The Sean McDowell Show - 80% of the Dying Report Deathbed Visions: How Do We Minister to Them?

Episode Date: October 18, 2024

Visionary experiences of God and the afterlife are all around us. According to some studies, MOST people will experience one before death. If this kind of experience is so prevalent, then we need to be talking about it more–both within the church and outside the church. To talk about how to minister to people who have experienced an NDE or a deathbed experience, I bring back Dr. Steve Miller, author of 4 books on the subject. READ: Deathbed Experiences as Evidence for the Afterlife, Vol 1 (https://amzn.to/3MaP7c7) *Get a MASTERS IN APOLOGETICS or SCIENCE AND RELIGION at BIOLA (https://bit.ly/3LdNqKf) *USE Discount Code [SMDCERTDISC] for 25% off the BIOLA APOLOGETICS CERTIFICATE program (https://bit.ly/3AzfPFM) *See our fully online UNDERGRAD DEGREE in Bible, Theology, and Apologetics: (https://bit.ly/448STKK) FOLLOW ME ON SOCIAL MEDIA: Twitter: https://twitter.com/Sean_McDowell TikTok: @sean_mcdowell Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/seanmcdowell/ Website: https://seanmcdowell.org

13 million Americans have had a near-death experience. Over 80% of the dying in a New York hospice facility report deathbed visions, visiting with deceased relatives, angels, etc. If these studies are accurate, most of us will experience some kind of visionary experience before death. The New York Times even recently had an op-ed about increased interest and attention in this topic from the medical community. Well, I've covered near-death experiences and deathbed experiences multiple times in this program. We've never discussed, nor have I seen, a helpful guide for responding to people who have experienced one personally. This promises to be a unique

contribution to the ongoing discussion about near-death experiences. And so to do this, I invited back for the sixth time, my friend and scholar, Dr. Steve Miller. Now, Steve, you and I have talked about the evidence for near-death experiences, hellish near-death experiences, the claim that near-death experiences point towards universalism and others. I've had leading experts in the field like Dr. Sabom, Dr. Long, John Burkhan, but this is a unique angle. So why is this so important? And when I asked you other topics we could discuss, you said, I'd like to just do a video ministering to people who've had near-death experiences, and then to help those who have not better minister to those who have.

So why is this angle so important? Well, as you've just introduced, these are so widespread. I mean, if you're dealing with widespread anxiety among young people, you need to know how to deal with young people with anxiety, right? If something is widespread, we need to know how to deal with it. If we really care about people and want to minister to them and learn from them, if they've had experiences different from us. But you mentioned the one in 25 reporting near-death experiences. Let's broaden it even further. One in four in Great Britain report having encountered evil spiritual entities in a survey.

One in three report visiting a deceased loved one. Over half of Americans say they've been protected from harm at least once by an angel. So once you add the 80% of the dying, when we come to the end of our lives, if that is almost intrinsic to dying, I mean, these people in deathbed visions, they may be having more visions even after we can't speak to them anymore.

It's almost intrinsic to dying. So this is something that almost all of us may experience one day uh so that in itself just the widespread nature of it means we've got if we can start opening up the conversation and talking to people about such visionary experiences uh there's a lot of ministry that needs to be done and this is even this is not something that just super spiritual people experience. I have secular friends that I thought were just totally against anything spiritual. And they'll pull me out and say, let me tell you about this experience I had when I began talking. So just the widespread

nature of it to me says, we need to help people out who are going through this. You know, let's just imagine for a second that all of these experiences are false and they're not true. Now, we're not laying out the evidence here, okay? Right. We've done that in the past. Yeah. Well, even if they're false, there are millions of people, probably tens or hundreds of millions

of people worldwide who think they have experienced them. So let's minimally still minister, engage to people in a meaningful, helpful way that for so many people transforms their life and just care for them, even if they're not true. Now, with that said, it's amazing that one of the reasons I find these cases compelling is that so many people are reluctant to share their stories. Most people are not trying to make money on a book or go viral. The vast majority, those are exceptions. Most people kind of hesitate to tell.

Why do you think people are so reluctant to share these kinds of transformative experiences? Well, you're right on target. Researchers talk about this often, how reluctant people are to share, particularly the negative visions, the hellish or distressing ones. Why would you tell someone about that? The only experience I've had of this nature was when I was in Bible college studying for the ministry, and I had this hellish experience of Satan torturing me in a very vivid dream. And when I called out to God in my dream, God didn't come. Satan was just laughing. And I went out in the hall, immediately woke up, went out in the hall so I wouldn't disturb my

roommate and wrote it down because this was something that had never happened to me. But this just didn't seem like something that would be edifying to somebody else to share about. And so I never told any about it, anybody about it. Kind of lived with it all my life until recently in studying visionary experiences, somehow it hit me, hey, Jesus himself had a face-to-face, one-on-one time with the devil where the devil was tempting him. Now, in retrospect, it makes sense that since I was a doubting, questioning person, that the evil one would throw some things into my life to cause me to doubt. But the fact that I didn't share it with anybody,

I think was partly brought on because nobody else was talking about experiences like this. So people experience a lot of anguish. I mean, a lot of people say, oh, it's not fair that these people get to see heaven or get to see the other side or all these. Why can't I? Why can't I? Well, think about what your these people are going through they've experienced maybe the most real thing empirically that they've ever seen or heard or maybe even touched and yet whenever they're trying to tell somebody about it the person's not used to that in our culture they. They kind of brush them off or change the subject. So you got the thing that's the most important life-changing thing, perhaps, that's ever happened to you, but you can't talk to anybody. Just listening to this experience,

this was Pim van Lommel, a cardiologist who did one of the best studies of near-death experiences that was published in The Lancet, one of the top medical journals, one of the patients he talked to said, I stopped telling my story. It was difficult enough to find words for my experience because how could words express what I experienced? This is called ineffability. So much of the experience, you just can't translate into earthly language. But what else what I experienced? This is called ineffability. So much of the experience, you just can't translate into earthly language. But what else could I do? Who could I talk to? What was the matter with me? Had I gone crazy during that time? I lived like an automaton. Although I looked after my husband and our eldest daughter and I walked the dog, my mind was elsewhere. My mind was on my experience. How

could I reconnect with it? Where could I hear such beautiful music, such lovely colors, find such gorgeous flowers, see such a dazzling light, experience so much unconditional love? Was I crazy for thinking these things? What was the matter with me? So where we assume that this would be the highlight of someone's life and they'd be eager to share, they're feeling like nobody can understand what do I make of it, and they need others to be able to help them unpack this thing to get them through it. And so I'm amazed. I guess what I'm amazed at is because they're so widespread, I began my study just studying the best studies of near death and deathbed experiences.

But then when I just offhand started mentioning it to people, I started finding people within my circles of trust that were telling me, oh, I've experienced that. Let me tell you about it. And I'm sitting there with somebody saying, it was real. It was realer than real. I was on the other side. And this is coming from somebody not in a way off study, but somebody that I knew and respected, relatives. In fact, a few months ago, I was talking to former legal writer turned Christian apologist, Lee Strobel, about a chapter that he's going to do on deathbed experiences. He was interviewing me for, and it should be published at the spring.

So I won't give away what happened, but as he started studying this, he told his wife about this and said, and Leslie starts telling him about some experiences from their own family. Same thing happened with my wife. I told her what I was studying. And she says, oh, did I tell you about the premonition of my grandmother's death and then a premonition of another person's death? And I'm like, this is interesting stuff. Why aren't we talking about that? So, I mean, I was in William Craig's Defenders class last week.

And afterwards, some of us get together and talk. These are people who are really into philosophy and apologetics. And the people at my end of the table, three out of four of them, when I told them what I was studying, started talking about their visionary experiences and i thought this is just it amazes me every time that these are smart sharp people people finishing a phd in philosophy and they're sitting across from me telling me with a straight face about some wild experience they had that changed their life either pi either a positive experience or a negative one, but both of them get their attention. One of the things that motivates me on this channel is just curiosity.

I'm curious what people believe, why they believe it. I want to know more, hopefully with a compassionate voice towards people. I can't imagine having the most dramatic experience of your life and feeling like you can't share it with anyone where either they

will dismiss it, they will move on quickly because it makes them uncomfortable, they'll look at you like they think you're crazy. How devastating is it for people to not be able to share this? And then on the flip side, have you seen some people and you just mention what you're studying and there's the sense of finally somebody will listen to me. How powerful is it when somebody is able to share this experience? Yes. Yes. And as I say, it's not just in conversations with spiritual people. My wife Sherry is a little bolder than I am about bringing things up like this. But I can recall being in a group of master's degree students at KSU, which is a secular public university, and master's degree students and their professors. And Sherry, we're the small group of people talking.

Sherry says, tell them what you're studying. That's when I was doing my dissertation on deathbed experiences. So I mentioned it to the group. One of the ladies says, let's talk about this. And we go outside on a screen porch and she starts telling me about her near-death experience that she experienced as a child when she almost drowned. Now, that gave us a relationship because most people don't want to talk. That's why they're saying, let's come talk about this out on the porch. But once you open up that conversation,

now, I wouldn't have expected this to be a spiritual person at all. But later in life, when she had an incurable lung disease, my wife and I were the ones she wanted to be at her side to help her through those final months. And during that time, she had a positive experience. Then she had a negative experience that really humbled her and gave me an opportunity to bring up the need for forgiveness. She was involved in a cult at the time. But I was able to talk more about Jesus to where two days later, her last words were, I'm at peace. So these are significant discussions that we need to have.

In fact, I think that while on a national level, we keep creeping further towards secularism and trying to make it a secular society, on an individual level, I really believe we've entered an age of post-secularism because people are so aware of these experiences that even if they've turned away from Christianity, they're not turning away from Christianity to become total materialist because they've had experiences either with LSD or something that said, whoa, there's something else out there. And we need to engage them where they are by taking seriously some of their experiences. I've shared this with you personally. I think maybe in one of our interviews is a couple of conversations. One is I live in Southern Orange County. I was sitting at Starbucks and an

author and pastor, at least a kind of a volunteer pastoral role, leads some Bible studies at a local church I've seen around for years, came up to me one time. I was sitting there studying actually on near-death experiences for my class on the resurrection. He didn't know this. He walks up and he goes, hey, Sean, can I share a near-death experience with you? And he was just so stunned by it. And it had just happened that he sat down. I listened to him and was able to say, I'm actually studying this and giving some context. That's one example. Another one is maybe a year or two before COVID had a student who graduated from our apologetics program.'re sitting around the bank when i said hey tell

me why you joined the program and it was a near-death experience in a car crash of seeing a man in white who she knew was jesus tell her everything was going to be okay that transformed her life gave her new purpose gave her new peace gave her new purpose, gave her new peace, gave her new love. And that was one thing that motivated her to be in our program. Now, in both these cases, I had ways that I responded. But tell me, how should we respond if someone shares something like this with us? And how should we not respond if somebody does in a case like that? Well, let's start off with what not to do.

There's a fascinating panel discussion with the New York Academy of Sciences when they were talking about resuscitation and the nature of death. And Dr. Tom Ofterheid, he's the director of resuscitation research at Medical College of Wisconsin, told a story on the panel of this was his first time to kind of be alone in the hospital as a new graduate, okay? And this person, an overseeing physician, was supposed to be following around, but he decided to go take a nap. So Dr. Ofterheide was on this floor when sure enough, as Murphy's law would have it, that all the bells and whistles go off. Somebody is experiencing cardiac arrest.

So he begins to go in, resuscitate this person, work with them and, uh, is feeling sorry for himself because his supervisor was not there. During the night, the guy's been unconscious the whole time. Even when they could get his heart started, he was unconscious. So he thought, well, you know, this guy's not going to eat his lunch. I'll just eat it, you know. And so he ate it himself, then went out in the hall and talked to the family about him and how he was doing. Almost miraculously, the person survived and was going to be released one day. And the guy called Dr. Ofterhout in, he said, I want to talk to you something.

He said, while I was supposedly, you know, just laying there unconscious, he said, I knew what was going on. You ate my lunch, you know, and you went out and talked to my wife in the hallway and down the hall. And frankly, you weren't very positive about how I was doing. And all the while you were sitting there thinking that you were, you know, you were feeling sorry for yourself instead of me because your supervisor wasn't there with you. Now, Dr. Ofterheide was shocked. He said, now I could explain away the eating the lunch.

Maybe somebody told him about that later. Maybe somebody of his family told him we talked in the hall, I don't know. But how did he know my thoughts now you talk about being curious any of us ought to be curious how did that happen and Dr afterhyde is not selling a book he risks his reputation by saying things like this in a uh an Academy of Sciences presentation so what's the deal well the guy asked him about it and he said, well, did you talk to your pastor? He said, well, I told my pastor about it. And he said,

well, that's not in the Bible and walked out in the hall and left. And I told my psychiatrist, no, no, Dr. Ofter had called the psychiatrist and before he could even finish telling the story, the psychiatrist said, well, that's crazy and just hung up on him. Well, for some reason, I think in the 1900s, a scientific naturalism became so dominant that we became embarrassed by the supernatural. And so our natural response, even of church-going folks, even of pastors, is just we get uncomfortable when people talk about it. It just seems it's embarrassing. And so we cut it off rather than asking for more. I mean, spiritually, we're supposed to be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger, right? Quick to hear. But instead, when we're listening, we get uncomfortable, we cut it off.

So don't do that. But even just thinking of it scientifically, if you think there's nothing to near-death and deathbed experiences, as you said, this is important to that person who probably believes this was real. So as theoretical physicist John Wheeler once wisely said, he said, in any field, find the strangest thing and then explore it. I don't think we're being very scientific when you hear a reputable scientist say, this person knew my thoughts when they were unconscious. Well, at the very least, that's interesting. How did that happen? And then if you find out from great studies of near-death and deathbed experiences that this is quite common for things like this to happen. That's very interesting. Einstein once described his genius to Carl Selig saying, quote, I have no special talents. I'm only passionately curious. I think

we ought to be scientifically curious enough to want to listen to these people and understand what they're saying, whether we believe them or not. I know Dr. Grayson, who studied these all of his life, when he started off, he studied psychiatry. He was at the University of Michigan, and one of his patients experienced something much like Dr. Ofterhuyck did. He said, I was so shocked, and this went against all of my studies. I didn't share it with my wife. I didn't tell anybody about it, but I started studying these experiences. And his supervisor said, you know, if you want to go further in this field in academia and go for tenure, you can't keep studying that. Study something legitimate. So he moved, he decided, no, this is too fascinating. So he went to University of Maryland, I believe, or University of Connecticuticut finally to the university of virginia where he was allowed to study these things so our culture academically and just

in general tries to explain these things away so i think we need to make these a matter of our conversation so that people will be willing to talk about them so the pastor who responded that's not in the bible i have mixed feelings about that i do too i've read the bible too well yeah in the sense that i was just preaching recently on acts chapter 17 and the brands when they're challenged with jesus being the christ are like we're going to examine the scriptures and see if this is so. So I love the instinct that says scripture is our authority when it's all said and done as believers. But the claim that's not in the Bible shuts down a conversation before we've asked what is a near-death experience? What was this like for you? How did this affect you? How common are these? Like it's a conversation stopper

rather than a conversation starter. So that gives me pause that any pastor would respond that way, unfortunately. But it's interesting we see this not only in the church, you see in academia, there's pressure to shut it down. Are there any areas in culture in which you see people open and engaging this? I mean, maybe the new age movement, because they have a certain understanding of what this means and how to interpret it, that would be different than you and I, that they're just not threatened by it at all. That might be the case. Any other areas or worlds where people just embrace, or is it just a certain kind of person

who's just not threatened by ideas that are different than their own and just says, tell me about that. What did you experience? I'm curious and listens first. Is that really more the key, just a mindset and a posture of curiosity? Is that really what matters most as you see it? close family. We just think there's that feeling of isolation that I'm the only one experiencing this. Kind of like when you're bullied at school and you think, well, I'm the only one,

I'm the only one out there. No, no, there are lots of people that feel the same way you do, but we need to be open about it to make it a part of conversation. And let me piggyback on what you said about the scriptures themselves. I've just finished reading the Pentateuch, just highlighting the visions there. A lot of people will say, oh, visions were just during biblical times, like when the giving of the law and the prophets, and then when Jesus came on the scene. We don't need those now because we've got the Bible. Well, visions weren't typically about giving new revelation they're often giving

direction look prior to the law abraham had these visions they were so real to him that he took up his family and left town to go to another place that god had for him uh in fact i geeked out on this a little bit i'm afraid but there were in in the first five books of the Bible, there's an average of 500 verses dealing with visions, either describing a vision, talking about a vision. That's five times five is 25, 2,500 verses in the first five books of the Bible. We go to the New Testament, boom, right off the bat you've got visions of john the baptist being born you know you're seeing angels that are talking to you it goes through go through revelation visions it's all through there so pastors i'm urging you don't

read a vision in the bible and say well today God just speaks to us in a still small voice. And we spiritualize that to make it okay to talk about in today's world. That's precisely why so much liberalism came through the churches in the 1900s, because people like Rudolph Bultman were saying, we can't believe this New Testament world of miracles and visions. We don't see that today. That doesn't happen. And yet, when we begin talking about it, we find out it just seems like it's everywhere. So now I've already forgotten your original question.

So get me back on track with that. But I did want to chime in with, biblically, look at Jesus. Jesus had this confrontation with the devil, okay? Jesus had his transfiguration where he taught to deceased saints from long ago. Today, we call those in research after-death communications. You've got Stephen at his martyrdom looking up, having a deathbed vision, seeing the other side right before he died. We see the Apostle Paul in 2 Corinthians 12 saying he saw paradise or heaven. He calls it both. He said, whether I was in the body or out, I don't know, but he had this vision.

It's there in Scripture. Why don't we take it seriously? So I don't want to hijack the conversation theologically, but one question I have for you, because we want to come back to how to minister to people who've experienced this, is there could be a key difference between the people you mentioned, Abraham and Stephen and John the Baptist and Jesus, called by god for a unique time that he spoke to them then move and counting the number of times this happened in the torah when god is working through abraham and moses and the nation of israel uniquely and normalizing that for the church that we should expect the same kind of visions. What's the point in bringing this up as far as the Old Testament goes when somebody can make

the case that these are unique visions for unique people at certain times like Abraham, John the Baptist, and Paul? Yeah, we did do kind of a hall of fame of faith there. Mistakenly, though, because look at Adam and Eve. They saw God. They walked with God before the fall and after the fall. They had conversations. Their own children, Cain and Abel, had this conflict between them, okay? No indication that they were super spiritual people or anything. And yet he said, wasn't it to Cain? He said, he said, listen, you know, your anger about giving the wrong kind of sacrifice. Don't, don't let that get to you. It was just a warning, right? To a person who we don't know anything about his beliefs or social life. But, and then you have Abraham did this

little thing where he was afraid his wife was so good looking, everybody was going to be hitting on her. And so he told these kings, it's my sister, right? God gave these secular kings visions. He came to them in a dream and said, don't mess with her. They came back to Abraham and said said why did you deceive us but god's concern is for the world so i believe and and remember paul's vision was not when he was paul that's when he was saul that's when he was out killing christians and he had a vision of jesus so if you read the old testament the whole thing about choosing the Jews was so that they could be a witness to the nations. God's heart is for the nations. And I think that's why

today, just a couple of weeks ago, I was talking to someone who's a missionary in a overwhelmingly Muslim country. And I said, tell me about these visions of the man in white. And I said, I really, I hear a lot of them, which sounds like a lot when you put the cases together among Muslims. But I don't really know an incidence of it, how much. And he said, well, I got these four guys I'm working with now. And three of them became Christians because of visions. He said, I can just keep telling you over and over and over. What they don't see is the whole gospel in the vision, especially like the apostle Paul. He doesn't give out the whole gospel, but he causes them to seek and get with others who can explain

it further. Same thing with the man in white that they're seeing in Muslim countries. They're not really sure what to make of this man in white. And then somebody says, hey, look over here in Revelation in this description of Jesus. And the guy might say, that's him. That's exactly what I saw. Or they'll see and they'll begin to realize. So it starts them seeking. Well, what that means is the rest of us have a responsibility to help these people in their seeking journey, or else they'll go to somebody else who's already incorporated near-death experiences into their new age ideas or some cultic ideas or something. We need to open up the conversation.

Let me read from Dale Allison. He's a longtime professor of New Testament. He wrote a book called Encountering Mystery. Very good book. And he said, so he's taught New Testament at Princeton for his career. But he looks back, he says, you know why I'm teaching New Testament at Princeton? Because when I was 16 years old, I had this vision and I knew there was more to life than meets the eye. So I decided to go into philosophy and religion and study these and go into it. At the end of his book, he puts out a lays out the gauntlet for pastors and anybody leading a small group that's leading other people.

He says to have nothing worthwhile to say about events that typically matter deeply and are often associated with God is to be inept and, at least in this particular, irrelevant. What good is an under-informed religious leader who is at a loss or dismissive in the face of mystical raptures, unexpected occurrences at deathbeds, visions of self-luminous figures or encounters with dead loved ones. So he's saying we need to start the conversation so that people will open up about it. Talk to your family, as I've done. I didn't initiate it. You know, it's just like my mom said, hey, tell Bucky here, your cousin, what you're studying. And then he begins to tell me about his experiences, which he's never shared.

So I think the first step to ministering to people is we need to make ourselves available because these people are all around us. Just tell folks that you're friends with and family, say, you know, I'm studying visionary experiences. Lay out the specifics. Some of them are negative. They've had an experience where they think they've been attacked by a demon. Some are positive. They think they've seen an angel. Sometimes God just ministers to people, it seems like, in a very special way. And they just know it's Him. Sometimes they see Jesus in a vision. Their near-death experiences they're you know some of our relatives when they're dying lay out the all the possibilities

and then i think you're going to be shocked to find out they've been happening around you even to people that you didn't think had any interest in spiritual things really is a great angle just to have a meaningful conversation with somebody i I've sent people links of our conversations. I've sent people articles that I've written. I've shared stuff I'm teaching in my class. People can say, hey, I saw this YouTube video. What do you think? Have you experienced?

Have you talked with somebody? And just it's not a debate. It's just simply let's talk about that. And that might give somebody permission to share that would surprise you. Now, the example about Dale Allison is interesting because he's hands down one of the top New Testament scholars in the world. And he wrote his book, Encountering Mystery, towards the eclipse of his career when he's already like an emeritus professor, has tenure. And if I remember correctly, he's kind of like, I'm at the point where I feel free to talk about stuff that's really happened to me because there's this entrenched academic pressure against talking about these things is reminiscent of our culture as a whole. Now, it feels like the dam is breaking

a little bit, but that's a conversation for another day. When those two people shared with me near-death experiences earlier, as best I can remember, I just said, tell me about that. And I asked questions and I listened. I wasn't judgmental. Now I had studied these, so I'm actually far more likely to believe someone than to not believe them. In fact, one of the first things I say is, look, I believe you. I think these things happen. And I'm really curious. Tell me about yours. And it's legitimate or not dismiss it as hallucination deception by the devil or the quote was that's not in the bible how do how can we overcome that natural tendency to dismiss others when they share near-death experiences or deathbed visions? So I probably would not say I believe you right off. Okay. And I'll give you an example why. There's a person in my life that he's deceased now, but

very close to him. And he was close to our children as well. And I think he had a legitimate near-death experience at a younger age. But if you keep listening, he'll start talking about later near-death experiences and visions. And then he'll start talking about that he's been writing down all these things that God is telling him that he's supposed to give out to mankind. And then finally, he admitted to me that he had been diagnosed with schizophrenia, but didn't like the way he felt when he was on meds and I thought okay well you've got a mixture of things that are real and then other things that may not be and I need to be honest with a person like that to help them out so there are people who have mental illness

we don't know when someone's telling us these things, what the source is. So whether you believe in them or not, don't be naive. The naive person believes everything. There are some people who are just out for attention. There are some people who have written a book on something and they know this is a genre that sells. So they're going to spice it up a little bit and put something in that appeals to people with certain beliefs. So there're going to spice it up a little bit and put something in that appeals to people with certain beliefs. So there are all kinds of stories out there. But I'd say whatever you believe about near-death experiences, be curious, be empathetic. This person is sharing with you something that's very important to their life. So start off by listening, empathize with

them. And some of you are thinking right now, oh no, now I realize that somebody, my husband or wife or somebody in the family or a friend started sharing with me this experience and I just blew them off. Or I started talking about something else and changed the subject. Well, just go back to the person and say, you know, the first time I taught, humility is good for the soul, right? Just say, you know, when you first told me about that, I was nervous, didn't know what to say, but I've been thinking about those lately. Could you tell me more? Because initially, if a person opens up, they're scared you're going to think they're crazy. So they'll just say, you know, I had this interesting dream thing, you know, the other night, and it was this and that. They're going to give you a little elevator speech just to see how you're going to react. And then if you say, you know,

I've been studying these things. These are really sane, smart, some of the smartest, most intelligent people out there reporting these things. So I think we need to listen to them. You know, tell me more about it. And then when you get to talking, you say, well, just how real was it? Was it just kind of like a dream? No, it was more than a dream, but they're going to slowly start telling you what really happened in the experience. So if you blew it the first time, reconnect. Say, I'd like to talk about it. And it doesn't have to be a one-time talk where you solve all your problems. Assure them that overwhelmingly such experiences don't indicate insanity. If you look in the nursing peer-reviewed journals, when they study these things, they say, don't immediately go in and adjust the morphine or come up with some kind of pharmacological solution.

Listen to them. Typically, typically, these people are not crazy. They've got something significant to share. So number four, listen actively. James said be quick to hear, quick to hear, quick to hear, right? Slow to speak, slow to anger. I'm sorry, but our culture, our to come up with what we're going to say next. We're not truly engaged empathetically with what the person's going through. So so just say, wow, thanks for telling me this. That's incredible. Maybe they had a distressing experience. Oh, that's terrible. I'm so sorry.

You know, tell me more about it. Come up some questions to uh to take the take the conversation further open-ended questions in many ways this isn't rocket science it really is just simple like responding to our generation we're really really bad at this well i remember going to southwestern seminary and taking a marriage counseling class. We're all intelligent people. We finished our undergrad studies. We're in master's degree level work. And they had us divide up one on one and say, you tell some best person about a problem in your life, that person is not supposed to give an immediate solution. You summarize, first of all, what the person said and then ask them a question to learn further that

can't be answered in a yes or no. So this is something, it is rocket science to a lot of people. I have to train my students in this. Fair enough. And oftentimes when I summarize, I'll say, did I summarize correctly? Did I explain your position well? And we want to understand intellectually, but also emotionally as best we can. So by saying it's not rocket science, I mean, for those of us who thought about what it means to listen on any subject, it's common sense. But maybe things like social media, maybe some of our worldview issues about this make us respond differently here than we would with other experiences that somebody shares, right? Like if somebody talks about losing a loved one, most of us are going to respond unless we're uncomfortable in an empathetic, curious, caring way. But when it comes to near-death experiences, all of a sudden it's weird and there's

worldview stuff and i'm uncomfortable and i think you might be crazy so we don't respond in the same way let's just be curious in fact one of my hopes is that christians would just be non-judgmental like i've said this many times what if somebody when they're just going through maybe a near near-death experience, suffering in their life, and they think, I just got to find a Christian, because a Christian will non-judgmentally listen and try to understand. That would be amazing in all areas, including this one. Now, if you're watching this, we would love if you would write some comments down. If you have had somebody respond

in a way that did not help because of a near-death experience or a way that somebody did help with the near-death experience. So if you had a near-death experience, what are helpful ways people responded, helpful ways they didn't respond? Or if you've talked to somebody, maybe say, you know what? I had this conversation. This worked. This did well. Or you know what? If I had to do it again, I wish I did this differently. Put those comments in here. Steve and I are going to go back through and read. And one thing Steve does is he really takes the time to engage people on the five videos we've done, including this one, if you have questions as best he can. But I would really like to hear. I want to learn how to get better at this myself. So please write those comments in. We're still listening and learning

about this practical area. And let me say one other thing about it is one of our problems, maybe it's just me, but it seems like guys particularly, we like to solve problems. And so when somebody shares with us something, we're thinking of what can I say to make this person feel better? What can I say to solve their problem? And sometimes that works against us empathetically, sufficiently listening to them. Or we want to make some judgment every time they say something that may come against our theology or that we think comes against our theology. Like often somebody will have a near-death experience. Let's say it's positive, and they say, wow, what I learned from it was that all religions are the same, take us to

the same place. Everybody's going to heaven. Now, you may want to say, okay, now I'm a Christian, I need to correct this theology here, but maybe it's not time to do that and in correcting it you may shut them down if you do i mean i can imagine if jesus were correcting every bad thought his disciples had he'd just been talking continually you know peter you know hush that thought you shouldn't have said this you shouldn't have said that you know but we've got to be patient with people and let them share sometimes when a person says says something like I found out that what I learned about religion and church was all wrong. Well, maybe they're right. Maybe they went to a church that was extremely judgmental, that presented God as somebody that just eagerly is looking for

somebody to mess up so he can smush them. And so sometimes they're more on track than we think they are. Don't think you've got to be quick to judge or to set them straight. Make it a point of conversation where you can talk about those things later and don't shut them down. Let me give you a couple of things on listening. Restate what they said. Love it. In your own words, that way they can say, yeah, you got that right but what about this ask for more rather than immediately giving your opinions or judgment um you know so you saw an angel on the other side what what was it like you know did it have wings like you know in popular culture or not or when you say you talk to a deceased relative were you speaking english to

one another like we are now, or was it more mind to mind? Those are things I'm very interested in because those are common characteristics of near-death experiences. The angels don't have wings or that people are talking mind to mind. That's not things that you can explain away as people's expectations because nobody's expecting that on the other side. Here are some questions you get asked. How did you know it was an angel? How real did it seem? Was it much like a dream or realer than real or what? What did you feel about? What did you feel on the other side? Was it quiet? Did love exude from everything? Were you scared? Were you still in pain? Did you hear some music?

What was your main outcome from the experience? Has your life changed? How do people react when you tell them? Can we talk about this more in the future? I find it fascinating. I know I'm going to come up with more questions. Are you willing to talk about it? And I think ultimately what they want is somebody they can talk to openly about the conversation and not be shut down.

You know, another comment I would love is if you're watching this and you think, you know what? I'm going to start looking for opportunities to talk to people about this. Say something, ask a question, share a video, whatever it is that gets the conversation going. And somebody shares with you, tell us about it. a question, share a video, whatever it is that gets the conversation going, and somebody shares with you, tell us about it. Either comment here in the video, you can email me through my website, seanmcdowell.org, and I can send those to Steve. We would love to hear so we could have some stories to share with people and say, here

is a viewer. They said this, got the conversation going so we could learn how to better engage others. So if this helps you and you go do it for the first time, tell us about it. We want to hear. And Steve is doing continued research on this. So all of these comments and stories just help us get a better sense of what's going on. So, Steve, it sounds like two mistakes. One is to be dismissive.

Oh, hallucination, deflect your like two mistakes. One is to be dismissive. Oh, hallucination, deflect, your crazy mental illness. The other is to be too credulous. Like you said, oh, I completely believe you. It's entirely true. So we want to show that I'm willing to believe. Maybe I have no good reason not to believe you. But at some point, I'm going to ask some questions and try to piece stuff together in a respectful, caring fashion. Now, are you aware of any groups for people? Are there groups online

where people with near-death experiences come and just share and talk? Are there Facebook meta groups about this where people come together? Or is there a sense of like, I don't even know if I want to be a part of that group because I don't want to get tagged and people don't think i'm crazy do you know of any kind of group like that or just support network for people trying to make sense of this experience well you have to be careful there are some local groups sponsored by ions the international association of near-death near-death studies and others You have to be careful about any group because a group can take on its own flavor. And some will be people who are trying to integrate it with more of a new age thing. Others are trying to integrate it with their niche theology. And just like any group,

some of them are good and some of them aren't so helpful. I know there's a Facebook group, I think it's called Jesusesus and the near-death experience where people talk about these things but there are places where people do search for them and if you find some good ones uh please let us know i'm not up on all of those um and by the way even if one is called jesus and near-death experiences still be critical about this. Is this the new age Jesus? Is this some secular Jesus? Is this some heretical Jesus? I mean, you and I know when it comes to near-death experiences, everybody's got a spin and a bias and a perspective on this. And you and I do too. We are Christians, so we are looking at this through a Christian lens. And I believe we're

following the evidence where it leads, but we all have to interpret it a certain way. So even if you're part of a group like that, just have some caution and some care. Now, with that said, let's role play. We talked a little bit about where this conversation would go. Some of these questions I did not prep you with. Let's just literally role play right now. If I, well, I am a friend of yours, but imagine I had a near-death experience and I just tell you for the first time, this isn't in front of some big group, maybe a handful of people around

or maybe just the two of us having coffee. And I say, Steve, not long ago, I thought I was gonna die. I saw this tunnel and this light. It was vivid. I've never seen with such clarity. I've never felt such peace. And I describe this to you. How would you respond to me? I say, Sean, it's amazing that you had mentioned that because I've become fascinated by these experiences.

And I've just studies have shown that maybe one out of 25 Americans have experienced something just like what you've described. And they're not crazy. They're intelligent people. They're not on drugs. And so I take what you're saying seriously. I mean, and I'm fascinated with it i mean this is this is more interesting than who does your nails or you know where where do you go shopping this is really can you tell me tell me more about your experience what happened i mean was it was it really real what do you what do you make of it? Tell me. We're role playing.

I love that. I'm not going to make up a near-death experience, but I'm going to get myself in trouble. Those watching this are going, yeah, that wasn't my experience. They'll make a clip and it'll be Sean's near-death experience. That's true. Well, so what I heard you doing essentially was just showing enthusiasm, showing interest. You're not threatened by this. You're intrigued by this. You happen to have some studies to say, Sean, you're not the only one. Others have experienced this.

I want to know they're not alone. I've thought about this. And then you lean in and you go, tell me more. I mean, the posture and the voice through which you presented this in such a pastoral fashion, I think it's a helpful way to respond to this issue and others for Christians. So I love it. So if somebody's had a near-death experience and they're watching this and there's debates we don't have to go into.

We've talked about this in other videos. What exactly can we conclude about the universe, about God, about the afterlife from near-death experiences alone? We don't have to settle this right now. But minimally, somebody has been woken up, they've been challenged, they're now thinking about the meaning and purpose in life in a way they haven't been before. And they're thinking, I had this experience.

The world is not the way I envisioned it to be. What do I do now? What would you, as a Christian professor, suggest someone who's had a near-death experience do for their next steps? Well, I think I would want to carry on. I would want to offer to be a part of the conversation in the future with that person to let them know I'm not just interested in this one conversation. And if we're not geographically close to each other, say, let's email. And I'll email back and forth with a lot of people who have questions. I think that God probably brought this person into my life. So I want to continue the relationship. I'd say read up on it as well. Read up on near-death experiences and visionary experiences so that you know more about what's going on because you typically in a near-death experience

you didn't have all the features of a near-death experience maybe um you know maybe 20 of the people who have a near-death experience go through a tunnel or have a life review not everyone has one like you maybe you don't even know that some people have distressing near-death experiences. You'd want to become familiar with that. You could read Moody's first book, Life After Life, and he just describes, he had like 150 people he interviewed. You could start reading some of the experiences. J.P. Moreland made it, it really encouraged him to, and he's a Christian philosopher, you don't, for those in the audience who don't know him, very well-respected person. But he had kind of a natural fear of death that he had overcome, even as a believer. And he began reading

a lot of these experiences in books, many, many books he and his wife read together on near-death experiences. And so I suggest some of these. I tried to summarize near-death experiences in Near-Death Experiences as Evidence for the Existence of God in Heaven. I think J.P. Moreland's book is good. I had it here in front of me and it just disappeared. But it was a very practical book on experiencing miracles. I wrote down the name of it here. J.P. Marlin's book, A Simple Guide to Experience Miracles. I'm just starting to read it now. It talks about near-death experiences,

talks about visions and different things. And it just helps you think that through so you have a fuller understanding of what people are experiencing and what this might mean to you. So Proverbs is huge on learning. Nothing you desire compares with her, speaking of wisdom. Nothing you desire. Keep getting wisdom. Watch the rest of our interviews together, the ones with Dr. Long that you did or Dr. Sabom. Learn more however you learn best, and that will help you to understand what's going on in context. And then I'd say, talk to your pastor. Maybe he won't listen to you like a lot of

pastors kind of but uh talk to people who know you because sometimes there may be something that God's trying to to to talk to you about that can be better understood in a multitude of counselors on my channel I often have people on that I differ with, and we have conversations about that. But as far as I can remember, every single person I've had on near-death experiences is one of the experts. Like you said, Jeffrey Long, Michael Sabom, John Burke, five others with you. They have great research behind it. Now they differ on some details, which is fine, but that is reliable, safe, good place to start to understand them. Your books are excellent. I recommend them all the time. Multiple books will link below on

evidence, on answering questions for it. You've done a real scholarly dive on this, which I appreciate a ton. As I think about it, I think I'm going to send this interview to a few people I've had conversations with about near-death experiences and just ask them, what do you think? Did we miss anything? Would you add anything? How were you ministered to? So if you're watching this, that might be one way to start a conversation. I just send to someone and go, hey, here's a conversation about how to help people with the near-death experiences. Watch it, tell me what you think, and let's have a conversation about it. Or of course, send them a different one. It's completely fine, but get that conversation going. In closing, did I miss anything, Steve? Anything else you want to say?

Any words of encouragement? Anything I didn't ask I should have in this kind of angle we're taking today? Well, as far as other readings and places that you could go to learn more, I do think one of the big outcomes-death experiences, which is about as many as you have reporting tunnels or life reviews, about one out of five experienced seeing Jesus on the other side. So I think that the little book that your dad wrote, and then I think you've now helped to update it, put it closer with the latest scholarship. More Than a Carpenter is a great little book to get you started looking further into Jesus or in your spiritual journey. I highly recommend it. Scholars, both secular and believing scholars, pretty much all agree that the earliest records we have of Jesus' life are the ones that we have included in the Gospels and epistles of our New Testament. Read about him. And the Bible is, even if you don't believe it's inspired, it's a wisdom treasure from hundreds of years. Read about the visions there and compare them to your own. Start with

the New Testament. It's just got visions. And I think you'll find yourself affirmed in your own visionary experience that it's not something weird. You're not going crazy, but it's a common part of mankind that we've just neglected because we got under the spell of naturalism. In a lot of other countries that have not been so secularized as Europe and the United States, they might talk about these things among their family and reassure one another. And you've got somebody to talk to. Here it's harder. Let's get the conversation going. And under these videos, we've had some great conversations. It's almost an education in itself just to see how people candidly respond from various worldviews, talk about these things, and we minister to one another. So this is a great

place to discuss it. Steve, I think if I'm doing the math correct, you are officially the guest who's been on my program the most. I think this is the sixth time and we will have you back. I appreciate your research, but just your kind, generous approach to have a conversation with people. I love that. So if you're watching this and there's still an angle on near-death experiences, we've talked about universalism and hellish near-death experiences. You're like, here's something I haven't seen covered.

I'd love for you and Steve to do a show on this. Write that in the comments below. We're open to revisiting that and again if you because of this are spurred on to talk with somebody who's had a near-death experience If it goes well or doesn't go well, we want to learn from it put those comments in below I read all the emails that come to me personally through my website Sean McDowell org I'm not able to respond. I get daily tons, but I will read all of them. And if they're applicable to Steve, I will forward them to Steve. I have a lot of guests engage comments at time when they can, but I don't think I have any guests who spends more time going through as you can

responding to the people that are there. So this is a real opportunity for people. If you have evidential questions about near-death experiences, Steve's going to engage you as best he can, assuming there's not 5,000 comments. This is really an opportunity for my viewers to do this. Maybe the next one we'll do is just a live Q&A and we'll have people come on, invite skeptics, and we'll invite believers and just live. Maybe we'll do something like that down the road. That would be fun.

But again, comment below and we're going to read these and try to come back and revisit this again. Steve, we still got to get you out to Biola. Class we have this fall is on artificial intelligence and apologetics. I think we still need to have you come out and do a class on near-death experiences and deathbed experiences. We're going through some transitions in the program positively, but let's make sure we do that. And those of you watching, we'd love to have you come join us at Biola in Apologetics full distance program. I have classes this fall on the problem of evil, the resurrection, teaching a class on my

new book and the stalemate, how to have conversations with people who see the world differently. Info is below. Would love to have you. We also have a certificate program. If you want to just study apologetics, but not at the master's level, we will guide you through how to do that. And it's a first rate program. Steve, always enjoy it. We're definitely going to do this again. And I look forward to the feedback on this one and then having you back. Thanks so much for having me, Sean.