Chapter 33: When Someone You Love Shares an NDE or DBE — A Practical Guide

Love First, Discernment Second: A Field Manual for the Moment That Matters Most

Your phone buzzes on the kitchen counter. It is your sister-in-law. She has been out of the hospital for three days now. The cardiac event was a scare, but she came through it. You have already called twice, brought a casserole, sent flowers. Everyone in the family has told the story of her collapse so many times that it has started to sound like a movie script. But this call is different. You can hear it in the first three seconds.

She is quiet. She clears her throat. Then she says, "Hey. Can I tell you something? I need to tell somebody, and I think you're the one I want to tell."

You say of course.

She takes a breath. And then she tells you that for seventeen seconds she was clinically dead. Her heart stopped. The monitor flatlined. The crash cart came. She was gone. And during those seventeen seconds — or during some moment that she cannot quite locate on any clock you would recognize — something happened. She left. She saw her body on the bed. She saw the nurses working on her chest. She heard things she should not have been able to hear. And then she was somewhere else. There was a light. There was a feeling. There was a Person, she thinks, though she is not sure. And there was love. So much love that she cannot describe it without crying, which she is now doing, on the phone, in her kitchen, because she does not know what any of this means and she does not know if she is losing her mind and she does not know how you are going to react.

What do you do?

This is the chapter that answers that question. Not the theological question of what her experience means. Not the evaluative question of whether every detail she reports can be trusted. Those questions matter, and this book has spent many chapters addressing them. But in the moment your sister-in-law calls, those are not the first questions. The first question is a different one. The first question is: How do I love this person well, right now, in this conversation?

That is what this chapter is about. The most common way most Christians will ever encounter a near-death experience or a deathbed experience is not through a book or a conference or a YouTube video. It is through someone they love. A family member who calls. A friend who pulls them aside after church. A coworker who suddenly gets vulnerable over lunch. A dying grandmother who looks up at the corner of the room and smiles at someone no one else can see. These moments come without warning. They come when we are not ready. They come from the people whose trust we cannot afford to damage. How we respond in those moments matters enormously — not only for that one conversation, but often for the whole long arc of the experiencer's walk with the Lord from that day forward.

The Thesis in One Sentence

Here is what I want you to take from this chapter, if you take nothing else:

I know that sounds strange in a book about testing the spirits. The whole point of this book is that Christians need to evaluate NDEs and DBEs carefully, because not every one of them is what it appears to be. Some carry elements that are biblically problematic. Some are shaped by deceiving spirits. Some are fabricated. We cannot be naive. Chapters 4 through 32 of this book have made that case in detail. If you have been reading straight through, you have spent many hundreds of pages learning how to spot the problems.¹

But here is the thing about learning to spot problems: it can train us into a reflex that is exactly wrong for the moment your sister-in-law calls. The reflex says, "I have tools. I have categories. I know what to look for. Let me start applying them." And so, as she is telling you about the light and the love and the Person, you are already mentally running her account through a checklist. You are already listening for the phrase that might signal trouble. You are already framing the gentle correction you might need to offer.

Stop. She is not a case study. She is your sister-in-law. She is crying. She called you because she trusts you. What she needs in that moment is not a diagnosis. She needs a person. She needs warmth. She needs someone who will listen — really listen — without flinching, without interrupting, without visibly analyzing.

That is the thesis of this chapter. Love first. Discernment second. And often — maybe usually — the discernment conversation is not the same conversation as the sharing conversation. Those can be two different conversations, or three, or ten, spread out over months or years. The sharing conversation needs to go well so that the discernment conversations are even possible. If you botch the first conversation, you may never get the second.

Why This Matters More Than You Think

Before we get to the practical steps, we need to understand something important about the people who have had these experiences. Most of them are terrified to tell anyone.

Researcher J. Steve Miller, who has spent decades studying NDEs and deathbed experiences, puts it plainly. People, he writes, "strongly resist sharing their NDEs and DBEs. They're afraid people won't believe them or will think they're crazy."² Many NDErs keep their experience to themselves for years. Some keep it to themselves for decades. Some die without ever having told anyone. Pim van Lommel, the Dutch cardiologist whose landmark 2001 Lancet study transformed the field, noticed early in his research that patients would not talk about their NDEs unless he asked. "People don't tell unless asked," John Burke reports Van Lommel concluding. "They don't want to be labeled 'crazy.'"³

A similar pattern shows up in the research on after-death communications (ADCs) — the experience of sensing the presence of a deceased loved one. In one large study cited in Miller's dissertation, fifty-four percent of bereaved people who had such experiences had never told anyone about them before being interviewed for the research.⁴ More than half kept it entirely to themselves. Miller explains why: they are "afraid people will think they are crazy."⁵ Even in self-help groups for the bereaved, parents who have lost children tend to start out sharing such things "very tentatively," opening up only after others in the group validate them.⁶

Why does this matter for you? Because it tells you what is actually happening when your sister-in-law calls. The sentence that comes out of her mouth when you pick up the phone — "Hey, can I tell you something?" — is not the beginning of the conversation. It is the end of a much longer conversation she has already been having with herself for hours or days or weeks. She has already imagined a dozen different reactions you might have. She has already almost decided not to call several times. She has already drafted in her head the one sentence she plans to lead with, to see how you react before she says more. Miller describes this pattern exactly: "Her first sentence was likely a well-rehearsed opening to see if you would shut her down."⁷

Think about what that means. She is not asking you to be a theologian. She is not asking you to be a philosopher. She is not asking you to be an expert in anything. She is asking you to be safe. She is asking you to be a person who will not laugh at her, not look at her sideways, not change the subject, not tell her she has been watching too much television. If you pass that first test — and the test is smaller than you think and takes no special skill, just warmth — she will tell you the rest. If you fail it, she may never tell anyone again. She may even start doubting her own experience, which she was already doubting before she called you.

There is more. Miller also points out that in American culture, "we're embarrassed by the supernatural."⁸ We have a standard conversational script for how someone's day went or how the game turned out. We do not have a standard script for someone telling us she saw heaven last Tuesday. When we are not prepared, we tend to say whatever pops out. And the things that pop out are almost always bad. They are things like, "Well, you've been through a lot." Or: "That morphine can really do a number on you." Or: "Huh. Wow. So anyway, how are the kids?" These responses are not cruel. The person saying them usually is not trying to hurt anyone. They are simply grasping for the cultural script and finding that no script exists. So they fall back on dismissal, deflection, or subject change — any of which will, as Miller puts it, likely "stop the conversation."⁹

That is why this chapter exists. You need a script. You need to have thought about this before the phone rings, so that when it rings, you are not grasping.

The Five-Step Sequence for Receiving an Account Well

Here is a simple five-step sequence for the first conversation. These steps are not magic. They are just careful expressions of ordinary Christian love applied to this specific kind of moment. If you internalize them, you will be ready when the moment comes.

Step 1: Welcome the sharing.

The first words out of your mouth need to communicate one thing: you are safe with me. Not, "I'll decide whether to believe you after I hear the whole thing." Not, "Let me check whether this meets my theological criteria." Just: I am glad you trust me with this, and I am ready to hear it.

Try something like: "I'm so grateful you're sharing this with me. I want to hear the whole thing. Tell me what happened." Or: "Wow — thank you for telling me. That must have been extraordinary. I'm listening. Start wherever you want."

Miller suggests a response along these lines: "Wow...thanks so much for telling me! That's incredible!" And if the experience was distressing: "That's terrible...I'm so sorry!"¹¹ Notice the warmth. Notice that he does not evaluate anything yet. He simply acknowledges the sharing and honors the weight of what is being shared.

Then — and this is almost as important as the opening line — stop talking. Let her tell the story. Do not interrupt. Do not say "uh huh" every three seconds. Do not finish her sentences. Do not jump in when she pauses to collect herself. Silence is not a problem that you must fix. Silence is where she is working up the courage to keep going. The single most important skill in this moment is the willingness to shut up and listen.

James tells believers to "be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger" (James 1:19). That simple command is the whole of Step 1. Quick to hear. Slow to speak. Just that.¹²

Step 2: Ask questions that invite depth.

Once she has told the basic story, do not jump into evaluation. Ask her to tell you more.

Open-ended questions are the goal. "Yes or no" questions shut conversations down. Questions that start with "what" or "how" open them up. Try:

"What was it like?"
"What did you feel?"
"Do you remember what you saw?"
"Who or what did you encounter? Can you describe that more?"
"What happened next?"

Miller offers a similar approach. Rather than immediately interpreting or correcting, he suggests: "So you saw an angel on the other side. What did it look like or do or say? Many people report encounters with angels, in visions as well as in NDEs and DBEs. Can you tell me more about the experience — I'm fascinated!"¹³ Notice how he restates what she said (so she knows he has heard her), briefly normalizes it (so she knows she is not crazy), and then asks for more (so she knows he is interested). That is the pattern.

Questions have a second benefit besides simply eliciting more information. They signal respect. When you ask someone to tell you more, you are telling them, "What you are saying matters enough to me that I want to understand it better." That message can be medicine for an NDEr who has been nursing a private fear that no one will take her seriously.

Step 3: Reflect what you are hearing.

Counselors call this "reflective listening," and it is a gift. After she has talked for a while, say something like: "It sounds like you experienced overwhelming peace, and a presence that felt deeply loving. You felt like you were being sent back." Or: "So the hardest part was coming back — the sense of loss when you had to return to your body." Or: "What I'm hearing is that the love you felt was unlike anything you've ever experienced before, and you don't have words for how vivid it was."

Reflection does three things. First, it proves you have been listening. She knows now that you heard her — not just the words, but the weight. Second, it helps her hear her own story more clearly. NDEs and DBEs are notoriously hard to put into words, and when a listener plays back what they have understood, the experiencer often says, "Yes! And also — " and a new piece of the account comes out that she had not yet been able to access. Third, reflection invites correction. If you have misunderstood something, reflection gives her the chance to say, "No, it wasn't quite that — it was more like —" and she refines her own account.

The one thing reflection is not is evaluation. "It sounds like you encountered something real and loving" is reflection. "It sounds like you encountered Jesus, because the Bible says such-and-such" is evaluation. The first is welcome. The second, in the first conversation, is usually not.

Step 4: Express gratitude for the experience, not premature assessment.

When she has told you what she can tell you, the temptation will be to render a verdict. Resist it. Instead, express gratitude. Say something like: "That sounds like a profound gift. I'm honored you've shared it with me." Or: "I can tell this meant so much to you. Thank you for trusting me with it."

This is harder than it sounds. Many of us, especially if we are the kind of Christians who care about theology, feel an almost physical pressure to land the plane — to end the conversation with some kind of declaration. Was it real? Was it Jesus? Was it from God? What does it mean? The NDEr is asking these questions. So are we. Everyone wants an answer.

But here is the thing. You do not have to answer those questions in the first conversation. In fact, in almost every case, you should not answer those questions in the first conversation. You have not yet heard the whole account carefully enough. You have not yet had time to pray over what you heard. You have not yet had the chance to think about which parts you feel confident about and which parts you have concerns about. And more importantly, she has not yet had time to process, either. If you pronounce a verdict too early, you will either (a) give her a false confidence she has not earned, or (b) give her a painful doubt she was not ready for. Both are damaging.

Gratitude is not evasion. Gratitude honors the experience as a gift and keeps the door open for more conversation later. That is what you want.

Step 5: Offer presence over time.

Close the first conversation with a clear message: I am not going anywhere. Try: "If you'd like to talk more about this as you process it, I'd love that. I know these experiences take a long time to understand. Whenever you want to talk about it again, I'm here." Or: "I'll be thinking about what you told me. Can I check in with you in a few days?"

This signals that you are not trying to handle the conversation once and be done with it. Integration of a major spiritual experience often takes years.¹⁴ The NDE changes the experiencer in ways that unfold slowly. The person who walks alongside the experiencer for the long haul has more influence on the long arc of their integration than the person who delivered the perfect theological response in the first twenty minutes.

And if you are a praying person, tell her you will be praying — and then actually pray. "I'll be praying for you as you process this" is not a stock phrase. It is a commitment. She will remember it.

Those five steps, in that order, are the heart of the first conversation. Get them right and you have built a foundation that will hold up whatever discernment work comes later. Get them wrong and everything else in this book becomes harder to apply — because you will not have the relational credit to apply it.

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Seven Scenarios You Might Actually Face

The five-step sequence above is the general pattern, but real life comes in specific shapes. Let me walk you through seven different scenarios you might actually face. Each one involves slightly different pastoral wisdom. The sequence stays the same — love first, discernment second — but the texture changes.

Scenario 1: The faithful Christian who had a classic Christian NDE

Your mother is seventy-eight years old. She has walked with Jesus for sixty years. She has a quiet, steady, unshowy faith. She has raised her children in the Lord, loved her husband faithfully, served her church for decades. Last month she had a cardiac event. For three minutes the doctors could not get her heart back. During those three minutes she saw Jesus. She saw her husband, who died four years ago. She saw a light she cannot describe. She was told that it was not her time yet. She came back changed — even quieter than before, and even more settled about where she is going.

What do you do?

This is the easiest scenario in the whole chapter. You rejoice with her. You weep with joy. You thank God together. You tell her how glad you are that the Lord gave her this gift. You affirm without hesitation that what she experienced is consistent with what Scripture teaches about heaven, about Christ's love for His people, and about the God who comforts His saints at the door of death.

"Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep," Paul tells us (Romans 12:15). This is a rejoicing moment. She is not asking for your evaluation; she is sharing her joy. Join her in it.

You do not need to run her account through the seven-test framework that this book develops in Chapter 10.¹⁵ A well-discipled mother of sixty years with a simple, Christ-centered, peaceful account is on as solid ground as any experiencer this book has considered. Research repeatedly shows that experiences like your mother's are consistent with how God has met His people at the edge of death throughout Christian history.¹⁶ The proper Christian response is gratitude, not skepticism.

If she asks you, "Do you believe me?" — and she might — answer with warmth. "Yes. I believe you saw what you say you saw. I believe Jesus met you there. I am so thankful." You do not have to pretend uncertainty to be humble. Honest belief, where belief is warranted, is itself a form of honoring her.

Scenario 2: The nominal Christian or drifting friend whose NDE was deeply Christian in content

Your coworker Tom is forty-five. He grew up in church. He would still check a box that says "Christian" on a form. But he has not darkened the door of a church in fifteen years. His marriage is shaky. He drinks more than he should. He is not hostile to faith — he just has not cared about it for a long time.

Last month Tom had a heart attack at the gym. He flatlined in the ambulance. He saw Jesus. He saw what he is convinced was heaven. He was told, with tremendous love but unmistakable clarity, that he had been given back his life for a reason. Tom cannot stop thinking about it. He is asking you, because you are the one Christian in his life, what he is supposed to do with this.

What do you do?

You rejoice. This may be the beginning of real faith for Tom — or the rekindling of a faith that was only embers. You walk alongside him gently. You help him put words to what he encountered. You answer his questions from Scripture when he asks them. You connect him, over time, with a good local church.

I want to caution against two things in particular in this scenario. First, do not rush Tom. His instinct may be to tell his whole church about his experience in week one. This is usually a mistake. The NDE community is full of people who turned a genuine experience into a public ministry before they had even started to understand it themselves, and who then got their interpretation locked in publicly before they had the chance to integrate it privately. Pump the brakes. "Tom, this is huge. Let's sit with it for a while. Let me help you read your Bible. Let's talk every week for a few months and just see what the Lord does."

Second, be careful which resources you hand him. The NDE world online is a mixed bag — some solidly Christian, much of it not (see Chapters 29 through 31 for full treatment).¹⁷ If Tom Googles his experience, he will find his way to all sorts of teachers, some helpful and some not. Better to hand him a Bible, a good study Bible, one or two trustworthy Christian NDE accounts, and an invitation to coffee every other week. Let the Word do its work. Let Christian community do its work. Your presence as a wise friend is worth more than a dozen books.

Tom may take off running toward Christ from this moment. Or he may drift back to something close to his old life in a year. We do not control outcomes. We walk alongside, faithfully, for as long as we are allowed.

Scenario 3: The Christian NDEr whose account includes some concerning elements

Your sister is a Christian. She teaches Sunday school. She reads her Bible. She prays. Last year she had an NDE during complications after surgery. Most of her account is beautiful, Christian, biblically coherent. She saw Jesus. She felt overwhelming love. She was shown her life and was profoundly moved by how Jesus was present in moments she did not even realize He was there. But.

Interspersed with the clearly Christian content are a few things that do not fit. She mentions, almost in passing, that she saw a "previous life." She has started reading books about past lives, which she did not read before. She also mentions that during her NDE she was told that "all paths lead back to the same place" — something that does not square with her Christian faith, but which she has not yet sorted out. She is not a universalist. She is not a reincarnationist. But she has threads in her story that lean that way, and she has not made sense of any of it.

What do you do?

This is where the experience-interpretation distinction becomes most useful (developed more fully in Chapter 9). Some of what your sister experienced was almost certainly real and from God — the encounter with Christ, the life review, the love. Some of what she reports, however, may be (a) elements of the experience itself that were corrupted, or (b) interpretations she added during or after the experience, possibly under the influence of books she has picked up since returning, or (c) the human mind's tendency to filter spiritual encounters through prior cultural assumptions — even assumptions she did not know she had. Hybrid experiences are discussed at length in Chapter 17; I will not repeat that material here.¹⁸

Your job in the first conversation is still to love and listen. Do not reject anything in the first conversation unless the whole account is clearly anti-Christian (which it is not — this is mostly beautiful). Do not make her feel like a bad Christian for what she reported. Do not leap in with, "Well, the Bible actually teaches—" the moment she says "past life." That response, however theologically correct, will make her shut down. She is sharing a confusing, tender experience, and she needs to know the sharing is welcome before she can bear evaluation.

In later conversations — a week later, a month later, whenever the trust has been built and she invites the evaluation — you can gently begin to distinguish the wheat from the chaff. The right tone is collaborative, not prosecutorial. Try: "I believe something real happened to you. I'm wondering about that one piece — the past life part. What do you think that meant?" Let her explore. Bring in Scripture gently: "I've been thinking about that piece, and I wonder how it lines up with what we see in Hebrews 9:27 — that it's appointed for man to die once. Does that passage mean anything to you in light of your experience?"

The goal is not to win an argument. The goal is to help her sort the experience itself (which may be genuine) from the interpretations (which can be mistaken even when the experience is real). Most of the time, if she is a sincere believer, she will — given time and affection and Scripture — sort this out herself. You are not her exorcist; you are her sister. Walk with her.

Scenario 4: The NDEr whose account is predominantly non-Christian or anti-Christian

Your old college friend calls. You have not talked in two years. She had a life-threatening reaction to a medication six months ago. During the crisis, she had what she now calls an awakening. She left her body. She entered a realm of pure light. A being of love met her and told her — she says with tears in her voice — that everything she had been taught about God in her Baptist childhood was small and fearful and wrong. There is no judgment. There is no hell. There is only love, and we are all one, and every path leads home. She has left her old church. She is thinking about starting a podcast. She has found her tribe online. She is writing a book. She is calling you because she remembers you were "so into Jesus" back in college, and she wants to tell you what she knows now, and she thinks you will be so relieved to hear it.

What do you do?

This is the hardest scenario in this chapter. Let me say up front: you do not have to endorse what she is telling you. In fact, you absolutely must not. But you do not have to reject her either. There is a way through this that honors the person without endorsing the teaching.

Here is the sequence I would walk, recognizing that every case is different.

First, let her tell the whole account. Do not interrupt. Do not argue. Do not pick up the pieces of her story and start running them through your discernment grid in real time. Let her say everything she wants to say. Listen with your whole attention. This is not compromise; it is basic human respect.

Second, honor the person without endorsing the teaching. You can say things like: "I can tell this was profound for you." "I can hear how deeply you felt God's love — I know that feeling is real to you." "I love you, and I want to understand what you went through." None of those statements affirm universalism. None of them deny it either. They affirm her. They keep the relationship open.

Third, do not — in the first conversation, and usually not even in the second — launch into correction. If you do, you will almost certainly lose the relationship and lose the chance to speak any truth at all. She did not call you for a debate. She called you because she remembers that you cared. Be someone who cares.

Fourth, at some point, if the relationship continues, you will need to share your concerns. Do it personally, not academically. Do it with "I" language, not "you" language. Try: "I want to share something I've been thinking about, if you're open to it. I hear how much love you felt. That was real to you, and I am not going to argue with what you felt. But I want to tell you what I've been learning in my own walk with Jesus, because some of it doesn't fit with what you've concluded — and I care enough about you to say so."

Fifth, when you do engage specifics, engage from Scripture, not from argument. If she claims the NDE showed her that all religions are equal, walk through Jesus's words in John 14:6 together. If the experience's message was "you are divine," walk through the biblical distinction between Creator and creature. If the message was "there is no sin, only learning," walk through the cross. Let the Word do the confronting. You are just the messenger.

Sixth, maintain relationship. Pray for her. Be patient. Trust God for fruit over time. You are playing the long game. Your influence over ten years — steady, kind, scripturally grounded, unconditionally loving — is worth more than one spectacular correction in one conversation.

I have read many NDE accounts that drift far from the biblical faith. I have also seen, over the years, a number of such NDErs slowly return to orthodox Christianity — almost always because someone in their life refused to either endorse the error or cut them off. They kept showing up. They kept loving. They kept gently, gently, gently testifying. And in God's kindness, the Word took root again. That is the posture this scenario calls for.¹⁹

Scenario 5: The DBE at a deathbed

Your grandmother is dying of cancer. She has days left, maybe a week. The family has gathered. You are sitting with her on a Sunday afternoon. She has been in and out of awareness. Suddenly her eyes open. They focus somewhere over your shoulder, near the corner of the room. Her face changes. Something you have not seen on her face in months — peace, or joy, or recognition — floods in. She says, softly: "Jesus. You came." A moment later: "Mama. Oh, Mama."

What do you do?

Please hear me. This is sacred ground.

Do not interrupt. Do not analyze. Do not ask her to describe what she is seeing in more detail so you can evaluate it. Do not take out your phone to record. Do not run to get the family. Do not try to test her for medication side effects. Do not say anything clever.

Just be present. Hold her hand if she lets you. Cry quietly if you need to. Say, gently, "Grandma, that's so beautiful. Jesus loves you so much." Or: "He's come for you. It's okay. You can go when you're ready." If you pray, pray quietly. "Thank you, Lord, for coming to her. Thank you, Father, for this moment."

The research on deathbed experiences — often called deathbed visions, end-of-life experiences, or nearing-death awareness — is vast. These experiences are documented across cultures and centuries. They happen with hospice nurses, in homes, in hospitals. The dying often perceive presences the rest of the room cannot see. They speak to deceased loved ones. They see light. They see Jesus. And they die in peace.²⁰ DBEs are the subject of Chapter 3 (for the definition and history) and Chapter 12 (for why they are especially trustworthy); I will not recapitulate that material here.²¹

What I will say is this. A DBE in a dying Christian grandmother is one of the most theologically clean spiritual experiences a Christian will ever witness. The research shows they are remarkably consistent and typically produce peace.²² The appropriate response is not skepticism. The appropriate response is worship.

Later — after she is gone — you will tell her story to others. And it will strengthen their faith, because they will know, because you were there, that the Lord came for her in her last hours. That is a gift. But right now, in that room, the moment is hers. Let it be.

Scenario 6: A child who had an NDE or DBE

Your five-year-old son was in an accident. For a few minutes the emergency room staff was not sure he would make it. He pulled through. A few days later, at bedtime, in the tone children use for very simple facts, he mentions that while he was in the ambulance a man with a bright face was there with him and said he was going to be okay. He says the man's name was Jesus. He adds, matter-of-factly, that his great-grandmother — who died before he was born — was also there, and she was nice.

What do you do?

Receive it warmly. Do not exaggerate. Do not press. Do not start building a theology on top of it. Just listen, gently, with the same warmth you would bring to him telling you about his day at school.

Ask a few simple, open questions — but not leading ones. "What did he look like?" "How did you know his name was Jesus?" "How did you feel?" Let the child describe what he remembers. Do not say, "Jesus has a beard, right?" Do not say, "Did he have a white robe?" You will unintentionally teach him what to say, and within a month his account will sound like a picture book.

This matters because children's reports of spiritual experiences at the edge of death have unique evidential weight precisely because children have not been shaped yet by elaborate theological or cultural expectations. The great pediatric oncologist Diane Komp, former Yale professor of pediatrics, observed this throughout decades of ministry to dying children.²⁴ Research summarized by Miller shows that children's DBE accounts are especially credible because children, as Miller puts it, "tell it like it is," without filtering through social etiquette.²⁵ Dr. Pim van Lommel, who has studied many such accounts, notes that if children's NDEs were simply wishful thinking, children would report seeing living family members like their parents. Instead, they most often report seeing deceased relatives — including, in some documented cases, relatives they never met and had never been told about.²⁶

So what your son told you is, statistically, very likely a real encounter. But here is the pastoral guidance: do not turn this into a story you tell. Do not publish your son's account on social media. Do not take him around the church to give his testimony. Do not push him for more details every few days to see if the story is growing. Children's experiences are fragile things. When a child's experience becomes a performance for adult audiences, the child often begins — without meaning to — adding details that please the audience. The pure thing gets corrupted not by any demon but by well-meaning parental showmanship.²⁷

Receive your son's account as a gift from the Lord to your family. Pray with him. Thank Jesus. Let it be something quiet and precious between you. If he brings it up again later, listen again. If he does not, let it rest in his heart like a seed. The fruit of that kind of reception over a lifetime is usually better than whatever short-term spectacle a public testimony could offer.

Scenario 7: The NDE or DBE that seems distressing to the experiencer

Your uncle, a man in his sixties with a complicated past and a complicated relationship with the church, had a cardiac event two months ago. What he experienced during the crisis was not peaceful. There were dark figures. There was fear. There was a sense of being weighed and found wanting. He is not sleeping well. He keeps reliving it. He finally tells you about it in a parking lot after a family dinner. He is asking you what it means. He is asking you if he is going to hell.

What do you do?

First, do not panic. Distressing NDEs are real experiences, and they are not automatically demonic (see Chapter 21 for the full typology: Hades encounters, genuinely demonic encounters, fear-filtered positive experiences, and disciplinary experiences for believers).²⁸ Distressing NDEs account for perhaps fifteen to twenty percent of reported NDEs, depending on the study. The most common response to a distressing NDE, Nancy Evans Bush has documented, is what she calls "the conversion response" — the experiencer takes it as a warning and turns their life around.²⁹

Second, do not dismiss his fear. Do not say "it was just your brain." Do not say "shake it off." Do not say "that can't have been real." He knows what he experienced. It was more real to him than the conversation you are having now. Miller is emphatic on this point — when the person sharing locks eyes with you and says, "It was real," the loving response is not to argue with them about their own experience.³⁰

Third, remind him of the gospel. If he is asking, "Am I going to hell?" — the answer is the same today that it has always been. Jesus died to save sinners. "Whoever calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved" (Romans 10:13). A distressing experience is not a verdict; it may be a mercy — a warning shot before a final reckoning, given so that your uncle will repent and believe. Tell him so. "Uncle, I don't know exactly what you saw. I know it scared you. But I know that Jesus died for sinners and that He receives everyone who calls on Him. If you are reaching for Him right now, He is already reaching for you. It is never too late for that." Miller's advice on this point is pastorally wise: even Jesus was personally tempted by the devil, so a distressing encounter cannot mean one is doomed; John 3:16's "whoever" surely includes people who have had distressing NDEs.³¹

Fourth, connect him with pastoral care that is equipped for this (Chapter 34 addresses the pastor's role in detail).³² A distressing NDE sometimes requires more than a kind conversation with a family member. If your uncle is willing, help him find a pastor who will not dismiss him and will walk him through the experience over weeks and months.

Fifth, pray with him. Right there, in the parking lot, if he is willing. Not a long prayer. Not a fancy prayer. A simple prayer: "Lord, you know what my uncle saw. You know his heart. Meet him. Give him your peace. Protect him from any lie of the enemy. Draw him to yourself. In Jesus's name, amen."

· · ·

Common Mistakes Christians Make

Across all seven scenarios, Christians tend to make the same handful of mistakes. I have made several of them myself, more than once. Understanding what not to do is sometimes more helpful than a long lecture on what to do. Let me walk through six of the most common errors.

Mistake 1: Immediate theological correction

This is the most common mistake, and the one most likely to be made by Christians who love the Bible and care about truth. The NDEr starts talking. The Christian hears something — "being of light," "past life," "unconditional love" — that triggers alarm bells. And within thirty seconds, the Christian is fact-checking the experience in real time. "Actually, the Bible says—" "Well, the problem with that is—" "I don't think that's what really happened, because—"

This instinct is not evil. It comes from a desire to protect the person from error. But the effect is disastrous. The NDEr feels interrogated rather than welcomed. The trust evaporates. The conversation stops. The Christian has scored a few theological points and lost the whole relationship. The Christian may never be trusted with the next piece of the story. In trying to protect the person from error, the Christian has guaranteed that whatever error is there will grow up unchallenged — because the NDEr will now look elsewhere for people who will actually listen.

Remember Proverbs 18:13: "If one gives an answer before he hears, it is his folly and shame." Theological correction, when it is warranted at all, comes later. In the first conversation, Christians need to be quick to hear (James 1:19), not quick to correct.

Mistake 2: Dismissive response

The opposite of the first mistake, and almost as damaging. "Oh honey, that was just a hallucination." "That's the morphine talking." "Your brain was dying, that's all." "I read an article that said NDEs are just oxygen deprivation."

This response feels, to the speaker, like kindness — as if reassuring someone that nothing weird happened is comforting. It is not. It is dismissal. It tells the person that what they experienced, which was more real to them than the chair they are sitting in, was nothing. It tells them their brain betrayed them. It tells them you are not a safe person to talk to about anything outside the ordinary. And it is, besides all that, probably wrong. This book has spent many hundreds of pages arguing that most NDEs and the vast majority of DBEs are not brain-generated hallucinations but genuine spiritual experiences.³³ Dismissal is not only unkind; it is also often factually mistaken.

Miller observes that the dismissive instinct is deeply cultural in America. We are uncomfortable with the supernatural. We do not have a social script for it. So we reach for the dismissive script as a kind of reflex — a way to bring the conversation back to safe, ordinary territory. Resist the reflex.³⁴

Mistake 3: Uncritical enthusiasm

The opposite of dismissal — and another error. The NDEr tells her whole story, including the parts that do not fit Scripture, and the Christian friend responds with, "Oh my goodness, that's incredible! That's so beautiful! Everything you said has to be from God!"

This response feels loving, but it is also a failure of love. The NDEr needs truth as much as she needs kindness. If she has brought back a corrupted element — a message about reincarnation, a claim of universal salvation, an instruction toward psychic practices — telling her it was all beautiful and all from God is telling her a lie. The lie may feel gentle, but it is still a lie. It will cost her later.

Faithful love engages truth. Ephesians 4:15 calls believers to speak truth in love — not truth without love, and not love without truth. Both are essential. The Christian who only affirms and never discerns is as unhelpful, in the long run, as the Christian who only corrects and never listens. The trick is to love generously in the first conversation while reserving the right to evaluate carefully in later ones — and then, actually, to evaluate carefully in those later ones. Not doing so is not kindness; it is abdication.

Mistake 4: Making it about yourself

The NDEr begins her story. Three sentences in, the Christian interrupts: "Oh, that reminds me of this book I read. It was amazing. The author talked about—" or, "Let me tell you about my cousin's neighbor who had something similar—" or, "You know, I've actually studied this a lot, and in my experience—"

Stop. The NDEr did not call you so she could hear your knowledge. She called you so she could share hers. Miller makes the point beautifully: "The person sharing with me is the authority on her experience."³⁵ Even after decades of research, when someone shares their experience with Miller, he is, in his words, "all ears."

When we make the conversation about ourselves — our knowledge, our similar story, our reading list — we communicate that the NDEr is a secondary character in our drama rather than the subject of her own life. That is not what she needs. She needs to be heard. If our knowledge is relevant, there is time for it later. In the moment, silence and attention are the ministry.

Mistake 5: Turning the conversation into an apologetic debate

Some Christians, especially the philosophical types, hear "NDE" and immediately want to discuss consciousness, substance dualism, the AWARE study, the brain-as-filter model, and whether the soul survives the body. These are genuinely interesting questions, and this book has defended substance dualism and the conscious intermediate state in earlier chapters.³⁶ But none of them is what the NDEr is asking about in her first conversation with you.

She is not asking you to prove that NDEs could happen. She is asking you to sit with the fact that one happened to her. The apologetic conversation belongs in a different setting — perhaps at a later point, with a curious friend, over coffee, for intellectual reasons. It does not belong in the conversation where your sister-in-law, three days out of the hospital, is trying to find a human being who will not flinch at what she tells them.

Mistake 6: Demanding immediate theological integration

The NDEr has finished telling her story. The Christian friend asks, "So what does this mean for your faith? What are you going to do differently now? How is this going to change your walk with the Lord?"

These questions are not wrong in themselves. They may be very good questions — in month six. In minute forty, they are often pressure. She has not had time to know what it means. She is still holding the experience in her hands like something she just caught and does not yet know how to name. Asking her to tell you the final integrated meaning of it in the first conversation is asking her to do work she is not ready to do. Let her sit with it. Let her come back to you in her own time. The integration of an NDE can take years — often does take years.³⁷ Premature demands for closure are not helpful.

Practical Language for Specific Moments

I want to give you some sample phrases you can actually use. The exact words do not matter — what matters is the tone and the posture behind them. But sometimes, in the actual moment, people freeze. So here are phrases I have collected, some from my own pastoral experience, some from the research literature, some from wise Christian friends who have walked NDErs and their families through these conversations.

When the conversation opens:

"I'm honored you shared this with me."
"Thank you for trusting me with something this important."
"I want to hear the whole thing. Take as much time as you need."
"I'm so grateful you're telling me."
"I'm listening. Start wherever you want."

When you are in the middle of hearing the account:

"Tell me more about that."
"What was that like?"
"How did you feel when that happened?"
"What did it look like? What did it sound like?"
"Do you remember what happened next?"
"I've never heard anything quite like that. Can you say more?"

When you need to slow down or ask clarification:

"Can you go back to that one moment for a second?"
"When you say [word she used], what do you mean by that?"
"Help me understand that part better."

When the account is finished:

"That sounds like a profound gift."
"Thank you for sharing this with me."
"I can tell how much this meant to you."
"I don't have all the answers, but I'm here to walk through it with you."
"What was most meaningful to you about the experience?"
"I'd love to keep talking about this as you process it."

When you sense something was distressing:

"That sounds terrifying. I'm so sorry you went through that."
"I'm glad you told me. That's a lot to carry alone."
"Can we pray together about it?"

When the moment calls for gentle truth later on:

"I want to share something I've been thinking about, if that's OK."
"I love you, and I love that you're processing this carefully. Can I ask you about one specific thing?"
"I've been praying about what you told me, and I want to walk through one piece with you if you're open to it."
"I don't want to rush anything. Can we talk about [the specific element] sometime when you're ready?"

When you do not know what to say:

"I don't know what to say, but I want you to know I'm here."
"I don't have answers, but I'm so glad you told me."
"Let me sit with this. Can I come back to you in a few days?"

Notice a pattern in these phrases. None of them is clever. None of them requires specialized knowledge. All of them are simple expressions of warmth, attention, and ongoing presence. That is really all the toolkit requires.

The Long Game

I want to say something important about time. Most Christians, when they hear about NDE and DBE discernment, imagine a single decisive conversation in which they get to sort out what happened, pronounce a verdict, and help the NDEr make the right call. That conversation almost never happens. What does happen is something slower, deeper, and more like ordinary Christian friendship.

Integration of a major spiritual experience is a years-long project. The NDEr who had an encounter in the hospital last Tuesday is going to be making sense of that encounter for the rest of her life. The meaning of the experience will shift as she grows. Pieces of it she did not understand at first will become clear later. Pieces she was confident about at first will turn out to be more complicated than she realized. The initial enthusiasm may fade into puzzlement, then into something more settled. She will need different conversations in different seasons.

This is why your role is not to deliver a masterclass in one sitting. Your role is to be there, over the long arc. The Christian who shows up for the first conversation, and the second, and the twelfth, and the seventy-fifth, five years later — that Christian has a kind of influence no single brilliant correction ever achieves. You become, over time, a voice the NDEr trusts. You become someone whose reading of Scripture she actually considers, because she has seen you read it faithfully for years. You become the friend whose gentle question — asked in month thirty-seven of your friendship — causes her to re-examine a conclusion she reached in month two.

I have watched this happen. I have seen an NDEr who initially drifted toward New Age interpretations come back, slowly, over many years, to a biblically faithful integration of her experience — and the cause, as she tells it now, was one Christian friend who refused either to endorse the error or to end the relationship. She kept showing up. She kept praying. She never once, in those years, gave a lecture. She listened. She asked real questions. She loved. And the Lord, in His kindness, used her faithful presence as the place where the experiencer eventually sorted wheat from chaff.

Let me give you a concrete feel for what this can look like over time. Imagine that in year one, your friend tells you about her NDE and concludes, with great conviction, that "all religions are one." You love her, you listen, you hold your peace, you pray. In year two, she asks you one evening if you really believe that Jesus is the only way. You answer from the Gospels — gently, honestly, with the text open between you. She pushes back. You do not escalate. You just say, "That's what Jesus Himself said. I take Him seriously." In year three, she mentions that she has been reading her old Bible again, just to see. In year four, she is quieter, and wrestling. In year five, she tells you she has started going back to church. In year six, she says she thinks her NDE was real, but she now believes her own interpretation of it was shaped by things she had been reading — and she is still figuring out what was the Lord and what was the interpretive filter she added. That is what real integration looks like, and it happens in the ordinary soil of long friendship, not in the dramatic air of one decisive conversation.

That is the long game. It is not glamorous. It does not produce viral testimonies. It does not sell books. But it is how the Spirit tends to work through ordinary Christians in the lives of the people they love. If you can hold the steady posture — unfailing warmth, careful scriptural thought, patient prayer, unwillingness to give up on the person — over years, you will be worth more to the NDEr than any expert they could find online.

And I want to say a brief word here about praying for NDErs. It is easy, in a chapter full of practical steps, to forget that the real work is not yours. It belongs to the Lord. He loves the NDEr more than you do. He has more time than you do. He is present to her when you are not. The ultimate work of helping her integrate what she experienced is the Holy Spirit's work, not yours. Your job is to be faithful in the conversations God gives you. His job is to draw her heart. Pray for her. Pray for her by name. Pray for her understanding. Pray for her protection from any deception. Pray for the Word to take root. If you do nothing else well, do this well.

A Note on When the Experiencer Has Already Started Teaching

Occasionally the scenario is not "my loved one just had an NDE last month" but "my loved one had an NDE five years ago, has been podcasting and posting about it ever since, and is now teaching things I cannot endorse." This deserves a brief separate word, because the dynamics are different.

When an NDEr has built a platform around their experience, the experience has already been made public, public reactions have been received, and a certain theological shape has hardened around it. It is much harder to influence interpretation after a platform has been built than before. The platform creates accountability pressures of its own. The audience wants the message to stay the same. Any shift looks to the audience like betrayal. The experiencer may privately wrestle with your questions and still publicly say what the audience expects.

This does not mean you give up. It means you adjust. A few specific adjustments.

First, do not argue on the platform. Do not leave comments on her podcast. Do not share her posts with rebuttals attached. Public correction of a loved one's public teaching will almost always be received as attack, even when it is offered in love. Private conversation remains the channel God most often uses for this kind of work.

Second, remember the distinction between the person and the platform. You can love the person, enjoy their company at family gatherings, share meals with them, and pray with them — without endorsing anything they publish. You do not owe endorsement of their teaching as the price of continuing in relationship. Nor do they owe you agreement as the price of your presence. You can be, in the truest sense, friends across a real disagreement.

Third, do not pretend you agree when you do not. If your loved one asks, "Have you listened to my podcast?" or "What did you think of my book?" — be honest. Kindly honest. Specifically honest. "I listened to the first few episodes. I loved how you described your encounter with Jesus. There were a couple of things I had questions about that I'd love to sit down and talk through sometime if you're open to it." That is better than the convenient lie or the silent evasion. Honesty, delivered in love, protects the relationship better than polite pretending does in the long run.

Fourth, keep trusting the Spirit's slow work. Platforms come and go. Interpretations shift. A person who is publicly committed to one reading of their experience at forty-five may, by sixty, have a very different reading — and your faithful, honest, unshaken love across those years may be one of the means by which the shift happens.

The Biblical Foundations for This Posture

Everything in this chapter flows from a handful of Scripture passages. Let me surface them briefly so you can see the biblical roots of the posture this chapter recommends.

James 1:19. "Know this, my beloved brothers: let every person be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger." Miller observes that this passage captures the whole of the right response to an NDEr.³⁸ Quick to hear. Slow to speak. Slow to anger. When someone is sharing something fragile, difficult, or extraordinary, these three postures are the antidote to every one of the six mistakes above. "Quick to hear" rules out dismissal and interruption. "Slow to speak" rules out immediate correction, uncritical enthusiasm, apologetic debate, and making it about yourself. "Slow to anger" rules out the reactive hostility some Christians feel when they hear theological content that alarms them.

Proverbs 18:13. "If one gives an answer before he hears, it is his folly and shame." The proverb is blunt. Answering before listening is not merely unhelpful; it is foolish. It is the kind of error that shames the person who makes it. When a Christian corrects an NDEr before fully hearing the account, this is the Scripture that rebukes them. Listen first. Answer later.

1 Corinthians 13. Paul's great chapter on love. "Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude." All three of those qualifiers apply directly to how Christians should receive NDE and DBE accounts. Patient — willing to give integration the time it needs. Kind — warm, welcoming, unwilling to wound. Not arrogant or rude — not quick to display our theological credentials at the expense of the experiencer's trust. And Paul's final line is the one that matters most for this chapter: "the greatest of these is love" (1 Cor. 13:13). When we are deciding between demonstrating our discernment and demonstrating our love, we always lead with love.³⁹

Romans 12:15. "Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep." Many NDEs are joyful. Many DBEs are peace-filled. The Christian response to those is rejoicing, not auditing. Many distressing NDEs are terrifying to the experiencer. The Christian response to those is weeping, not explaining. Emotional solidarity is not optional; it is a direct apostolic command.

1 Peter 3:15. "In your hearts honor Christ the Lord as holy, always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and respect." Peter's famous apologetics verse contains the qualifier we often skip. With gentleness and respect. Whenever we engage an NDEr's account — including when we need to raise concerns — Peter's qualifier is not optional. Gentleness and respect are not cosmetic touches on top of the real work of correction. They are the mode in which correction is allowed to happen at all.

Ephesians 4:15. "Speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ." Two words, neither of which can be sacrificed. Truth without love is harshness. Love without truth is flattery. Christian maturity holds both at once. When an NDEr brings us a mixed account, our calling is truth and love, neither one alone.

Galatians 6:1. "If anyone is caught in any transgression, you who are spiritual should restore him in a spirit of gentleness. Keep watch on yourself, lest you too be tempted." Paul's instruction to the mature is to restore — not rebuke, not expel, but restore — and to do it gently. When an NDEr has picked up some non-Christian interpretive framework and is now teaching or believing error, the response that Scripture commends is gentle restoration, not angry confrontation. And Paul adds the humility check: "keep watch on yourself, lest you too be tempted." None of us is so far beyond theological error that we can afford self-righteousness toward an NDEr who has slipped.

Put all these passages together and you get the portrait of the Christian who is ready when the phone rings. Quick to hear. Slow to speak. Slow to anger. Answering only after listening. Loving first, last, always. Rejoicing with those who rejoice. Weeping with those who weep. Gentle. Respectful. Committed to truth. Committed to restoration. Aware of his own need of grace.

That is not a technique. That is a character. And character is what we need here, more than any scripted response.

One Last Word: The Privilege

Let me close with something that I hope lands the way I mean it.

When someone trusts you enough to tell you about an NDE or DBE — especially when they know you are a Christian and they are uncertain how you will react — they are handing you something precious. They are handing you, in effect, the most important experience of their life. They are asking you to be careful with it. They are asking you to be a safe person. They are giving you a chance at a kind of relational depth most friendships never reach.

That is a privilege. It is not a burden. It is not a test of your theological skill. It is a gift that the Lord has dropped in your lap. The Lord has placed you in that person's path — at this moment, in this friendship, in this family — because He has work for you to do. Not dramatic work. Not theatrical work. Just the steady, long-haul, ordinary work of being a faithful friend who loves well and discerns wisely.

If you do that work — and you can — you may be the means by which your sister-in-law's NDE leads her into deeper faith than she has ever known. You may be the one whose patient presence at your grandmother's bedside carries the family through the years of grief ahead. You may be the long-term friend whose refusal to give up on your college roommate eventually brings her back to Christ. You may be the parent whose quiet reception of a child's DBE plants a seed that bears fruit forty years later when that child is sitting at his own grandmother's deathbed.

The Lord does a lot of His most important work through ordinary Christians who simply love people and take Scripture seriously. You do not have to be a theologian. You do not have to be a pastor. You do not have to have read every book. You just have to be ready, when the phone rings, to welcome the person on the other end — and to stay for the long haul after the call ends.

So when your sister-in-law calls — and someday she will, or someone like her will — pick up. Be warm. Listen without flinching. Ask questions that invite depth. Reflect what you have heard. Thank her for trusting you. Offer to walk with her over time. Resist the six mistakes. Pray for her. Show up next week, and next month, and next year. Let Scripture be the ground under your feet. Let love be the tone of your voice.

And trust that the Lord, who met her on the other side, is still meeting her now, through you.

That is the calling. It is smaller than we think. It is also bigger than we think. And it is, I believe, one of the most beautiful assignments the Lord gives to ordinary Christians in an age in which more and more people are coming back from the edge with stories they need someone to help them understand.

Take up the privilege. With both love and discernment — in that order.