Until We Meet Again

A Shorter Pastoral Handbook on Grief, Near-Death Experiences, Deathbed Visions, and the Christian Hope of Reunion

Condensed Edition — A 36-Chapter Pastoral Handbook with Five Condensed Appendices, for Pastors, Caregivers, and Grieving Christians

By Matthew Friend, Th.D.

This book is written for the widow who sits on the edge of her bed at three in the morning, asking a question her pastor could not quite answer: "Where is he right now? Is he okay? Can he see me?" It is written for the father standing in his daughter's bedroom three weeks after her death, staring at a stuffed animal he cannot move. It is written for the son who has been grieving his father through nine years of Alzheimer's and now grieves a different way at the end. And it is written for the pastors and elders and lay friends who love these people and want to walk with them, but who have stood at too many bedsides feeling that nothing in their training quite prepared them for the moment.

Most Christian grief books fall into one of two patterns. Some are pure theological reflection on suffering and hope — moving, but light on specifics about what has actually happened to the loved one. Others are pure pastoral hand-holding — warm, but thin on substance. Meanwhile, fifty years of careful medical and clinical research on near-death experiences and deathbed visions has been quietly accumulating, and the grieving Christian rarely encounters any of it. This handbook bridges that gap. It draws together three streams — Scripture, near-death experience research, and deathbed-experience research — and weaves them into specific, evidence-informed, biblically grounded hope for those who mourn.

The theological bedrock beneath every pastoral promise here is laid in the opening chapters. The Bible teaches a real, conscious intermediate state: believers who die go immediately into the conscious presence of Jesus Christ, awake and aware, while they await the resurrection of the body. The human person is body and immaterial soul; the soul survives the death of the body as a conscious, experiencing subject. This is not abstract metaphysics. When we tell a grieving widow that her husband is not lost, we mean it literally: his conscious self is not lost. When we tell a mother that her child is with Jesus, we mean it: her child, as a conscious person, is with Jesus right now. Every chapter rests on that foundation.

For the hardest cases — the loved one whose spiritual state was unclear, the suicide, the long dementia, the child, the sudden and traumatic loss, the unbeliever — the book refuses both false certainty and grim resignation. It lays out, with patristic and contemporary support, the biblically defensible hope of postmortem opportunity: that the God who is love does not stop pursuing the lost when they stop breathing, and that every unsaved person will receive a genuine, personal encounter with God in the dying process, in the intermediate state, or at the final judgment. This is not wishful thinking. It is a position held by Clement of Alexandria, Origen, and Gregory of Nyssa, and by serious contemporary evangelicals (Beilby, Walls, Pinnock, Tiessen, Jonathan). The book does not require the reader to adopt it. It lays it out as a real, warranted source of hope.

The middle sections move through the evidence: reunion with deceased loved ones in NDEs and deathbed visions; encounters with Jesus reported by the dying and the resuscitated; the peaceful deaths of believers; terminal lucidity and shared death experiences; what it means when your loved one died without you there; and what the evidence offers in the hardest pastoral cases. Later sections turn to the reader's own experience — for those who have had an NDE, who have sensed the presence of the deceased, who carry continuing bonds with someone they have lost — and to the pastor's toolkit: ministering at the bedside, preaching the funeral, walking with the bereaved through the long second year, grief in children and teens, complicated grief, and building a church culture that does not forget the bereaved when the casseroles stop. The closing chapters return to the bigger story: the resurrection of the body, the recognition of loved ones in the life to come, and how the Christian hope of reunion transfigures the rest of life.

The voice throughout is pastoral. The scholarship is in service of pastoral care, never displayed for its own sake. Turabian footnotes are present in every chapter; technical terms are defined in plain English on first use; nothing is too dense to read through tears. Each chapter is self-contained — the reader can begin where her grief most needs her to begin and read in any order. There is no wrong way to read this book. Stop where you need to stop. Weep where you need to weep. The hope here is real. The hope is grounded. The hope is for you.

Part I — Foundations for Hope

The biblical, theological, and research-level groundwork on which the rest of the book stands — the conscious intermediate state, the surviving soul, and a careful primer on NDEs and deathbed visions.

1. Ch. 1 Introduction — Why This Book Exists: Grief, Hope, and the Evidence You Haven't Heard Why most Christian grief books fail the bereaved at the very point where they most need a real answer, and the case that Scripture joined with careful NDE and DBE research provides specific, warranted hope rather than generic comfort. Previews the three streams of evidence the book will draw on and closes with Paul's teaching in 1 Thessalonians 4 that Christian grief is real grief that is also hopeful grief.
2. Ch. 2 What the Bible Says About Death and the Conscious Intermediate State A careful exegetical case that the believing dead are not asleep but consciously with Christ right now. Steel-mans soul sleep and then engages it through close readings of Luke 23:43, 2 Corinthians 5:1–8, Philippians 1:21–23, and Revelation 6:9–11, with confirming witnesses in Luke 16, Hebrews 12, and Luke 23:46 — and shows why the answer matters pastorally, not just theologically.
3. Ch. 3 The Soul That Survives — Substance Dualism for the Grieving Heart Why the doctrine that the human person is body and immaterial soul is the bedrock beneath every Christian promise of reunion. Lays out the biblical, philosophical, and pastoral case against Christian physicalism and certain conditional-immortality physicalist alternatives, so that pastors can tell grieving families their loved one, as a conscious person, has not ceased to exist.
4. Ch. 4 What Near-Death Experiences Are (and What They Are Not) — A Primer A clear, discerning primer for the Christian reader suspicious of "heaven tourism" and unsure what to make of fifty years of medical research. Introduces the core features — out-of-body awareness, the being of light, life review, encounters with deceased loved ones — distinguishes peer-reviewed work (Greyson, van Lommel, Long, Parnia, Sabom) from popular sensationalism, and lays the groundwork for the book's careful, discerning use of NDE evidence throughout.
5. Ch. 5 What Deathbed Visions Are — A Primer for Families and Pastors A primer on the deathbed experiences pastors and families actually witness in their own hospice rooms — DBVs, nearing-death awareness, terminal lucidity, shared death experiences. Draws on Barrett, Osis and Haraldsson, Fenwick, Callanan and Kelley, Kerr, Peters, and Miller to explain how common DBEs are (50–90% of dying hospice patients), how to distinguish them from medication-induced hallucination, and how to receive them with belief, attention, and discernment.

Part II — What the Evidence Says About Your Loved One

The pastoral payoff of the book's central evidential thread — what Scripture, NDE research, and deathbed-experience research together say to the bereaved about the loved one they have lost.

1. Ch. 6 "Are They Okay?" — The Question Behind Every Grief The unspoken question beneath every grief, and the layered Christian answer it deserves — rich and specific for the believing dead, honest and hopeful for the dead whose faith was uncertain. The chapter shows the pastor how to give a grieving father in his daughter's empty bedroom something better than "we just don't know."
2. Ch. 7 Reunion with Loved Ones Who Have Died — The NDE and DBE Evidence "Will I see him again?" One of the most consistent features of both NDE and DBE research is reunion — deceased loved ones appearing to greet, comfort, and welcome the dying. Treated here not as sentimentality but as one of the strongest evidential threads supporting the biblical promise that those who die in Christ are not alone and that recognition and personal relationship survive death.
3. Ch. 8 The Deathbed Vision of a Deceased Relative How families should receive the well-documented vision of the dying loved one — Mom, Dad, a sibling, a grandparent — appearing at the bedside to greet them. Neither morphine nor confusion but, with discernment, a real sign that the dying are not alone and that those who have gone before may be part of how God meets us at the end.
4. Ch. 9 Jesus Meets the Dying — Encounters with Christ in NDEs and DBEs The single most pastorally significant pattern in NDE and DBE research: across thousands of accounts — including from those who did not believe in Him, did not expect Him, and could not have wished Him into the experience — the figure encountered at the threshold of death is often clearly identified as Jesus Christ. For grieving Christians, this is the deepest comfort the evidence can offer.
5. Ch. 10 The Peace That Passes Understanding — Peaceful Deaths of Believers The centuries-old, hospice-corroborated pattern of Christians dying with a peace, clarity, and even joy that defies their physical suffering. The chapter holds the evidence carefully — not promising every believer such a death, but showing the pattern is real, and that the believer's death is not abandonment but a meeting.
6. Ch. 11 Terminal Lucidity, Shared Death Experiences, and the Dignity of Dying Two of the most striking phenomena in deathbed research — terminal lucidity (the unexpected return of clarity in dementia patients near death) and shared death experiences (when bedside family report sharing aspects of the dying person's experience) — and what they suggest about the dignity of the human person and the reality of something happening at the threshold that brain biology alone cannot explain.
7. Ch. 12 When Your Loved One Died Without You There For the bereaved who carry the particular ache of having been absent — the hospital call that came too late, the moment they stepped out for coffee, the death that happened during a flight or a phone call. The chapter addresses this wound directly with biblical truth and pastoral honesty: your loved one was not alone, and your absence did not abandon them.

Part III — The Hardest Cases

The losses that resist easy comfort — the unbeliever, the child, the suicide, the sudden trauma, the long dementia, the unfinished caregiving, the unclear spiritual state, and the frightening experience.

1. Ch. 13 When Your Loved One Was Not a Believer — Hope and Postmortem Opportunity The hardest question in Christian grief — "Will I see them again?" when "they" did not visibly believe — and the biblically defensible hope of postmortem opportunity. The chapter argues that the God who is love does not stop pursuing the lost when they stop breathing, drawing on Scripture, the patristic descent-of-Christ tradition, and contemporary scholars (Beilby, Walls, Pinnock, Jonathan, Tiessen) to offer real, warranted hope without false certainty.
2. Ch. 14 The Death of a Child — From Miscarriage to Adulthood The grief that does not heal cleanly. The chapter gives Christian parents both unflinching pastoral honesty about the depth of the wound and the specific, biblically grounded hope that their child is held by God — through David's words in 2 Samuel 12:23, through Jesus' welcome of children, and through the witness of a God whose mercy reaches where words cannot.
3. Ch. 15 The Suicide of a Loved One — Grief, Questions, and Hope Suicide loss — grief compounded by guilt, theological confusion, and stigma — and the specific biblical, theological, and pastoral grounds for real hope it deserves. The chapter responds to both the harsh ("they are damned") and the vague ("we just don't know") with a careful, honest framework that honors the depth of the wound and the love of a God who knows what mental anguish is.
4. Ch. 16 Sudden and Traumatic Death — No Time to Say Goodbye When death comes by accident, heart attack, or violence — with no goodbye — and grief is layered with shock, trauma, and the unfinished. The chapter helps the bereaved name the particular wound of sudden loss, hold the unfinished last conversation, and find biblical truth and grounded hope to walk through it.
5. Ch. 17 Death After Dementia, Alzheimer's, or Cognitive Decline For families who have walked the long road of dementia, and the haunting question — "Was she still herself? Did she know me at the end? Where is the person I loved?" The chapter offers theological, pastoral, and research-grounded hope (Swinton, terminal lucidity research, careful substance-dualist anthropology) that the soul of your loved one was never lost even when the brain could no longer express her.
6. Ch. 18 Anticipatory Grief — Caring for a Dying Loved One The months and weeks of caring for a dying loved one as themselves a form of grief — and a sacred form of love. The chapter helps the caregiver name what they are carrying, sustain themselves through exhaustion, and hold their loved one well to the end, with practical wisdom for the long bedside vigil and the kitchen at midnight.
7. Ch. 19 When You Don't Know Their Spiritual State For the bereaved Christian who cannot say where her loved one stood spiritually — the silent years, the missed conversation, the profession of faith that may or may not have been real. The chapter refuses both false certainty and grim resignation, offering a framework of biblical hope, honest humility, and trust in a God whose love is wider than our knowledge.
8. Ch. 20 Distressing NDEs and Frightening Deathbed Experiences The minority of NDE and DBE accounts that are dark, fearful, or troubling. The chapter addresses these honestly, neither dismissing them as merely psychological nor sensationalizing them as direct revelations of hell, and offers the bereaved and the experiencer a careful, biblically grounded framework for understanding what such experiences may and may not mean.

Part IV — When You (or Someone You Love) Has an Experience

For readers who have had a near-death experience themselves, or have sensed the presence of someone they have lost, or have continuing-bonds experiences they have not known how to tell their pastor about.

1. Ch. 21 You Had an NDE — and Your Church Doesn't Know What to Do For the reader who has had a near-death experience and returned to a church unsure what to do with it. The chapter speaks directly to the Christian NDE experiencer, offering integration, discernment, and a framework for living faithfully in light of what they have seen — without isolation, without suppression, and without losing either the experience or the faith.
2. Ch. 22 After-Death Communications — The Research and a Christian Understanding After-death communications (ADCs) — the experiences of bereaved persons sensing, seeing, hearing, or otherwise being contacted by their deceased loved ones — are widely reported. The chapter offers an honest, careful framework: respecting the research (Guggenheim, LaGrand), distinguishing biblical from unbiblical interpretations, and navigating discernment without paranoia.
3. Ch. 23 "I Saw My Mother After She Died" — Sensing the Presence of the Deceased The most common after-death communication is the simplest — the sense of the deceased's presence in a kitchen, in a quiet moment, at a meaningful place. Well documented in grief research and consistent (with discernment) with Christian faith. The chapter helps the bereaved name the experience without fear and without overinterpretation.
4. Ch. 24 Continuing Bonds — A Christian Theology of Ongoing Connection The contemporary grief research of Klass, Silverman, and Nickman has overturned the older "stages of grief" model: the bereaved do not "let go" of their dead but reshape their relationship with them. The chapter offers a Christian theological grounding for continuing bonds through the communion of saints, the unity of the body of Christ, and the love that does not die.
5. Ch. 25 Discernment — A Red-Flag Guide for Pastors and Families A working framework for evaluating NDEs, deathbed visions, sensed presences, and after-death communications. Christians need discernment without paranoia — not every experience is from God; not every experience is demonic. Biblical markers, content questions, and fruit tests for evaluating experiences without either credulity or fear.
6. Ch. 26 When an Experience Doesn't Fit Scripture — A Framework for Honest Engagement When an experience contains content that does not fit easily within biblical Christianity. Rather than dismissing the experience whole or accepting it uncritically, the chapter offers a framework for honest engagement: keeping what aligns with Scripture, testing what does not, and trusting Scripture as the final norm — without forcing the experiencer to suppress or reject what was clearly real.

Part V — The Pastor's Toolkit

Practical equipment for the pastor or caregiver — at the bedside, in the funeral pulpit, across the long second year, with children and teens, and in the building of a congregation that does not forget the bereaved.

1. Ch. 27 Ministering at the Bedside A practical theology of presence at the bedside — what to do, what to say, what to read, what to pray, and how to be still. The chapter equips pastors and caregivers for the sacred work of accompanying a saint to the threshold, including silent presence, Scripture and prayer at the bedside, ministry to the family, and the unhurried final hours seminary did not quite prepare them for.
2. Ch. 28 Preaching the Funeral The funeral sermon — one of the most consequential pastoral acts. A working framework for preaching funerals that are faithful, hopeful, and honest: comforting the bereaved, honoring the dead, and proclaiming Christ without lying about the deceased and without retreating into platitudes — including how to handle the hardest case, when the deceased's faith was unclear or contested.
3. Ch. 29 Walking with the Bereaved — First Days, Months, and Years Most grief care fails in the months after the funeral, when the casseroles stop and the long quiet desert begins. The chapter outlines a practical framework for sustained pastoral and lay companioning of the bereaved — first days, first weeks, first months, first year, second year — with specific guidance on what the bereaved need at each stage.
4. Ch. 30 Grief in Children and Teens Grieving children and teens are often the forgotten mourners — assumed "resilient" while the adults focus on the surviving spouse or parent. The chapter equips parents, pastors, and caregivers to walk with grieving young people honestly, age-appropriately, and with the long view of how childhood loss shapes the rest of a life.
5. Ch. 31 When Grief Doesn't Fade — Complicated Grief and Anniversary Grief Most grief follows a long but recognizable trajectory. Some does not. Complicated grief — now formalized in DSM-5-TR as Prolonged Grief Disorder — is grief that has become stuck. The chapter equips pastors and caregivers to recognize when grief is no longer doing its work, when to refer, and how to support the bereaved through anniversaries, holidays, and the years when the loss does not soften on schedule.
6. Ch. 32 Building a Grieving Church Most local churches are not equipped to walk with the bereaved across the long haul — the funeral is well-attended, but the second year is forgotten. The chapter offers a working framework for building a culture of grief care across a congregation, through liturgy, lay ministry, training, and structures that do not depend on the pastor's memory alone.

Part VI — The Bigger Story

The book's final movement — the resurrection of the body, the recognition of loved ones, the transfiguring effect of grounded hope on the rest of life, and a pastoral close.

1. Ch. 33 The Resurrection — The Final Reunion The Christian hope is not finally an immortal soul drifting eternally in heaven. The Christian hope is the resurrection of the body and the renewal of all things. The chapter brings the book's hope to its biblical climax: the intermediate state is the between-time; the final state is bodily resurrection, recognizable persons reunited in a renewed creation.
2. Ch. 34 Will I Recognize Them? Identity, Relationships, and the Life to Come "Will I recognize them?" The biblical answer is yes. Resurrected persons are recognizable persons. The chapter explores what Scripture teaches about continuity of identity, relationship, and personal love through death and resurrection — with pastoral honesty about what we know, what we do not, and how marriage and family relationships are transformed (not erased) in the life to come.
3. Ch. 35 Living in Hope — How This Hope Changes How We Live Christian hope is not escapist. The grieving Christian who has touched real, biblically grounded hope walks the rest of her years differently — loving more deeply, fearing death less, holding the world more loosely, serving more freely. The chapter explores how the hope of reunion transfigures rather than erases grief, and changes the rest of life.
4. Ch. 36 Conclusion — Until We Meet Again The book closes where it began — with the grieving Christian and the question of hope. The hope is real. The hope is grounded. The hope is for you. Until we meet again is not a sentimental closing line; it is a Christian promise, anchored in Christ, attested by Scripture, corroborated by careful research, and given to the bereaved as the church's settled inheritance.

Appendices

Reference materials supporting the pastoral work of the main chapters — a Scripture index, a pastoral conversation guide, an annotated resource list, a glossary, and a quick-reference for the hardest pastoral cases.

1. App. A Scripture Index on Death, the Intermediate State, Reunion, and Hope A topical Scripture index organized by theme — death and the dying process, the conscious intermediate state, the soul and substance dualism, Christ's presence with the dying and dead, God's universal salvific desire, postmortem opportunity, the death of children, the resurrection of the body, recognition and reunion, comfort for the grieving, Christ as sympathetic high priest, lament, discernment, and biblical warnings. Each entry includes brief ESV text and a one-sentence note on pastoral relevance.
2. App. B Pastoral Conversation Guide for the Bedside, Funeral, and First Year A practical, FAQ-style guide for pastors covering the most common questions across the grief journey — at the bedside, immediately after death, funeral planning, first weeks, first months, first year, beyond the first year, and the hardest questions ("Was she saved?", "Why did God let this happen?", "Is my suicide-loss loved one in hell?", "I'm angry at God — is that sinful?"). Each entry is a paragraph or two on what to say, what not to say, and where to turn for deeper treatment.
3. App. C Annotated Resource List for Grieving Christians, Pastors, and Caregivers A curated, annotated bibliography across nine categories — Christian grief classics (Guthrie, Sittser, Keller, Lewis), books on heaven and the intermediate state (Alcorn, Wright, Walls), substance dualism and the soul (Cooper, Moreland, Farris), postmortem opportunity (Beilby, Jonathan, Walls), NDE research (Greyson, van Lommel, Long, Burke, Miller), deathbed research (Callanan and Kelley, Kerr, Moody, Peters, Miller), continuing bonds and ADCs, grief science, specialty resources, and organizations.
4. App. D Glossary of Key Terms A working glossary of approximately fifty essential terms — theological (intermediate state, substance dualism, postmortem opportunity, conditional immortality, paradise, Hades, communion of saints), biblical-language (nephesh, ruach, psyche, pneuma, aionios), NDE/DBE research (out-of-body experience, life review, terminal lucidity, shared death experience, after-death communication, Peak in Darien), and pastoral-clinical (anticipatory grief, ambiguous loss, complicated grief, lament). Each defined in one or two sentences of plain English.
5. App. E Hard Cases Quick Reference A quickly navigable reference for twenty specific difficult pastoral situations — death of a child, miscarriage and stillbirth, suicide, sudden and traumatic death, death after long dementia, death of a loved one with unclear faith, death of one who rejected Christ, anticipatory grief, loss of a parent, spouse, sibling, child to overdose, loved one from another religion, complicated grief, family estrangement at death, acute suicidality in the bereaved, congregation-wide grief, mass-casualty events, military combat death, and death of a child with disability.