The Sean McDowell Show - How Near-Death Experiences Support Christianity (and challenge other worldviews)

Episode Date: September 14, 2024

Do NDEs vary from culture to culture? How often do people see Jesus? Do Buddhists see Buddha and Hindus see Krishna as often as Christians see Jesus? Do they support reincarnation? The answers to these questions might surprise you. My guest today, Dr. Steve Miller, has extensively studied NDEs and concludes that they rule out materialism, New Age, Marxism deism, and uniquely favor Christianity. Find out why! READ: Is Christianity Compatible with Deathbed and Near-Death Experiences? (https://amzn.to/45Hganl) WATCH: Near-Death Experiences: The Evidence (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fhqLc6GPu-U&t=457s) *USE Discount Code [SMDCERTDISC] for $100 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

All right, friends, welcome to a fascinating conversation I've been really looking forward to. My guest today, Dr. Steve Miller, has written three books on near-death experiences and deathbed experiences, but this new book goes into new ground where he specifically explores some of the challenges and questions raised by near-death experiences, such as do they point towards universalism? Can they be explained away as being demonic? Do Christians see Jesus as much as Hindus see, say, Krishna? Muslims see Muhammad? What do they actually show? Steve, it's so good to have you back. I love your new book on this and hope people check it out. You are treading new ground, so to speak. Thanks for being here live.

Thank you for having me. So let's jump right in. You have written other books making the case for the legitimacy of near-death experiences and deathbed experiences. Tell us what makes this new book unique and maybe just briefly some of the research you did behind it. Sure. Well, in my first two books, I talked about evidence that the near-death experience is often really an experience with the other side. They're often legitimate experiences. There, I'm really talking mostly to atheists and agnostics or Christians who are doubting their faith in God to say, hey, there is an afterlife. Second book was on deathbed experiences and trying to show that there's a lot of research showing that those are really evidence of going to the other side right before a person dies.

Now, I didn't really address that much about meshing that with Christianity in the Bible. And so I get a lot of questions about now, wait a minute, what about this? What about this? I don't think that's a Christian thing. Some Christians have written very dogmatically against such experiences saying they're either hallucinations or of the devil. And so I felt like these really needed an in-depth response, sort of a systematic theology of near-death and deathbed experiences, why they're important, how do you help people who are going through this, and looking at it from a Christian viewpoint. Because I myself am a Christian, I believe in the authority of scriptures,

and wanted to show people how I think they mesh pretty well. Well, I've had a lot of questions about this for a while, and you answered them, or at least I would say sufficiently addressed them very thoughtfully in a way I have not seen other apologists address them. So we're going to dive into that, but maybe just remind us really quickly what you mean by a near-death experience and what you mean by a deathbed experience. So in a near-death experience, a person may have a cardiac arrest. They have experienced clinical death, which is no heartbeat, no breathing. And yet when they're resuscitated, they say that they were not dead. They were perfectly aware and they have a perfectly formed memory of coming out of their body,

looking down, seeing themselves, maybe having a life review, many characteristics that were found by Raymond Moody back in his book, 1975, Life After Life. Now, deathbed experiences is something I ran across while I was studying the best studies on near-death experiences, where a person, two people back in the 50s and 60s, studied people, what nurses were saying about people who were at their deathbed and had experiences with the other side. Maybe they would see visions or see deceased relatives and begin excitedly talking to people on the other side.

And that's what I did my dissertation on, a PhD dissertation, is studying deathbed experiences. That was my second book. Your books on both of those are the first two that I recommend. Of course, we've had interviews on each one of those. We're going to assume some of the data you've laid out there. Now we're going to look at some of the objections and questions that people raise. And then if we have time, I see some live questions coming in. It would be fun to take some of those as well. Well, let's jump into what I think,

this is my opinion, is some of the most interesting data that's come out of your research, is how much do people experience Jesus in near-death experiences, and what do they see? Well, this is a completely unexpected finding. I mean, I was fine personally, as if I found out that near death and deathbed experiences were just experiences with the other side, but with God in general, and not necessarily with Jesus, many people have experiences with God or with angels or whatever.

But I saw a little kind of preliminary study somewhere someone had done where they found Jesus a good many times. And so I went in to study. Let me back up a little bit. Okay. After my first two interviews, there are a lot of people who ask questions at the bottom of the videos, and I began to talk to them and answer them, and one person just insisted that near-death experiences were not about Christianity, that they were anti-Christian, encouraging people to go into New Age, to believe in reincarnation, that they were not supportive of Christianity, and I kept giving counter-evidence from the best studies, And I

thought, well, hey, there's a pretty easy way to research this. Let's go into NDERF, N-D-E-R-F website. Dr. Long and his wife have put it up and they have over 5,000 people who have reported near-death experiences. Now, some of these are really not near-death experiences. You have to be careful on that site because somebody will put up a vision they had. Somebody will find out is a little bit got mental issues and they'll tell about going to the doctor for those things. But I took a consecutive 100. I wanted to find a consecutive 100 experiences so that I'm not cherry picking. This is a big problem in the field. Let's look at 100 consecutive experiences. I actually looked at over 140 of them. This was a document of over

a thousand pages and just said, okay, what do these say? How many of them say something against Christianity? How many are supporting reincarnation or other religions and how many are supporting reincarnation or other religions, and how many are consistent with Christianity. Well, I found an amazing correspondence with Christianity. I felt like things that were coming against Christianity were just anomalous type. They weren't even enough to be considered, which you have to do in any kind of scientific survey. You weed out the anomalies. You take the big things that you see over and over again. But what I was surprised is that how many of them I found, even the first one I looked at, had Jesus in it. And then I kept seeing Jesus and I said,

well, I've got to go back and see what percentage of these have Jesus. And I was shocked to find approximately 20% of the near-death experiences uh containing uh you know people saying that they saw jesus now the main researchers are often people at universities and people who are very sensitive to diversity and things and sure they might mention an experience that had jesus but then they're quick to come back and say, often, not all do this, but they'll say, well, you know, if the person had been a Buddhist, they probably would have seen Buddha. Had they been a Hindu, they might have seen Krishna. And so they kind of say,

okay, these things are not according to people's expectations, but in this one area, their expectations seem to be getting the best of them. They're really just seeing a general being of light, but being Christians, they naturally think this is Jesus. But if you look at the specific testimonies of the people, they don't say this. If that were the case, you would expect people to be saying, I saw a being of light. Hey, I wonder if that was Jesus but instead they'll say I saw Jesus and I know it was him here they just knew command communicating mind to mind as they often do that okay this is who it is for some they asked to see Jesus but but they said they just knew this just to me it kind of came out of nowhere but

I thought this is important for us to deal with um i couldn't believe it so many seeing jesus okay that that is really surprising to me now why couldn't this just be expectation though because jesus is the most popular religious figure uh probably a lot of these are from america or the west why isn't this just expectation people see what they are expecting to see well i'd say in general with near-death experiences one thing that researchers have found over and over and over is that these do not go according to people's expectations now people say oh christian america people you know they all believe in God and the afterlife and all this. But what a Christian is expecting at death, you're not expecting a near-death experience. If you have a heart attack, you're thinking, oh my goodness, I may be dying. And you're probably right if it's

a serious heart attack. Most of these are not revived. So if you go into clinical death. But we're expecting as Christians, when we die, to come to the other side, and there's going to be some kind of a judgment, there's going to be these types of things. We're not expecting to go out of our bodies, look back, see our bodies in the operating room there, go through a tunnel of light. The Bible doesn't talk about those things

that cause us to expect them uh it's just you know a discussion with angels about whether to come back or not these are not so why are they all having it in religions across the world and in various cultures what we find is there are these core experiences that are over and over and over, and they are not according to the expectations of people. So why should we single out this experience of Jesus and say, oh yeah, but this part is expectations? Gotcha. So I think that's number one.

Okay. Number two, I'd say when I went in to see, okay, well, how many times do we see Muhammad? Some people will say, oh, well, Muslims, even right before they're dying, they're asked to say the Shahada, you know, there is no God but Allah. Muhammad is his prophet. So it's very much on their minds. But you just don't see Muhammad. I mean, it would be, it's very rare to see somebody claiming to have seen Muhammad on the other side. Why aren't we seeing 20% of Muslims seeing Muhammad? And then you look at Krishna.

These are just extremely few. And what I did was to narrow down, okay, let's take all the people that say they're Hindus or they're from a primarily Muslim country or they claim to be Muslims. What are they experiencing? And often what you will see is that a Muslim will say, I saw Allah because that's their name for God. I think we're seeing the same thing as a Christian when they say, oh, I saw God on the other side. Muslim's going to say Allah. Well, a lot of Hindus will say, I saw Krishna. Well, Krishna may be their God in their version of Hinduism. And so they're just saying, I saw God. But I don't see any saying, oh, I saw this picture of Krishna in the picture of what I've seen in our religion to where to identify them separately from God. So I think that's just another indication this is not just expectations, or we'd see all of them having their expectations as well. I think it's really interesting that there's 5,000 of these studies, and you rule out some

of the ones that are not reliable. That might be close to 1,000 cases that would report Jesus, roughly, statistically speaking. I know you went through a percentage of these. But when you looked at Muhammad and Buddha, it was like one, two, maybe three instances that were very equivocal and unclear. So the data is unmistakable of the percentage that you looked at that people are seeing Jesus in a way that they don't see other religious figures regardless of their worldview going in. Is that fair in summary? That's the result of my study, and I would encourage others. I took the number one case submitted to the long site through 140 something just to keep it together and to think that, okay, these aren't people that are just trying to replicate what they've seen before.

These are early ones. You go take another group. Take number 300 through 400 and see what you find there in percentage. But I can tell you that they're well represented. In fact, in one page of my book, I say, okay, let me just go back to all the near-death studies that I have here in my office from some of the best researchers, and I show you where they give examples of seeing Jesus as well.

They're not giving a percentage. That just wasn't a part of their research, but they're there. They're well represented in the literature. Now, I saw a comment that said NDEs don't uniquely support Christianity. We're going to start by talking about how they challenge other worldviews and then look at the positive support, but I see another comment here that says 20% seems low. I'd figure anyone who has an actual NDE would see Jesus. Why not 99% or 100%? And I would say very quickly, there's a difference between comparing how many see Jesus

with other NDEs that they don't and how many see Jesus compared to other religious figures. There might be reasons why everybody with an NDE doesn't need to see Jesus, but clearly the data shows that Jesus emerges in those you've studied in a way that trumps any other religious figure, and that requires explanation. All right, now you have a list in your book, which I love, where you have like 14 different worldviews. We won't look at all of them. I want to ask you about five or six, and maybe just one way that you think NDEs, if they're true, and we're not laying out the evidence here, you do that in your other books, we do that in our other interviews, would challenge certain worldviews. So how would it challenge philosophical materialism or naturalism?

Typically, philosophical materialists and naturalists would say that there is no soul separate from the body, so there is no afterlife. When you die, you die. It's all material, so when you die, that's it. Yet, in a near-death experience, and interestingly, when atheists experience these, typically they become theists and believe in God because they'll say, okay, it was real. I've been there. Now I've got evidence. But in these experiences, they're seeing an afterlife. They're seeing deceased relatives who've been there for a long time. There is a soul, and a soul is not typically known as something that's material. Very helpful, and particularly when people come back with information that they could not have had seems to show that there's a

consciousness that continues apart from the brain, okay? Now, you might argue that naturalism implies determinism, and I think that it does, but why do near-death experiences challenge determinism? Well, when people have a life review, that's—God is not really yelling at people in the life review. This is a halftime experience, not the end of life, okay, when you might go to a judgment or whatever. But it's just kind of like meeting Jesus, the woman at the well. He talks very gently to her about her past. That's what we find in near-death experiences. Well, that implies that when you realize that you hurt someone with your words

or your actions in your past and you're not only seeing yourself doing this but you're feeling it from the other person's perspective that you heard this this is a very self-judgmental thing saying you did something wrong well that implies that you could have done differently right right? Which implies free will. Also, many people that have the experience of making a decision as to whether to come back or not, many of these are given some latitude into what do you think? You know, I know you got a family you want to attend to back on earth, but do you want to come on across?

You can, but you don't have to but you do come back feeling okay i've been doing some things right in my life but there are other things that i've not been doing right and i need to make changes all that implies choice and our ability to make those choices to make the changes what about the idea of pantheism? Some would say that these experiences are about entering kind of this God consciousness and this spiritual realm. How do you think NDEs challenge pantheism? Well, in a pantheist worldview, there's not a personal God. God and the universe are just kind of all one, but there's not a personal God that that you can talk to a personal god who loves you but in a near-death experience when they go to the other side and even if even if they're not

a very spiritual person just say i don't know what it was it was a being of light but they'll say that light loved me and that light knew all about me and still loved me, and I went through a life review with this being of light or with an angel, that's not stuff that you're expecting in a worldview that's pantheistic, where God is not personal. They're seeing, all of them that I've read, you know, certainly within the mainstream, they are seeing a personal God on the other side. Okay, two more for you. Again, we're not laying out the evidence here, but if there's some merit to near-death experiences, how would they challenge Marxism?

I've got to be honest, this one totally surprised me. It makes sense. I didn't see it coming. I was like, wow, that's a fascinating point. So how do near-death experiences uh challenge the worldview of marxism well carl marx really he had a problem with religion and he thought religion was something that we need to to get behind us and get away from it was just the uh this god stuff was just an opiate of the people that kept the lower classes down and uh so so it's really the way communism grew in

the 1900s, it was very much an atheistic thing. You know, they would allow some religion somewhat, but they were wanting it to eventually go away. But in a near-death experience, of course, you're experiencing God. People come back saying, you know, the most important things are God and how I treat other people, yet Marxism is very much future-oriented in that a lot of things can be justified in order to create this ideal state in the future. You know, what was one of the quotes? I believe it was Stalin who said that, you know, one person's death is a tragedy, but

a million is just a statistic. And so you had a very low view of human life where in the near-death experience, it's not all about big economic matters. Yes, you're supposed to be helping people and standing up for the poor and those things, but very different from Marxism in that how you treat the person next to you is primary. How you love your neighbor is primary. How you love that little person who seems to have that person who may be in a coma in a nursing home, how treat that person is important the least of these which is exactly what jesus said was important whatever you do for the least of these you've done it for him

oh my goodness you better not mistreat people in order to establish some future utopia i see somebody's side of the passage about uh satan appearing as an angel of light we will get to that hang on these are some of the theological objections we're going to look at. The last one is that you say it critiques liberal Christianity. We're not talking about political liberalism. We're talking about a movement that J. Gresham Machen has said, moving away from the essentials of the faith on sin, the character of God, the deity of Jesus. How would near-death experiences challenge liberalism? Well, liberals come in many stripes. You know, you're talking about the specific kind of liberalism that Macon was fighting in the early 1900s. And I think that that type of liberalism tended to not really believe in an afterlife, not really believe that Jesus was the Christ, not really believe in angels and demons and this whole biblical world.

Rudolph Bultman and others would say, you know, in this modern age of electric lights and science, we just can't believe in that biblical world anymore. But when I look at near-death and deathbed experiences, they're experiencing a world that looks very similar to the world that was being experienced during biblical times. They talked about angels. They talked about demons. They talked about, you know, a little girl who died. Jesus raised her from the dead, and her spirit returned to her. It's not just a physical world, and so I think that the liberal, again, liberalism is very broad, but for the ones who say, well, I don't know if we really believe in God or at least a personal God, and I don't believe in angels and answered prayers and things like that,

that's not going to jibe with what we're seeing in near-death and deathbed experiences. I think you also point out that there's this sense that there is sin and right and wrong and judgment, which is absent in liberal Christianity too. Okay, now we just talked about five worldviews that you would argue near-death experiences kind of challenge those worldviews. Now let's talk about some of the positive ways that, again, if they are true and we're laying that case out elsewhere, they would reveal. So what are some things you think that near-death experiences

might reveal about the character of God? Well, what we find is not just a loving God, but a loving to the extreme. What the Bible talks about is agape love, a selfless, a giving love, like Philippians where it says Jesus divested himself of his being recognized as God in order to not only become a man, but become a servant and wash people's feet. And so we see this, I think that's the thing that most people are amazed at. And maybe even most Christians, even though we hear God is love, God is love, we really kind of expect if we do something wrong,

God's going to squish us or at least yell at us. And yet they go to the other side and find a God who loves sinners, loves them, even though they've done a lot of things wrong. They find this loving God. And again, it's not just an emotional type thing. They're amazed that this being loves them. I have a guy in my church that I was talking to, and he had had a vision of Jesus that very similar to a near-death experience. But Jesus said, don't you see what I did for you, Ray? And he used his name and he would just tear up when he said it because he said, Jesus

loves me. I mean, we know God's personal. We say that all the time. But if I hear him say, hey, Steve, I really love you. Wow. And that's the kind of love that we see. We see a just God. In fact, let me look at it in a kind of negative way. I've never heard a person come back from a near-death experience saying, God is so unjust know yeah he's big yeah he's god of love or whatever but his decisions oh my i can't believe that god is like that how could you respect someone like i've never heard anyone say that they say he's just and typically what happens to some

of these who have a deeper experience they go to the other side they review their life and then they say oh now i understand why i was born into the family I was born into. Now I understand why my brother had to die at such a young age. Now, so the problem of evil is kind of resolved as they see things from God's perspective and realize, oh, he is a just God. Now, when they get back, they can't explain it all, but they'll say, when I was on the other side, I understood it. So it's kind of like you take your daughter to get an inoculation against something at the doctor's office. And she's like, why are you taking me here to be tortured? But then you put your hand and mind meld with her head.

And she says, and she all of a sudden sees life from your perspective, and she says, I still don't like getting shots, but now I understand. I think that's what we're seeing in near-death experiences. The justice of God, the wisdom of God, the love of God, these characteristics we see over and over in the Bible, I see them in these experiences. Again, in the mainstream experience. You can go cherry pick all kind of weird experiences because they're out there. And you're not saying these are authoritative and we start here. You're saying if the Bible is true, let's look at these near-death experiences and see, number one, if they're valid, if the testimony is good and trustworthy.

And many of these accounts, as you do in your book, are very carefully documented. I mean, there's the Journal of Near-Death Experiences, a peer-reviewed, careful journal. And then when we find these certain themes emerging, you're comparing it to Scripture and saying, although there's a few anomalies, this seems to line up very consistently and powerful and surprisingly with the Christian worldview. That's what's really interesting. So we talked about God's character. What do they reveal about the afterlife that lines up with scripture? So let me reinforce what you just said. I don't think this is giving us new revelation about the other side. It's not like we're adding to the Bible. It's just underscoring so many of the things that we should have already known about the afterlife and really haven't. You know,

when you see people that are coming up with all kind of unique theology, often I'm thinking, okay, I've got a lot of red flags about this experience because it's so anomalous. It's like when you're studying the efficacy of something like Tylenol, you don't take all the little weird experiences and make them the general thing. So I think we have to be careful of this. But ask you know, ask the question again. I'm getting older, and now that question just flew through me. No, no, no, no. Ask T.P. one more time.

We're talking about what near-death experiences reveal about the character of God, and you are careful to say that we're not saying this adds revelation to the Scriptures, but it's an extra-biblical, fascinating, maybe confirmation and affirmation of the things in Scripture. So my follow-up question was not only what it reveals about God's character, but what do NDEs largely reveal about the nature of the afterlife that lines up with Scripture? Okay. Sorry, listeners. I'm getting older. You're doing great. The afterlife. So the afterlife is real it's something

that the good and bad I we need to clarify here I'm saying they go to the other side I'm not saying that this is our final heaven as is mentioned in you know the new heavens the new Earth I'm not saying it's necessarily the paradise that people go to in the interim period. On the other side, in a spiritual world, we find angels sometimes, we find demons sometimes. There's a spiritual world out there, and God takes people, I believe, to something that you might call a vestibule of heaven and sometimes they'll be experiencing some wonderful things on the other side and jesus or god will say hey do you want a glimpse into what heaven's going to be like in other words this wasn't heaven as we read about in the bible but

it is the other side okay okay so but it tells us there is another side. God is there. God seems to permeate the other side. They'll talk about buildings that exude love itself. God is there. A place where our, some of our relatives, it doesn't say that all of our relatives are over there. Sometimes people will see a relative and they're like, why did I say uncle so-and-so? I would have expected to see a relative closer to me. But it's not saying that all of our relatives are over there, but some are. And it's just a wonderful place. The feeling people get is just overwhelming. Someone will say, I've always tried to just go back and capture that wonderful peace, like a peace that passes all understanding. It's just not even describable what they're experiencing on the other side. And I think people come back and say, oh my goodness, this is what it's all about. You know, I've got to

stop just living for material things that are passing away and live for love, live for God. And I think primarily this is encouraging people to seek. It's not giving them the whole picture of salvation and God and theology, but I think it's just kind of like the Apostle Paul had his experience. He didn't see all kinds of things, but all of a sudden he had to rethink his faith. And a lot of people will have a vision at a time at an accident or whatever. Jesus said, seek and you shall find. And I think all the way through the Bible, seeking long-term consistent, seeking Greek present tense there, seek and keep on seeking and you shall find. I think God is urging people to authentically seek.

And many of these people have these experiences. Maybe they went to church occasionally. Maybe they didn't. Many of them were just not seeking. Let me ask you some biblical and theological questions that I've had. One would be, if Christianity is true and near-death experiences are real, why don't we have accounts of more people explicitly hearing the gospel? So either there are accounts that I missed or they're not being expressed.

Why not? Well, I think that goes back to the seeking. When Paul was in Athens, he said, God spread all these people out on earth so that they might seek him. We will seek him and find him when we search for him with all of our heart. Over and over in Scripture we see that. I believe that seeking is very important to God. And so if a person will seek, I believe they will find.

But what does that mean? Typically, God's not going to just write in the sky the four spiritual laws and say, okay, here are the points that you missed in life. You're a sinner. You've got to do this. You've got to do that. He wants to motivate somebody to authentically seek for the truth. And I believe if they seek authentically, they will run across people, theologians, churches, the people who can explain to them further about salvation. And besides, and it's a weird thing, I'm sorry, but in the Bible, Jesus entrusted the gospel to fallible people to spread it. Why is he doing

that? That seems so inefficient. And yet, God knows what he's doing. He entrusted to people. So I don't think he's typically going to give somebody a vision outside of someone seeking on their own and someone going to someone who already knows is further along spiritually than them, getting involved in a church and growing, studying the Bible themselves. I think that's the main way God is working with people, rather than just putting the gospel out in front of them in a vision. Although Paul's experience wasn't necessarily a near-death experience, when Jesus shows up to him, I don't think he preaches the gospel, what we see in the accounts and acts, but sends him to Ananias to then go hear what the gospel is.

So there could be bigger reasons why. Just simply to add to what you said. How about what we hear? Some have said that near-death experiences support reincarnation. Do you see people in the afterlife that are kind of appearing as animals? Are there accounts of near-death experiences that line up with reincarnation? What are your thoughts on that based on what the data shows? Sure. Yes, you can find accounts out there of whatever you're looking for if you cherry pick from the thousands and thousands of experiences. But when I talk to people who are more New Age oriented or Eastern religions oriented, those in New Age is very broad. I don't want to put any of these people in a box,

but who believe in reincarnation, it is just anomalous to see them in near-death experiences. Yes, someone will point to one, but it's really rare to see one now i'll see them mentioned in books and it gives the impression i mean even by researchers when they're telling an experience that they may put one of those experiences in there but they never give an incidence of it how many what percentage very small percentage raymond moody in his first book in 1975, he said, I don't see anything about reincarnation. He said, I'm not saying reincarnation doesn't happen. I'm just saying that in the 150 or whatever experiences he looked at, he was not seeing it. Sabom, who did really put a lot of the research on more of a scientific basis after Moody uh a cardiologist he he just told me personally i was

talking to him funny he said they're just not about uh reincarnation um they're just it's it's very rare now if you go into the database the ender database and you search for something like aliens and i went ahead and did this i thought okay I think you can find anything you want and and hey maybe there are aliens I don't know that's not my area of research but I found sure enough some people saying they saw aliens on the other side uh you can find what you want but what we're looking for is what most people are seeing so that's what do you see you go over to the other side and you're seeing long deceased relatives. Okay, well, you're seeing them as the same relatives they were. They've not reincarnated as another person. They've not reincarnated as an animal. So I think that speaks against reincarnation, unless you're going to say, okay, well, maybe reincarnation happens

decades after you get to the other side and you stay there but i think most forms of hinduism and and buddhism mahayana and uh you know some of these they would typically say the reincarnation happens pretty quickly after about a day or seven weeks or something like this why are you seeing people on the other side who are the same person, but they've been there for maybe decades? So I think it really speaks against many of the forms of reincarnation that people are believing. That's really helpful. I see some comments here of some people, skeptics who are not convinced. And by the way, you're always welcome to be here. Thanks for chiming in. Sure. Thanks for coming. Yeah. And who are saying things. And by the way, you're always welcome to be here. Thanks for chiming in. Sure. Thanks for coming.

Yeah. And who are saying things such as maybe the brain secretes these thoughts. Now, one of the problems, just respond really quickly, is in a lot of these near-death cases that you document, the parts of the brain that trigger hallucinations in these, as far as we know, are inactive during that stage. But second, people will come back and report information they could not have had in that physical state about other people, about events at a distance, about objects at a distance. We're not laying this case out here. The top book I recommend, Steve, is your book just simply titled, it's just called Near-Death Experiences, right? Your first book on this, did I get that right? Near-Death Experiences as Evidence for the Existence of God in Heaven. That is a conversation we have before you lay out in this book. I want to push back on you theologically, is that we often

hear that near-death experiences kind of imply that everyone will be saved, because you have atheists, people of other religions having these warm experiences in the afterlife. Doesn't it imply some kind of universal salvation as opposed to uniquely Christian exclusivist view of salvation? So I dedicate three chapters to distressing or hellish near-death experiences. Because I think those have been understudied but the experts in that area that have studied the most near-death experiences that are not heavenly they're more hellish or have hellish elements like some people may go to the other side Jesus will take them and say I want you to see what's going on here um you know in some kind of hellish existence or some kind of punishment that's going on um and so some will see only partially that and

then will be shown heaven or whatever but um maybe 20 again of these experiences at least 20% are probably distressing or hellish. And in these experiences, they see often demonic beings. It's not just benevolent beings. It's not just all good feelings. And at first, you think people are hesitant to talk about their positive near-death experiences. You're less likely to get a negative near-death experience out of them so that research has been coming along a long time uh but so there are negative experiences that show that there is punishment on the other side I'm not going to talk about

the theological issue of whether that's forever and ever or whether it's punished for a while and then you're annihilated or whatever. But I'd also say that you've got to look, I think, at God's end game. If I understand it correctly, God is wanting people to turn to him, seek him, and love him in this life, and then go to live with him forever. So what if that is your end game? When you are giving somebody a halftime experience with the other side, don't you want them to love you rather than just scare them into heaven? Romans 2 says the kindness, don't you know the kindness of God leads you to repentance? I think God wants to show his kindness, show his love, just like Jesus did. Yeah, Jesus yelled at some people while he was here on earth, but a lot of the worst sinners he talked very kindly to and showed his love to.

God wants you to know that he loves you. I think's the main thing and so i think these these uh primarily these experience are designed to make people seek a loving god and realize god loves you he cares for you the ones that are showing jesus reinforce that oh jesus if you're searching for god and now you're you're thinking about what religion I go to, you need to look into Jesus. Okay. I don't know what experiences you've had with Christians and churches and whatever, but let that keep you away from Jesus. Look into them because a lot of people are seeing him on the other side. So that's why I would say he's not.

I don't see. There's nothing in the Bible that says every time a nonbeliever or a sinner has a vision, it ought to be of hell. That's beyond Scripture to say that. Some people just think that since at the end of life, there's this eternity, that God ought to show us the same thing now. But this is not an experience with after your final death. This is a halftime experience where God is ministering to people in probably the greatest crisis of their life, which might be a heart attack or sepsis condition or whatever that's put them on the edge of eternity. Being a former basketball player, your halftime analogy keeps ringing true with me. So

I like that. Now I have some specific biblical questions for you. And very interestingly, it popped up in the comments, somebody raising it. So I'm just going to bring this comment over. Carolyn Nunes raises a great question that I've had as well. Hebrews 9, 27 and 28 says, it is appointed that men to die once, but after this, the judgment. And yet, in near-death experiences, it seems that they die and then come back and then later die again and have judgment. Your thoughts? Yes. Biblical words, just like words we use here in the United States, differ in meaning according to the context. You know, I ran to the store. I had a run in my hose, someone might say. Boy, we had a run on money at the bank, you know.

And so those run and mean something different. Same thing with the word die. Sometimes die in the Scripture means your final death. I think that's very obviously what Hebrews 9, 27 is saying. You're only going to have this final death once, and after that, there's going to be a judgment, okay? So that's talking about a final death. Okay, but if you take it to mean that people only die once,

well, what about Lazarus? You're going to put, if you believe the Scriptures, then you're going to have to say, well, Lazarus died once, Jesus resurrected him, and then eventually he died again. So the little girl he raised from the dead, there are many instances, or there are several instances of people who died and then were resuscitated, then died again. Also, all these resuscitations that are going on, tens of thousand people in our hospitals and with teams, they're clinically dead we're talking

about clinical death here not final death they're resuscitated eventually again so I don't think the scripture is contradicting that I think it's just talking about final death and this I should just mention this is the biggest problem that I see Christians having with near-death experiences. They confuse to me what's supposed to happen at final death with what's going on in a vision that happens in a half-time type experience during life. They assume that what's going to happen after their final death should happen when you're having a near-death experience. And I just don't see that taught anywhere in the Bible. And in fact, it makes more sense to me that God would

show you his love. And that's perfectly biblical for someone to die, be resurrected, or to be resuscitated like Lazarus was, and then die at another time. That first death was not a final death. You know, when we think about Hebrews 9, 27, it's describing the pattern that God has set up, like the sun will rise and the sun will set. But God also does miracles where at time he overrides the natural consistent process. In fact, to have a miracle,

you need to have a regular consistent process. So God has set up a system that human beings die and face judgment. But in his divine prerogative, if he wants to do the miraculous, then he can intervene, so to speak, and delay the final judgment. So there's ways when we look at this passage, I think more consistently to realize there's not a contradiction here. Hebrews is making a general statement about the pattern that God has set up. What about John 1.18, where it says, no man has seen God at any time? That seems pretty clear. And that you say a lot of people report seeing God in near-death experiences. So I think we've got to say theologically.

When you look this up in a systematic theology, what that verse is talking about is that no person has seen God in his pure essence before. So we're not saying that when people go to the other side on a near-death experience that they're seeing God in his pure essence we have many experiences however in the bible where jesus said i and my father are one we believe he was the son of god a part of the trinity and yet people saw him people saw him after he had risen from the dead and made appearances, they still saw Jesus, okay? So in the book of Revelation, he speaks of seeing God. In the Old Testament, some of the prophets, Moses, you know, says he saw God. But I mean, I think that all theologians that I've read are going

to say that we're talking about that nobody has seen God completely in his essence. There's a sense, too, I think, at the beginning of John that God is about to incarnate himself. And John makes it very clear that this is the invisible God who created everything, who now when we see Jesus, now we have seen God in a fresh way. So since this is in John, we've got to take the theology of John into consideration that nobody has seen God in the way God is about to reveal himself as the person of Jesus in the flesh. Could be a part of the backstory to this as well. Now, I imagine you get this question a lot, and to me it's one that I've thought about as well. Now, I imagine you get this question a lot. And to me, it's one that I've thought about as well. How do we know near-death experiences are not demonic? Now, I'm sure skeptical friends are like, this whole conversation is nuts. I don't believe in near-death experiences or demons. You might as well be talking about the Marvel Cinematic Universe. So if you're not a Christian,

I totally get this whole conversation sounds nuts. But you and I think the Christian worldview is true. I think demons are true. Some of the most popular shows on my entire channel, amazingly, are about demons. So how do we know to trust these, especially because one of the questions that came up earlier said that Satan in Corinthians appears as an angel of light. Okay, I need some clarification. You don't believe in the Marvel Universe? I am wearing a Spider-Man shirt just for the record, but you called me. We need to stay consistent here. I don't believe that all reported near-death or deathbed experiences are of God. I believe that sometimes they may be demonic in origin. Same way with I don't believe every sermon I hear.

I don't believe everybody who claims to be a prophet. There are good prophets and there are bad prophets according to the Bible. There are real miracles and there are satanically devised miracles. There are true preachers and there are false preachers. At the end of 1 Thessalonians, he says, do not quench the spirit, but examine everything carefully. Hold fast to that which is good. It's so easy to just say all near-death experiences are real,

and you just go and start picking all kinds of things out of them sure i don't that's wise proverb says the fool believes everything he hears don't believe every experience but i think it's also why unwise to say all of them are the devil well how can you know that in a big risk there see some people will say well it's safer to err on the side of the conservative let's just stay away from these things and not talk about them but i don't think it's ever safe to err and especially with jesus when people started saying well yeah we see your miracles but we think you're doing it of your father the devil then that was a very serious accusation you know using the spirit or accusing the spirit of being the devil or whatever.

So I think we need to be careful. That's why I wrote three. I'll have eventually written probably a thousand pages on this. Wow. I think we need to use discernment. So some of them, I believe, are of the devil. How do we decide things like that? Well, just like with prophecies in the Bible,

number one, is it consistent with what God's told us before? He's not going to contradict himself. Does it bear good fruit? You know, is it consistent with what you studied in the Bible and what Jesus said? Well, if it is, maybe it was something real. And I think one thing we need to be extremely careful of is when somebody trusts you enough to share their experience with you, often they get shut down by somebody saying, that's not in the Bible. I don't believe that.

That's of the devil. Well, then where is this person going to go if you won't talk to them about it? Be quick to listen, quick to listen, quick to listen, okay? Listen to what they say. If you just shut them down, they're going to go to somebody else who may try to harmonize it with some cult or who knows what. People need our input, and they need biblical input on these things, and that's where we're trying to go. So of them I believe may be of the devil we need to watch for those but others if they're bearing good fruit if they're consistent with theology from the past consider them consider that maybe something God's doing people say they're not in the Bible well look at the Apostle Paul 2nd Corinthians

12 he said I had this experience with, went to the third heaven up here. He said, I don't know if I was in the body or out of the body, but it happened. Okay. Stephen has a deathbed experience. He's dying. He looks up and starts talking to, you know, Jesus on the other side. Jesus had his transfiguration where they were talking to Old Testament saints who were still alive. That's called an after-death communication. Why are you saying it's not in the Bible? Besides,

God mixes things up as far as visions are concerned. We saw all kinds of visionary experiences throughout the Bible from cover to cover. It really is built into the Bible to check true prophecies from false ones, true teaching of Scripture from false ones. This is taught in the Old Testament, even miracles, how you assess, you know, are they miracles according to the Scripture, or do they ultimately contradict the Scripture, which implies that miracles could happen sometimes outside of the Christian faith, as we see even in the Old Testament, potentially some of the, you know, sorcerers in Exodus, you know, example like that. So built in is this idea of testing them. We shouldn't accept all. We shouldn't reject all. If they line up with scripture and we have good evidence, they seem to help bolster our case. I think that's fair.

Now, here's a question I imagine a lot of people are asking today because psychics and mediums and new age is really growing today. I can imagine some people saying, if these experiences are so positive and life-transforming when we meet others on the other side why not try to initiate such experiences through a medium uh ourselves you know i was astounded when i began to uh study the distressing experiences and i began to look and say well you know just how has it seems like a lot of people are talking about going to mediums uh their tv shows about mediums uh i wonder what's the most important tv show out there that people are watching about mediums and i looked and there were top 10 lists of the best medium shows streaming and i thought oh my goodness so this whole thing of people channeling and people going to the other side i just want to warn people about this i had one one man from England who read my first book, and then he said, he said, I just

got to know my wife passed away years ago, and I just, I'm just dying to get in touch with her. Is it okay to see a medium? And I said, I'm so sorry, but I really, the Bible is so clear about not seeing mediums. And if you go to God, you know, ask him, if you ask him for wisdom, according to James, he gives to all men generously and without reproach. If he doesn't give you the wisdom you need, obviously you don't need that, or there's something wrong with it. And what I've said, I read one book by a medium, and he was claiming that, okay, you just trust these beings from the other side, and you begin to just see these coincidences that happen in life, and you go to mediums and get instructions

on what to do. i thought if anybody follows what this person's saying he's going to get his direction by going to mediums and trusting his intuitions and his feelings which often lead us astray rather than doing what the bible says i want to look at biblical principles is this something that lines up with the bible on the decision i'm making, whether to go to college or who to marry or where to go tomorrow or what to eat? I want to just pray and say, God, you lead me. Depend on the Spirit. Depend on the Word. These others are saying, let's go to these mediums. Now, one thing I got from near-death and deathbed experiences is

there's not only benevolence on the other side but there's also personal evil and if you look at the distressing experiences they're talking about demonic presences that are often lying to them telling them things like like you never really existed none of this world existed it was just all made up and then, so there are evil entities on the other side. I'm willing to accept. I've never had some kind of positive vision, like a near-death experience personally. If God gives it to me, that's great. But I'm not going to go out seeking such experiences through some type of deep meditation to try to get in a meditative state and come out of my body. I'm not going to a medium to

try to channel someone. If they channel someone who claims to be a relative, how do you know if that's really a relative or if that's some demonic presence that's imitating that relative? Richard Gallagher, psychiatrist, wrote Demonic Foes, and he is a very well-respected respected psychiatrist I don't know if he's still teaching but was at Columbia University he got into this and said I didn't believe any of this stuff about demons and then he began to work with people and he said some of these things cannot be explained naturalistically so I'd get that book if you're just laughing at this whole demonic thing demonic foes Richard Gallagher I actually had a chance to interview him about two or three months ago, and it was totally fascinating on so many levels, chilling and

fascinating. His book is awesome, has the highest level of credentials, and has taken a lot of heat for this, but spoken out on what he thinks is true. I have so many more questions for you. We're going to have to do a follow-up conversation. One of the things that I do appreciate is that you're a philosopher. That's a lot of your training. You're careful with the research. You don't overstate your case. Now, you do say that these experiences are not authoritative compared to the Bible,

but there's an interesting lineup here that is suggestive. So I think a lot of skeptics, especially those hearing you today would say, you know what, here's a guy who's not out just to prove something, but wants to follow the data, see where it points. And I think you do that really fairly. So I hope people will check out your original book

on near-death experiences, your book on deathbed experiences, and then your new one here, which I printed out because it's so fresh when you sent me the PDF. The title is, Is Christianity Compatible with Deathbed and Near-Death Experiences? And you walk through many of the things. There it is.

I need to get a physical copy. That looks great. It came to me last night. That's pretty hot off the press. Are you serious? Oh, that's exciting. Congratulations. I know what it's like to open up a new book and how much years you really put into researching this. Are you going to keep studying near-death and deathbed experiences? Do you have more questions and stuff you want to do, or are you moving on? have said positively about arguing against the afterlife. I don't think I've adequately covered

that and deal a little more about the scientific nature of what I'm doing. There's some other things that probably most people aren't asking about, but I just feel like need to be covered if I'm going to make this into a true area of apologetics. And can I mention that if somebody's interested, thanks so much for mentioning the books. I really, really do try to document things well. Yeah, you do. And you'll find out. So I deal with tons of issues. You'll get tired of my detail. Just skip to another chapter that interests you more. But if you wish to go deeper via video or audio, some of you just learn better that way through these videos. I've got like 14 hours of videos with a fellow young apologist named Charlie Mitchell, and it's Pondering Christianity is what you would search for the YouTube channel

or Afterlife Apologetics. So I really go into more depth and all these things where with Sean, I've got these three interviews. We get to introduce the books and deal with the main issues, but there's so much deeper that we can go with this. That's awesome. What a good plug for that. 14 hours. I can imagine that's like a full week with breaks of almost recording it. So good for you for doing that and making it available for free. Again, the title of the book is, is Christianity Compatible with Deathbed and Near-Death Exper experiences. It's well done. Really, you chart some new territory here and some new ground. I was asked this past summer, we had our biolo-apologetic students out, and they're asking me, what areas is there new research needing to be done? And I instantly said near-death experiences and deathbed experiences.

You're out there doing this, and there's some other very careful scholars. I mean, that book, I think, 2018 at Missouri State University, if I recall the details, are leading academics and medics weighing into this, not just Christian apologetics, but tying to what it might mean to the faith in the afterlife.

You're kind of charting new ground here. So if anybody is interested, this is an area for other fruitful research, but I'd love charting new ground here. So if anybody is interested, this is an area for other fruitful research, but I'd love to have you back on. Maybe we can take a more pastoral approach to this. How do we address near-death experiences? Because when I first read your book, I wrote a blog and I think the title was like, Surprised by Near-Death Experiences. I was pretty skeptical and thought, I don't know if I buy this. I read your book and was like, dang, there's at least more to this than I realized. But it was your pastoral approach that really stood out to me. And I've realized many times in my own life, I'm quick

when others are going to share this stuff to just be the skeptic. I've made myself more open and it's amazing how many people have shared their stories with me. I won't talk about that, but maybe down the line, let's talk about how to respond to this and deal with it better in churches and in relationships because if 4% to 8% of the population have had near-death experiences, this is much more regular than a lot of people know. In fact, on Twitter today, an atheist responded. He goes, hey, Sean, I'm an atheist. I had a near-death experience.

Didn't change his worldview, but he shared it publicly. So we will have you back. And before others move away, make sure you hit subscribe. This is a topic we talk about, including other apologetic topics coming up. Some fascinating conversations, archaeology, sexuality, evidence for the Bible, you name it. If you thought about studying apologetics, join me at Biola. We have a fully distance program and we would love to have you join us. Information is below. Now, Steve, normally I'd hang afterwards and chat, but I'm taking my 19 year old son to check him in at Biola. So I'm getting emotional thinking about it, but it's

a special afternoon. So love you, brother. We'll connect soon. Thanks so much for coming on. The rest of you got another live stream coming soon. Thanks for watching. If this is helpful, please share it with a friend. Thank you so much, Sean. Thanks, brother.