The Sean McDowell Show - Hellish Near-Death Experiences

Episode Date: June 28, 2024

What are Hellish Near-Death Experiences? How common are they and what do they reveal, if anything, about the afterlife. Dr. Steve Miller is leading researcher on near-death experiences. While he has been on my show multiple times, this is the first time we have discussed distressing NDEs. We hope this is both challenging and helpful. READ: Is Christianity Compatible with Deathbed and Near-Death Experiences? (https://amzn.to/44NFMzq) *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

What are hellish near-death experiences? What do they tell us about the reality of hell and the demonic realm? How common are they and why are people so reluctant to study and discuss them? Our guest today, Dr. Steve Miller, is back for probably the third or fourth time. Steve, you're a favorite guest on this topic. You're working on, I believe, your fourth book on near death experiences, if I'm not mistaken. But we haven't talked about this specific angle. In fact, you've told me in all the interviews you've done, you haven't had anybody ask you specifically to talk about hellish, distressing near-death experiences.

And there's a reason for that. Now, your very first book where you're kind of making the case for near-death experiences, you had one paragraph on distressing NDEs. Why such a small section then, and then why three chapters in your latest book, which is, is Christianity compatible with deathbed and near-death experiences? Why the shift well first of all I have read about I had read about such experiences as I was researching my first book but frankly they give me the creeps I mean none of us really like talking about hell we don't want to have nightmares so they're just naturally we don't want to talk about it I think and researchers tend to follow the same thing. And perhaps some of it for the researchers is that many of those are in secular academia

and they're more open to talk about angels and good things on the other side, like is popular in New Age literature. But demon sounds kind of like, you know, what scientists would talk about, the demon-haunted world and all that is something from the middle ages and pre-science but for me it was more it just kind of gives me the creeps number one but number two uh it was irrelevant to my first book my first book was really written from the perspective of saying let's say you're a totally secular person you don't believe in God or the afterlife let's just look at this phenomena of near-death experiences and see if it gives evidence for the afterlife and so really death

distressing experiences were such a sub point there that they didn't need to be they weren't required to be talked about okay so we're gonna define what they are and get into it but is this a newer phenomena or since the earliest studies that people have done on near-death experiences has this always been kind of a feature well let me take a few minutes to walk you through the history of the research because I think this is important and it shows why some researchers ignored them didn't talk about them or thought they were just hallucinatory or something uh the first book that came out that really popularized

near-death experiences was raymond moody's life after life back in 1975 and uh he did mention distressing experiences he didn't put the distressing features as a part of the core experience, interestingly enough, but he did hear people talking about them and mention them. He hypothesized that maybe these are caused by people who are committing suicide or doing something they shouldn't have been doing, but he wasn't really sure what to make of them, even though he did mention them. Now, interestingly, his book, if you look at who it's dedicated to, it's dedicated to George Ritchie, M.D., and through him to the one whom he suggested.

Now, that's kind of cryptic. What's he talking about? Well, George Ritchie was the fellow who at the university where Moody was studying, University of Virginia, Dr. Ritchie was speaking at. And later, Ritchie would write this book, Return from Tomorrow, which I encourage people to read in this regard, particularly concerning distressing experiences. Very well-respected psychiatrist. And when he went to the little seminar where he was teaching, Dr. Ritchie described his near-death experience that he had as a medical student, had pneumonia, and was actually declared dead. I mean, he had the written death certificate with him that they had declared him dead. dead during that time before he resuscitated just on his own he resuscitated and he described this fantastic near-death experience where he

experienced Jesus Jesus was very prominent in it Jesus showed him something about the afterlife a good afterlife but also showed him something about the afterlife, a good afterlife, but also showed him very descriptive scenes of hell where you had deceased people who were suffering. You saw demons who were impacting people on earth sometimes and then impacting, then were just seen as demons. And he said, he said, this is hell what I'm experiencing so Richie although earlier had made some commitment to Christ as a young person was following medicine following his dreams and pretty much put the Jesus stuff behind him this is a very very big turning point in his life so now Moody came from an atheist background and he was trying to

present near-death experiences as something that anybody could study and didn't want it specifically to be a Christian thing. So he asked Dr. Ritchie, can I dedicate this book to you? Dr. Ritchie said, no, I'd rather you dedicate it to Jesus because he was prominent in the experience. He's the one that gave me the experience. But not wanting to be so Jesus-y about the thing, and maybe good for future study in secular realms, he just dedicated it to Dr. Ritchie and the one whom he mentioned, one capitalized who was jesus so from the very beginning we had negative experiences from dr ritchie acknowledged by moody but some studies after that by cardiologists didn't find any of these experiences and some people who are wanting

to be a little more new agey with it who who lean that direction, they wanted to talk about angels and the good things, and maybe these experiences were just hallucinatory. But soon after that, just a few years after Moody published his book, Dr. Rawlings published a book called Beyond Death's Door. Now, a lot of people kind of rejected his as not being really scientific research he was just telling stories from his patients but this was a major change in rawlings life now dr rawlings he was a um he was not just your average cardiologist next door he was very well respected within his field what would teach on these themes and was actually to a lot of the heads of staff at the pentagon you know former presidents and people like that that he was a cardiologist for so i think we need to take him seriously yeah what a lot of people didn't like was when before he discovered these experiences he believed that at

death you just exited all the pain and suffering and you were just gone there was no afterlife okay but he had a patient one day this was just a couple of years after moody wrote his book and he and and rawlings didn't believe in near-death experiences, of course. He had a patient that was on a treadmill and his heart stopped while he was on the treadmill. They were doing the resuscitation and they could bring him back for just a second, just enough for the guy to start screaming that he was in hell. He was experiencing hell. And he said, you've got to keep me alive, doctor. You got to keep me alive doctor you got to keep me alive he was just screaming and you could see it on his face this guy was serious and every

time they would bring him back he would say I've been in hell again you've got to keep me alive now that really shook the doctor and he began researching these experiences and began talking to his patients about them. He surmised that most patients weren't going to talk to you about a negative experience of this negative caliber. But if you saw them right when they were being resuscitated, he felt like about 50% of his patients who had near-death experiences were experiencing these negative ones. Well, again, researchers didn't really take him so seriously. It wasn't a scientific study. It was just him talking about patients that he knew. Plus, he became very

evangelical in his faith, and he was preaching Jesus in these books. He wrote this book and another one, To Hell and Back, Life After Death by Rawlings, and people thought, okay, well, he's just trying to preach his faith, and they just kind of dismissed him, but I would read him because he is a force to be reckoned with as an intellectual, as somebody who's very well respected in his field. After that, after many people were saying, oh, we're not going to believe rawlings maybe they're just hallucinatory he had two books come out blessing in disguise this is one that i would really recommend if you want to go in depth yes i have three chapters on it but uh blessing

in disguise dr uh barbara romer a medical doctor she's got a lot of these experiences in her book that are distressing. Blessing in disguise means it didn't look like a blessing when they had this experience, but it turned out to be a blessing in disguise because it was a wake-up call for people. People would repent, get their lives right with God they would change their ways and uh and then there was another book by um nancy evans bush on the same thing they said finally the researchers came to the conclusion that probably 20 at least of near-death experiences that's one out of five were actually distressing or hellish they began to recognize them as such and in fact recently some people will put that as a part of the core experience for near-death experiences some of them are indeed distressing that is so

interesting i had no idea about going back to moody's book about 50 years ago now that it was tied to somebody who had a distressing near-death experience. And it's kind of been an undertone that's been a part of the research. But you say in your book that it's really been understudied. Now, we're going to get to some specific cases, but maybe you can lay out for us how they are different from near-death experiences as a whole. And what I mean by that is you've documented this in your book, and so has Jeffrey Long and Sabom and others, that there's common experiences of near-death experiences. So heightened senses, people seeing a tunnel and the light, loved ones, Jesus shows up commonly, certain feelings that people have. Like there's these common experiences

people have. How do those compare and contrast with a hellish distressing near-death experience? Sure. Well, in the hellish experiences, and I'll just read off Margot Gray described distressing experiences, and here are some just little bullet points of the type things they experience but similar to the positive ones they believe they have left their body they believe they have gone to the other side it is real if not realer than real distinguishing them from hallucinations where you wake up from and say wow that sounded real real when I had it, but now I just know it was a hallucination. They actually have common features unlike hallucinations. So that here are some of the features. Why would there be these common features?

Why wouldn't it be just bad feelings or whatever your mind could come up with as far as monsters? Why, if it were a hallucination, wouldn't it just have an almost infinite variety? And yet we find these common features, a feeling of extreme fear or panic, emotional and mental anguish, a great sense of desolation,

the brink of a pit, the edge of an abyss, a definite sense of being dragged down by some evil force, visions of wrathful and demonic creatures, intense cold or unbearable hot, sounds that resemble the wailing of souls and torment, a fearsome noise. So those are some of the things, some of the characteristics that we see in these negative experiences you see why nobody wants to read about this I want to I want to read the happy stuff you know and get excited and in comfort people about the afterlife it's not something I want to believe okay so just for for clarity to make sure we're tracking is a hallucination

or a dream there's typically a sense oh, I know that wasn't real. You can distinguish fact from fiction. But with near-death experiences and hellish near-death experiences, it's not only people are convinced that they're real, but they're convinced that it's almost more real than the world they regularly inhabit. Like these people are convinced that they had these experiences. Is that true? That's true. And as evidence of that, their life changes as a result. Psychologists look at things that actually produce life change because there aren't a lot of them. But these experiences afterwards, they are very much much disturbed does this mean i'm going to hell what do i need to do to stay out of such a place some will actually have an experience where

they have both distressing and positive elements such as the one we mentioned from dr ritchie but some will feel like they've gone to hell demons Demons are attacking them. It's painful. It's horrifying. And then they actually look up and call out to God to save them, and he brings them out to the other side. So some actually have both, but they're convinced that this is real. And to show that, their lives change. The typical response is basically repentance. Something in my life, whether they're a believer or not a believer, something needs to change in life is the prima facie response of these things that this came into my life for some purpose. Okay, so if angels show up with some frequency, I forget the percentage of people who report them in near-death experiences. How common are demonic-type beings in these distressing near-death experiences? I've not seen anybody give a figure to this, so I just have to plead ignorance on that one.

Okay. And that's why we need to do more study on them to come up with more percentages as to how these things happen. I do know that it is common. If you look at definitions of distressing experiences, demons will be a part of that experience. Are there maybe just one or two more accounts? I don't want to dwell on this too much, but I was just looking in your book, reading some of these, just to give people a sense of what those with a hellish near-death experience experience. I think this is on page 216. You list three or four of these. Of course, you could read others, but just give us a sense of kind of the experience of what people actually report when they've had a distressing near-death experience and they're willing to talk about it.

I'll just read some of these off to try to get it right. These are quotes from people who've had them. It's a dusky, dark, dreary area, and you realize that the area is filled with a lot of lost souls. The feeling I got was they were all looking downward. They were all kind of shuffling. There was a kind of moaning. There were all kind of shuffling. There was a kind of moaning. There were hundreds of them looking very dejected. Another one said, a hell is a pit, and there's darkness, but there's also fire. I was in a place to which the Bible refers as

outer darkness and is not pretty. As real as this letter is, so is this place. Another one said, I felt my body slipping down. It was cold, dark, and watery. When I reached the bottom, it resembled the entrance to a cave with what looked like webbs hanging. The inside of the cave was gray and brown in color. I heard cries, wails, moans, and gnashing of teeth. Another one said, I was led by Jesus from the side of bliss to a side

of misery I did not want to look but he made me look and I was disgusted and horrified and scared it was so ugly the people were blackened and sweaty and moaning in pain chained to their spots so these are horrifying experiences and you can see why many people would never want to tell anyone else near-death experiences when they're good people don't want to talk about them for fear that people will think they're crazy or believe in their hallucinations but imagine you had a terrifying one how much harder that would be to tell somebody because it's almost like saying well I'm going to hell you know to some people that are listening.

So they tend to be extremely private about those. They say that those that actually share them, which may be the reason that some of these cardiologists didn't hear negative experiences when they talk to them after their events is, is that number one, the person needs to have gone long enough to where they can process the event before they're willing to talk about it. Number two, they're only going to talk about it to someone that they really trust that they've spent some time with and are willing to, are willing to share it with. So that 20% is probably on the low side, I would say. Probably more people have experienced it and just aren't willing to talk about it. Or Dr. Rawlings suggested that there were a few people

he talked to who, when they were resuscitated, they talked about this experience and were horrified, but then a few days later, he asked them about it. And they're like, what experience? Apparently, they had just submerged few people that died and like these dark, shadowy, demonic type beings go and just drag them to a hell type state. And I saw that if I remember as roughly a teenager, and that was like a disturbing image, like, wow, it kind of just took something that was abstract and made it personal. I can still kind of envision that in my mind. I can only imagine for somebody who actually sees that and believes that it's real, how radical that would shift them. Now, people- And let me just say that even as you're saying those things,

it seems so dark ages. I know we're not supposed to call it the dark ages anymore now that we know more about the middle ages, but it just seems like something pre-scientific, something we shouldn't be talking about right now. I do think that the 1900s, late 1800s, the secularism, the materialism that came through philosophical materialism has really made cowards of all of us to even talk about these things and even like when i read carl sagan who wrote demon haunted world and things he doesn't really give he doesn't really look at the evidence pro and con in the things that i've read by him he just kind of assumes that we're past all that because it seems so wild and crazy. So I think we've got to open up our minds and start listening to people when they talk about

these experiences and other related evidence for this kind of personal evil on the other side. So there's a reluctance amongst people to talk about any near-death experiences, and you've talked about this in part because people think that other people think they're crazy, won't believe them. But then you add to it this element of it being hellish. I would imagine that a lot of these people think if I tell you, Steve, that I had a hellish near-death experience,

that's an indictment of my character because I'm the kind of person who is destined to hell. I'm not even saying that's true. I'm saying that's probably how a lot of people might interpret it. So is that part of the reluctance? I mean, who has these kind of hellish near-death experiences? Is it different from anybody who has near-death experiences? Or do we just not have enough data to really know?

I'd say we don't have enough data to get a percentage of it but I think we can know in in dr. Ritchie's case for example he was a nice guy he was trying to go into medicine yes he had gotten wrapped up into his self when Jesus when his report was that Jesus asked him what what have you done with your life? And he said, well, I was an Eagle Scout and I did this and that. I made these achievements, right? And Jesus said, yeah, but what have you done for me?

So it was like Richie wasn't an evil person. He had just gotten distracted in life, going after good things, but missing out on the best. So I get the feeling that people, some people who have experienced this, have just taken a wrong direction in life and need a wake-up call. Maybe they're lukewarm spiritually where they used to be more fervent in their faith. But maybe I should bring up my own experience, which was not really a near-death experience, but similar to these other people, I didn't talk about it.

And it wasn't because I thought I was going to hell or anything. It just didn't seem like the type thing that would edify anybody else. And I was studying for the ministry in college, trying to do the right thing. I didn't have any trouble in my relationship with God. I was trying to serve him, move forward with my spiritual life. So middle of the night, I had this very realistic dream that Satan was tormenting me. And I would call to God, call out to God, and Satan would just laugh. It was like God couldn't save me out of it. And then I woke up in just, I don't know if I was in a cold sweat or what. I had a roommate,

so I left the room and wrote it down. I remember my first words were, I just had a dream, or was it a dream? It was so realistic. It wasn't a near-death experience. It wasn't a deathbed experience. I was perfectly healthy, but it was some kind of a visionary experience of evil. I didn't tell anybody. Why would anybody want to know about it? How encouraging. But I had a tendency to go through doubts and questions, you know, about my skepticism through

life where I was always questioning things. A part of that was questioning my own salvation. Looking back, and it wasn't really until I started studying these distressing experiences that I saw my experience in context and I thought now wait a minute Jesus himself had a personal experience with the devil saw him you know hurt him white like he was talking to now it wasn't because Jesus was going to hell it wasn't because Jesus had taken a wrong path in his life and so there are realities out there and maybe sometimes some of us who are more spiritual legitimately trying to follow god have strong um assaults by the enemy i mean in fact that's very biblical when you think

about it i don't know why i thought it was so odd you know the evil one he seeks to devour us he talks about taking spiritual uh using spiritual weapons to fight spiritual warfare against these uh forces of darkness it's all over the new testament why did i think it was odd that i would experience something like that and if you look at the statistics people like that are let's say i think i've got it here somewhere 20 of people in north america report an experience with evil spiritual entities now this is on surveys where they're not having to talk to somebody about it right i'm sure now you say well wait a minute in america you got a lot of church-influenced, Jesus-y people walking around. What about a place that's more modern and less Jesus-y like Great Britain? But 25% in Great Britain say that they have at least once encountered an evil presence.

That's one person out of four. So I think we need to start talking about these things again, because they're happening to many of us. Okay, so one question that I have, and I'm sure people watching this are like, okay, how can we determine that these are real if they're subjectively in the mind of the person who reports them? So they believe that they're real, changes their life so they're convinced of that. When I look at near-death experiences, the most compelling thing to me is when somebody is in a physical state and they come out of it and have information they could not have known in that state because their ears won't work in their eyes, it was at a distant location, and it matches up with precision. Tells me minimally there's something more than matter going on here because we've objectively confirmed it.

With hell type experiences, it seems a little harder to objectively confirm that. What would be the line of reasoning that we can trust these evidentially speaking well I think we need to do more research on that to actually find out how many of the people with distressing experiences could report what was going on in the resuscitation for example like dr. Sabo studied in his patients so I'd like to see that applied to these I can say in dr. Ritchie's case he actually saw some of this demonic activity like he looked down at one point on earth and saw in a bar where people were getting drunk and when they would pass out he could see demons coming in to influence them. It'll make some of you think about your partying, okay? But he saw that there was this influence going on and he recognized as he was looking some of

the stores and places around it. Well, years later in life, he was going through a town and he realized, I've been here before, not physically, but I was here in my experience. He said, I know what's around the corner. And so if you believe Richie's report, he seems like a pretty reliable guy with a lot of awards. He won the Dr. James, William James Award for research or whatever. He's a great psychiatrist. But that was a confirmation to him and any that believe in him that what he saw in his visionary near-death experience, which was both positive and negative, that he saw there on earth, then he saw the place that he had been. These things happen.

To me, one thing, if you think about it philosophically, why do we believe that anything really exists here on earth? Like, why do I believe I'm talking to you right now? Well, it's real. Now, how do I know that I'm not dreaming this? Because when I wake up from a dream, I look back and I realize that was less real than what we're calling reality now. So I think I'm warranted in saying that because of the degree of reality of me talking to you right now, that I believe this is real. And that's why

we tend to believe in the things around us. And it's confirmed by a lot of other people who've seen these things as well. Others have seen your office here or mine. So I think in the same way with near-death experiences, both positive and negative, these people are saying it was real. I remember the guy I was talking to about his near-death experience who was on a church staff that I used to be involved with, and he just leaned across the desk and he said it was real. It was as real as me sitting across from you right now. Now you say, OK, well, that was real for him. But what does that have to do with me?

Well, if you look at it with legal evidence, those are the kind of testimonies you trust the people who you can tell they have no reason to be lying about this experience you trust them because of their character this was an eyewitness event on their part so many of these experiences if they come from trustworthy people i think i'm warranted in putting some belief into their experience. And if you don't trust them, these things are so, you know, with 4% of the population experiencing near-death experiences, maybe over 80% of the dying experiencing deathbed experiences.

And by the way, with deathbed visions, people do find, seem like maybe 30% of those were negative, according to Osis and Harrelson. If I've got that stat right, I believe that's true. But it was something like 30%. I'm saying, okay, so there are a lot of people who have negative experiences there. So there's this testimony, not just of the person I was interviewing, but you have all these other people giving testimony that have had the negative experiences saying, it's true, it happened to me. So even if I don't trust a lot of those

individuals, I can assume that if I were to have such an experience that I'd be saying the same thing they are. So believe my future self, who will probably have some type of deathbed experience when I see these. And if maybe a third of these are negative, then why shouldn't I trust them? Why should I just trust the positive ones? So those are several of my lines of evidence as we go into these. Okay, that's fair fair that's definitely for those watching if someone wants to do a doctoral dissertation diving into this in more depth would be helpful no matter what comes out of it we need to do more research and I would encourage you to do a lot of research going on right now with near-death and deathbed experiences it just keeps increasing so get involved

I love it now here's one question. I've had, you've been on my channel a few times. I've had Dr. Jeffrey Long and Dr. Sabom, John Burke. I've been fortunate to have just some of the key players and a somewhat common objection I'll get, I think it's from Christians, is, hey, this whole thing is demonic. Satan and demons could be deceiving us about this. Now, I don't believe that, but it's a fair objection because if we have hellish near-death experiences and there's demons that are there and demons are liars, how do we know

we can trust anything that they say, not only in hellish near-death experiences, but then therefore in all near-death experiences? That's a legitimate concern, and it's something that in a lot of the conferences that I see when I just look at the titles of the speakers, what they're speaking on or whatever concerning near-death experiences it seems to be they don't take the negative ones seriously and they don't take the possible existence of the demonic seriously so when you just rule those out you're just liable to believe in all kind of things that people say on the other side as Christians as people who if you take the Old Testament and New Testament seriously, you realize that you're not just supposed to believe any vision that you hear. You're supposed to, as 1 Thessalonians talks about, don't quench the Spirit, do not despise prophetic utterances. So kind of within that realm of utterances that are from God visions

and whatever we're not supposed to quench the spirit what if the spirits working through it so to those who say oh they're all demonic well how do you know they're demonic does the Bible say all distressing experiences of the evil one are demonic does it say that all that all near-death and deathbed experiences are demonic? If not, you're really stepping outside of the Bible to say these are all demonic. In fact, the prophets of the Old Testament, I believe it was Jeremiah, he cautioned the false prophets saying, why do you say thus saith the Lord when he has not spoken? So I think a lot of people want to make this all or nothing. Okay. They're either all of the devil or they're

all good. The Bible says something in between. Don't quench the spirit. Don't despise prophetic utterances, but examine everything carefully. Hold fast to what is good. So I think we have to do the same thing with people's experiences, especially if you go to YouTube and start searching near-death experiences or distressing. What is YouTube going to bring to the top in its algorithm? The ones that people have liked the most. Which ones are they going to like the most the ones that are the most interesting that aren't just the core experience that we see over and over again yeah so i think we need to stay to the core experience watch out because there are going to be false experiences there examine them carefully how do we examine them well number one if they're

just submitted and you don't know anything about the person, don't be naive. Solomon says that the naive believes everything he hears. Don't just believe it because the person seems sincere. They may have mental issues. They may have been on drugs when it happened. They may be trying to get traffic to their own YouTube channel by giving

an experience that might appeal to a lot of people, which means either they made the whole thing up, which has happened in publishing before, or they exaggerate in order to get more hits. So I'd say stick with the main experiences that are given to us by main researchers, physicians, and others that you can trust. And listen to those and evaluate each one for its own merits. The Bible gives us some other things. Number one, is it consistent with what God has said in the past. If it's teaching some kind of false doctrine according to Galatians 1, even if it's an angel from heaven supposedly that's telling us, don't believe it. God's not going to contradict himself. Number two, what is the fruit of it? Jesus said a good tree can't

produce good, bad fruit. A bad tree can't produce good fruit, okay? You'll know them by their fruits. Well, in Dr. Ritchie's case, this produced good fruit in his life. In Dr. Maurice Rawlings' case of studying all his, it brought good results in those patients' lives and in his life as well. Dr. Sabom's second book talked about outcomes that were good in his patients, leading them to a stronger fate. Are some going to be led astray? Yes. But some are on a search and may come back if they're honestly seeking. Seeking you shall find.

So don't believe all the outcomes people give. People are in a search mode. And I think those are some of the principles we use to look at each one but but if the bible doesn't say all these are the devil why should we examine them and use uh use your common sense and biblical data and draw your own conclusions that's really helpful not take the extreme of accepting them all, but rejecting them all. And I think the passage you referred to in Matthew 7 about judging a tree by its fruit. Now what Jesus meant by fruit, if you just look in the context of that passage and

the gospel of Matthew, is the fruit of repentance. That's what he means by fruit. Not some subjective experience that somebody has, but fruit of repentance. And particular in the cases of distressing NDEs from the preliminary data, this is scaring the hell out of people, pun intended, to think, wait a minute, I got to get my life right. There's scary stuff on the other side.

It's at least minimally caused to be able to think about questions of eternity in a way they hadn't before. Doesn't seem like the kind of thing as a whole demons would invent. So I think that's a fair push back on this. Now, some have suggested there's a lot of naturalistic and other explanations to this we can't get into, but I've seen at some of the national conferences and some of the other books that there's a huge new age backing behind some of and interpretation of near-death experiences. And so some have suggested that maybe these hellish near-death experiences are people just

resisting kind of the disillusion of the self at death, that people are afraid to let go and enter into kind of the oneness of reality and kind of an Eastern sense? Is that reasonable? Is that possible? and scientists we need to to take any hypothesis and look at it and see if it fits with the data that we found people did suggest certain things like that when they were trying to dismiss the distressing experiences those with more of a new age take on things would say, oh, there's this disillusion, there's this disseminating of self going into the all the great mind, impersonal mind of God or whatever on the other side. And people that resist that, maybe they're having this distressing experience. I don't see any evidence from the experiences themselves that people are

resisting something like that that are going into these experiences. In fact, in regular normal, well, I shouldn't say normal because we have a lot of each going on, but in the positive near-death experiences, I don't see any disillusion of self there at all i see people going they're very aware of themselves it is their lives that are being reviewed on the other side they're actually talking to other beings their self is still intact so it doesn't seem like that they're submitting to some kind of disillusion of self. Why are they having a good experience when their self seems perfectly intact? But I think we need to look at those type of hypotheses and look at them. But I think now that we've gone along later

and we've got more experiences from people like Barbara Romer and Nancy Evans Bush, we can look at those experiences and say, well, I don't really see any resistance to anything going on there particular in the in the experience itself that would cause for that type interpretation I guess we'll begin with the assumption that New Age is true and need an explanation for this this would presumably fit the data but then when we look at the actual data there's no evidence people are really resisting this in the way it's described. So it at least calls that into question.

Now, I have seen, you've sent me some links to some of these conferences, how when it talks about near-death experiences, it also moves into kind of mediums and others who are saying, wait a minute, if we've talked with the dead in these near-death experiences, maybe we should seek this in some sense. Like if our deceived

loved ones can be conscious on the other side, as near-death experiences kind of, and the Bible indicate, it makes sense that many students of near-death experiences might be tempted to try to make contact through a medium. Is that wise? What caution would you give there biblically? And maybe what is the difference between using a medium and just between seeing somebody on their side, regular near-death experience or hellish near-death experience? Sure. Several things we could go into there. Nancy Evans Bush, she's a good thinker who wrote the book on distressing experiences, Dancing in the Dark. She suggests that a lot of the New Age influence on near-death studies came because in 1975 when Moody wrote his book, it was really kind of the height of New Age thinking. This was a new thing that was coming up and it seemed very

scientific. We're going to get past all these traditional religions. Now we're just going to look to these experiences. And so there are a lot of people who try to interpret near-death experiences in new age terms. And we see that at conferences. But that means you can go to a conference on near-death experiences and there may be seminars on how to contact your dead loved ones either through a medium or through some psychological means or intense meditation or something like this and uh i remember receiving an email from a distraught person i believe he was in england who had lost his wife and he he said, I just want to talk to her one more time. He said, okay, if I go to a medium and try to make contact, I understand that pull.

I lost my own wife. She died in her thirties of cancer. It would be neat to talk to her again. Why don't I do that? Well, biblically in the book of James, we read that, you know, whatever you're seeking, you know, it says seek God, you know, seek God. He's generous with his wisdom. If he doesn't give something to me, like if I want to know some information about my deceased wife, if I pray about that and he doesn't give me any information about him, I need to trust God that he's a good God and I don't need that right now. Okay. So if any man lacks wisdom, let him ask of God who gives to all men generously and out without reproach. And it will be given to him if it's something that I need. But we won't see all things clearly until we die. We shall see all things clearly just as he sees them now,

according to 1 Corinthians 13. So we need to be content with less than perfect knowledge. The problems I see happening with these people who want to make contact with the other side is when you read, and I actually read one of the mediums who's very popular. He gets paid a lot for his insights, supposedly from the other side. And he says, it's all good on the other side. You need to just relax and accept it as good. If you're channeling someone or if you've got a spirit guide, it's all good. And I'm saying there are several reasons to

not believe that everything's good on the other side. One is studies of mediums. In studies of mediums, if you look at the summary studies of studies in the past, one good summary study said that they're just as much wrong as they are right, maybe 50-50, but they'll give a reading on a certain person and say, is this one correct or not? They either get it right or not. Another one says that they approach like 60% right, which would say this is a study of past studies. They used a little different configuration of the evidence and came up with maybe 60% of the time they're right. But listen, if they're wrong 40% of the time, would you trust a witness at a trial that had already been wrong in 40% of the things they had stated? so i think there's evidence from studies of mediums that

some of them seem to have knowledge they shouldn't be able to have some of the people that studied them like william james and others in the late 1800s early 1900s said that some of these were just very deceptive particular ones that were doing it for money. They said they and they could deceive brilliant, objective people. Watch out for that crew. It's a bad industry. So be careful of that. But studies of demons as well. You interviewed the fellow Richard Gallagher from Columbia University, very respected psychiatrist who didn't believe in all this stuff. But when he began to go to people who are trying to exercise demons, he said, number one, sometimes they're exhibiting superhuman strength, which is not a psychological you know thing that should be happening number two sometimes they are they knew things that I only knew in

my mind how could they have known that that does not work well with some psychological theory and they would just be evil. They wanted to do evil to their hosts, and oftentimes, if you read his book, they would imitate angels. They would act like they were angelic beings, but then later would admit that they were, oh, well, I'm really a deceased relative, and then would later admit, no, I'm really a demon, And so since these are all about deception, all about destroying you, it makes sense that the Bible, even if you don't... Now, Sean and I believe we have adequate evidence that the Bible is an inspired book. But even if you don't, just take it as a wisdom tradition of hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years.

Over and over and over, there are verses saying do not listen to mediums. Do not go to mediums for knowledge. Do not use occult methods of trying to consult with the dead and these type things. There are reasons for that, and it's for our protection because i believe there's good evidence there is evil on the other side and how do you know if you're trying to make contact on the other side that what you find is someone who's evil or someone who's who's legit so um so near death and death ex deathbed experiences come to us unasked for. It's not a result of deep meditation. It's a passive thing that happens to us. Like Abraham's walking along and he gets a

vision, okay? He wasn't in meditation trying to communicate with the other side. It comes upon you. But when people actively try to make contact with the other side, that's when we get into the dangers. And listen, over the past 20 years or so, the number of people who claim to be mediums, who claim to have contact with the other side, occultic things have just exploded. So we need to especially be careful here and be careful of those who are in near-death experience research but are drawing that into their themes. I don't think it's that good a fit with what we see in near-death experiences, but they're trying to force it in there because that's a part of their worldview.

That's a huge difference between somebody intentionally trying to talk with the other side through a medium or some other means and a near-death experience coming to you when you're not looking for it. Both assume that there's consciousness on the other side, and both are kind of evidence that we're not just our bodies. Even in the case of some of these mediums that get things right, I would attribute that to demonic information. I mean, I have a friend of mine, I won't mention, who distinctly was playing with a Ouija board and said, this thing knew stuff it could not have known, scared the bejesus out of me,

ended up becoming a Christian. He was, that's what it took. So that kind of information shows that there's a kind of consciousness on the other side similar to near-death experiences. But just because we can experience them suddenly interrupting our lives doesn't mean we should actively search after them. In fact, the Bible over and over again discourages such behavior. That's really, really helpful to know. Now, tell me a little bit about this conference that you sent me. I was not aware of this.

I think it's the International Association of Near-Death Experiences, something to that effect. There's 100 speakers. It's four days. These are not some of the figures I would have expected. And I look to as experts in terms of just analyzing this carefully and philosophically what's happening there do you have concerns do they cover distressing near-death experiences do they bring in some of this kind of medium stuff tell us a little bit about that i've not actually been to the conferences i've just done like you and looked

at them on the web and and was very concerned with some of the people that they would have speaking or would be advertising uh through the sites advertising their services there there is probably in the name of open-mindedness that we're gonna okay we want all kinds of views here and here's a person saying that they offer a type of therapy with deep meditation that will help you meet with a spirit guide who will help you and there are I mean we just that they have people that are in that movement who take that approach and they take bits and pieces of near-death experience data from legitimate

researchers and say hey that shows that there are spirits on the other side and they just kind of some of them just kind of ignore the negative experiences it's all positive it's all good so let's and how do you get healing from things like um okay uh loss like you've lost a loved one let's try to connect you back and so some may be legitimately trying to help people and they're allowing all kinds of people to come in and speak there but they let's just say they've broadened past near-death experience research and gotten into some other areas that I think are quite dangerous well if you ever decide to go i'd love to do a report on what is there and what people are saying and the recent data like i think that'd be really interesting uh i don't

have four days to do right now even like two days would be fascinating but if you're ever motivating your research to do it uh let me know maybe we'll meet up or we'll do a story on it just be fascinating for for folks outside of that to know what's going on so let me do mention that because of that though so much of my research and writing has been trying to fight against secularism and to say listen there really is more to this world than just the material world the new atheism came on really strong after 9 11 and uh so our attention has been there at the time that as apologists our our attention has been focused on defeating those I think a lot of these we've we've not noticed that people are no longer believing in materialism

they're believing very much in a world out there but they're trying to use spells they're trying to use Ouija boards it's a new paganism which I think a lot of apologists need to start addressing yes we need to stay keep addressing the atheist but it's this new spiritualism that has a lot of dangers that's not rooted in good solid research that's that's a good word we try to cover it more so here and we'll continue to do so what would you say to someone steve maybe you've had this conversation maybe not i've had conversations with a handful of people who've had near-death experiences one of our former students in our apologetics program at biola

had a radical one like time slowed down and a car crash was protected by somebody who was wearing white, identified it as Jesus, came out and just completely turned her life and her values upside down. Had a conversation with a pastor in my city who just sat down next to me. He didn't know I was preparing a lecture on near-death experiences and says, can I just tell you about a recent near-death experience I had? I was like, sure. I mean, so I've had a few conversations, but never with somebody who's had a distressing near-death experience. What would you say to somebody if they're watching this and they've had one, or maybe somebody who knows somebody who's had one? Be quick to hear, slow to speak. Number one, take the person seriously. Now, the person may have mental illness. The person may have been on drugs. There are all kinds of possibilities.

But when pastors shut people down by saying, well, I don't see that in the Bible, or that's of the devil, and just dismiss it you don't listen they if they cared enough to tell you about that experience they're not going to tell you the whole thing right off probably they're gonna test you to see if you think they're crazy or demonic or whatever but you need to keep asking them more about it take them seriously tell them you've heard about these experiences and that they they seem like they've happened to a lot of people, that you're not the only one. Listen to it. These are things I wish

people had talked to me about after I'd had the experience. Since we weren't talking about them in the Christian school I was in, I assumed that I was the only one. You want to know that there are others experiencing. Talk to them. Listen. You're not an expert on it, probably. I'm not a total expert on distressing experiences. But tell the person, I'll help you do some research on this if you want to. Why don't we read this book by Dr. Rahmer, Blessing in Disguise, or read the three chapters Steve Miller has on it relating it to Christianity in the Bible. Let's talk about it. Put yourself in their life. Be willing to help and just love the person.

Take them seriously. You didn't have this experience. They're the ones that are the experts. Be scientific in that you're gonna do observations. You're going to learn rather than just spouting forth information. Pray for the person. Pray together with the person.

You need wisdom from God to discern. Was this something from God? Was it from the devil? By the way, if you're contacting demons on the other side, and these demons often will be lying, saying your life was not even real, your family wasn't real. What I was hearing on the other side was, God can't help you. I can do whatever I want to you. Well, you don't believe a liar, right? So if you're hearing untruths from the other side and it's demonic in nature, we need to come to the word of God.

We need to say what is the truth and realize that it's not odd to be attacked. One fighter pilot told me one time, he said, I've never once flown over the right target without being fired at. Well, why should it seem so odd to us if we're trying to follow God and follow Jesus that we're going to get an attack from the enemy? So normalize it for them. This is a part, this is a part of the world we live in. We've got how many people, maybe a third of the people uh i forgot the percentage already but in america and in britain who feel like they've been attacked by some evil source um let's talk about it let's pray about it let's work through this together let's not let's don't let this be the

only conversation let's keep talking about it. That's really good encouragement. Now we're going to do a show down the road where we just talk about how to minister to people who have had near-death experiences. You and I are going to come back and do that in depth. Our next show we're going to do in a few weeks is I get asked more than anything else, don't near-death experiences affirm universalism? So we're also going to come back and talk about that in a few weeks but maybe just to wrap this up can you sum up for us some of your outcomes from this from studying distressing near-death experiences I just lost you in the last part of that so just sum up what I got out of this, number one, this has helped to me to confirm the biblical worldview that so many liberal theologians dismissed years ago.

They thought you couldn't believe in the biblical worldview of the New Testament with demons and angels and miracles and all this. And yet when I'm studying just secular authors and others that are writing about these experiences, I'm saying, wow, this looks like the New Testament worldview. So it has helped me in my faith. It has helped me personally in dealing with my own negative visionary experience uh it has also helped me very much in in understanding the lure of people getting into mediums and others to find out about lost loved ones and that we've got a lot of teaching that we need to do to warn people about the pitfalls of those and and what can happen if you follow that i would recommend people to read richard gallagher's book again demonic foes to see what's going on because if you're in college it's innocent you

get an ouija board you're just experimenting with things right but often gallagher said the people who were the most into these things that were have being distressed or possessed at some point they they they not only started playing with this but made some kind of commitment to the other side the evil other side in order to maybe get something like to get a girl to love me or to get riches or to be successful at school making deals. Stay away from that. That stuff's dangerous. So I really see a motivation to live for things that matter, to live for God, because my struggles in this life are not just with flesh and blood things or writing things or teaching things, issues. There's a spiritual battle going on. And for me, this study has made it all the more real. Steve, I really appreciate how careful you are in your research, not to go beyond what the data shows, to admit when you don't really know where the evidence points in a certain case. I appreciate

that you're always biblical on this, but also pastoral, that these aren't just abstract numbers we're studying, but real people who've had these experiences and in some cases had terrorized them and turned their lives upside down most for the good when it's all said and done. So we will have you back for sure. Always appreciate you taking the time to come chat with me. I hope folks will check out your book. Is Christianity Compatible with Deathbed and Near-Death Experiences? Is Christianity Compatible with Deathbed and Near-death experiences. It's Christiane compounded with death bed and near-death experiences, and chapters 10, 11, and 12 are really what we unpacked here, even in some more depth. So we'll have you back, but for those of you watching, before you click away, make sure you hit subscribe. We've got some other interviews coming up. A former Muslim from the Revolutionary Guard in

Iran. We've got some other topics on near-death experiences, evidence for the Bible. You won't want to miss it. Make sure you hit subscribe. And if you thought about studying apologetics, we've got the top rated program, Talbot School of Theology, Biola University, totally distance-based.

And I would love to help train you to be resourced to your church and beyond. Information is below. And we still have our certificate program that if you're like, I want a little more formal training, not rated for a master's, significant discount is below. Would love to get that into your hands. Steve, thanks for coming on. Let's do it again, my friend. Thanks for having me, Sean.