" — they are almost certainly constructing these systems after the fact, building them on the genuine experience but extending far beyond what was actually communicated.⁶ Miller's point is vital: the experience was real, but the theology is the experiencer's own construction.

NDE Cases Where the Experience Seems Genuine but the Interpretation Is Problematic

Shaun Tabatt, in The NDE Conspiracy, provides several detailed case studies from the NDERF database where this dynamic is clearly visible. Let me walk through several of them, applying the experience-interpretation distinction to each.

The Case of Bristol O.

Bristol O. experienced an NDE during severe blood loss from a ruptured ovarian cyst. During her experience, she encountered an incorporeal being who described what she called "the system of the incarnation cycle" — a framework in which souls wait in stasis between physical lives, are assigned new bodies based on their prior conduct, and can be "suspended from reincarnation" if their behavior was evil enough. The being told her that if she chose to remain on the other side rather than return to her body, she would be "placed in the back of the line" and would not receive another chance at life for a long time.⁷

Tabatt makes two important observations about this case. First, the being who communicated this information was "vague and nondescript" — Bristol did not identify it as God, Jesus, or any specific divine figure. Tabatt notes that he finds this concerning: "I'm always nervous about NDE accounts where beings, especially those that the experiencer believes to be God, is vague and nondescript. If the being claiming to be God in the experience isn't readily identifying itself, I find it suspect."⁸ Second, the entire "incarnation cycle" framework is fundamentally incompatible with the Christian view that a soul lives only one life (Hebrews 9:27).

Applying our distinction: did Bristol have a genuine experience? She very well may have experienced an out-of-body episode and encountered a spiritual being during her medical crisis. The experience itself — the departure from the body, the encounter with a non-physical entity — may have been real. But the theological content she reports — the reincarnation cycle, the system of stasis, the "back of the line" framework — bears no resemblance to biblical teaching. This theology may have been communicated by a deceptive spiritual being (see Chapter 25 on demonic hijacking), or it may be Bristol's own interpretive framework imposed on a more ambiguous experience. Either way, the theology is clearly wrong — even if the experience of leaving her body was genuine.

The Case of Anne W.

Anne W. experienced an NDE during unconsciousness at the time of an apparent heart attack. She described being shown "the expansiveness of the universe" and feeling that she was "ONE with ALL THAT IS." She reported feeling "omnipresent" and "omniscient," declaring that "EVERYTHING WAS CONNECTED. I WAS EVERYTHING, EVERYWHERE."⁹

Tabatt notes that Anne's language "leans into pantheism" — the view that everything is God and God is everything. He also observes that the experiencer ascribes to herself qualities — omnipresence and omniscience — "that you would generally only use to describe God."¹⁰

Applying our distinction: Anne may genuinely have experienced a dramatic expansion of her consciousness during her NDE. Many NDErs report a sense of vastly expanded awareness and knowledge — this is a well-documented core feature of the NDE.¹¹ The experience of expanded consciousness may well be real. But the conclusion — "I am everything, I am omnipresent, I am omniscient" — is Anne's interpretation. She experienced something far beyond her normal human consciousness and concluded that she was God, or that she was the universe. A more biblically grounded interpretation would be that she was being given a glimpse — a limited, temporary participation — in God's perspective. She was not becoming God. She was being allowed, for a brief moment, to see through a wider lens. The difference between "I experienced expanded awareness" and "I am God" is enormous — and it is entirely a matter of interpretation.

The Case of Robyn

Robyn experienced a profound NDE during an overdose of anesthesia. She described leaving her body, becoming "one with all in existence," and feeling that "the purpose of human life is solely for experience and expansion." She then made a remarkable claim: "Murder, rape and cannibalism, they are all okay. Just experience to grow from." She concluded, "I am God. And so is everyone and everything else."¹²

Tabatt's response is blunt and appropriate. The claim that "murder, rape, and cannibalism are okay" is, in his words, something that "simply sounds like a lie from the pit of hell."¹³ No genuine encounter with the holy God of the Bible — the God who thundered from Sinai, "You shall not murder" (Exodus 20:13, ESV) — would produce the conclusion that murder and rape are acceptable learning experiences.

Yet even in this extreme case, the experience-interpretation distinction remains useful. Robyn may genuinely have had an out-of-body experience during her anesthesia overdose. She may genuinely have experienced a sense of expanded awareness. These aspects of the experience may have been real. But the theological conclusions she drew — pantheism ("I am God"), moral relativism ("murder is okay"), and the dissolution of personal identity — are so radically contrary to biblical teaching that they cannot be accepted. Either a deceptive spiritual being fed her this theology, or she constructed it herself from the raw material of an experience she did not have the framework to interpret correctly. In either case, the theology is catastrophically wrong — even if some elements of the experience were genuine.

The Case of Eben Alexander

Perhaps the most well-known case in recent years is neurosurgeon Eben Alexander, whose bestselling book Proof of Heaven describes his NDE during a severe bout of bacterial meningitis. Alexander describes vivid visions of an afterlife realm of great beauty, encounters with spiritual beings, and three core messages he believes he was given: "You are loved and cherished," "You have nothing to fear," and "There is nothing you can do wrong."¹⁴

Tabatt draws attention to the analysis of prominent Bible scholars who have weighed in on Alexander's account. Pastor and theologian Greg Boyd acknowledged the beauty of much of Alexander's experience but raised a pointed concern about the third message: if a divine being genuinely told Alexander that "there is nothing you can do wrong," then the being was implying that evil and sin do not exist. Boyd concluded: "If a divine agent gave this teaching to Alexander with the meaning that there is no such thing as evil and sin, then I have no choice but to conclude that this agent was demonic."¹⁵

Donald S. Whitney, professor of biblical spirituality, offered a similarly careful evaluation. He observed that in Alexander's account, "Jesus is absent and presumed non-essential," all people appear headed to heaven regardless of their sins or beliefs, and God's message in the Bible — that people need a Savior — is implicitly denied.¹⁶ Whitney concluded that while much of Alexander's description is "beautiful, stirring, and appealing," the account ultimately "does not square with the teaching of the Bible at too many crucial points."¹⁷

Applying our distinction: Alexander genuinely experienced something extraordinary during his meningitis coma. The beauty, the otherworldly realms, the profound sense of love — these aspects of the experience may well be real. But the theological messages he reports receiving — especially "there is nothing you can do wrong" — are flatly incompatible with biblical teaching. This is exactly the kind of case where the experience-interpretation distinction is essential. We do not need to dismiss Alexander's entire experience as a fabrication. But we must evaluate the theological content against Scripture — and some of it fails that test decisively.

Sabom's Research: The Experience Deepened Faith — the Theology Did Not Go Off the Rails

One of the most important empirical studies supporting the experience-interpretation distinction comes from cardiologist Michael Sabom's Atlanta Study. Sabom, a committed Christian and ordained elder in the Presbyterian Church of America, investigated what actually happened to the religious beliefs of NDE patients — as opposed to what media reports and popular NDE books claimed was happening.¹⁸

The popular narrative was that NDEs drew people away from organized religion and toward a vague, non-specific "spirituality" — often involving Eastern religion, reincarnation, and universalism. Sabom wanted to test this claim with actual data from his own patients. What he found directly contradicted the popular narrative.

Sabom's NDE patients did not move toward Eastern or universalist theology. He concluded: "A belief in reincarnation and in Eastern, universalist religion is not a direct aftereffect of near-death experience."¹⁹ Instead, his patients took their faith more seriously. Church attendance increased among conservative Christians, liberal Christians, and God-believers alike — with the greatest increase among those holding the most traditional Christian beliefs.²⁰ This increase actually reversed a prior trend of declining church attendance that Sabom found both in the NDErs before their experiences and in a control group of cardiac patients who did not have NDEs.²¹

Even more striking: of four NDErs in Sabom's study who made changes to their Christian belief system following their NDEs, all four changed "to a more conservative Christian doctrine."²² Not one moved toward liberalism, universalism, or Eastern religion. The NDE appeared to significantly strengthen intrinsic faith, meaning in life, capacity for love, and involvement in family.²³

Penny Sartori's hospital-based NDE study in the United Kingdom found a strikingly similar pattern. She reported that "all patients reported an increased tendency to pray, go to church, and read the Bible."²⁴

What do these findings tell us? They tell us that when NDErs are studied in a neutral, controlled setting — rather than through the filter of IANDS conferences, New Age bookstores, and popular media — the experience itself tends to deepen traditional Christian faith, not undermine it. The problematic interpretations — reincarnation, universalism, "all religions are equal" — appear to come not from the NDE itself but from the cultural and social environment in which some NDErs process their experiences afterward.²⁵

Sabom made this connection explicitly. He noted that the studies showing increased belief in reincarnation after NDEs were conducted among members of IANDS — the International Association for Near-Death Studies — whose conferences and publications exposed members to Eastern and New Age thought. The increase in reincarnation belief among IANDS members was, as Sabom demonstrated, "more a function of NDE research than the NDE itself."²⁶ Kenneth Ring himself had acknowledged this possibility years earlier, writing that an NDEr's "openness toward reincarnation" is "more likely to be a response to an NDEr's reading and other life experiences following an NDE."²⁷

This is the experience-interpretation distinction playing out in real research data. The experience itself — the NDE — deepened faith and produced positive spiritual fruit. The problematic interpretations came from outside influences that shaped how the experience was understood.

The Theological Framework: Why Human Interpretation Is Always Limited

Now let me develop the deeper theological reasoning behind the experience-interpretation distinction. Why should we expect human beings to misinterpret divine encounters? Several important theological principles are at work.

All Human Reception of Divine Communication Is Filtered

God communicates through many means — Scripture, creation, conscience, visions, dreams, direct encounter. But human reception is always filtered through the human mind, with all of its limitations. We are finite creatures trying to comprehend an infinite God. Even the biblical prophets — who received divine communication more clearly than anyone else in history — sometimes expressed bewilderment at what they had seen and heard. Daniel, after receiving powerful visions, confessed: "I, Daniel, was overcome and lay sick for some days. I was appalled by the vision and did not understand it" (Daniel 8:27, ESV). If Daniel was "appalled" and confused by a genuine divine vision, we should not be surprised when modern NDErs struggle to interpret their experiences correctly.

This is why Scripture is the norma normans — the "norming norm." In the history of Christian theology, this Latin phrase describes the unique authority of Scripture as the standard by which all other claims to truth must be measured.²⁸ An NDE, however vivid and life-changing, is a personal experience. It is not divine revelation on par with Scripture. The Bible is the authoritative Word of God, breathed out by the Holy Spirit (2 Timothy 3:16), carefully transmitted and preserved. An NDE is one person's encounter with the spiritual realm — real, perhaps, but partial, filtered, and subject to misinterpretation. When an NDE account conflicts with the clear teaching of Scripture, Scripture wins. Every time.

The Noetic Effects of Sin

Theologians have long recognized what they call the "noetic effects of sin" — the impact of human sinfulness on our ability to think clearly, especially about God.²⁹ The noetic effects of sin (from the Greek nous [νοῦς], meaning "mind") refer to the way sin distorts our reasoning, warps our perceptions, and makes us prone to self-deception — especially when it comes to spiritual matters. Paul describes this condition vividly: "The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned" (1 Corinthians 2:14, ESV).

This does not mean that unsaved people cannot have genuine encounters with God — the NDE data strongly suggests they can. But it does mean that their ability to correctly interpret what they experience is compromised by the very sinfulness and spiritual blindness that characterizes fallen human nature. An NDEr who has never submitted to Christ, never studied Scripture, and never been taught by the Holy Spirit is trying to interpret a profoundly spiritual experience with a mind that has been damaged by sin. We should not be surprised when the interpretation falls short.

The Limitations of Human Language

NDErs consistently struggle to put their experiences into words. They say things like, "There are no words in any human language to describe what I experienced," or "Earthly language is completely inadequate." This is significant. If the experience transcends human language, then any verbal description — and any theological conclusion expressed in words — is necessarily an approximation. The NDEr is trying to pour an ocean of experience into the tiny cup of human language. Something is going to spill. Something is going to be lost. And some of what the NDEr says will inevitably be distorted by the inadequacy of the medium.

This is not a criticism of NDErs. It is a recognition of a genuine limitation. Even the apostle Paul, when describing his own "third heaven" experience, acknowledged this: "He heard things that cannot be told, which man may not utter" (2 Corinthians 12:4, ESV). Paul — the greatest theologian in the history of the church — experienced something so transcendent that he could not put it into words. If Paul struggled, we should be very patient and very careful when ordinary people try to articulate what they experienced during an NDE.

Sabom's Case Studies: Ritchie and Eadie

Sabom provides two particularly instructive examples of the experience-interpretation distinction in his discussion of George Ritchie and Betty Eadie — two of the most well-known NDE accounts in the literature.³⁰

Ritchie described a powerful NDE encounter with a being of light he identified as Christ. But as Sabom carefully documents, Ritchie later expanded his account significantly in a second book, adding material that did not appear in the original — including a "precognitive vision" of future events that Ritchie claimed was shown to him by Jesus during the NDE itself, even though this vision was completely absent from a lengthy presentation of the same NDE published thirteen years earlier. Sabom notes that Ritchie also received additional "messages" from "Christ" during the forty-seven years after his NDE — and it became increasingly difficult to distinguish which teachings came from the NDE itself and which came from subsequent experiences.³¹

This is the experience-interpretation problem at its most acute. Ritchie's original NDE may have been genuine. But over decades, the theological content of the account grew, shifted, and expanded — incorporating material from subsequent visions, personal reflections, and evolving beliefs. What started as a report of an experience became a theological platform. And some of the theology — such as Ritchie's claim that "If God is our Father and Jesus is our brother, then we also have to be gods" — directly contradicts Scripture.³²

Eadie's case is similar. Her "Jesus" provided her with what she described as "absolute and complete" answers to major theological questions — including that "We have no right to criticize any church or religion in any way" and that "All persons as spirits in the pre-mortal world took part in the creation of the earth."³³ These teachings bear a striking resemblance to the theology of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which was Eadie's religious background. As Sabom points out: since these teachings clearly contradict Scripture — "something the biblical Christ never did" — the being who communicated them cannot be the Jesus of the Bible.³⁴

Sabom makes a vital observation: reports of religious teachings received during NDEs are very rare. In his entire Atlanta Study, not a single patient claimed to have received theological instruction during their NDE.³⁵ Kenneth Ring raised the further possibility that NDE "revelations" may not originate from information received during the NDE at all, but may result from subsequent visions and experiences that the NDEr conflates with the original experience over time.³⁶

This finding powerfully supports the experience-interpretation distinction. The raw NDE experience — the light, the love, the being, the out-of-body perception — is consistent and well-documented. The theological conclusions people build on top of that experience? Those are the experiencer's own constructions, shaped by their pre-existing beliefs, post-NDE influences, and the natural human tendency to make meaning out of extraordinary events.

Practical Application: How to Evaluate Any NDE Account

How, then, should a thoughtful Christian evaluate an NDE account? The experience-interpretation distinction gives us a clear and practical approach. Every time you read an NDE account or hear someone describe their experience, I want you to mentally separate two things.

First, identify the raw experience. What did the person actually see, hear, and feel? Did they leave their body? Did they encounter a being of light? Did they experience overwhelming love? Did they see deceased relatives? Did they go through a tunnel? Did they experience a life review? These are the experiential elements — the "what happened" of the NDE. Accept these provisionally as potentially genuine, while keeping them subject to further evaluation.

Second, identify the interpretation. What conclusions did the person draw? What theological claims did they make? Did they say "all religions are equal"? Did they claim "there is no hell"? Did they say "I am God" or "I have lived many lives"? Did they declare that "there is nothing you can do wrong"? These are the interpretive elements — the "what it means" that the NDEr has constructed on top of the experience. Evaluate these rigorously against biblical theology.

Let me offer some specific guidance. When the experiential elements of an NDE align with what we see consistently across the professional research — out-of-body perception, encountering light and love, a personal divine being, a life review emphasizing love, a sense of returning reluctantly — there is good reason to take the experience seriously. These core elements appear across cultures, religions, and time periods with remarkable consistency. They are not products of cultural expectation.

When the interpretive elements align with biblical teaching — the reality of God, the importance of love, the existence of the afterlife, the presence of Jesus, the reality of moral accountability — we can receive them with gratitude and confidence.

But when the interpretive elements contradict biblical teaching — reincarnation, pantheism, the irrelevance of Christ, the denial of judgment, the equality of all religions, moral relativism — we must recognize that the interpretation has gone wrong, even if the underlying experience was genuine. The experiencer has either been deceived by a malevolent spiritual being (see Chapter 25), or has filtered a genuine experience through a faulty theological framework, or has confused their own post-NDE theologizing with what was actually communicated during the experience.

Answering Common Objections to the Experience-Interpretation Distinction

Before we move on, I want to address a few objections that thoughtful people sometimes raise against this approach. These are fair questions, and they deserve honest answers.

Objection 1: "Isn't this just a way to cherry-pick the parts of NDEs you like and dismiss the parts you don't?"

I understand why someone might think that. But the distinction is not arbitrary cherry-picking. It is grounded in a well-established philosophical principle — that raw experience and interpretation of experience are genuinely different things. We apply this principle in every area of life. A scientist observes data and then interprets it. The data is the data. The interpretation can be wrong. A jury hears testimony and then evaluates what it means. The testimony is the testimony. The conclusion can be mistaken. In neither case do we call the process "cherry-picking." We call it careful thinking.

Furthermore, the criterion we use to evaluate interpretations is not our own personal preferences. It is Scripture — the revealed Word of God, which all Christians acknowledge as the authoritative standard for faith and practice. We are not saying, "I like this part, so I'll keep it, and I don't like that part, so I'll throw it out." We are saying, "This part aligns with the Bible, so it passes the test, and that part contradicts the Bible, so it fails the test." The standard is objective. The application is principled. That is not cherry-picking. That is discernment.

Objection 2: "If you can dismiss any theological content you disagree with by calling it 'interpretation,' doesn't that make NDEs completely unfalsifiable for a Christian?"

No — for two reasons. First, the experiential elements of NDEs can still be evaluated. If an NDEr claims to have left their body and observed specific details in the operating room, that claim can be verified or falsified. Veridical NDEs are testable. The experience-interpretation distinction applies to theological content, not to empirical claims about the physical world. Second, if the theological content of NDEs were consistently and universally anti-Christian — if every NDEr reported that Jesus is not real, that there is no God, that the Bible is false — that would be significant evidence against Christianity. The fact that the theological content is inconsistent, that many NDEs strongly support Christian teaching while a minority contain problematic elements, is itself data. And the most reasonable explanation for this pattern is exactly what the experience-interpretation distinction suggests: the core experience points toward the God of the Bible, while the variable interpretations reflect the diverse theological frameworks of the experiencers.

Objection 3: "But some NDErs say they were explicitly told things — not that they interpreted them. How can you say those are just interpretations?"

This is the most challenging objection, and it deserves a careful answer. Some NDErs do report being told specific things by the being of light — receiving direct verbal or telepathic communication. Are those messages also "interpretations"?

The answer is: it depends. If the messages are simple and consistent with Scripture — "You are loved," "It is not your time," "Go back and love others" — there is good reason to take them at face value. These messages are consistent with both the core NDE experience and with biblical teaching about God's character.

But when the messages involve detailed theological systems that contradict Scripture — a full reincarnation framework, a declaration that evil does not exist, a claim that all religions are identical — we must ask harder questions. Is the NDEr accurately remembering what they were told, or is their memory reshaping the message to fit their prior beliefs? Are they distinguishing between what they were told and what they concluded on their own? As Sabom and Ring both documented, NDErs sometimes conflate the original NDE with subsequent visions, reflections, and evolving beliefs — producing accounts that blend genuine experience with post-hoc construction.⁴³ Additionally, as we explored in Chapter 25, not every being in the spiritual realm is benign. A message that contradicts Scripture may have been communicated — but by a deceptive being, not by the God of the Bible (2 Corinthians 11:14).

The point is not to dismiss every reported message. The point is to evaluate each one carefully — using Scripture as the standard, examining the source, and distinguishing between core themes and peripheral claims.

Why This Distinction Matters for Christian Engagement with NDEs

The experience-interpretation distinction is not just an academic exercise. It has enormous practical implications for how Christians engage with the NDE phenomenon.

Without this distinction, Christians are stuck in a false dilemma. Either we accept everything in every NDE — including the parts that contradict Scripture — or we reject everything, dismissing all NDEs as demonic or delusional. Both approaches are intellectually dishonest and spiritually harmful.

The "accept everything" approach leads Christians into theological confusion. If we uncritically swallow every theological claim made by every NDEr, we will end up believing in reincarnation, pantheism, universalism, and moral relativism — all of which are flatly incompatible with the Bible. Some Christians have gone down this road, and it has led them away from biblical faith.

The "reject everything" approach squanders the powerful evidence that NDEs provide for the reality of God, the afterlife, the soul, and the truth of Christianity. As we documented extensively in Chapter 18, there are at least forty-seven points of remarkable compatibility between NDE reports and mainstream biblical teachings.³⁷ Dismissing all of this evidence because some NDErs draw wrong theological conclusions is like refusing to look through a telescope because some people have claimed to see things through telescopes that turned out not to be there. The instrument is valuable. The user can make mistakes. We should correct the mistakes — not throw away the instrument.

The experience-interpretation distinction gives us the tools to do both. We can take the veridical evidence seriously — the Maria's shoe cases, the Pam Reynolds case, the blind people who see, the children who describe relatives they never knew (see Chapters 6–9). We can affirm that the core NDE experience points powerfully toward the reality of the spiritual world, the survival of the soul after death, and the truth of substance dualism. And at the same time, we can lovingly but firmly say, "The experience you had was real. But the conclusion you drew from it does not match what God has revealed in His Word."

This is exactly the posture that John Burke, the bestselling author of Imagine Heaven, recommends. Burke writes that Christians must "be cautious to avoid building a theology (or view of God and eternity) around individual stories or details that go beyond the framework of Scripture or the core elements found in most NDEs."³⁸ Burke is not dismissing NDEs. He takes them very seriously — his entire book is built on them. But he insists that Scripture, not individual NDE accounts, is the authoritative standard for theology. NDEs provide powerful illustrations and confirmations of biblical truth. They do not replace the Bible. They do not override the Bible. And when they seem to contradict the Bible, the contradiction is almost always in the interpretation, not in the experience.

Connecting to the Broader Framework of Discernment

The experience-interpretation distinction is one essential tool in the larger framework of biblical discernment that we are developing throughout Part V of this book. In Chapter 25, we established that not every NDE is from God — demonic elements can infiltrate or hijack genuine experiences. In this chapter, we have added a second critical tool: even when the experience is genuinely from God, the human interpretation can go wrong. In Chapter 27, we will apply this distinction to the specific claim that "all religions are equal" — showing why this conclusion does not follow from the NDE data. In Chapter 28, we will examine the dark fringes of the NDE world — psychics, mediums, past lives, alien encounters — where the interpretation has gone disastrously wrong. And in Chapter 29, we will bring all of these tools together into a comprehensive biblical framework for evaluating any NDE or deathbed experience.

Together, these chapters equip the Christian reader with everything they need to engage the NDE literature wisely — neither swallowing everything uncritically nor dismissing everything fearfully, but discerning the genuine from the counterfeit, the divine from the demonic, and the experience from the interpretation.

Conclusion

The experience-interpretation distinction is, I believe, one of the most important keys to understanding near-death experiences from a biblical perspective. It liberates us from the false dilemma of uncritical acceptance versus wholesale rejection. It allows us to take the powerful evidence for the reality of NDEs seriously — the veridical perceptions, the blind who see, the children who describe things they could not have known — while still evaluating every theological claim against the authoritative standard of God's Word.

NDErs are not theologians. They are not prophets. They are ordinary people who have been granted an extraordinary glimpse of the spiritual world — and who then must try to make sense of what they have experienced using whatever framework they already possess. Sometimes that framework is adequate. Sometimes it is woefully inadequate. And sometimes the theological conclusions they draw are not just wrong but dangerously wrong.

Our task as Christians is not to mock these experiencers or dismiss their encounters. It is to listen carefully, to receive what is consistent with Scripture with gratitude, and to gently correct what is not. The experience may be from God. The interpretation may be from the human mind — with all its limitations, biases, and blind spots. Learning to tell the difference is the heart of Christian discernment.

As we move into the next chapter, we will apply this distinction to one of the most common and most troubling claims in the NDE literature: the assertion that "all religions are equal." We will see that this claim fails not only the test of Scripture but also the test of logic — and that the NDE data itself does not support it. The experience of God's love is real. The conclusion that love makes truth irrelevant? That is a human interpretation. And it is wrong.