The Sean McDowell Show - Near-Death Experiences and Universalism (Jesus, Buddha, and Muhammad)

Episode Date: July 19, 2024

Do Muslims see Muhammad, Christians see Jesus, and Hindus see Krishna? People often claim that near-death experiences confirm universalism, but the data might surprise you. Dr. Steve Miller is leading researcher on near-death experiences (he has written 3 books on it). While he has been on my show multiple times, the most common objection we have received against NDEs is that they promote universalism. Is this objection legitimate? Join us for an in-depth look at whether NDEs confirm all religions or uniquely support Christianity. READ: Is Christianity Compatible with Deathbed and Near-Death Experiences? (https://amzn.to/44NFMzq) WATCH: Near-Death Experiences Point to God and Heaven: (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bxqweRfreck&t=14s) *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

I've done several interviews with our guest today, Professor Steve Miller, about his research on near-death and deathbed experiences. We've received literally thousands of responses. The number one objection we have encountered from listeners is the claim that people who are not believers in Jesus often have wonderful heavenly experience with the God and no longer worry about salvation. In other words, do near-death experiences

teach and promote universalism? This is a big question and I can't wait to dive into it. Steve, maybe we start with this. Remind our viewers and our listeners, kind of an elevator speech so to speak, what you concluded about near-death and deathbed experiences in your earlier books? Sure. All this needs to be in context because a lot of times I'll get questions about, well, are these for real or whatever? And I'll think, oh, I wish they could go back and hear our earlier interviews. So this all took me by surprise about 12 years ago. I found out that there was actual research that had been done in the past on near-death experiences and I wanted to know what the research was and I was shocked to find that competent well-respected researchers typically in secular academia or secular medical vocations had studied these

near-death experiences for almost 50 years now death deathbed experiences, probably 130 years or so. They've been studying them. So what I wanted to do was to not just go on YouTube and listen to experiences. We don't know where those experiences coming from. We don't know if the people are legitimate or not or have mental illness or trying to sell their own books or whatever. I wanted to get into the research done by professionals who had interviewed people and find out what was going on. So I got into it and was shocked to find probably about a dozen lines of evidence for near-death experiences that told me,

I think these are real experiences often with the other side. And then I got into deathbed experiences with my dissertation that I did on deathbed experiences as evidence for the afterlife and found the same thing with them. These are experiences just before a person actually has their final death. And again, I just saw a lot of evidence for the afterlife. So I was hooked. It helped me as a doubter to kind of put the icing on my apologetic cake that, wow, this really meant a with Christianity? And my final book was comparing the best of near-death, deathbed experience research with biblical theology and seeing what are the connections. And I found around 47 areas of overlap. So I felt like there was a very good mesh with what we've been saying in Christianity all along. There is a personal

God. There's a God who loves us. That's not in all philosophies of life or even all religions that there's a personal God. So I found it to line up very well. And there's other things that line up such as angelic beings, a review of somebody's life, that the way you live this life matters, that ultimate reality is about loving people. And yet the area that seems to diverge is this conclusion many people take that it encourages a kind of universalism, that everybody is fine in terms of their salvation. Now, in your recent book, and I'm going to focus the title, it's called, Is Christianity Compatible with Deathbed and Near-Death Experiences? This is volume three of your research. You found something that surprised you, and it surprised me too, that between 18 to 20% of near-death experiences report in your specific study included Jesus. But don't Muslims see Muhammad, Buddhists see Buddha,

Hindus see their gods, etc.? Yeah, this was a surprise finding. I mean, I was fine as a Christian if this was just kind of a basic experience that gave us the idea that there is a God, there is a heaven, and filled in some of the gaps. You don't expect any one line of evidence to give it everything. But when researchers had tended to say, they would mention people talking about seeing Jesus on the other side,

but then kind of as secular individuals who are teaching in secular academia, they didn't want to make this just a Christian thing. So they would kind of back off and say, hey, maybe if this were a Muslim, they would have said they had seen Muhammad. Maybe if it were a Hindu, they would have seen Krishna. And so I'd just taken it that that's the way it was, that these were people who were kind of uncertain of what they saw they saw being of light and as a christian they said oh that must be jesus so um what i did i saw a preliminary study a person had done on dr long's in derf site where he had found a lot of sightings of jesus and i thought well what if i look at consecutive experiences that have been submitted so that i'm not cherry picking so i took starting at the first experience so that I'm not cherry picking. So I took starting

at the first experience so that I couldn't be accused of just grabbing a section that had a lot of Jesus in it. Started with the first experience submitted to the Inderf site and looked at almost 150 different experiences. And I found again, about 18 to 20% of them saying that they had seen Jesus. And they weren't saying, I see a light, I think it might be Jesus. These were saying, wow, I saw the nail scars in his hand, or I just knew for sure this was him. Just like they were talking about other things, like seeing a being of light or having a life review. They didn't show any doubt of those.

So I thought, wow. of light or see having a life review they didn't show any doubt of those so i thought wow i mean even if it's just christians having this experience uh still the the beings that people see on the other side that are deceased are typically relatives people they knew maybe christians in their experience actually see jesus but, if these experiences are largely real, then they're seeing Jesus. I thought that was significant. So next I went to look at the hypothesis that maybe people coming from other backgrounds were seeing their God. So this was just an interpretive thing that was going on indeed. So what I did is went in and looked at,'s over 5000 cases on the Inderf site for people who and I look for cases where someone self-identified as Muslim or they were from majority Muslim countries where they're not, this is not from Atlanta, Georgia. Okay, we're talking about other countries and people who are actually saying I'm Muslim.

None of them mentioned seeing Muhammad. And a lot of Muslims will mention this, that they don't see people having this experience with Muhammad. And they have their theological reasons for saying that, but it is significant to me that are not saying that seeing that Hindus one of their most popular gods would be Krishna so I searched for Krishna I only saw three claiming to have seen Krishna and two of those were well I'd say they're red flag type things that within the experience that said, oh, maybe this isn't so accurate or maybe this

really wasn't a near-death experience. Maybe they're just reporting a vision. And so like three out of 5,000 that came to like, you know, that's just three out of 5,000. It's just not a lot. I mean, I found 0.6% of people claiming to have seen aliens. So what I'm trying to say is that with these experiences, especially when they're submitted to a website, you don't have a physician looking over them saying, okay, does this person have mental illness? Are they on drugs? Let's compare it to the hospital records. So you're going to have a lot of anomalous experiences out there. So you have to consider that when you're doing research. When you're studying near-death

experiences, look for the core experience. What are 15 to 50 percent of the people saying? Maybe between 15 and 20 percent say that they saw a tunnel. Well, that's significant. It's not like one percent or half of one percent that you really need to set aside as anomalous. So when I looked for what Hindus were experiencing and look for what Muslims experiencing, I did not see the hypothesis that everybody's just seeing the divine being that they expected. Now, of course, if a Muslim sees God, they're going to call God Allah. Or if a if for a certain Hindu, Krishna is the high God and that's their name for him, they may call him that. But I didn't see the Nish prophets or Nish people that were under God being mentioned there. So this was totally shocking to me, but I think it's significant.

People ought to comment on it and think about it. Steve, from what I've seen in studies internationally, there's pretty common threads of near-death experiences that cross cultures. But yours is the first that I've seen that's asking the question about Christians seeing Jesus, Muslims seeing Muhammad, Hindus seeing Krishna. Are you aware of other studies that also ask the questions you asked? Or is this the first one that you're aware of? I think this would be the first I'm aware of. Okay. Okay, that's helpful. So more research needs to be done here.

Yes, yes. But the preliminary data you carefully did does not show that people just see the spiritual person that they believed in and so this is a kind of wish fulfillment something else is going on uniquely about jesus so that's fair now here's the question that i get and i see more comments on twitter when i post videos of us or on youtube interviewing you and they'll say isn't it true that people are typically told in their near-death experiences that all are going to heaven? In fact, most people don't pose this as a question. They pose it as a statement. So is that true? Right. I'd say no, not the way you phrased it. When I see people saying, oh, I had this accident. I went to the other side, and it was all good, so I'm no longer

afraid of death. That's fine. I asked further, or I asked myself if I'm just reading their experience. Now, is that what they saw on the other side, or is that their initial conclusion after having the experience? That's very significant to say that because if you if you ask so another thing i look for with the 150 consecutive experiences is what unchristian doctrine is being uh claimed to have been found on the other side and i really just uh reincarnation extremely few people were saying they saw something on the side that on the other side that told them, this is what happens after death. You're reincarnated. I found one where a person was saying, oh, I had a feeling kind of like when people talk about reincarnation, but

it's not very specific. Another one had all kind of red flags in it. But even with that, just one or so out of that many. Now, I had one person reply under one of our interviews, and he said, oh, but I'm just seeing all kinds. Most of these experiences are talking about reincarnation. And I kept saying, well, in my study of the best studies, I don't see it happening. In fact, Moody, who popularized near-death experiences with his book in 1975, Life After Life, he didn't find any that had anything to do with reincarnation. So why is it that this person was seeing so many? The only thing I can figure is that at one point he said i have seen this many experiences and i thought oh he's going to youtube and google and looking

for examples of near-death experiences well what are google and youtube with their algorithms going to feed you if you're searching for that? They're going to feed you the experiences that are the most interesting, the most people have liked. That's going to be a part of the algorithm. And then if you like one that has reincarnation, oh, Google says you like those with reincarnation. And so you find yourself in this web of experiences that are very new age, and you begin assuming that that's what most experiences are like. But I'm saying if you go in and look at 150 consecutive experiences to find out what percentage it is, it's just very,

very small. So what people are often doing is if they mention something like reincarnation or that everybody's going to be saved and everybody's going to heaven, I'm no longer fearing death. These people who have had these experiences don't come out with a full fledged systematic theology. Sure. They're just thinking this thing through. I think the main purpose of this experience from God's perspective is to cause us to see a few things. There's a God. There's a God who loves us. There is an afterlife.

The way you live your life matters. There's a whole world out there that has angels in it. And beware, if you look at the distressing experiences, there are malevolent beings over there as well so it opens up your eyes and you find atheists that are all of a sudden whoa materialism I don't I'm no longer a materialist materialist philosophically I don't believe that the world's just material I've experienced an afterlife with spiritual beings that's a huge paradigm shift for people what's god doing i think he's wanting people to seek and i would encourage christians and non-christians atheists about the value and importance of seeking um jesus saidermon on the Mount, seek and ye shall find. If you look

in the New American Standard over in the margin, it clarifies that that is a present tense verb, seek, seek, and it says keep on seeking. So for me, when i began to go through doubts and questions in high school i had to go through periods of searching i was reading pro and con literature reading a lot of apologists like your dad at the time and others and then reading what others would say against them and how does this come together i'd come through a period of doubt then something else would make me question it took time it took years for me to work through these i searched through prayer i searched through examining my heart to make sure i wasn't just trying to prove what i wanted to believe i searched by getting with other sincere seekers and believers. So I think out of these experiences come people who are all of a

sudden very much humbled and starting to seek. Now their first ideas as to how to interpret this thing are probably largely driven by their past experiences. If the person came from a very legalistic church or a church where the leadership was not consistent with their faith and were not really loving and serving people, then after the experience, they're going to say, wow, God is nothing like what religion has taught me. Religions are false, right? I mean, that's their first thought is this is nothing like the church i've been going to or the religious group and so uh others who who were all worried about life and they're dealing with anxiety and many things and they go and see a loving god they think oh i'm no longer worried about death look god is good but they've never studied uh distressing hellish experiences to see that side of it.

They've not thought of other lines of evidence like, okay, well, if people are seeing Jesus on the other side, maybe I ought to find out what Jesus was all about. Where are the earliest records of Jesus and what can I learn about him? They're just starting their search. But I think that often the confusion is you have people telling about their outcome and others are saying, oh, they saw on the other side that Burke and Imagine Heaven and Imagine the God of Heaven, where there's so many things of near-death experiences as a whole that line up with scripture. And yet within that, there's a few anomalies that don't, which is to be expected given the wide breadth of cases that we have. Now, the big anomaly and pushback, again, is this idea that it teaches universalism. So if it doesn't, then why do you think people keep saying that these kind of near-death experiences or deathbed experiences teach universalism?

Well, I think, again, they've been to the other side. They've seen something glorious. Maybe many of them had great fear of death, and now they've met a God who loves them extravagantly. And I think that would be a logical conclusion if somebody's just starting their seeking. I do believe if they continue to seek that they'll find that there's a lot of nuance to that. Yes, God loves you, but yes, also he is a just God and things get more complicated with that as you, if they finally turn into the scriptures. A lot of people are saying and uh perhaps this is a reason that this has become a problem in 1975 when raven moody wrote life after life this was kind of the height of the new age movement was coming in a lot of people had rejected traditional religion you had people starting to believe in okay there are angels

there is something else out there, and reincarnation, buying into more Eastern religions and their teachings. And so maybe it's no doubt that some of the people who were early writers in their death experiences leaned into these New Age teachings and were trying to harmonize it well. I don't think it harmonizes that well with New Age teachings. For example, reincarnation. If your idea of reincarnation is that immediately or soon after death, you are reincarnated as either a totally different person, you're a person but it's not you anymore,

or some animal depending on how you lived your life and karma and all this. Then why are people going to the other side and seeing deceased relatives who've been there for decades? I mean, when they see these deceased relatives, they haven't turned into different people. They're not now an animal, and yet they're there decades later. Now, maybe you harmonize that by saying well the reincarnation happens decades later they got a period up at either i'm not saying therefore yeah that just throws out all other beliefs i'm just saying it seems more consistent with a christian view that when you go to the other side jesus said to the thief on the

cross today you will be with me in paradise. It's not like you're going to be reincarnated or something else. You're going to be on the other side, and it lined up with Christianity. But I do see how initially people could take that to be, you know, oh, God loves me. Why would I worry about God god or why would i worry about an afterlife and then they move on from there okay but so initially in the research i think there are a lot of people who are in a new age camp and there still are a lot if you go to a small group meeting of people who've had near-death experiences it may be filled with people who are more new age. And some of them, you know, have had bad experiences with religion. And to them, it's just so comforting to think, oh, I don't have to go to a religion to believe in the afterlife or God. Here I can look at this other evidence. But it's significant

that Dr. Sabom, who did, to me, the first scientific study of near-death experiences, a very well-respected cardiologist, and he didn't believe in near-death experiences when he first began to people say, well, it really leads to new age beliefs and universalism and all these things. So he actually did a study that he called the Atlanta study. He was in Atlanta at the time, and he talked to people, patients he knew, others he had heard of who had had near-death experiences and said, what is the outcome? That was his big question. What he found is in the vast majority of cases, they were not turning to New Age thoughts, giving up their traditional beliefs, but they were more dedicated to their churches. They were more, they were reading their Bibles. They were more involved in the church. And in fact, this is what happened to dr sabom he became a more traditional believer in jesus over time was like an elder in his church and

to this day is very much following him so when people say that it leads to new age teachings or that it leads typically to universalism i'd say you've seen that in some reports but what if those are just niche reports that have been gathered together by google i think if you look at the outcomes and penny sartori i believe saw the same thing in her as she was studying near-death experiences for her dissertation that people were praying more. They were turning more to traditional faith. And if you read on distressing experiences, both of the people who've written full books on distressing experiences and would be considered authorities in that area,

they'd say the typical response to a hellish experience is just, they take it prima facie. Something's gone wrong in my life. I've been headed in some wrong direction. I need to repent. And then they start seeking God. They don't assume that everybody's saved for sure. They're concerned about their own salvation, and they do a traditional repentance and try to turn back to god and serve him it'd be interesting to know at some point steve people having near-death experiences in other countries what are the outcomes of people in muslim-based countries and

catholic-based countries and more you know marxist-based countries and all that data hasn't been done but that would be interesting to see some of those outcomes. Now, I think one of the biggest pushbacks against universalism, at least near-death experiences promoting this, is like you said, hellish near-death experiences. It's about 20%. And some studies would suggest that's underreported, and it's even higher than that. Just yesterday, I was checking some of the comments before we did this interview, and somebody posted a comment on my interview with Sabom, who you mentioned, and my interview with you, and just basically said, this is not word for word, but this is right. I had a near-death experience, and it was awful. It was harrowing, and I just wanted to get back

alive as soon as I could. Death is scary. Not enough of those stories have been told. So they don't all fit in this category of it's rosy and it's fine and everything is great on the other side. Hellish near-death experiences challenge that. Now, with that said, some do report that because of the experience, they believe religion isn't that important or that there's nothing to worry about concerning death since all make it to heaven. We do hear some people reporting that. So how do you make sense of some of those reports? Well, again, when I looked at 150 consecutive experiences, I just didn't see people saying that on the other side I was told that religions don't

matter or that religions are all wrong I just didn't find reports like that I might now what I'm reading some of the respected researchers sometimes one will come up like that where someone said oh I discovered that all discovered that all religions were wrong. But again, it's presented as an outcome typically. And again, I would say if somebody's had a bad experience with churches or they've been in some cult or they've been in some very legalistic church, which didn't really present the love of God, what they've experienced is totally different from what they imagined God was like. And so sure, they're going to say religions have it wrong. So you need to ask, what do you mean by religion? Because different people mean different things by that. And you have to find out. But I just did not find. Okay. So what

you will find when you get into anomalous experiences, the one out of 100 type things, OK, you'll find one person who says, I found that everything I'd been taught in Sunday school all my life was true. That's almost the exact words of one of the ones that I read about. But you'll see another one saying, I found out that all religions are wrong. And you're like, well, wait a minute. Those just contradicted each other. And so when you lean on the anomalous experiences,

rather than drawing from the core, you're getting into people who've had weird, you know, they've got mental problems. They were on drugs, but didn't tell anybody. They're trying to sell a book that's appealing to a certain group of people. That's why I didn't go out and read all these books of people claiming to have an experience or go on YouTube. I wanted to see what we were getting from the best research. And when I look at the best research, I just don't see people coming back in any significant percentage saying, oh, I found,

I was told on the other side that all religions are false and that that's just, we don't need them. What about being told that all religions are true and that whatever path is fine? Does it also challenge that narrative as well? Well, I think it does because as i mentioned on what i found were 47 specific counts i felt like there was a strong convergence with christianity um you're so many of these doctrines differ widely from religion to religion, specifically within niches of each religion. Like some people will come back. Some people's religion teaches that when other people are coming against you and coming against your faith, it's OK to promote terrorism or whatever. Whereas Jesus was totally opposite.

He said, turn the other cheek. People are gonna hate you. Turn the other cheek, love them. Try to love them to Jesus. So when religions are so starkly contrasting on certain points, I'm not saying that everything about other religions are wrong,

but surely as a person who's concerned to seek God and to know what God wants out of my life at some point you have to compare and say which world views or which religions are closer to what we found through this you know this line of evidence of near death and deathbed experiences which ones fit best with that data now that's only one line of evidence and I think a true seeker is going to say well I want to look at the history of the Quran I want to look at the history of the Bible and see did these events really happen that's another area of research so um but I but surely it's incumbent upon all of us how can you just say they're all

right would they conflict in so many ways I mean either God is impersonal and we're gonna after death meld into an impersonal Universal Mind who's not really a being that you pray to and love and that loves you? Or is it this personal being that everybody reports who actually loves you and is concerned with your prayers? Well, that kind of being you want to be praying to because that being cares for you, and it's not like that in every religion. Focusing on the core distinctions is what helps because sometimes people look at religion and say, well, they're all about doing good and caring for the poor and showing mercy. But you just made a very important distinction that in the afterlife, Eastern religions as a whole and New Age, there is an impersonal existence that we either cease to exist or meld into, but it's in the monotheistic religions, and in particular Christianity, that there is a personal ongoing existence of

individuals and, of course, a personal God. So the fact that we don't see in the afterlife this impersonal kind of dissolution of the self is challenging that understanding of reality. So that's helpful when we focus on the core differences between religions rather than some of the surface ones. And also your distinction, Steve, between the experience somebody has and the outcomes is interesting. So I know A.J. Ayer, the late atheist, had a near-death experience, but as far as I'm aware, didn't shift his worldview because he interpreted it through the existing kind of materialistic understanding that he brought to the experience itself. biography lately. And I think the way I would say it was this was toward the end of his life, but it wasn't a deathbed experience. It was a near-death experience. And some of it was, it was distressing. He saw like a red light that was hurting his eyes. And some people who saw him shortly thereafter said it really shook his worldview because he didn't believe in an

afterlife, didn't believe in a God. Now, later, as he was talking to people, he seems to have tried to explain some of the way and smooth it over and whatever. But I am amazed at how many people I was in a bookstore the other day with my wife and saw a biography of Patrick Stewart, you know, the great actor. You're into stuff like this, you know, Star Trek type things. But he, but I looked at the index in the back, looked up the word paranormal experience or something. Sure enough, went there and he had an experience where he heard a deceased relative talking to him. I believe it was his mother. These things are everywhere.

And I think we need to think through which worldviews fit best with this. If anybody's a seeker, we simply must do that. We can't get away from it. And I would caution people when you make a big distinction between Eastern religions and Western religions. You know this, but just there's all kinds of nuance out there. I mean, when you're talking about Hinduism, Hinduism could be defined as the various religions of India. So there are probably many out there who believe in a personal God. And then there are many over here claiming to be Christians who are very liberal and don't even believe in a personal God and then there are many over here claiming to be christians who are very liberal and don't even believe in a personal god so much nuance to these things but i i understand your point these are things that we need to consider when narrowing down which religions

seem to have the closest to the truth that's a helpful distinction i would expect from a careful philosopher like yourself that's great now i've got some other questions for you. Sure. I'm just curious how that, that you've read the story by A.J. Ayer or Ayer. I tend to interpret that as maybe kind of God's common grace or in breaking into his life, trying to spur him to think about things without overwhelming him with evidence, without knowing more, that's how I would maybe interpret that. Tell me how you might interpret something like that. I think God's giving people what they need in order to try to draw them to himself.

And another way to put this question, maybe you were going to ask this later is, okay, why are, why are so many people that are, I mean, even, even wicked people, why are they going over and seeing a loving God? That seems like a tease or something as if they're okay now. Why, why not give them a taste of hell? And if that's true, since the way is broad that leads to destruction, we ought to see most people having the hellish experiences. Now, maybe most do have hellish experiences. People are extremely reluctant to share those. Who knows? But why do we think biblically that a person who is wicked ought to see a judgmental God, not after death? Our theology teaches us that after death, after our final death, there is a judgment seat. But it doesn't tell us in a halftime experience what we're going to experience

what would i expect during that experience well what i would expect is that first peter peter says or is it second peter where he says god is not not god is patient toward us not wishing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance. God wants everybody. He wants A.J. Ayer. He wants Patrick Stewart. He wants all these people.

He wants them to know him. He, God so loved a few people. No, no, no. God so loved the world. And so as one missionary was talking about, there seemed to be redemptive analogies in all these cultures, indigenous cultures around the world. There are things that God has built in. And what I'm seeing is that one fellow studied indigenous cultures and the oldest civilizations and asked the question, why do these people believe in God in the afterlife? His conclusion was that often

they were having experiences like near-death experiences. Shushan is his name, S-H-U-S-H-A-N, did great, great study on this. God was working in these people's lives to reveal himself. Okay, so how should God reveal himself? What would we expect? Well, it seems to me that God's end game is to fill heaven with people who choose him because they love him. So doesn't it make sense that if he wants everyone to come to repentance, Paul said, Romans 2, the kindness of God leads us to repentance.

He doesn't want to come up with Hitler right at the end of his life and say, "'Okay, well, I'm gonna scare him with hell "'and then he'll make a decision.' "'Well, I don't think that goes along with God's purposes. And in fact, it's not surprising to me at all that in Luke, Jesus is teaching us to be good to even bad people. Okay.

Don't just be good to good people. Be good to bad people. And he says, why? Because our father in heaven is kind to ungrateful and evil men. Okay, well, in a near-death experience, God is being kind to people who don't deserve kindness. I don't even deserve kindness. You know, I've done enough wickedness in my life in the past to deserve hell, I think. But God acts toward me in kindness. And so it's not

surprising to me at all that God would show someone his love. Let's say someone grew up with horrible parents that the world's just been bad to them all along. And yes, they're wicked people, but in their mind, they justify it. If there is a God, they think he must be horrible. And then they have a traffic accident and for the first time find totally selfless love coming from God. Wow. That person, I think, is going to become a seeker. It's not just that he believes in the afterlife and God, but all of a sudden God is attractive to him. And like one person from, I believe, the Middle East had said in her experience, she said,

never before had I seen someone to love me like that being. Everyone's just beat me. Everybody has been unkind to me. Everybody puts me down. And then I go to the other side and there's this being that loves me. She was just startled. And so that can provoke a search. Look at Acts 17, where Paul's talking to the Athenians. He says, hey, God spread out all these people around the earth so that they might seek him. And so I think what God's trying to do is provoke seeking and if you look at jesus he didn't give everybody everything they needed to get saved i mean you look at nicodemus but that's

really kind of an exception when he told him about uh you know john 3 16 and believing in order to be saved and to be born again often he would tell somebody just well go go sell all you have and give to the poor or go be a better person. And you're saying, wait a minute, Jesus, you're promoting works. But I think what Jesus is doing, he doesn't want to bypass somebody seeking in order to find him. So he gives bits and pieces. He'll tell a parable. They're like, what's this parable about?

I don't get it. Why is he doing it? Because I think he wants us to seek. So I always wonder, why, 66 books in the Bible, why isn't one of them a systematic theology that clears up Pentecostal versus non-Pentecostal, charismatic versus non-charismatic, mode of baptism, how should the church be organized? All these questions that have divided Christians.

Why didn't he just say what to believe i think god wants us to seek him and depend upon the holy spirit and often this is a lifetime process for us and i think we'd find something to divide over given our nature nonetheless why he didn't include that very sure at least electric guitars and drums there you go this idea idea, I think, is profound and important, that God wants people to seek him, that he's showing kindness. And many people who have a positive experience, the next question is, how do I know this God? What do I have to do in this life in order to have a relationship with that God. That's the natural takeaway that many people are having, rather than, oh, all is good, and we're all going to heaven,

and universalism is taught. That's a very important distinction, especially in Romans when Paul says, it is your kindness that leads to repentance. Now, I speculate on this. I'm just going to throw this out there for somebody potentially as a research project. I wonder if we go to countries like Muslim countries, and I realize there's a difference between Sufi and Shia and Sunni, but they don't have an issue with God judging when

we die. I wonder if we'd see a greater amount of positive experiences of a God of love, because that might be what's needed there. Whereas in, say, India, where Hinduism is dominant, and there's a pluralistic kind of flair and less concern about being judged in the next life, if maybe there'd be more hellish NDEs. I don't know the answer to that.

That would be an interesting research project. But here's my question. Are NDEs consistent with universalism? So when you look at the core experience, I guess there's two questions. Do they promote universalism and or are they consistent with universalism? What are the best studies reveal? Well, again, if you go to, let me go back to your little, somebody could do some research, but I know Osis and Haraldson studied deathbed experiences in both the United States and India. You're suggesting maybe people there in order to be motivated to seek God, maybe they would

need a more distressing experience. And that's actually what he found in his research. If you look at his charts at the end of his book, he didn't make a big deal out of that. He's thought it was interesting. Now, maybe it's because they are more fearful of death. And so I, you know, that influenced them. I'm not sure. Sure. So, but, um, so now I got off and completely forgot your question. Give it to me in one sentence again. The question was, are NDEs, do they promote or are they consistent with universalism? Universalism. Yeah.

Well, I think some of the things that we see, and again, I've written an article that I hope will be published in the Journal of Near-Death Studies about the necessity of sticking with the core when i see researchers go astray they'll throw something in there like that you know sightings of jesus are really just this and that i'll say well is that consistent with the core i mean if one out of five of them are experiencing this then maybe jesus ought to be a part of the core also a lot of them ignore distressing experiences. And yet, if that's 20% of them or more, then that needs to be considered a part of the core. And one recent study actually put distressing as a part of it where Moody and others just didn't put anything about distressing when they were talking about the typical elements of a near-death experience. So sticking with the core, is that consistent with universalism? I'd say no.

Some people, in fact, Dr. Grayson in his recent book called After, he was talking about people's life reviews and saying most people felt judged or a significant portion felt judged in their life review. He said, not typically like God was yelling at them. A lot of it was a self-judgment, but it was not like some, some people claim it doesn't really matter what you do in this life. It's all about growing and this and this. Well, you look at a near-death experience and some of these people are horrified with the way they've been living you know that's their outcome from specific things that were a part of their core experience some things are wrong some things are right they realize with horror

how they things that they said to other people things they did because they feel they empathize from the other person's point of view, how they felt when you said or did that. That's an indication that some people are living better than others. And if you're experiencing that horror when your eyes are open up to the way things really are, what if that's a part of what hell is is that you get to the other side and if you've not repented or changed the rest of your life you live with these memories of what you've done to other people again distressing experiences i think they show the same reality as the good ones and if's true, often when they're going to the other side, it's not just that they're seeing some bad things that scare them, but they're often seeing people

over there that are in some type of distress, emotional and physical. So to me, that's much more consistent with the fact that not everybody is going to this glorious situation, but many apparently are in a very bad situation on the other side. get inside God's mind. But in some ways, I've heard people saying, I wonder myself, why doesn't God just clear up so many issues by just introducing everybody, not 20% of those who have a near-death experience to Jesus, and present the gospel in every case? I think what we're assuming is, okay, if God wants everybody to know that he's real, why doesn't he just paint in the sky, maybe a different color every night so you couldn't attribute it to a naturalistic cause, and just print the gospel out there? Hey, I'm here. Jesus died for you. Let's do this and that, you know, and you can get saved.

What we're assuming is that God thinks like we do. And we know if the Bible's true, that, and I believe it is, look carefully at Isaiah 55 when it says that his ways are not our ways. Now you say, okay, well, yeah, but if you get really theologically strong, we could just, we're almost there to understanding his ways. It ought to be pretty close. Maybe we're this far from understanding his ways. No, no, no. The verse clarifies, as far as the heavens are from the earth, so are his thoughts different from our thoughts, his ways from our ways.

For some reason, I don't see in the Bible anybody getting the gospel from a vision. The Apostle Paul was going the wrong direction. What is he given? All of a sudden, he sees Jesus on the other side, and Jesus doesn't present the gospel. He says, go and speak to somebody here, you know, Ananias. I've prepared him. Go talk to him. I would have gone ahead and cleared up everything for him.

He ends up having to spend time in Arabiaia praying and searching and whatever talking to the other why go through all this stuff i think god wants us to seek he wants us to develop a relationship with us and that goes through seeking sometimes doubting sometimes questioning sometimes leaning on my brothers and sisters in Christ. And so God just doesn't, when I look at the, again, the way people responded to Jesus and what he said to them, he didn't give the whole picture. I think he wants us to be a part of that in our seeking, in our praying. And in James, he says, you know, whatever you ask, he'll give it to you. But again, we need to pray long term.

We need to ask and keep on asking if we're going to get close to him. So I think God's ways are simply not our ways. He doesn't do the thing. Why in the world would he give the gospel to people who are so fallible to spread it in his great commission. That's a recipe for disaster, as far as I'm concerned. And some people are going to hear better than others. Why, why, why? But I do believe at the end, everybody's going to have a fair chance. I think that probably almost everybody's going to have some type of visionary experience before they die. It may not be until death, but I think just like he's going to save people

who are before the age of accountability, he's a fair God, just as the Old Testament saints were saved by their faith, even though they didn't know a lot of specifics, I think God's going to give us enough to where we can make some kind of a fair decision by the time we die. So I think that's what God's up to. It's not as simple as we think. His ways are not like our ways. This final question is both personal and I think

practical. And maybe you've done this because I think this is maybe our fifth interview. You spent hours responding to individuals in the comments here and through emails, which has been a remarkable ministry. I appreciate you doing that. So again, maybe you've done this in person, but imagine a friend comes up to you and says, I met a loving God in a near-death experience, and now I think I don't need religion. I'm good with the afterlife. I'm going to heaven. How would you respond? Be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger. The Bible says quick to hear and slow to speak. Don't assume you know what in the world he's talking about, first of all, because I would begin asking questions. Say, well, what do you mean by, you know, the religion doesn't matter? What do you mean by religion?

That person might say, well, you know, these people that are saying you've got to go to church to be saved and that you've got to do this and you've got to do that. And you say, oh, okay, well, I understand. You know, Jesus was really against that too. Jesus was against that kind of religion. Maybe that person's on the right track after all with what he's saying. You just need to clarify a little more.

I think I would ask them, did you know that about 20% of near-death experiencers see Jesus and they'll just swear it was really him? What does that tell us about if you're seeking God and seeking truth? Have you considered seeking more about Jesus? Forget the church thing if that bothers you. Forget the religion thing if that bothers you. But the earliest documents we've got about Jesus are these in the New Testament, you know. These

are the earliest and best documents. Have you really read? That's one of the things I did, I would tell the person, to clear up my doubts and to seek was to actually start reading the Bible for myself. I prayed. Why do I pray? Because I think there are bad forces out there, according to stressing near-death experiences. So I want to pray that my mind's open, that I'm actually objective about this thing. And just like Alcoholics Anonymous or something, they'll say you need other people to overcome these problems. Well, find some fellow seekers. And I'll look and look and look till I find a church that's got some authentic people in it to where I can seek together with them. And it's not just an individual thing where I might be led astray. So those are some of the

things I would say, but it depends on the individual. Pray and let the spirit lead you, but don't just react to people. Ask, get to know them, make it an ongoing conversation. Don't make this the only conversation about it. So let me think about that. Let's get back with it. Make it an ongoing conversation. I love asking people what was the experience like uh what what surprised you most in that experience uh and maybe even at some point saying you had an experience and have this takeaway from it the vast majority people have near-death experiences have a different takeaway why do you think there might be a comparison of contrast here what does scripture say about this what did did Jesus say about this?

Like just that kind of careful, gracious conversation is most likely to be received rather than jump in and go, no, the Bible says otherwise. Because this person had an experience. And one thing we know about people with near-death experiences is they are sometimes described as the most real experiences they've ever had. And they're transforming. So that care is really helpful. So ask them more about their experience. Nobody asks them follow-up questions about them. If they find that you're the person they can talk to about their experience, you've got a relationship on your hands. Steve, we're definitely gonna have you back. But on terms of the question of universalism being promoted by near-death experiences, any final thoughts or questions I should have asked you?

I just want to say something to everybody. As you said, I do take answering questions on the site seriously. I take it as a ministry. They don't pay me to do these interviews. This is just, I'm concerned for, I think this is some of the most important stuff of life. And I want to talk about these things. But I would say, whether you're a believer or a skeptic or whatever, examine yourself honestly, are you truly seeking because what I'll often see is the skeptic naturalist types will often say very strong things about how well well Steve's just a charlatan or he's just making things up or you know and and I'm thinking but but they show no evidence that they've read the first thing about near-death experiences, except maybe from another atheist. Are you authentically really seeking? Have you read the best studies of near-death experiences to see what they say?

Or are you just fine? Most people read stuff that agrees with their viewpoint to get ammunition. They read stuff against their viewpoint just to put them down, to find things wrong with. Neither one of those is truly seeking. Are you authentically seeking? In John 7, 17, Jesus said, if any of you is willing to do his will, he will know of the teaching, whether it's for me or, you know, whether I'm just speaking for myself or it's from God. Do you have a willing heart? Are you humbly seeking? There's a lack of humility out there in seeking these things and saying, God, wherever the truth leads, I'm willing to go there. Just open up my heart. Let me see. I saw a comment

from a believer that was saying death in the Bible is always about permanent death. And I thought, did you just hear somebody say that and repeated it because it resonated with you? Or did you actually look at Jesus talking to Lazarus where he said, Lazarus is dead, but knowing good and well, he was going to resurrect him in a few minutes. Okay. But believers and non-believers, there's not a lot of humility and, um, and just learning being open to God. And I would also add the element of passionate seeking, uh, Jeremiah 29, and you will seek me and find me when you search for me with all your heart. I just encourage you, if you've had a near-death experience, don't stop seeking. Seek through

prayer. Seek through talking to other intelligent, open people. Seek through reading the Bible to see what it says about Jesus. Seek by reading the best of both sides of different things and authentically seeking for God. And don't be discouraged. It's hard to be a seeker. It's hard to go through doubts. But I believe what Jesus said when he said, seek and keep on seeking. And one day you'll find. That's a great answer. I'm glad I asked you for some final thoughts on this topic. And I want to really thank you for spending so much time responding to the comments. Across our videos, I think this is maybe the fifth time I've had you on. I mean, hundreds of thousands of views, thousands of comments, if not more.

So you won't be able to respond to every question. But if you have a question for him and write it in the comments, you'll do your best to go through and answer those that you can. If you have other angles on near-death experiences that you'd like dr miller and i to discuss put those ideas below someone gave me the idea of hellish near-death experiences i didn't see a lot of videos on that so we did a video on it it was really well received if there's other specific questions and interests theologically scientifically let us know because we definitely want to have you back. And no, you don't get paid to do these interviews. That's why I want to make sure folks check out your more recent book on this is Christianity Compatible with Deathbed

and Near-Death Experiences. And this is volume three. So you have other books and you are Christian and obviously your worldview comes through, but very fair. You evaluate the evidence. I think you're one of my favorite writers on this. And if you're watching this, make sure you go back and watch some of our other interviews. But I've had Dr. Sabal on, Dr. Long on. I've had John Burke on. Try to speak to some of the experts in this area and bring them to you. So before you go away, make sure you hit subscribe.

We've got those shows coming up and many others. And if you've thought about studying apologetics, this is becoming a piece of our program here at Biola. We have a distance master's program and would love to have you in it. It's the top rated fully online program now. Or if you're not ready for a master's, but think I'd love to study apologetics guided by somebody, we have a certificate program and there's a significant

discount code below. Steve, always enjoy it, my friend. And I'm already looking forward to our next interview. Thanks for having me. Thanks, brother.