The Sean McDowell Show - When Atheists Have Visions: 9 Surprising Encounters

Episode Date: September 9, 2025

What happens when atheists who expect nothing after death report vivid visions of an afterlife? Dr. Steve Miller returns to unpack surprising cases of near-death experiences, deathbed visions, and other phenomena that challenge a purely naturalistic worldview. He talks about how these encounters unfold, what they describe and how they reconcile them with their beliefs. Are these experiences just brain chemistry or something more? *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.

Want to keep God's word with you wherever you go? The King James Bible Study KJV app by Salem Media makes it easier to read, study, share, and pray daily with a timeless KJV translation. Enjoy features like offline access, audio Bible listening, smart search, and tools to highlight bookmark and take notes, all designed to keep your Bible studies simple and organize. Best of all, it's free to download in the Google Play Store. Grow in your faith every day. Search for King James Bible Study, KJV, and download the app today. Why do atheists report visions? How do atheists respond when they have a near-death experience, deathbed experience, or some other vision that doesn't seem to fit within their naturalistic

worldview? We welcome back, Dr. Steve Miller, because of his expertise and study of near-death experiences, deathbed visions, and more. Steve, thanks for coming back. Thanks for having me. Absolutely. I've been looking forward to this. This angle is so interesting to me. but before we jump in, just remind us really quickly. Can you explain what we mean by visions like near-death experiences and deathbed visions before we talk about some of the atheists who have experienced these kind of things? This is a good clarification because there are many types of vision, Sean, and visions. And one would be a near-death experience, which many people are talking about has been studied very much over the past 50 years.

A near-death experience, a person may have a heart attack, experience clinical death, cessation of breathing, cessation of heartbeat, and then they'll come back telling about a very vivid experience that they had, visionary, that's real, if not real or than real. And it has certain characteristics that go along with that globally. Death-bed experiences are really a cluster of experiences that happen around our final death. A near-death experience, you experience clinical death and come back. In a deathbed experience, this is your final death, but people will have a vision during that time, or there will be some other phenomenon that seems very spiritual. And then there are just many different types of visions. If you look through the Bible, you see Stephen at his death in Acts.

That would have been a deathbed vision. He looks up and sees Jesus, you know, at the right end of God. After death communication, somebody's died, but appears to someone later. That would be Jesus and his transfiguration. So that happens. 2nd Corinthians 12. Paul reports a visionary experience of heaven or paradise, which looks awfully like a near-death experience.

And then we have all kinds of visions in the Bible. Bible, some that are when you're asleep, some when you're awake, to unspiritual people, visions to spiritual people, everything in between. So there's just a rich variety of these. But I guess what brings them all together is people distinguish these from dreams or hallucinations. They just come back saying, the more they thought about it, they said, this was just real. It was just, I was there. Good response. Now, I'm curious, you've written multiple books on near-death experiences and these kinds of visions, but what interests you about atheist visions? Well, I'd never given it much thought. I'd never give the whole vision thing much thought up until

about 12 years ago. I just thought these are private experiences that people have, might have evidence for the person having the experience, nothing beyond that. But naturalists would tend to say they are just, they are caused by people's expectations of what will happen at death, or, you know, maybe they're seeking some kind of experience like this. But when it comes to really everybody that's having these near death and deathbed experiences, Christians aren't expecting them to be like this. They're expecting them to be, if they think they're dying, they think this is what will happen at final death,

rather than being some type of halftime experience and, life. So nobody's expecting it, but especially atheists. They're expecting at death that the lights turn off, that that's it. And so, and they're not expecting some kind of vision during their life of the afterlife or something that points to the supernatural. So, for example, I've been studying Ludwig Firebock. I'll kind of show you some books along the way, wrote a very famous book, the essence of Christianity, another one on thoughts on death and immortality. I've been studying him for the last month, and he was very influential on the early Marxists, important figure.

But he said, when he talked about visions, he said, the way we know that visions aren't real, that they're purely naturalistic, is that they only happen to people who are spiritually minded. If we got Christianity and these religions out of the way, people wouldn't report visions. well, what we found is, and Firebock was not known for doing much research for his claims. He would just claim things, but had he interviewed people during his time, I think he would have found many atheists, because near-death research for the last 50 years has shown that these experiences are irrespective of your former beliefs, of your former worldview, where you live in the world. And so you can't say that they're just because of expectations, what you're expecting.

So especially when it comes to atheists, they're not expecting this type thing. And yet they have to deal with a very real experience that has happened to them. Now, first when I looked into this, I thought it might be like, you know, Joe who has a Twitter handle who says he's an atheist. but we're talking about people like Bertrand Russell, Michael Shermer, A.J. Iyer. We will get into these prominent atheists. And what's fascinating about this is that Fierbach could not be more mistaken. Two days ago, Steve, I was having coffee with a friend of mine who's an agnostic. And he looked at me, he said, Sean, I died and I came back, meaning his heart stopped beating and he was resuscitated. He looked at me, he said, I had an out-of-body.

experience. I floated above my body and I looked down and I could see what the doctors were doing, what they were saying. When I came out of it, I described it to the doctors. They looked at me and they said, how could you possibly know this? This is not someone who is thinking about God. This is not somebody who's expecting it. And he said a couple things to me that were interesting. He said, you know, it feels like the universe is looking out for me. It feels like there's a purpose to my life. And I pushed back. I said, well, the universe sounds vague. When you say a purpose to your life, that sounds like intention, like a mind. He goes, okay, maybe there's some mind. I said, well, second, if you said, the universe is looking out for you, now there's a mind who cares about you and loves you.

And he paused. He goes, all right, Sean, I need more time to think about this. I sent him a link of an interview you and I have done in the past. We're going to talk about it more. But my point is, These things are far more common than we think people not expecting them, atheists, agnostics, and that's what we're going to get into. And what's so fascinating about this is we wouldn't expect atheists of all people to have visions. Let's look at eight people. I asked you to come up with the list. I added a few to this who describe having visionary experiences.

It'd be helpful if you just explain kind of briefly who these atheists are, what they experienced, and how they made sense of it. Let's start with one of the most influential atheists of the 20th century, Bertrand Russell. Sure. So I really want to caution people about just going into YouTube and looking for people who've had near-death experiences or even visions because it's going to feed you things that other people have liked and according to what you've looked at in the past,

rather than giving you objective things to look at. We don't know a lot of these people. on the web. We don't know what to think. So I got famous people, people that you read about, people that you know from their autobiographies or other books that are talking about them so that I think they're a lot more legitimate than just going on the web and looking. So let's think about, let's think about Bertrand Russell. And I read a lot of atheists just for my research, for my books. I'm writing a book now on people who claim that there is no afterlife and their reasons. So I'm reading a lot of atheists. Bertrand Russell's one of them. He was, and I apologize,

I'm going to read a lot of this because I want to get this accurate rather than just talking like we've done in the past. So he was a famous philosopher of the 1900s, arguably the most influential atheist throughout the 1900s. He was like the Richard Dawkins of his time, but He was a legitimate philosopher, graduated from Cambridge and wrote a lot of books. He had written in 1901, he had completed a book called The Principles of Mathematics, and he was pretty full of himself at the time for having written it and thought that he was doing pretty well in life. But then he entered what he calls, quote, the darkest despair that I've ever known. Now, I'm pulling from chapter six of his autobiography, it's just called the autobiography of Bertrand Russell.

And this is what he's saying, darkest despair he had ever known. And here's how his profound experience unfolded in his own words. Quote, ever since my marriage, my emotional life had been calm and superficial. I've forgotten all the deeper issues and have been content with flippant cleverness. And if you read, if you read his autobiography or biography by his daughter, particularly, my father's, my father Bertrand Russell by Catherine Tate, you see, he was very much just into himself, into his own research, into data or whatever, rather than personal things. Suddenly, the ground seemed to give way beneath me.

And I found myself in quite another region. Now, this is a guy who believes in materialism. Material world's all there is. And he finds himself in quite another region. Within five minutes, I went through some reflections as to the following. The loneliness of the human soul is unendurable. Now, this isn't the sight thing the Bertrand Russell that I read about would have been thinking about normally, not his expectation. So the loneliness of the human soul, nothing can penetrate it except the highest intensity of the sort of

love that religious teachers have preached. So he's saying, okay, there's something to this love that religious people are talking about. That's the only thing that can penetrate this loneliness. This is what he got in his vision. Whatever does not spring from this motive is harmful or at best useless. How biblical. Everything has got to be, you know, come from love. It follows that.

One should penetrate to the core of loneliness in each person and speak to that. Now, let me stop again to say this is extraordinary coming from a self-centered, egotistical person that all of a sudden he's thinking compassion. It's almost as if God really is a God of love. God is love, according to the Bible, or that, you know what, for God so loved the world, not just people who are following him, but Bertrand Russell, who's going on his own way and trying to convince others of atheism. God loves him.

And it's not his will that any should perish. So as evidence of the impact on his life, and he never questioned this experience or explaining away psychologically, as far as I can tell. But as evidence of this, philosopher Alfred North Whitehead and his wife, his wife was, they were staying at his house. His wife was experiencing some terrible heart issues.

and they had a three-year-old son whom Russell had never even paid any attention to. Well, during one of the times when she was really suffering for this and the boy was just kind of trying to stay out of the way, Russell went to the boy after the vision and he had compassion on him, led him by the hand that became closest friends up until his eventual death. Russell continues, quote, at the end of those five minutes, I became a completely different person. For a time, a sort of mystical illumination possessed me, end quote. He felt closer to those around him. Those few minutes transferred him, transformed him from an imperialist to a pacifist.

I mean, in just a few minutes, he changed his whole view of war, okay? That's crazy. And with, quote, semi-mystical feelings about beauty with an interest in children and a profound desire to find some philosophy which should make human life and durable. In other words, he discovered that love is what counts and he should seek truth. But I don't get the impression that he swallowed the bait that God had thrown out for him. In fact, he says, this is all coming from the same section where he's talking about his vision. But he says that the feeling largely faded over time and got back to his habit of analysis that reasserted itself.

but um but and it didn't change i don't think he allowed it to change his life in regards to the compassion whenever he would fall for a new woman he he said that he just really didn't care what it did to his wife at the time or whatever and uh so you don't have to respond to these but but in his in his favor i will say toward the end of his life he had said if you raise kids as atheist not as religious believers that nobody would become believers. So as fate would have it, his daughter as an adult, married adult, became a believer and a missionary, and he ended up supporting her somewhat month to month in her missionary. Wow, that's so interesting. It is. That comes out in her biography for dad. I would not expect that. So Berford Russell, I didn't even remember until you told me to,

let's do this interview, I didn't even remember he had had. such an experience. So there's a ton of questions people have right now. How does this fit into a Christian worldview potentially hold those thoughts? The point is that here's somebody who's a materialist and atheist, has the kind of experience that resists his worldview, talks about values for kids, the importance of love and compassion, has a life altering shift on his life. Does that tell us that more is going on in reality than material things, at least

minimally it suggests it now this next one seems to go even a step beyond bertrand russell's experience and this one especially intrigues me because maybe six or eight months ago i had a two-hour friendly debate with michael shirmer about free will and morality and the soul and of all people one of the most need a daily spark of hope and direction let the daily bible app from salem media be that spark this free android app delivers an uplifting verse each morning plus we reading plans, devotions, and trusted podcasts from leaders like Joyce Meyer and Rick Warren. Prefer to listen instead? The Daily Bible app reads verses, reading plans and chapters allowed, handy for the headphones moment of your day. Choose from versions like ESV, NIV, KJV, and more,

and bookmark favorites to revisit later. Share inspiring messages with loved ones right from the app. Feel God's presence in every notification. Search for Daily Bible app on Google Play and begin your day with hope, purpose, and peace. Well-known skeptics today. Had a powerful near, not a near-death experience, like a supernatural experience. Tell us about it. Well, you'd actually call this an after-death communication,

and those come in all kind of different ways. I'll just read from his book, Heavens on Earth, which is an argument against the afterlife, but he admits that he had this experience. It's under a subcategory called Find the Stranges Thing and Explore it, which I think is a quote from the physicist Wheeler talking about, you know, if you want to do something in academia, find the strangest thing in your field and then explore it. So let me just read from Shermer's book.

He says, I'm skeptical but open-minded, not only because that is the approach any scientist should take when confronting an unexplained mystery, but also because of my own experiences with the anomalous. Most dramatically, in early 2014, I had a jarring experience for which I have no explanation. Later that year, I wrote about it in his Scientific American columns. So you can go find it. It's called Infrequencies. Look up Infrequencies and Michael Shermer, and you'll find it free online. Later that year, I wrote this article.

The articles generated more bail than any of my other columns since I began writing in 2001. brief. My fiancé at the time, Jennifer Graff, now my wife, moved to Southern California from Cone, Germany, bring with her a 1978-Fillips 070 transistor radio that had belonged to her late grandfather Walter, a surrogate father figure as she was raised by a single mom. Now, this is one of these, some of you that are young, this is not a digital thing where you turn it on and it goes to the most clear station. This is one of those where you have to fool with the knob and it'll be between stations and there are multiple stations it can go to. So that's significant. So she had fond memories of listening to music with him through the radio. So I did the best to resurrect it, but without

success. After putting in new batteries, he did some welding, different things. Leaving the power switch on the own position, we gave up and tossed it into the desk drawer in our bedroom where at lay dormant for months. So it's been sitting there in the bedroom drawer for months. During a quiet moment after our vows at a small wedding ceremony at our home, Jennifer was feeling sad, being so far from her family and friends and wishing she had some connection to loved ones, most notably her mother and her grandfather, with whom to share this special occasion. We left my family to find a quiet moment alone elsewhere in the house when we heard music emanating from the bedroom, A chill ought to be going through people's fine at this point, which turned out to be a love song playing on that radio in the desk drawer.

It was quite a spine tingling experience. It could have been tuned to any radio station or more likely between stations, producing nothing but static. It had been in Germany, not in California, right? So it would not be even tuned to the right station. It was perfectly tuned to a station playing music suited to the occasion. And it could have come on at any point in the months before or after the wedding ceremony. But it happened at the very moment Jennifer needed that connection. The radio played similar music for the rest of the evening, but went quiet the next day.

It has been silent ever since despite my repeated attempts to revive it. Now, that's a weird experience for someone. His wife said, it's my dad. I mean, it's my granddad. She immediately, and she's a very skeptical person, but to her that meant that her grandfather was sending her message. But now, a lot of people responded to Shermer and said, okay, now, you've been cutting down experiences like this all your life and saying they really don't mean anything. Certainly don't mean anything about the supernatural. He ended the article just saying, I'm just telling you this because it happened.

I'm not telling you what to make of it. But people would say, maybe there was a sunspot. Maybe there was something else that happened. Maybe over time the things that were not connected, something wore off and it became connected. And Shermer responded, yeah, but what about the timing? This is going to happen three months. Why did it happen at the exact time? Well, by the time he wrote his book on the afterlife, he came to the end of that story and said,

well, you know, when you're dealing with something that you don't have an answer for, really the scientific thing is just to bask in the, you know, an interesting account here of what happened. Don't, you know, but just wait until the future. Maybe there will be a scientific explanation. And I thought, that sounds like a cop out. I mean, you're, this, I mean, you just said, find the strangest. thing and explore it, why just assume naturalism? That sounds like naturalism of the gaps where whatever happens that looks spiritual, you just say, oh, eventually there will be a naturalistic

explanation and dismiss it rather than saying, well, there's a natural hypothesis is why this happened. There's a supernatural. What fits the facts the best? And scientists like to deal with numbers. So what I did is I said, okay, let's say that Shermer were interested in looking at this further. What are the odds of this coming at the precise hour rather than three months before or after? And I came up with one chance out of 4,320. What are the odds of it being on the right station? I looked at the number of stations. You could set that thing too.

Out of 200 possible settings, that's one chance out of 200. Multiply them together. And that's one chance out of 864,000, which is getting close to one out of a month. million. So I'm saying if you science is about observations. Let's look at the facts of the case. Why just accept the one in a million odds that it's something naturalistic rather than saying, you know, maybe this is an indication that something supernatural is going on. Do you have any comments on that? You know what? I think I think we can be not skeptical enough and Schumer pushes back on that, we can also be too skeptical. If this was the only case, I'd probably chalk it up

towards anomaly. But there's so many different cases without expectation and explanation, pointing towards supernatural phenomena, there's a pattern here that cannot be so easily dismissed. That's a nice sense here. So don't just do the math, but then explore what about visions has been studied, for example. So I looked at one dissertation, very well done dissertation, which was a meta-analysis of studies on after-death communications, which this would be. And they came to the conclusion that over 35% of the population

will experience one of these. So it's not just an isolated one-and-a-million experience, many people. This is something we can study and see if it fits better with the afterlife hypothesis, or some naturalistic hypothesis. That's a great way to look at it. You and I did a separate video on deathbed visions. In one study, I think in New York, was like 88% of people reported this.

It's just stunning, blew me away. So there's more to it than these isolated instances. But let's move to another atheist, AJ, Iyer. And it might be air. I actually don't know the specific way to pronounce it, but he passed away in 1989, very influential atheist. said I had a bizarre near-death experience. Tell us about it. Sure. And I'm pretty bad on my pronunciations as well. I mostly just read stuff and never hear these names. I call him Air, A.J. Air, A.E.R. And I'm pulling from a life, A.J. Air, A.J. Air, A. Life. That's a biography written of him. So he was highly influential among philosophers in the 1900s. He wrote a little book called Language, Truth, and Logic.

which if you studied philosophy in the 1900, you probably read A.J. A.J. A. A. A.J. A. A. Proponent of logical positivism saying that not only can you not get evidence for God and heaven and stuff like that, but it's just meaningless to even talk about such things. So he was very influential. So later in his life, about a year before he died, he was, he had been hospitalized for pneumonia, got out for a while, had to go back into the, the hospital and he chokes on some salmon that he's eating. And he died for like five minutes. So, um, so within 24 hours after that, he could talk and reported a quote unquote, very vivid memory of an experience that happened while he was clinically dead. So his heart had actually stopped for this period of time. He was quote, confronted by a bright red.

light painful even when he turned away from it, which he understood was responsible for governing the universe. Something in this light, this sounds like God to me, governor of the universe. He also spoke of crossing a river, which he said was presumably the river sticks, which went into, he had to cross to go into Hades, right? So did he take the bait and run with it? I mean, this would have been a distressing near-death experience. And up to 25, 20 or so percent. of near-death experiences are actually distressing, if not hellish. This was painful to him. It's kind of like, to me, when you tell a kid not to get out in the road and he doesn't

listen to you, and then grandmom just kind of grabs him by the neck and pinches him and says, okay, it's time to get serious. I kind of feel like that's what God was doing with AJ Air. A friend of his was there when he first woke up and said, she said, quote, I recalled that he seemed very deeply shaken by the experience. It was as if his worldview had been thrown into doubt. Now, three months later, he wrote an article entitled, What I Saw When I Was Dead, Again, he knew he was dead.

This wasn't something like that. Yeah. And he wrangled around about it, but he made, he made an admission in just a couple of sentences. He said, okay, I'm not really a theist yet. He's not really ready to give up everything. He's had three months. People like your friend that you talked to, they have to think about these things.

And I think God doesn't want to short-circuit our seeking. Jesus said, seek, and you shall find. And so often it takes people time of seeking if they take the bait to put it all together. But before this experience, he admitted that he had been inflexible, was the word he used, inflexible in his displeaf in the afterlife. He had only looked at evidence supporting the afterlife to find fault. He wasn't really open to it. He was inflexible in his beliefs.

But he said, after this experience, he was more open to study the evidence for its own sake. In other words, he became a bit of a seeker afterwards. Now, I don't know when what happened later, had he continued his seeking. This was in 1988, 13 years after Moody had written his. his book on near-death experiences. Seybom had done his scientific study of near-death experience. A lot of stuff he could have sought. I don't know his heart.

Don't know where he went. But he had this experience and didn't deny it. And it certainly unsettled him and made him rethink his worldview, whether or not he shifted his worldview, I think, is the key. And this kind of expectation, some governing influence over reality that didn't feel like a dream certainly doesn't fit within atheism. Steve, you sent me this other one that's fascinating. Some of these are names people will recognize.

We're going to come with other recognizable names. But you sent me this story. I had not heard of a Marxist from China named Chen. What happened in this account? So this is not from a biography or a well-known person, as you mentioned. So I was studying cross-cultural near-death experiences to see the differences and similarities and ran across this person in the Enderf website where Dr. Long has collected like over 5,000 different experiences. But he says that he said that he had joined the Communist Party in college, was working with great ambitions.

He said, quote, I deeply believed in materialism and strongly rejected anything that related to idealism. Neither did I believe in God. However, he had a near-death experience. He says it changed him completely. So this is a person growing up in an atheistic culture, at least the government's pushing that. He's on board with them. He joins the party and says, no, I don't believe in God. But he said, the light was extraordinary.

In it were love and peace. I was completely enveloped by love and I felt totally secure. But also he was struggling with depression. seeing no point in his own existence. He was formerly plagued with depression, but this was a complete turnaround. He said, quote, some invisible force had opened up new paths along which I must travel,

something to strive for, that my life was not in vain, and that should I have goals that fill the needs of those around me as well as my own, and that every day should be filled with good and meaningful activities. So he has been changed from a person absorbed in his own goals, his own education, his own future, just saying, wait a minute, life's about others. That's a radical change.

God is love. And I think God is out to give people experiences like this to start them off seeking. What's fascinating about that is it's somebody in a different context. No expectation or probably awareness of kind of near-death studies and kind of the research done here. Has the kind of experience that matches up with so many. many other near-death experiences, life transformation, unexpected, talks about love and purpose. Now, right away, some people are going, all right, what about the new age angle here? We're going to come back to that.

We're trying to share stories of atheists who've had near-death experiences. And this next one might surprise some people, but tell us the account of Bill Wilson. Sure, Bill W., they call him within Alcoholics Anonymous circles. So he and some others came up with this whole AA 12 steps to recovery. So you've seen it and people recovering from alcohol. Looking for a simple way to stay rooted in God's Word every day. The Daily Bible Devotion app by Salem Media gives you morning and evening devotionals designed to encourage, inspire, and keep you connected with scripture.

Plus, you'll enjoy daily Bible trivia and humor. A fun way to learn and share a smile while growing in your faith. Get the Daily Bible Devotion app for free on both iOS and Android. Start and end your day with God's Word. Search for the Daily Bible Devotion app in the App Store or Google Play Store and download it today. All from drugs, used widely all over. And if you read that, God is all over it. Now, they began calling it later a higher power so that atheists and everybody could be apart and feel comfortable.

But it's just God's all over it. And so you kind of think, okay, this is a guy who grew up in. Sunday school and he wanted to throw God into the mix. But actually, he was a person who did not want anything to do with religion. He just had a very anti-religious thought. But when he was very early in life, once he took his first drink, it was like, this is it. And he was just immediately hooked.

So he had been through this for two decades, slavery to alcohol. And finally, he had tried to quit so many times. He just came to the end of himself and called out, If there be a God, let him show himself now. And God answered the prayer in the form of a vision. A room filled, the room he was in filled with light. He found himself on a mountaintopped, profoundly free, enveloped with God's presence. He immediately lost all desire to drink and would remain sober the rest of his life.

He followed up with some searching to better understand the experience because he was very scientific. He read Harvard professor William James's varieties of religious experience and thought, okay, this is something that happens to people and I'm okay with it. So he began to search somewhat afterwards. But here's a guy who he doesn't like the God thing, but God works a miracle as well as a vision. And don't expect everybody listening out there this problem has problems with addiction. Don't expect it just to happen immediately. It doesn't always happen like that.

And he understood that, but it happened to him and he couldn't deny it. Well, the 12 steps have deep roots in Christian ideas, and one of them is not pray for a vision. But that's what happened in his story, not looking for the kind of visionary encounter, so to speak, even though we wanted God to respond in some fashion. So I had no idea that experience was at the root of this transformation. What about Matthew Perry? So that was on Bill W is the name of that book by Francis Hardigan. So you can find that in there if you want to do further research. Okay, so Matthew Perry, you know him from one of the most famous and most popular, most money-making TV series ever called Friends.

That's Matthew Perry. So I was in the library doing some research and I saw this on sale there. in the library and I flipped through and oh my goodness there's a near death well a visionary experience i thought i've just seen them everywhere these days so uh now i'd say he's not so much an atheist as an app atheist like he was just apathetic toward god he wasn't seeking he was doing his own thing he didn't pray and have quiet times and go to church he was doing his own thing grew up in canada parents divorced mom remarried at 10 years of age quote i made a conscious his choice to say it's every man for himself he wasn't going to be the nice guy who contributes to the

family and his good he's decided to rebel and do his own thing at 14 he started drinking at 15 he moved to live with his dad in los angeles and he said i was quote absolutely desperate to be famous so there here comes his first prayer um god you can do whatever you want to me just please make me famous, end quote. And so, also, he was becoming addicted to drugs as well as alcohol. So his life's kind of a mess, okay? And sure enough, he lands the part of Chandler Bing on one of the most popular, highest grossing TV series ever, Friends.

And, but he lived, if you read the book, it's really, he just lived an incredibly shallow life. He would be, he would date girls on the first date. He would say, this is just for fun, not long-term, commitment, you know, that's what I want, want you to know you're getting into. So he just went from girl to girl from high to high, had to depend on other people to help him with his sobriety and things. He needed help. But he was just, he was just a mess. If you read the biography, you'll see that. But, and he admitted eventually after friends, he said, I want you to understand. He said,

the thing about success is it doesn't fix anything. This is pretty profound. He said, I think you actually have to have all your dreams come true to realize they're the wrong dreams. So he continued living what he called a selfish, narcissistic life, failing over and over to feed alcohol and drugs. Finally, he hit rock bottom. He ran out of his Xanax one day and felt physically horrible,

riddled with shame and guilt. I hated myself. Imagine this guy. He's achieved everything. They were making, he said, a million dollars per episode at one point. All the way he wanted. But you know what? I think God loved Matthew Perry. Why? For God so loved the world. He loves everybody. And he says his second prayer. He said, I frantically began to pray with the desperation of a drowning man. God, please help me. Show me that you're there. God, please help me. As I sat down looking at, looking at the moment. I was in the desperation of a drowning man. God, please help me. As I sat down looking at, into the kitchen and I noticed a crinkle in the atmosphere. I prayed, quote, as I prayed, it transformed into a small golden light as I kneeled the light slowly began to get bigger and bigger until it was so big that encompassed the entire room. It was like I was standing on the sun. Why was I starting to feel better? Why was I not terrified? The light engendered a feeling more perfect than the most perfect quantity of drugs I'd ever taken. The euphoria had begun at the

top of my head and slowly seeped down through my entire body. And for the first time in my life, I was in the presence of love and acceptance and filled with an overwhelming feeling that everything was going to be okay. I knew now that my prayer had been answered. I was in the presence of God. He says, some may write it off, but I was there, and it was God. I stayed sober for two years based solely on that moment. God had shown me a sliver of what life could be. He said, saved me that day and for all days no matter what he had turned me into a seeker there it is again i really believe these experiences are not giving you the whole picture of jesus and salvation and but god doesn't want to bypass that seeking process and he says it made him a seeker not only of

sobriety and truth but also of him so did he establish an authentic relationship with god did he follow through i don't know he died of some prescription drugs I believe ketamine that he had been prescribed. He certainly didn't have a perfect life after that, but only God knows. I think God may have touched his heart and maybe even at a deathbed experience. So if over 80% of people are having those, maybe God helped him get together. Really quick thoughts. That's an incredible story.

And it just shows how common it is in books with celebrities having these kind of visionary experiences. But you're right. What they do is they invite people to discover truth. They invite people to kind of challenge their existing worldview and makes people think, what is the source of love and meaning in the universe? That's why these are so life-changing. But where people go with it is not always determined by the experience itself. Let's look at two more.

One is Dr. Michael Eggner, who is a materialist. I had them on maybe, I don't know, three or six months ago. One of the most popular interviews I've had in a long time, over a half million views, people just were intrigued by his story. But he had a vision, didn't he? Yeah, and it's a very good book. I recommend it because here's a person who is a neurologist, a brain surgeon, and not just your average brain surgeon next door. He teaches neurology, so he's an academic as well. And now he's later on in life reflecting back, which is pretty powerful.

But earlier in his life, he had what he called hauntings that were both disturbing and enticing. They were so powerful that they took his breath away. They were the sense that there was a profound truth pressing in on me that I was ignoring because I was so caught up in the ordinary affairs of everyday life that I was ignoring this elephant in the room. Why was I here? Why does everything exist? his life all about. They came unexpectedly when he was alone or woke at night. Sometimes he might imagine waking up, quote, in a huge mansion or neat, bright and beautiful, with no memory of how he

got there. After the birth of his children, the hauntings increased in intensity. In retrospect, he thinks they came for God. Now, that's significant. Here's a brain surgeon. He knows that a lot of people have hallucinations, and he's thinking all this through. but in retrospect, he's saying when I look at all the evidence here, all the data, I believe that was from God. Then another vision sealed the deal for him with God. It came when his son, who was six months of age at the time, and so far shown only interest in objects, but not people. You know, most babies look you in the eye, they coo, they, you know, feel that warmth between you. And after six months, his baby had done none of that.

He was terrified that his son might have some severe type of autism. Not all autistics are like this, but it seemed like something pretty severe. And he was afraid, you know, he may never really know or respond to me, you know, as a parent, terrifying thought. So he was leaving a hospital. He noticed a chapel and thought, I don't believe in God, but I'll do anything now. I just want my son to know me. So he knelt before the altar and said, I don't know if you exist, but I need help. I'm terrified that my son is autistic.

It's agony to have a child who will never know or love me. Then he heard a voice. The only time it had ever happened to him saying, but that's what you're doing to me. God was saying, you're ignoring me. He collapsed in front of the altar. He says, my heart burned in me. So this was extremely realistic to him.

He told the Lord, he would stop ignoring him and asked him to heal his son. and his own hard heart. Few days, just a few days later, at his child's six-month birthday, his child behaved totally normally for the first time, looking us in the eye, smiling, and laughing. And he knew, ooh, here's a corroboration to my vision.

This is a miracle. And you can imagine that, you know, as a parent as well. So powerful. That is very powerful. And you have the opinion. I mean, this is just a straight-up guy. who's brilliant telling us about his experience and he was an atheist prior to all this. His conversion, his book is part what motivated me to do this program because I had a chance to endorse his book and he has a chapter on near-death experiences.

And he mentions A.J. Air, but also another one, we're not even going in detail here, Howard Storm, who was an atheist and tells a story in his book, My Descent Into Death, about how, He had this non-expectant near-death experience. And now is actually a theist and believes in God. And I thought, how many more atheists have had these kind of experience? Why do some believe and others don't? We'll come back to those questions. But one more that our audience here will probably all recognize is Lee Strobel. Now, people know about his investigation against Christianity through journalism that ended up surprising him with the evidence.

But there's also a visionary experience. there? Yes, there is. And I'd never heard. I don't think he had shared this before, as far as I know, until he got into his book on miracles, I believe it was, and started talking about it. So, yeah, he wrote the book, The Case for Christ. He was once an atheistic, legal editor for the Chicago Tribune. So here's a guy who graduated from Yale, learning how to sift evidence, learning how to be a lawyer. He's a great thinker. And he's reflecting back on something that happened to him, a remarkable vivid dream as a 12-year-old that he could never get off his mind. Okay, it was in his book, a case for miracles that he tells of speaking to an angel who told him of the glories of heaven.

And Strobel responded to the angel, he said, that he hoped his good deeds would get him there. And the angel responded, quote, that doesn't matter. Someday you'll understand, end quote. Because in the Christian worldview, salvation is by grace through faith. It's not of your own works. And so he didn't understand what the angel was talking about, but he said, okay, it's not enough. It's not good enough just to be a good person. Strobel says it was no ordinary dream, and it was 16 years later after he had gone through his atheism,

that he heard a sermon giving the gospel, which fulfilled the prophecy, I guess you would call it, from the angel. He says this of it. He says, it was dramatic. I'm still amazed by its clarity and vibrancy as well as the emotional impact it had on me at the time. But then you don't have to respond immediately to your visions. He went into his atheism, and then later he reflects back. He says, oh, all this makes sense. So, you know, this is coming from a legal mind.

And I wasn't acquainted with Lee Strobel until he interviewed me for a chapter of his latest book. And I thought, he's really a nice, humble guy. You've known him a lot better than me, but wouldn't you vouch for him that he's not the kind of make up tall tales or lie about stuff? I actually, one of the reasons I trust most stories about near-death experiences in deathbed visions, not all of them. is people resist telling them because they think people are to think they're crazy. Even Michael Shermer's story. Like, I give him major kudos for sharing this. It doesn't fit in his narrative.

And that tells me, oh, he's willing to share something even when he doesn't know how to exactly make sense of it. So are there some people that have made up stories? Sure. But even this fellow I mentioned I was having coffee with yesterday, this agnostic two days ago. he was like, am I crazy? Do other people have these experiences? He wasn't aware of any of the research or data on this. And I was able to just say, hey, here's actually some common phenomena of people are happening.

But that thread of people as a whole sharing stories unexpected changed the way they view. Looking for a simple way to stay rooted in God's word every day. The Daily Bible Devotion app by Salem Media gives you morning and evening devotionals designed to encourage, inspire, and keep you connected with scripture. Plus, you'll enjoy daily Bible trivia and humor, a fun way to learn and share a smile while growing in your faith. Get the Daily Bible Devotion app for free on both iOS and Android. Start and end your day with God's Word.

Search for the Daily Bible Devotion app in the App Store or Google Play Store and download it today. The world, they're nervous to tell anybody. tells me they're at least not lying and making this up. And the idea that deathbed experiences and near-death experiences are some projection of pre-existing beliefs, which is one naturalistic objection, that's ridiculous. We see the exact opposite. And of course, we've just given eight cases here. There's far more than this. Now, one thing I want to ask you about, we have Jana Harmon, she's been on my show.

She taught classes for years at Viola. She did her, oh, you've got a book. She did her PhD studies on atheist conversions. Tell us what she found and how it relates to this. Because I know some people are thinking, wait a minute, Michael Shermer had this experience. He certainly doesn't believe. We're not sure about Russell.

Maybe Matthew Perry, we don't know. Michael Ignor, Least Trouble came to believe. Like, what's a connection between these kinds of visions and conversions that she found. Sure. And if you think about it, this is not something that just forces you to believe and forces you to follow God.

I mean, think of Judas. He was around Jesus. He saw all his miracles through the year. Years if he wasn't there, you know, at the, he wasn't there at Jesus' transfiguration, but everybody around him told him about it, the other disciples. Jesus had a vision at his baptism.

Judaism. Judas knew of all these things, but still money became more important to them. So it's not a slam dunk that you're going to convert. But what Jan did, Jana did that was so powerful was that she did her dissertation on atheists who eventually found Christ and said, okay, I want to understand what happened in their conversions. And so I actually talked to her a little bit before this interview to make sure I got some of this right. But she found that almost one in four, of these atheists who became Christians, they almost one in four had some type of visionary or transcendent experience at some point in their intellectual journey. So this was quite common. And she's got a website that I recommend to everyone called X-Skeptic, X-K-E-P-T-I-C, X-Skeptic, Jana-Hara-S-K-E-P-T-I-I-C-S-Septic, Janae, search that and you'll find it.

but she's got like over 120 of these testimonies and below them she'll say here if you're searching here's some of the reading that these that were recommended by these people as i interviewed them so this is not something that's odd she recommend so i recommend that you go there and see some of the skeptics themselves that had visionary experiences like al gascon g-a-s-s-o-n uh that was from Episode 90, this guy grew up in a nominal Catholic background, turned atheist in college, eventually felt lonely without purpose, went into depression, suicide attempts. And then he has this vision of God during church. He actually went to church with a friend.

He had been hostile toward God and humanity. Everything changed. Stephen McWhorter's story. Look at it. She's got them there on the site. She's researching. She's thinking about what these mean. But if you've got friends who are atheists that you're trying to work with or if you're an atheist and you're interested to see others' paths, read these. These visions are something that atheists and Christians and all of us have in common. Why aren't we talking about them like Wheeler said, the physicist, and investigating them? I totally agree. The more I listen to people, the more stories people share with me about having visions. It's way more common. And I'm preaching to the choir with you here, but speaking to people viewing this with us. But you've said a couple times, Steve, that God, I think you said, God loves Matthew Perry. God loves Michael Shermer. God loves all of us. Why wouldn't if he loves us and this gets so many people's attention, why wouldn't all atheists or non-levers have these kinds of visions? Well, it may be that we all will have a vision before we die. I mean, 4% of the population has near-death experiences.

One third of the people will see an after-death communication. Then you see the numbers that report seeing angels or having a demonic attack from the other side, some evil force from the other side. these are up near 50% or so in England and United States when they're surveyed. And then the recent studies on deathbed experiences when they actually interviewed the patients. These are dying patients. They asked them every day if they've had any experiences. And 80 to 88% of them were experiencing those.

So, and maybe everybody will have some kind of a deathbed experience. Who knows? So maybe everybody. will. On the other hand, I really believe that God gives us what we need. There may be one within our grasp if we actively start seeking. I think you're going to find those just like Sean and I have all around us, people we know and trust having them. I prayed when I was going through my bouts with doubting and researching out the pros and cons of Christianity and atheism and all these things. I often prayed, God, just give me some vision, just let me know for sure.

But he never did. The only vision I ever had was kind of a negative one when I was in college that I think was probably an attack by a malevolent force. So I'm here trying to live a good life, trying to search, and God doesn't give me the experience others had. But in retrospect, that's exactly what I needed because that forced me into this search, which now I can draw on all that research from the past. I do not think I would have been motivated to go through this search and this learning

had I had an experience and it was just no longer an issue. You know, in some ways I should have said this earlier, but if people are watching this and you're still with us, Christian or not, and you had a near-death experience, you had a vision, share it. Whether you ended up believing or not, I would love to see, especially if you were an atheist and you became a Christian and a vision was a part of it, like 25% of Jan O'Harman's research, tell us your story. If you're still an atheist, you know, like I had a vision, it unsettled me, like some of the

ones we've listed here, just tell us about it. I'm not looking for a debate. I'm going to read a lot of the stories here. I'm fascinated to know. And if you don't still believe, why not? In some ways, you've answered this question I have for you, Steve. I want to know why in these visions it's not more explicit, and the gospel isn't specifically shared, but you've said a few things like God is inviting us to look into him. God is unsettling our

worldview. It's like God has given us more opportunities to turn to him without overwhelming us. Is that how you see it? I think these visions are more like general revelation than special revelation. So just as somebody can look at the intricacy of the world and say, wow, there's got to be something more here. There's something more. And then we go searching because of that. Now, the intricacy of the creation says nothing about Jesus or the Bible or all these other things. It just starts us searching. And I think the same thing with near death, deathbed experiences and other visions. I mean, and this is very consistent with the Bible. I mean, look at Saul. Saul was out persecuting the church. He was not an atheist, but he was a hater of the church and all that. And he gets to,

a vision. Well, so Jesus comes to him and shares with him the gospel, right? Wrong. He just, he appeared to him, and then he had to go to other people to work through all that other stuff. I think it's important for God not to short-circuit the seeking. For some reason, that's important to God. And even look at Jesus' conversations with people. I mean, with Nicodemus, he came out very specifically with You Must Be Born Again. But there are all kinds of other people who ask, How do I have eternal life? And he'd say, well, what does the law say? And it's like, wait a minute, this is a perfect opportunity to give the whole gospel.

But I think Jesus felt like he wanted to give people enough to allow them to authentically search. Some of these encounters, like the one by Michael Shermer, kind of the dead communicating with the living in some fashion, arguably seems more new age than it does Christian. And I think I need to have you back. One of our next shows should be on some of the, you know, alleged new age, you know, truths that fall from near-death experiences that you and I don't think are the case. But this one arguably could be a little bit more new agey than Christian. How do you make sense of that?

Well, that brings up a good point that some of you are listening to this and you already believe in God and you believe in visions. And so it's easy for you to naively just believe all these experiences. were taught about. Or if you're a Christian who believes that God no longer works this way, or you're an atheist who doesn't believe in things, it's very easy for you just to look for reasons to dismiss these. I think the biblical approach is to examine all things. First Thessalonians 5.

Paul talks about examining such things. So they can be caused by malevolent forces. They can be caused by God, but we need to use discernment when people tell us. his things. And we just need to be more careful when we see such things, I think. And what was, I think I forgot your question. Give it to me directly again. It was about the experience with Michael Shermer and the dead communicating with us. So the dead communicating with us. Well, remember Jesus in his transfiguration, he taught, he communicated and the disciples saw all this,

three of the disciples, and they were communicating with the long deceased, Moses, and Elijah. Now, you can't get more Christian than Jesus Christ. You know, so to say that all these are of the devil, some of them might be that almost certainly are that people are experiencing, but to say that the dead can't communicate with the living, Jesus gave us one example there. So I don't think we can biblically just throw them all out. Fair enough. That point towards discernment and care is really, really important.

Now, some of these atheists who had visions became Christian, some did not. Some are still playing out their story right now, we'll see. But there are also some atheists who become Christians not through visionary experience, but by reflecting on the visionary experience of others. Maybe tell us just one of those stories that jumps out to you and what you would draw from that. Sure. Well, let me just mention these briefly. Randy Steer is a person that I talk to.

Again, now that I tell people that I'm studying this, if you in the listening audience, start studying these and telling your friends and family what you're studying, you're going to start hearing all kinds of stories. That's right. But this person was especially, I mean, he has, this is a physician. He's got his, you know, he's got his degree in medicine, but he also has a PhD and became a medical researcher.

his whole life. Now he's retired. So I meet this guy. Jana introduces me to him at a meeting that we were all at. Neither one of us were speaking. So just kind of came out of nowhere. But this guy had been raised by an atheist father. And when he was young, like in his teenage years, young years,

his father had had a heart attack. He very much respected his father because his father could speak fluently, several languages, was brilliant, scientific, all the things you would respect in a person. And after his heart attack, he called his son, Randy, into his hospital room and told him about a remarkable vision of seeing both of his deceased parents and seeing Jesus right in the middle holding out his hands toward him. And he said, as a young person, I was into my own thing, I was into girls and whatever, and I just kind of dismissed it as some hallucination.

But he said years later, I was working at a veterans hospital and saw a Vietnam vet who had been almost destroyed from Agent Orange. He had been blown up while he was there, lost his legs. And he said, can I talk to you a minute? And he had had almost exactly the same near-death experience as his dad had. He said, the hair raised up on my arms as I realized. hear people across the world from each other, and they had the same experience.

And my dad, his dad told him, don't tell anybody this. He was a shame to tell anybody, but he said it was real. So this led Randy Stier. You can look him up. He's like a trustee for the Mayo Clinic. I mean, trustees are trustworthy, right? That's why they hire them to give advice to their organizations. And Diane Komp was another person.

I'll just mention that she wrote a, little book called A Window to Heaven. This is a Yale pediatric oncologist. She taught at Yale, and she was an atheist, and she said, you know, if anything's going to convince me, it has to be some kind of super reliable witness. And she said, I never expected that the witnesses would be the dying children who are having these deathbed visions. And so this is a powerful, it's a little book. If you don't like reading that much, you can get through it quickly. And it's probably out of print. You can get it really cheaply off the Internet.

This is just powerful stuff to me, Sean. I don't know about you, but it just sends shivers up my spine. When I see reliable people who have no reason to be lying to us, telling us that they've seen and experienced the love of God reaching out to them. And I just say, if you've had this experience, search. Take the next step. When I was doubting and when I was questioning, I never quit searching.

Jesus said, seek and you shall find, and that word seek in the Greek as the present tense, seek and keep on seeking. Jeremiah said, you'll seek me and find me when you search for me with all your heart. So during my times of doubting and questioning, I continued reading the Bible, because I thought if there's truth there,

I want to know what it is. I prayed. I went, religious services so that i would be with other fellow seekers and learn from them i read apologetics work start with more than a carpenter if you've not read anything on apologetics if you're more of a listener listen to more of sean's videos and and and study near death and death and death bit experiences i've written several books on it i'm not pushing them here i'm just saying there's something out here that we all need to be seeking and learning from and it's the strangest thing you may have

ever studied, but, boy, that's the way we learn. And I think it's motivating a lot of people to seek in a way that we weren't doing in the 1900s when we were just embarrassed by the supernatural and wouldn't even look at it or talk about it. Last night I was sitting out having coffee with my wife telling her about this conversation we're going to have. And I said to my wife, I said, you know, I really don't fear death. I have some fears at time of the dying process and just the pain that people go through. Like that's something that I'll have that fear at times. But I really, I don't fear death.

And there's two big reasons for it. One is I think the evidence for the resurrection is strong and compelling. And the accounts of near death experiences and visions, including the one from two days ago, from the agnostic friend of mine, not looking for a vision, still processing it in real time. And, you know, he moved from like there's some. cosmic energy field to is like, okay, higher consciousness. There must be a mind. Then I just press them. Like, it sounds like this God loves you to use your own words. And he's kind of like, I think you're right, but I'm not sure if I'm ready for that yet. And we're going to follow up

and continue the conversation. So many people have had these kind of experiences. And I do think you're right. They're a kind of general revelation of a God who loves us, inviting us to realize so what we can touch, taste, and feel is not all that there is. Life continues after the grave. There's a God who loves us. And I think the evidence points towards Jesus uniquely being that God. We will do this again. I want to invite atheists watching this to do two things.

Whether you believe, whether you're a former atheist or an atheist, if you've had a visionary experience, would you just be one to share it with us, how you make sense of it, what happened? I would love to just hear your story and your account, even if you're like, I don't believe here's how I explained away. Or second, if you're an atheist, you know, like, I don't buy this entire thing. Here's the reason why. What are your objections? Why you don't think visionary accounts or near-death experiences point towards anything supernatural? Put your best objections in here. And maybe Steve and I will come back and give our thoughts about some of them in the future to keep the conversation

going. Steve, always fun. Appreciate you. Thanks for your research, man. We'll do this again soon. Folks, before you click away, make sure you hit subscribe. We've also got Gary Hubermas coming on soon. Talk about the evidence for near-death experiences. He's been studying this for decades, but we've never had them on specifically the evidence for it. And he's talked about recently how it's just exploded the amount of evidence, wants to weigh in on that. We've got some other conversations coming up have a dialogue soon with Peter Singer. Interestingly enough, you will not want to miss. So make sure you hit subscribe. And if you thought about studying apologetics, that's something that we would love to have you join us at Biola. By the way, Steve, we were just looking at our curriculum

recently, and we have woven in an afterlife apologetics course in due time we're going to offer. So we'll be talking about that. All right. Thanks again, my friend. And those of you watching, we'll see you soon. this show, please hit that follow button on your podcast app. Most of you tuning in haven't done this yet, and it makes a huge difference in helping us reach and equip more people and build community. And please consider leaving a podcast review. Every review helps. Thanks for listening to the Sean McDowell Show, brought to you by Talbot School of Theology at Biola University, where we have on campus and online programs in apologetic, spiritual information, marriage and family, Bible, and so much more.

We would love to train you to more effectively live, teach, and defend the Christian faith today. And we will see you when the next episode drops. Has fear stolen your peace? I'm Jennifer Slattery, lead host of the Faith Over Fear podcast, helping you fight your fears and grow your faith. Subscribe at lifeodio.com.