The Sean McDowell Show - What We Can Learn About the Afterlife from Children’s Near Death Experiences
Episode Date: June 30, 2026Children who have near-death experiences make for unusually strong evidence and almost nobody has studied them. In this conversation, near-death experience researcher Dr. Steve Miller returns to walk ...through what we actually know about children and NDEs. We get into the case from Dr. Melvin Morse's peer-reviewed work (the drowned girl who came back describing exactly what her family was wearing and doing at home), the documented patterns from Dr. Elizabeth Kübler-Ross's cross-cultural research, the children Dr. Diane Komp watched die at Yale that turned her from atheism to faith, and a few accounts from Steve's own circle of people he knows and trusts. *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://x.com/Sean_McDowell TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@sean_mcdowell?lang=en Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/seanmcdowell/ Website: https://seanmcdowell.org Discover more Christian podcasts at lifeaudio.com and inquire about advertising opportunities at lifeaudio.com/contact-us.
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Life Audio
What makes an NDE evidentially significant
is when something is known or seen
that couldn't have been known or seen in that state
physically possible in a sense.
And these accounts will get to are kids coming back
and reporting seeing certain people
that they didn't know existed
that matches up exactly with somebody
that adults know and had not.
not told them about. This is a middle-aged lady. She says, when I was about nine years old,
I drowned and I was revived. But during that time, I had a near-death experience. And it was just as
real to her now 50 years later as, as it was then, apparently. She could just tell me exactly
what happened. These kind of descriptions are very, very interesting. What does the data show
about near-death experiences and children.
How compelling are they from an evidential standpoint.
Dr. Steve Miller, welcome back.
You are my go-to near-death experience guru and expert,
and this is about the 10th episode we've had you on
to talk about near-death experiences
and deathbed experiences
and how they provide evidence for God and the afterlife.
And also how they dovetail with the best research
on traditional Christian theology.
Today we've got a very unique,
unique topic that a lot of research has not been done on and it's near-death experiences,
deathbed experiences, and children.
According to an April 26 article in popular mechanics, children may hold the key to
understanding death, but quote, very few studies bothered to ask children about them.
A 2024 article in psychology today reported that most near-death experience research has been
done on adults.
So what are the unique challenges of studying cases of children who have near-death experiences,
and why do you separate them as a special line of evidence?
Sure. Well, I think that was in popular mechanics or other sensational title that children hold the key.
That's probably true.
And I think that, but I think there is special evidence there.
It's quoting a psychology today article that was quoting another peer-reviewed article,
which was a summary of other peer-reviewed article, which was a summary of other peer-reviewed.
reviewed studies on children. So there have been several. It's, it has been studied, just not as
widely in comparison to near-death experiences where you have scores of studies out there. So they have
been studied. But I think the, uh, there are both challenges with children. Let's say you have a
four-year-old child that has had some, that has died and come back for some reason, been resuscitated.
You may have to interview them with a coloring book at hand or something to keep their attention.
attention and you talk to him and they may kind of discuss it over time rather than an adult
being willing to talk to you about their experience for hours perhaps. And so their attention spans
a little limited and also their vocabulary is limited to explain things. Now that's a hindrance
in one sense, but it's an asset in another because as adults we're trying to say things in a way
that goes along with our worldviews and our past experiences and children are just kind of freely
expressing it. When we get to some of the accounts, you'll actually see this. But I think one of the
most important things about children is that, number one, they're not familiar with near-death experience
research. They haven't looked at documentaries of near-death studies. So if their experiences are much
the same as adults, then it would be hard to say that, oh, well, these people had prior exposure to this.
And also, they don't have a lot of exposure to theology. So if they're talking about things,
they're not trying to put it into their very limited children's worldview, which may just be from
children's books that their parents have read to them. That's so interesting. That on one hand,
they lack a vocabulary to explain things in the depth and with clear.
clarity that adults can, but that can also be a strong suit because there's less of an agenda. They're
just describing as best they can what they've seen and are not as committed typically to a certain
way of seeing the world and feeling the need to force this into that way of the world.
And they're not trying to sell books, obviously, like some adults who are telling about
they're experiencing. And by the way, by my paperback book on my experience, so they're not
these ulterior motives that some adults would have. I love it. That's helpful. So let's let's talk about
what makes an NBE near-death experience evidentially significant. And do you, when you assess accounts
from children, look for the same factors or is it different? Many of the same factors. They just
come out in a different way with children. Dr. Diane Komp was a professor emeritus of childhood oncology,
Yale University. She was an atheist. And she said that in order for me to find God, I felt like I had
to come up with some kind of really reliable witness. And she never thought that that witness would be
through watching children go through their deaths. But she said, she had this quote,
when the clever are really intelligent, they look to children for answers. And I thought,
you know, that's sort of like Jesus treated children. People would say, oh, send the children away.
We got important things going on. He said, bring the little little.
children to me, for the kingdom of heaven is for such as these. And he respected children. So I think
that they really have something special to say to us. I suspect that they're never told that they're
dying. This would be a difference between adults. Imagine that you have a five-year-old child who's
dying of leukemia. You're not going to come up and say, oh, and by the way, you're not going to recover from
this because the child is going to say, well, what do you mean? Well, that means you're going to go to
heaven. Well, what does that mean? So are you going to be there? I mean, to a child, their whole
world is their home, their family, their teddy bear, the things that they love, what's home to
them. That would be a terrifying thing. So Elizabeth Kubler-Ross, one of the greatest experts,
wrote the book, On Death and Dying, she said that she was usually told, don't tell them that they're
going to die. So if a child starts saying to their parents, I'm going to die, you wonder,
where did this come from? This isn't a natural thing. It's not like they've died before and know how it feels.
Why are they saying they're dying if indeed they know it beforehand? So this gives us a special
opportunity evidentially to look at the near-death experience. That's so interesting. And it kind of
crosses over with what might be called a deathbed experience. And we've
talked about this in other episodes, but some people who know generally that they're suffering
and could be dying have a distinct awareness that they're dying before the brain or body
could be attested and known from a doctor. They just have this direct awareness. But of course,
they know they're sick and they know what death is. When it comes to kids, they don't know
they're dying. And they generally haven't experienced this in the same way that adults have.
So to talk about it is so much novel and different and in some ways surprising for a child than an adult.
And of course, we'll get to this.
But what makes an NDE evidentially significant is when something is known or seen that couldn't have been known or seen in that state physically possible in a sense.
And these accounts will get to are kids coming back and reporting seeing certain people that,
they didn't know existed, that matches up exactly with somebody that adults know and had not
told them about, these kind of descriptions are very, very interesting and arguably evidentially
significant.
Okay.
What did children tend to report in their NBEs?
How do they compare and contrast, for example, with adults?
So we often hear there's common criteria, maybe 12 or 15, that experts like Vaughn LaMelle
and Sabam and Jeffrey Long and others talk about. You've talked about this in your books,
like heightened senses, seeing things, hearing things, a tunnel, angelic beings, life review.
I mean, that'd be interesting for a kid who's four to have a life review. But are these common,
are they the same kind of things that we see in adults? Do we see those same kind of things
in children? In general, I'd say yes, which is surprising. From a naturalistic standpoint,
point, you'd think if you have a dying brain and they're just hallucinating from a dying
brain or that they're dreaming dreams that were suggested to them by their parents or others,
you would think it would conform to your or your parents' expectations of death.
And you'd think that these experiences will be just all over the board as to what they're
experiencing. I mean, I would think it would be more common if the child thought that they were
really dying, that they would kind of deceive themselves.
by just thinking about experiences here on earth continuing with their family, right?
If you're going to suggest to yourself something that is comforting.
So it is surprising that they seem to have the characteristics of others.
Now, as you say, they don't have much of a life to review.
You know, oh, yeah, remember that day when you took my pacifier from me?
You know, I don't know what they would review.
So that doesn't seem to be significant.
But a lot of these are deathbed experiences.
and typically in deathbed experiences, the commonalities do not include a life review, which makes
sense from a God perspective because they don't have any time to change their lives based on their
life review, so it wouldn't make that much sense to have a life review if it's right before death.
But for the ones having a near-death experience, sometimes one difference may be that it seems
to be in an adult experience that God is easing our passage to the other side by allowing us to see
people that we know that had pre-deceased them in death. And for these children, they may not know
anybody who's already died. So sometimes it'll be a deceased pet that comes to greet them and welcome
them and make them feel comfortable on the other side. So that would be a difference. It's not anything
in contradiction to the amazing pattern of what goes on in this experience globally with adults,
but it is tweaked a little bit.
Yeah, that makes sense.
Okay, so we're going to get to some stories, which are just fascinating and compelling on so many levels,
and then some of the most common objections we hear against these.
But maybe talk for a minute, Steve, about how these experiences affect children.
Are they life-changing?
And it's just interesting to think about a life-changing experience.
for a four-year-old or a six-year-old akin to somebody who's 40, 50, or 60.
Are they the same kind of just impact emotionally and experientially as with an adult?
I remember talking to a person, one of the fascinating things about this study is I went in to study
the best studies of near-death and deathbed experiences. I wanted to see what professors and
other great researchers had found when they legitimately interviewed these people, some
prospectively, some retrospective, looking at people who'd already had the experience. That's what I
wanted to see. But as I began doing this study and would tell other people, people would start telling me
their experiences, people from my own circles of trust, people I know in trust. It would just send
chills down my spine. I thought, why haven't we ever talked about this at a family gathering?
And yet people are scared. People will think they're crazy, and so they don't tend to share it.
But I remember being at a graduate gathering.
I teach a public university, Kennesaw State University, and there was a graduate school gathering there.
And my wife poked me and said, hey, why don't you tell so-and-so here about what you're studying?
And I said, near-death and deathbed experiences.
This happened so much.
The lady we're talking to kind of looks at me and goes, hey, can you talk with me outside?
And I said, sure, this is a middle-aged lady.
She's not like a young graduate student.
And she says, when I was about nine years old, I drowned.
And I was revived.
But during that time, I had a near-death experience.
And it was just as real to her now, 50 years later, as it was then.
Apparently, she could just tell me exactly what happened.
So it's life-changing in the sense that these people,
people that have these experiences still remember them decades later and they think about it.
And maybe they've not had anybody to talk to about it because they're so embarrassed to bring up
the subject to anyone. Or they've tried to tell someone about it and the person nervously kind of
put them off. So that's a big part of the impact that I'm seeing is that it's just not forgotten.
But also for the children themselves, this is a deathbed experience. So again, I should back up
for those who are first time. A near-death experience is when someone, let's say, has a cardiac
arrest. They experience clinical death, cessation of breathing and heartbeat. And then they come back,
telling about this, when they're resuscitated, telling about that they were on the other side
in this place with no pain, no worries, meeting with angels, perhaps, deceased relatives,
having a life review, having a decision as to whether you come back or not.
haul in a place that's devoid seemingly of space or time where you can just go like this to
you see something far away just as clearly as it is here. These are things that you're not,
nobody's expecting on the other side to be able to talk to people mind to mind. But children
experience these and at death, a deathbed experience would be before your final death,
like a child dying of leukemia, as we mentioned. But a child experiencing this, it seems
to be something that just greatly eases their transition. It sounds like something that a loving God
would allow to keep a child in the most potentially distressing psychologically and physically time of
life to be transitioning. Some of them seem to be like they may have been in a, have a very
painful illness, but then for the last few days, be totally free of pain. It's almost like they're
becoming detached from their body, and then they begin talking about people they're seeing.
Now, as opposed to...
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A near-death experience where you're coming out of your body, they're typically in their body,
and they can see their family around them and communicate with them, but at the same time,
they're talking to deceased people or angels or Jesus or God on the other side.
Well, what this does for the child is often, and this is what Dr. Komp, the one who taught at Yale,
She said, here I had been told, don't get too close to the families, don't get too close to your patients at that time.
Maybe they've changed now in medical training.
But she said, I felt like I had to get close to these families.
And in doing so, when I saw some of these children who became very ecstatic and excited about going totally away from everything that they knew, totally away from home, their teddy bears and everything.
and they were excited and they were comforting their parents.
You see, they didn't even know they were dying according to the parents, but they knew
that they were dying.
They knew that their parents were upset and concerned, and you'd see these little children
comforting their parents and saying, it's okay, it's great over there, I want to go.
This is so interesting.
I'm getting someone ahead of myself with the objections, but one naturalistic objection would be
that evolution explains this.
somebody's dying and it's just easing the process of death but on the other hand in evolution
is a fight for survival why would you have a mechanism to help somebody die that encourages
other people to not fear death and not fight for survival such an explanation to me wouldn't
seem to work now i'm getting a little bit ahead of myself i do on episodes my next question is
going to be about stories i want to give us some examples of children what they're seeing and what
they're reporting. But for this lady, you said four or five decades later to hear what you do
and then immediately want to share it, say, can we step outside? There's still 40 or 50 years
later a sense of like embarrassment. Is he going to think I'm crazy? I've got to keep this private
tells me as a pastor at my local church, as somebody who just works with people personally,
not just apologetically, we've got to talk about this. And this is way more common. And this is way more
than people realize.
And to have an experience from four decades ago feel alive and vibrant tells me that is a life-defining experience for this individual.
And that's what we see in so many of these children.
So with that said, there is power in the stories themselves, but I know you're a data person,
and that's one reason I keep bringing you back on as you do your work carefully.
give us some examples of well-documented stories from dying children.
I say well-documented because I know right now people are thinking we've seen books with
well-known Christian publishers, tell stories about kids' near-death experiences,
and then retract it because later the kid says it was made up.
Totally recognized there have been some faulty ones.
But that doesn't mean all stories are faulty.
Give me some examples of well-documented cases from dying children.
and then maybe how we evidentially evaluate them.
Sure.
The name of the book I'm familiar with,
well, that happened where it was all a deception.
The family's name was malarkey.
We should have had some kind of cue to that there was something wrong with that.
Oh, my goodness.
But yes.
So when I went to study these,
I thought,
I don't want to pull stuff from the Internet.
These are people that I don't know.
I want to approach it like we do in the legal sphere,
where testimony is important, testimony is value.
Our legal system would largely crumble without personal testimony, an expert testimony.
So we're looking for testimonies that are actually valuable.
And one of the special cases in the legal system is the deathbed testimony, because people are very unlikely to be trying to get in their last lie right before they die.
They're kind of sensitive to these things.
And what's their motive?
Again, they're not publishing a book or getting famous.
they're about to die, so these testimonies can be important. But I just want to warn people, if you go to
YouTube and start searching for near-death experiences, what is going to inevitably pull up for you are
the most anomalous, strange experiences, not strange in the sense of unbelievable, but they're going to
tend to be talking about a lot of doctrine that maybe fits with a Mormon worldview or a Hindu worldview or
somebody's Christian worldview because people that are trying to get clicks on their websites
and on their YouTube channels, they know that people love these details and people are willing
to exaggerate and put them out there. So if you go and search for it, you'll typically get the ones
that are not the same old consistent near-death experience or deathbed experience that we're seeing
in the literature. So I stuck with the literature. And I've got some of the books here
with me to show you that I'm actually reading these books, and this is where I'm getting them from,
rather than just taking stories from the Internet. But let me just quote. I'm going to stick a little
bit close to the writing because I want to get the stories correct. I have a great respect for these
stories. So this is coming from my book, Deathbed Experiences as evidence for the afterlife,
and I document all this relentlessly so that you can go in and study them yourselves.
And so people know why you're looking for that quote.
People can buy it on Amazon.
Yes.
But you send people the PDF for free, and we'll give that information at the end.
Because earlier we said somebody who's trying to sell books and then you hold up your book,
that's not what you're trying to do here.
Red flag, red flag.
Information out to people, and you're happy to send it to them totally for free.
Sure.
And in case we forget, J. Steve Miller, the letter J. Steve Miller at gmail.com.
If you don't have the money or you're in a country where it's hard to get a book,
book, you know, I can send you a free PDF of any of my books. I have several on these subjects.
I still can't believe you give your personal email out. There's about zero chance I would,
which just proves you're a better man than I am, Steve.
Proves I'm not as famous as you. I don't know about that.
All right, go to the quote.
Here we go, page 192. Let's look at this one. Now, this is one that is interesting in several ways.
First of all, it's a Dr. Morse that was doing the study. This was published in a peer-review journal,
as well as his book. He has a book here that I don't see right offhand, but he wrote a book on it, Dr. Morse,
and it's called Closer to the Light. And so there was this child who was brought to him who had died in a swimming pool, drowned.
She was found at the bottom of the pool. She was totally unresponsive and was floating face down, actually, when they found her.
her. She was resuscitated in the emergency room, so this was a good while later. They had to get her to an
emergency room, and she was actually brought back to life. And so Dr. Morris inquired about what had
happened in the water. So he's talking to the child after she's recovered and fully conscious
and wants to know what happened. I mean, did somebody push her? Did he, he needs, did she hit the bottom?
what happened? And she's saying, what happened? And she said, well, do you mean about meeting Jesus and the
Heavenly Father? And Dr. Moore's kind of shocked. He says, why yes? Tell me about that. Good answer.
And so she told of meeting Jesus, the Heavenly Father, and a parent angel, a couple of young boys named Mark
and Andy. And she taught for a little while, like I was saying with children, you don't get the whole story
had of them, but he got that much, and then he interviews some intensive care nurses to see if this
could be corroborated with them and said, you know, what did she say when she first
waked up if you're the one that said, well, they asked where are Mark and Andy? So, I mean, this
was a story that she knew well right from the very start and was consistent with it. But she spoke of seeing
things that were going on with her family at their house during the time she was in the coma, telling
where what clothes her family was wearing. This is in their house, right? She wasn't in their house.
She was in the hospital and she's telling what's going on at her house for their family.
What her mom was cooking, what her brothers were playing with, a G.I. Joe specifically and a Jeep.
Katie's mother corroborated this and was indeed what they were doing and what they were wearing at the
house. So he publishes this. Okay, now think about that for a minute. How did she know these things?
unless she was outside of her body, which lets you know why people like J.P. Morland and Gary Habermas
are intent on talking about near-death experiences to say, this seems to prove that people are outside
of their bodies and mind-body dualism, which the Bible talks about. So they use that as evidence of this.
This is a good case in point. So it's published in the American Journal of Diseases of Children.
This is not a theological journal.
And by the way, these studies on near death and deathbed experiences, they're all over the medical
literature because these are very practical questions that nurses and doctors have to deal with on a
day-to-day basis. If someone's dying and they begin talking to deceased relatives, they need to
know, oh, do I need to adjust the morphine? Or is this some type of legitimate experience? And basically,
when you read these articles overwhelmingly, they say, treat it like a,
legitimate whatever you believe about it treat it like a legitimate experience this is not a
hallucination it's a great response from that doctor to just say yeah tell me more and not freak out
well i don't know if he was just flabbergasted and didn't know what to say or if he was sensitive
enough to children to say this is interesting let's uh and i find the same thing in my conversation
with people sometimes people will say certain things that indicate they've had an experience like this
I just say, tell me more, and it's amazing how many times people are willing to share.
Now, what's evidentially significant about this is she's face down, clinically dead.
If she's rest the hospital, this is seemingly beyond the four-minute mark, as far as I would guess, resuscitated back.
Her family was not there giving her information, that she did not talk with them before the doctor did.
He's the first one when she's reticitated back reports information.
from a distance, specified information, not just my siblings are playing on the floor or generic.
My mom's making dinner.
It's specified information.
What they're wearing, what they're eating, what they're playing with.
And it matches up.
That's the kind of evidential significance that we're looking for that says this is more of a story than a kid just made up.
Not to mention, I mean, child or not, like drowning like that is incredibly traumatic, that this is the first.
first thing you talk about is so opposite of what you would expect just from a biological level.
Now, I do want to ask if there's some reputable larger studies, but are there some other individual
accounts that you want to share about children?
Sure.
I think we need to deal with some of these accounts because they're published in peer review
literature or by very respected people.
Let me tell you, first of all, just what Morse did as a result of this?
He said, we are taught – what is his conclusion?
Okay.
He's the doctor in charge.
and his articles you'll find are very well documented. Very, very good studies that he does.
But he said, we're taught in medical school to find the simplest explanation for medical problems.
After looking at all the other explanations for near-death experiences, I think the simplest explanation is that NDGs are actually glimpses into the world beyond.
Why not? I've read all the convoluted psychological and physiological explanations for NDEs, and none of them seems very satisfying.
And so he went on to do a study of children's near-death experiences and deathbed experiences and plowbush those as well.
That seems like about as good of a motivation to do that study as any.
If that doesn't take your interest, I don't know what would.
Now, I do want to get into some of those studies, but is there another account or two you want to share about the kind of experiences that children have so we get a sense of it?
Or do you want to move on to the larger studies?
Let's talk about some of these. I think people need to stop and reflect and put it in your theological or philosophical pipe and smoke on it a little bit on your back deck because you need to stop and think about it.
Hey, this is Biola. We don't smoke here. I'm just kidding. I teach you to a public university, okay? So here we go. On children and death, this is by Elizabeth Kubler-Ross, who is a trained psychiatrist. Her doctorate is in psychiatry. She's probably the authority on death and dying. And so she has a book on children and death. And I'll just read one of her accounts for you to evaluate. But I'm.
but very fascinating again.
She said, this reminds me of my early days of my work with dying patients.
And she was one of the first when she came from Switzerland to New York City and began working
with dying patients.
She was just appalled at the way they're treated.
The doctors were embarrassed that they were failing, you know, so they're kind of,
and you're just trying every possible way to keep somebody alive, which may just be torturing
the patient.
And so she began to work and become an authority on working with people at their dying stages and was very influential on the hospice movement.
By the way, what's so important about this is we're seeing more and more research come out about people that seem to be in a brain dead comatose state that it was believed they couldn't register in here.
And now it's like, oh, actually people come out of it and see and hear the way they were treated in very dehumanizing kind of language.
language is what we would expect if we are body and soul and not just a body. So that's another
line of evidence, I think, that's pointing towards this dualism that we're talking about. But keep going
with her research. Sure. So she was working at a university hospital where she said I
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I had no, I had to promise never to tell my patients that they were terminally ill. It was easy to keep this
promise since the patients would tell me. Shortly before children die, there's often a very clear
moment, as I call it. Those who have remained in a coma since the accident or the surgery
opened their eyes, that's terminal lucidity, as we've talked about before. They open their eyes and
seem very coherent. Those who have had great pain and discomfort are very quiet and at peace.
It is in these moments that I asked them if they were willing to share with me what they were
experiencing. Yes, this is a quote, yes, everything is all right now. Mommy and Peter are already
waiting for me, one boy replied. With a content little smile, he slipped back into a coma from which he
made the transition we called death. I was aware that the child's mother had died at the scene of the
accident. Okay, so remember, he saw Mommy and Peter waiting for him. Well, she said she was aware that
the mother had died. Maybe he had heard from someone that his mother had.
died, okay, for her to expect her on the other side. But he said, mommy and Peter are both waiting
for me. I was aware that the mother had died, but Peter had not died. He had been brought to a special
burn unit in another hospital, severely burnt because the car had caught fire before he was
extricated from the wreck. Since I was only collecting data, I accepted the boy's information
and determined to look in on Peter. It was not necessary, however, because as I passed the
nursing station, there was a call from the other hospital to inform me that Peter had died a few
minutes earlier. In all, the chill going down your spine yet, it should be, if you're listening,
this is crazy wild stuff from a naturalistic standpoint. In all the years that I've quietly
collected data from California to Sydney, Australia, white and black children, aboriginals,
Eskimos, South Americans, and Libyan youngsters, every single, she is speaking with authority.
here, right? Every single child who has mentioned that someone was waiting for them
mentioned a person who had actually preceded them in death, even if only by a few moments.
And yet none of these children had been informed of the recent death of the relatives by us at any
time. Coincidence? By now, there is no scientist or statistician who can convince me that this
occurs as some colleagues claim as a result of oxygen deprivation.
or for other rational or scientific reasons.
So this is the conclusion of somebody who's spent her life working with the dying
and specifically a lot of dying children.
So the first account is somebody having information at a distance that they could not have
had access to.
This account is somebody having information from the next life or the afterlife that they
couldn't have had information to knowing that a person had died.
What's interesting about this is it's not just North American Christians, for example.
She says it's a cross culture, Libya, Latin America, Native Americans, you name it.
So it's more of a universal kind of experience, which tells us two things.
Number one, there's a lot of numbers behind this.
Yes.
Number two, there's a lot of diversity behind this, which I think makes the case arguably even stronger.
Let's talk a little about – do you have another individual?
story you want to share. Let me mention a couple of them that are closely related to me. Again,
one of the most fascinating things. And I would just, I would encourage people. One of the most
fascinating things about this is if you're not into the research and digging endlessly into peer
review journals, start talking to the people you know and trust. Tell them, you know, I'm interested
and I'm studying on near-death and deathbed experiences and you'll be amazed at how many people
come up to you from your church, from your work, from your wherever you're studying at a university,
and start telling you these stories. So I reconnected with a friend of mine in the ministry. He had
had a background in a seminary that was more on dispensationalism, teaching that God worked
these miraculous ways in early, you know, back in biblical times, but not so much now. So,
when we were in ministry together, we didn't talk a lot about miracles and visions or anything like that.
He had since spent some time in a Muslim country ministering and had come back and was talking about some of these visions,
but they actually had one that happened in their own family. So this is a person I know and trust.
He's not a guy who's always telling wild stories of God did this, God did that in my life. He's not one of those.
But his wife just wrote me an email. She said, I'd like to tell you,
happened to my precious four-year-old niece. She gives the names, but I'm going to leave those out for their privacy.
She died tragically and unexpectedly several years ago, four years old. Okay, remember that.
A few weeks prior to her death, she started coming to her parents' room in the middle of the night.
She would wake them up, tell them that she had seen Jesus, and that he wanted her to come and live with him.
His parents, of course, would assure her that, yes, someday she would go to be with Jesus when she died, but that would be a long time in the future.
The following night, Andy came into the bedroom and repeated what she had seen.
The third night this happened, her mother became upset and told her, no, not now in the future.
Andy would not be convinced. Mommy, she said, Jesus wants me to come now to live with him, and I want to go.
Now, get that. She wants to go.
Her parents were not mean parents.
This was a loving family.
But somehow on the other side, she felt so welcome, so at home that this had prepared her
and was preparing her family with what was to happen.
Two weeks later, the mother was driving to the school where she was a teacher.
The daughter safely buckled in the back seat.
The rural road where they ran parallel to the train track, then right before the school,
the road made a sharp left turn and crossed the track.
It was a blind crossing, meaning there were no gates or lights.
The mother crossed the track every morning at this time.
There were never any trains, but this day there was.
The car they were driving was broadsided by the train, badly damaged.
The mother survived, but the child died in that wreck.
She was able to...
to hold her for a minute, but she died afterwards. And indeed, she went to live with Jesus. So this is a
powerful, powerful thing coming from somebody, somebody I know. And I can just maybe, if we don't have
time for all of these, I'll just say they're, I don't know the statistics on children. Children
obviously haven't lived as long as adults. And so they haven't had as many opportunities to die and
come back in a near-death experience or have heart attacks or whatever. So four percent of the
adult population is talking about near-death experiences in large, well-done surveys in Australia
and Germany, the United States, four to six percent of the people. Deathbed experiences,
deathbed visions. Someone studied that in a hospice unit in New York. They interviewed the patients
daily and found that up to 88 percent of them were having these experiences. So,
these are widely experienced. I don't know the numbers on children, but I know there are plenty of
peer-reviewed and reputable people that have given plenty of instances of coming from children.
But I'll just mention a family from Ukraine.
Let me jump in here. Before you go to the family from Ukraine, I know people listening to that
past story going, wait a minute, why would God allow this to happen? Why wouldn't he just save the
child? Those are completely fair questions related to the problem.
of evil and we're going to deal with theological and biblical objections in an entire other episode
we're doing soon we're not dismissing those part of my answer is i don't know the answer to that
and that's very fair what we're looking at here is the evidential significance of somebody saying
this in the middle of the night to their parents and then within two weeks dying that it's hard
to invent a story like that, again, somebody seemingly no incentive because you know they lost
their child sharing this with you personally. That's a very significant thing. Now, of course,
somebody gets to say, well, they're inventing it to make themselves feel good and comfort themselves.
Well, there's a lot of ways to comfort yourself besides inventing a story that raises other
theological questions. How did they know they need to be comforted? Exactly. The train had not
hit them in that case. You're raising all the right questions. I just want to make sure people
know we're not dismissing those, and I understand the weight of those questions. But let me,
let me comment on the problem of evil. I think this is important, and I think that near-death and
deathbed experiences have something to say to that, because people do think of what kind of a
guide would allow a young child like this to be killed in such a tragic way. But I will say that
people who have had near-death experiences, and I've read hundreds and hundreds of these experiences,
I've never seen one person come back and say that when they met God that he was evil or unjust.
They, even the things in their life like, why was I born into this family or why did this happen to me?
On the other side, it all made sense.
And they come back saying, that is the most loving being.
I never wanted to leave this being side.
and so it seems like the problem of evil is cleared up once your mind is expanded.
Now, when they come back over here, they can't explain to you exactly why all that made sense,
but they know that it made sense.
And so I think it does speak to a loving God.
That is another issue and a lot of discussion.
I've lost loved ones, been through a lot of tragedy in my life, so I understand those questions,
and I've come out in my theological journey with believing that God really does love us,
even though there's a lot of horrible things that happen in the world.
Amen, and he loves children, too.
We see that distinctly with Jesus in an age when children were not valued on the same level.
Even his disciples are like, why are you talking to children?
So on that note, I think you had one more account you wanted to share?
Sure.
Well, I'll mention briefly a couple of them, but I lived in Slovakia for a while and had a colleague that was a missionary,
in the Ukraine, and I noticed in his prayer letter, he mentioned that his child had died when he had
made a little fort in a snowbank, and the snowbank fell on him, died, was resuscitated in the
ambulance, and I thought, okay, and he mentioned that he had had some kind of experience on the other
side. So I talked with this child on the phone, and it was amazing. He went to the other side. He
felt perfectly fine, and his deceased St. Bernard was bounding in to greet him. And it was just a
precious story, but as I asked him, he just, he could, it was almost like he was playing back
the video in his mind. I said, he said, oh, there were these beautiful flowers over there.
I said, well, what colors were they? And he told me specifically the colors he saw, the ones he didn't
see. And then he said, there were other colors that I've never seen before, but I, I can't
can't even describe those. So it was a powerful experience in this child's life. Again, coming from
somebody that I know and trust, why would they be lying to me about that? There's a dissertation,
I quote, Angela Ethier wrote a dissertation for her nursing degree, so her doctoral work,
own children and death. And so she interviewed a lot of parents who had lost their children. And in that,
there was a story about a parent who was in with her child. Her child kind of gingerly asked mother,
do you see the angels in the room? And her mother wanting to have a feel good moment, said, well,
yes, I see them. And the child says, what they look like? And she said, the mother said, well,
the one I see has great big wings. And she says, Mom, you don't have to lie to me. They don't have wings.
And so the wisdom of children.
And that's something that Dr. Barrett wrote in his book, Sir William Barrett,
Deathbed Visions.
He was collecting stories of deathbed visions.
He was so great at his work in physics and his discoveries that he was knighted, Sir William Barrett.
Very reputable source.
But he said that typically when he saw children that,
stories of children who had died that the angels didn't have wings, which is impressive from a
Christian standpoint, because children, if they're getting their theology from little children's
book and children's stories, all the stories of Jesus and the angels, you know, at his birth,
all the angels have wings, but the Bible never says that they had wings, right?
I mean, there's some angelic creatures in the Old Testament that had wings, but they're never
called angels. So it's like what you would think a child would be expecting doesn't happen. So these are
powerful stories. And maybe I should mention Diane Komp too in her book. And I would highly recommend
it, A Window to Heaven again by Diane Komp. She's the one who teaches or taught at Yale. She's
retired now, Professor Emeritus. And she gives cases where the children were dying.
This is when she was an atheist and she was watching these children die.
And one child just right before she died, she just raised up in her bed and she said,
Mommy, the angels, can you hear them singing?
I've never heard such beautiful singing.
She was ecstatic.
And then she laid down and died.
I mean, just immediately.
You can't make up that.
I mean, what's going on?
And, you know, a witness, you know, when you're in a court situation and you're evaluating testimony,
you look at people's expressions, how they're saying what they're saying, and when little children are just as sincere.
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here is the world talking about these things but dan comp said something very special she said
you couldn't have given the parents a greater gift at that point because these parents have the
assurance that their child was going to heaven
what more could you ask for?
Well, I don't know where she went in her worldview,
but if you're an atheist, it's hard to account for a gift.
What evolution gives you a gift?
Like, that doesn't make any sense.
But if there's a gift giver and a God who cares about comforting people,
it makes sense.
It's the kind of thing that we might expect and fits within a certain world view.
It's not surprising.
It gave me goosebumps, and it's beautiful.
But it's not surprising from an epistemic standpoint, which is important.
And by the way, Dr. Comp did become a believer in God.
Okay.
Okay.
Okay.
And she's got verses throughout this book.
It's an, I haven't read that one.
I think 1990s or whatever, it's probably 99 cents on Amazon.
Get it.
I mean, here is a Yale professor talking about the experiences she's seen.
I think that's a great source.
So people know you have a Yale professor here.
You have Sir William Barrett, who is knighted, Dr.
more, you're not pulling from just studies and random stories on YouTube, you've done careful work,
again, which is why I keep wanting you back. Now, there are some objections I do want you to
address related to children having NDEs. And one of them comes from Michael Shermer, who I've
had debates with multiple times, really enjoy engaging him, thoughtful. And he's pushed back on
the evidence of near-death experiences, even though he had a kind of experience that doesn't really
fit within his worldview, but that's a story for another time you and I have discussed.
A fun story, yes.
And he said, there are billions of people in the world.
With that many people having dreams and hallucinations, surely the odds are that someone
have hallucinations of correspond to reality in fantastic ways.
People just don't understand large numbers.
Now, basically, this is a common naturalistic move to increase our probabilistic resources.
So the origin of life, incredibly remote.
but if you have enough universes or enough planets and enough opportunity in time, life could emerge.
It's the same kind of move.
So, yes, these are surprising from the bottom up.
But if you include the number of people who have lived and the accounts that people tell,
we shouldn't be surprised that we have a few anomalies, so to speak, that we can't explain.
Sure.
Well, number one, there are black swans in science where somebody,
will say, you know, all you need is one black swan to overturn the theory that all swans are white.
And sure enough, that's what some European explorers found when they used to make little jokes about,
you know, white swans because all swans they knew were white. And then somebody goes down to
Australia and finds a black one. It only takes one good observation to overturn a theory that all
swans are white. Well, what naturalists are saying is everything is,
naturalistic. Okay, well, all you need to find is one thing that is not consistent, obviously,
with naturalism, or they say when the body dies, the person dies, okay, well, that's something,
but when you have these people giving testimony after testimony in a situation that in a court
of law, they would be very believable, saying that they were on the other side, visiting with
deceased relatives, that sounds like these relatives died years ago.
that's after their life, which sounds a lot like the afterlife to me. And so I think we have great
evidence, not just, okay, so children, well, I don't have statistics on children, but I have a lot
of great accounts from authorities who have seen a lot of children in death situations and have
collected them. But when you look at the near-death experiences in general, 4% to 6% of the population,
80% to 88% having these visions at death.
This is not a one out of a billion thing, as Shermer's talking about.
And by the way, Shermer made one statement.
I did read his book where he was arguing against the afterlife.
And he said, one reason that we know that there's not an afterlife is that when, as the body's dying from diseases like meningitis and Alzheimer's that are destroying the brain, they don't get better.
don't recover their ability to have conscious experiences. Well, obviously, he didn't study terminal
lucidity because we have good evidence that at death, a lot of these people, including some
children, they're at death, maybe their brains have been eaten away by a tumor, not just pushed
aside, but actually eaten away, and then become perfectly conscious. That speaks against
Shermer's contention that once your brain is gone that you can't have experiences with your mind.
So the number of cases we have and the specificity of those cases counters the idea that we can just
look at so many people who die and the number of possibilities, the number of cases that we
can document from reputable sources and the specificity they give cannot be wiped away by just
referring to some apparent large number.
All right.
With that said, let's go a couple more.
Sometimes skeptics will posit that these are the results of a developing brain undergoing
stress.
So either it's a young brain, it's developing, it's expanding pretty radically.
And sometimes this will be coupled with kids just creative imaginations, which we all know
have kids, kids have creative imaginations and they have dragon friends and they have battles
they fought in.
And so how do we know that the best explanation is not some developing brain or just kids kind of telling stories like kids do?
Sure.
I mean, some even adults believe that Spider-Man is real.
You know, so we do have to consider that as a hypothesis.
But as Bruce great, Dr. Bruce Grayson said, he's taught most of his adult life at the University of Virginia Department of Persexual Studies.
He says near-death experiences sound pretty naturalistic.
as long as you ignore all the supernatural elements.
And I think, yeah, people, there are things that happen at death to the brain that cause some
people to hallucinate, some people to think that bugs are crawling all over them or have all kinds
of distressing things go on.
But these are very different from a near-death or deathbed experience, from what they're
experiencing there.
They're very lucid.
They'll just talk to you like we're talking to each other.
now and you say this is a real intelligent person that's speaking very lucidly about what's going on.
And then anything about a dying brain doesn't explain how this child knew before the train hit
them that they were going to die. It doesn't tell how the little girl knew what her family
was doing at their houses. It's just not a sufficient explanation.
Another response is that parents or some other authority are filtering these cases to kids.
Like I mentioned earlier, there's at least one prominent bestselling book.
I guess the name was Malarkey.
That's the first I've heard that with some level of irony.
Of a child having a near-death experience that the publisher pulled and said it didn't happen.
So how do we know there's not some kind of hidden information or mechanism giving this to kids before they share their accounts?
So in none of these illustrations that I've given were the parents,
you know, writing books about it or have any ulterior motives for doing it. And think about
Dr. Morris was interviewing the child herself, not the parents about what was going on. And typically
these are Dr. Kubler-Ross, she was actually talking directly to the children themselves. So I
don't think it can be just parents making up things. So talking to the kids themselves helps
weed that out. But also there's a certain chain of command in some of these cases where there's
just no time for parent input from the accident near-death experience to the report,
parents come subsequent to that.
So unless you say the parents fed him, had the kid, fed him the information, had them nearly
die and drown and then come out of it to tell the story, which is far less believable
to me.
The possibility to impart that information, at least many of the cases, is not present.
Extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence.
I mean, hey, maybe these kids have an international conspiracy together to tell stories that all have the same results.
Okay, but what an extraordinary, you know, the parents all made this up.
But wait a minute, it was the kids interviewed.
These naturalistic explanations are just quite extraordinary and seem to have no data behind them.
these studies have been done for the past 50 years, particularly on near-death experiences,
and the naturalistic theories just do not fit the data that the best researchers have gotten.
And some of these researchers have been researching since their early years in medicine.
And today, you know, 50 years later, they're saying, yeah, these people came out of their bodies.
So you've got to match the data, infer to the, you know, to the hypothesis that makes
the best sense of the data. That's why worldview is so important and critical here,
that if you bring a theistic worldview, an openness to the afterlife, these stories don't surprise
me. They fit with what I believe is true. But what is interesting is you have people like
Pim von Lemel, who I've interviewed, Eben Alexander, who I've interviewed committed,
leading scientist medical doctors in a materialist worldview, game-changing experiences they had or
saw shifted their worldview in light of the near-death experiences. So when we are confronted with
some of the challenges our worldview, either we can dismiss it or we can shift our worldview.
And that's what I'm hoping skeptics might do when they see this, given the number of cases.
And the unique evidential, just fascinating value of children, I'm hoping that might give them at least
some pause. Now, coming out of that, I think an interesting thing is that some, some atheists who have not
read in this area will say, oh, well, this is just Christian researchers trying to affirm their
worldviews. But as you mentioned, people like von Lomel, Dr. Sabom, these others that, Dr. Grayson,
these were, these were not evangelical Christians from the start trying to defend their
worldview. They were startled. It was like they came into this thing kicking and screaming,
not believing that these were really experiences with the afterlife. And then after their study,
and after a whole lifetime of studying, these are some of the best researchers, they believe
these people were coming out of their bodies. Now, interestingly, the atheists that I see
arguing against near-death experiences, they were already outspoken atheists before they ever got
into near-death experiences. So it looks to me like there's a lot more potential for them to be
placing their worldview over this and seeing it through their lens rather than being able to
look objectively at the evidence. Perhaps the most common objection I hear, and this is with,
say, the evidence surrounding historical Jesus, more so in the area of intelligent design,
is just God of the gaps. There's some facts that we can't fully explain. We don't know,
but rather than saying God did this, let's allow science to advance and eventually will discover
a reason.
So pausing the soul, positing an afterlife is kind of a god of the gaps that, number one, prevents
science from moving forward because now you say God did it, so there's no reason to probe
further for a naturalistic explanation.
And it posits an unjustified pointer towards something beyond science.
So what's your take on this being a God of the Gaps kind of argument?
Sure.
Well, that's interesting because Dr. Moody from the start, if you read his books, it's almost frustrating.
Dr. Kubler-Ross would speak with Dr. Moody who did the first really popular study of near-death experience.
1975 is when he published his book Life After Life.
And he would give all this stuff that was very consistent with Theism and with the afterlife, as he described.
And then we'd come to the end and he would say something like, but of course these are just anecdotes.
And like Kubleros would be, what are you talking about?
I mean, this is really powerful evidence.
And I asked Dr. Moody one time on the phone, I said, why was it that it took you so long until your later years before you finally said, yeah, this is the afterlife is the best explanation?
He said, I was just, I always wanted to be the Socrates who was just always doubting.
I was afraid if I came to a conclusion that I'd quit searching.
So he really, really resisted that.
But finally, he says, yeah, okay, it's about the afterlife.
But about the God of the Gaps, I love to explore caves, particularly wild caves.
But I was in a public cave one time, and a person was showing a formation where it was like on a stalagmite hanging down.
But there was a curved.
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A deposit of calcite on it.
And they said, we haven't figured out how in the world that happened.
That just doesn't make sense because drops drop down and deposit there.
Why would it go around?
And I thought, okay, that's a good illustration.
If I say, well, we don't know how it happened, therefore God made that,
that would be an example of God of the gaps.
I'm throwing God in there where really we ought to wait on a naturalistic explanation for it.
But in these situations, this is not just throwing God in as an explanation.
God is already all over the experience.
This little girl said, I saw the Heavenly Father, I saw Jesus, I saw angels.
Well, by the virtue of the fact that it's already a part of the experience, that surely gives
us the right to say, well, here's one hypothesis.
Maybe she really saw God the Father and Jesus and angels.
okay so it deserves the right to have a hypothesis to me when secular people come in and impose
their own worldview on this and say okay well there's got to be a naturalistic explanation let's
just we don't know the naturalistic explanation for NDEs but we should await a naturalistic
suggestion i'd say well that's called naturalism of the gaps where you just take your
naturalistic worldview and you impose it on whatever you see and assume there'll be a
naturalistic answer. So if they say, oh, well, we ought to wait and see a future evidence. And I'll say,
but I can't make my decisions on anything with future evidence that's all hypothetical. I can only
deal with the evidence as I see it. And to me, the evidence weighs heavily in the favor of the afterlife
hypothesis. You've written four books on this that people can get either on Amazon or you'll
email PDFs to them for free, which is amazing. You brought a lot of these books. You've
research this a ton. Are there any just final remarks related to kids and NDEs or deathbed
experiences we didn't cover that you want to make, or you feel like we laid it out there?
I'd say, what does it profit of man to gain the whole world and lose or forfeit his soul?
Jesus said that, you know, when I was young in my spiritual journey, that during my times
of faith that reassured me I was going the right direction, when I was going through doubt,
it haunted me. But I believe that what it shows is that this life isn't all there is. Why live for
things on this earth that don't last? Why chase, you know, climbing up the ladder of success,
but then finding at the end of your life that it was leaning against the wrong wall, that just
doesn't make sense when in the light of, even if you're not a Christian, but just in the light of
near-death and deathbed research showing that there's something much more glorious that's offered
to us afterwards and that children have preceded us sometimes there and have told us in their
transition, oh my goodness, this is where I want to go. This is my ultimate home. That's what we
need to be living for. And if you have a lot of uncertainties regarding religion, some of these
people saw Jesus. I would recommend heavily that you seek Jesus. The earliest and best documents we have
on him are the documents contained in the New Testament. Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John,
the Apostle Paul was a contemporary of Jesus, born about the same time. He wrote about Jesus.
I'd say, go back to these documents. If you're searching for reality and spiritual things
and for meaning in life beyond this material world, seek Jesus.
And yes, read my books.
I've tried to do the best I could on researching the best research
and giving it to you in a way that's understandable and actually readable.
So I think I've given people a way to search with plenty of documentation if you want to go further.
You definitely have.
And I had one last question for it.
In some ways we've answered this.
But if somebody says, hey, can I?
Talk to you outside. I have an experience to share with you.
We hear somebody say something conversation that suggests a near-death experience
where you talk with a kid that starts talking about certain things.
You might be tempted to write off as just imagination, but now that you've heard this,
you think maybe they had an experience that was a near-death experience.
How should we respond just pastorally and practically to people who have that kind of experience?
Biblically, be quick to hear and slow to speak. Amen. Ask them questions. I hate it when somebody
gets back from the mission field and people, I'll hear a report, and then never ask them anything else
about it. This may be the most important thing in the person's life. Well, these people have been
to the other side. I'm calling it the other side. I don't want to talk about as if it's the final
new heavens and new earth or something like that, but they've been on the other side. They've talked to
the deceased, they've, they've had, maybe had a life review. This is by far the most important thing
that's ever happened to them. Talk to them about it. Listen to them. Ask them more questions.
What I find is that often they'll kind of just say, well, I had an experience like that once.
They're just testing you to see, okay, if you're going to change the subject, they're not going to
go there. Some of the people that tell me this about their experiences will say, you're the only person
I've ever told about this. They're so, so afraid, people will think they're crazy. So ask them more
questions, talk to them and say, you know, I'd like to talk more about this in the future. Would you
mind talking to me more? And what you'll find is this is just a wonderful ministry opportunity because
typically they haven't found anybody that wants to carry on a conversation about this. Or you could
say, you know, I need to study this more as I research and read more on it. Can I come back to you
and talk to you about their experience. So often I've been shocked at people in my church that
I'll begin talking to about this, and I'll say, oh, let me tell you about my experience.
And I'll talk to them there, but then I'll write down some more thoughts about it that I want to
ask. And I'll say, okay, well, is this like fairly real? Was this as real as, you know, a vivid
dream? What degree of reality was it? And they'll come back and say,
say, oh, it was, it was real. It was just as real as us talking here today. Yeah. And I asked them
those questions, and it still, to this day, it just sends shivers down my spine when I have people I know
and trust. Get them talking. Listen, we've got a lot to learn for these people. Steve, there's a lot of
reasons why I enjoy having you on as a guest. One of the things you do is you go back through as
many of the comments as you can and you respond to skeptics as you can with questions. You hear
people's stories, give them counsel. So as I've said on some of the previous videos, if people
listening had a near-death experience, if you saw somebody have a deathbed experience, especially
if you had one as a child, please share it here. Lee Strobel interviewed you for his book
on Seeing the Supernatural. And one of his responses of looking through some of my videos interviewing you
was he expected all this criticism and attack, and it was story after story after story of people
sharing and in many cases saying this is the first time I've shared. Thanks for listening.
Thanks for giving you a platform. So please comment with a story below. We would love to hear
your account on this video. Now, you and I are about to shift because we have about eight or
10 students in studio that are in a class right now called Afterlife Apologetics that you're
teaching with me here at Taub School Theosophob.
Now, this will not be aired our interaction.
So people listening to this are going, wait a minute, how do I get it in on this?
And the answer is you join us in the MA Apologized Program here at Taubo School of Theology.
This is a class we want to teach again.
So if you're listening, you're fascinating by this, pick up Steve's books.
That's a great place to start.
I've actually just yesterday, as we're recording this, created a playlist that has all of our interviews on near-death experiences,
as well as Sabon and Von Lommel and James.
Jeffrey Long and John Burke, some of the leaders in this for people who want to go back and study,
we have crossed almost every T and dotted the eyes.
And if you have some ideas of, wait a minute, somebody hasn't done this on near-death experiences.
Let us know.
And maybe we'll revisit it if we could do it in a way that would be helpful.
Steve, always enjoy us.
Give us your email one more time for people who would want a PDF of your books.
Sure, the letter J, J. Steve Miller at gmail.com.
And yeah, let me know if you need a copy.
them out and appreciate your candid input. We have good conversations. You're awesome. Thanks,
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