Chapter 10: A Biblical Framework for Evaluating Any NDE or DBE — The Seven Tests

Tools, not weapons

Imagine a friend tells you about her aunt's near-death experience. The aunt died briefly during surgery, saw a "beautiful being of light," felt "completely loved," and came back convinced that "everyone goes to the same place no matter what they believe." Your friend asks you what you think. You don't want to dismiss the experience — her aunt is a serious person, and the encounter clearly affected her deeply. But you also can't simply nod along to the conclusion, because you know it does not match what Scripture teaches. So what do you do?

You need a framework. You need a set of biblical questions you can run an NDE or a DBE through — not to crush the experiencer, but to honor the experience by taking it seriously enough to test. That is what this chapter offers. The previous six chapters laid the foundation. This chapter builds the tool.

Why a Framework? Building on Chapters 4–9

Chapter 4 established the basic command: test the spirits (1 John 4:1). The Greek verb dokimazō (δοκιμάζω) means "to test, examine, or prove" — to assay something the way a goldsmith assays metal — to find out what is real.¹ Christian discernment is not optional, and it is not a sign of cynicism. It is obedience.

Chapter 6 reminded us that the spiritual realm is real. Angels exist. Demons exist. NDEs and DBEs are not impossible by definition; they happen in a universe Scripture itself describes as densely populated with spiritual beings.

Chapter 7 sounded the warning. Among those spiritual beings is one whom Paul calls Satan, who "disguises himself as an angel of light" (2 Corinthians 11:14, ESV). This is the most important reason a framework is needed. Not every glowing being is a good being. Not every comforting voice is the voice of God. Light, by itself, proves nothing about the source of the light.

Chapter 8 set the standard. Scripture is the final court of appeal. Even an angel from heaven, if it preached a different gospel, would be accursed (Galatians 1:8). Experience is not self-authenticating. The Bible is.

Chapter 9 distinguished experience from interpretation. What a person saw is not the same as what they concluded. A real encounter can be wrapped in a wrong worldview by an experiencer who never had a category for it.

Take all of that together and a framework practically asks to be built. We have a command (test), a context (a populated spiritual realm), a warning (deception is real), a standard (Scripture), and a method (separate experience from interpretation). What remains is a structured way of applying these to a particular case.²

The Seven Tests

Test 1 — The Christological Test

Question: Does the experience point toward, or away from, the specific incarnate, crucified, risen Jesus Christ of the New Testament?

Biblical grounding: 1 John 4:2–3 — "By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, and every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God." (ESV) John 14:6 — "I am the way, and the truth, and the life." Acts 4:12 — there is salvation in no other name.

Pass criteria: A figure in the experience is identified as Jesus and shows characteristics consistent with the biblical Christ — embodied, scarred, glorified, holy, loving, authoritative. Or the experience as a whole points the experiencer toward Jesus, intensifies their love for him, deepens their grasp of who he is.

Concern criteria: The figure is described in generic terms — "the source," "the one," "pure consciousness." Or the figure says all paths lead to it. Or the figure declares the experiencer divine. Or Jesus is conspicuously absent, deflected, or relativized.

This is the first test for a reason. Christianity is not generic theism with a Jewish appendix. It is the worship of the particular man Jesus of Nazareth, who is also the eternal Son of God. An experience that affirms divinity, love, and life-after-death without ever pointing to that particular Person has not yet established that it is a Christian experience.³

Test 2 — The Doctrinal Test

Question: Does the content of the experience cohere with the core doctrines of biblical Christianity as summarized in the ancient creeds?

Biblical grounding: Galatians 1:6–9; Jude 3 ("the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints"); 2 Timothy 3:14–17.

Pass criteria: The experience and its teachings line up with the Apostles' Creed, the Nicene Creed, and the historic Christian faith — one God in three Persons, the deity and humanity of Christ, salvation by grace through faith, the bodily resurrection, future judgment, heaven and hell as real destinies, the authority of Scripture.

Concern criteria: The experience teaches reincarnation. Or it denies the incarnation. Or it dissolves judgment. Or it presents many gods. Or it declares humans divine. Or it offers salvation by works or universal salvation apart from Christ. Or it denies a real heaven or a real hell.

The first test asks whether Jesus is in the picture. The second test asks whether the picture matches the rest of Christian doctrine. An experience can sound Christian and still teach things that no Christian council, ancient or modern, has ever recognized as Christian.

Test 3 — The Moral / Ethical Test

Question: Does the experience call the experiencer toward holiness, repentance, and moral seriousness — or toward moral relativism and self-divinization?

Biblical grounding: Matthew 7:15–20 ("by their fruits you will know them"); 1 John 2:3–6; Romans 6.

Pass criteria: The experience produces deeper repentance, more honest dealing with sin, greater love for God and neighbor, fresh moral seriousness. The experiencer comes back wanting to live more carefully, not less.

Concern criteria: The experience leads to phrases like "I realized I was perfect just as I am," or "there is no right or wrong," or "God doesn't care what we do." Or the experiencer drifts into moral indifference, self-importance, or detachment from biblical ethics.

This test sometimes takes time. A new NDEr may not have had years to walk out the implications. But the trajectory is usually visible early. People who meet the holy God become more conscious of holiness. People who meet a counterfeit tend to become more relaxed about sin.

Test 4 — The Ecclesiastical Test

Question: Does the experience lead the experiencer toward the church — the body of Christ, the worshiping community, the ordinary means of grace — or away from it?

Biblical grounding: Hebrews 10:24–25; Ephesians 4:11–16.

Pass criteria: The NDEr is drawn into a local church. They read Scripture more, pray more, take communion seriously, find their way back to the people of God.

Concern criteria: The NDEr concludes that their experience has put them past the church. They no longer need preaching, sacraments, or the wisdom of older Christians. They start teaching their experience as a new revelation that surpasses biblical instruction. They drift into solo spirituality, cross-religious eclecticism, or NDE-centered communities that quietly replace the local church.

Like Test 3, this test takes time. Many genuine Christian NDErs need a season to process before re-entering church rhythms. That is not the same as walking away.

Test 5 — The Fruit-Over-Time Test

Question: Over the long run, does the experience produce the fruit of the Spirit (Galatians 5:22–23) in the experiencer's life?

Biblical grounding: Matthew 7:16; Galatians 5:22–23.

Pass criteria: Across months and years, growing love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. Better marriage. Deeper character. More service. Bolder witness to Christ.

Concern criteria: Growing self-importance. Spiritual pride. Disregard for those who haven't had the same experience. Moral compromise. Attraction to ever-more-exotic spiritual practices. A life that becomes about the experience rather than about Christ.

This test cannot be applied in a single sitting. It is a test of a life. Michael Sabom's Atlanta Study found that NDErs in his cohort tended to move toward more conservative faith, more prayer, deeper love, and less materialism over time⁴ — exactly what we would expect if their experiences were fundamentally from God.

Test 6 — The Pattern-Match Test

Question: Does the experience fit the patterns of genuine biblical encounters with God, or the patterns Scripture associates with spiritual deception?

Biblical grounding: the great biblical visions (Isaiah 6, Ezekiel 1, Daniel 7, Revelation 1) — and the warnings about deception (2 Corinthians 11:14; 2 Peter 2:1; Jude; Revelation 13).

Patterns of genuine biblical encounter: a sense of God's holiness that produces humility and even fear; awareness of sin; clear calling to faithfulness; Christological focus; conformity to existing biblical revelation rather than novelty.

Patterns Scripture associates with deception: flattery of the experiencer ("you are special, you have hidden gifts"); claim to give new revelation beyond Scripture; contradictions of Scripture; instructions toward occult practice (mediumship, psychic work, past-life regression); promotion of cosmic monism, universal religion, or the divinity of all human beings.⁵

When the prophets met God, they collapsed (Isaiah 6:5; Ezekiel 1:28; Daniel 8:17; Revelation 1:17). They did not come away from the encounter feeling that they had finally been recognized as wonderful. The Bible's pattern is uniformly humbling. Counterfeits flatter.

Test 7 — The Whole-Person Test

Question: Considering the NDEr's overall trajectory — belief, practice, relationships, witness, long-term fruit — does the experience belong to the kingdom of God, or to something else?

Biblical grounding: Matthew 25:31–46; 1 John 3–4.

This is the integrative test. It combines the previous six into a single judgment about the experience as a whole. Some experiences pass some tests and fail others. Test 7 asks: stepping back, looking at everything, where does this person and this experience seem to be heading? It is not a tally of points. It is the kind of judgment a wise pastor makes about a parishioner over years.

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The Tests in Action — Four Cases

It helps to see the framework at work. Four cases are useful because they cover the typical range of verdicts: a clear pass, a mostly-pass with concern, a clear fail, and a category that does not actually fit the framework at all.

Ian McCormack — A Clear Pass

Ian McCormack was a young New Zealander night-diving off the reefs of Mauritius when he was stung four times by box jellyfish, any one of which is potentially lethal.⁶ As he was dying, he prayed the Lord's Prayer — half-remembered from his Christian mother — and called on the Lord. He had a profound encounter with Jesus Christ, recognized as Jesus, who showed him heaven and called him to a new life. He returned dramatically converted and has spent the decades since proclaiming Jesus.

Run him through the tests. Christological — pass. The figure was identified, by name and by character, as the biblical Jesus. Doctrinal — pass. McCormack's testimony coheres with mainstream Christian doctrine; he did not come back teaching reincarnation or universalism. Moral — pass; he came back convicted of sin and seeking holiness. Ecclesiastical — pass; he moved into the church and into Christian ministry. Fruit-over-time — pass; decades of consistent witness, stable family, biblical preaching. Pattern-match — pass; the experience humbled him and conformed to Scripture rather than competing with it. Whole-person — pass.

McCormack's case is the kind that should remind us why the default Christian posture toward NDErs is generosity. Most NDEs do not fail every test. Many pass them all. The framework's first job is not to rule out experiences but to clarify what we are dealing with — and on the data, most are like McCormack's.

Colton Burpo — Mostly Pass with Some Concern

Colton Burpo's case, made famous by Heaven Is for Real, is mostly strong but not entirely free of concern. As a four-year-old in 2003, Colton's appendix burst undiagnosed for several days. During emergency surgery he had what his family later understood as an NDE. Some elements are remarkable: he reported meeting his great-grandfather "Pop," whom he had never met, and described a baby sister his mother had miscarried — a pregnancy Colton had never been told about.⁷ He described Jesus with the marks of the crucifixion. Years later he picked Akiane Kramarik's Prince of Peace painting out of hundreds of artistic depictions of Christ as the only one that resembled the Jesus he had seen.⁸

Christological — pass; Jesus is named and recognized, the marks of the cross are noted. Doctrinal — generally pass, with some elements (children's-book details such as Jesus on a rainbow horse) that read more as a four-year-old's imagery than as theological teaching. Moral and ecclesiastical — pass; Colton grew up in church and in faith. Fruit-over-time — pass overall. Pattern-match — generally pass, though the marketing apparatus around the bestseller introduces elements outside the experience itself, which is precisely the kind of issue Test 6 is alert to. Whole-person — pass.

The concern is not the boy's experience. It is that the popularization of NDE testimony tends to add details, smooth edges, and convert spontaneous childhood reports into bestseller-shaped narratives. Christian readers can affirm Colton Burpo's experience while still reading the book aware that experience and packaging are not always the same thing. That awareness is a Test 6 reflex.

Betty Eadie — Multiple Failures

Betty Eadie's Embraced by the Light is one of the most-read NDE books ever published. Her account names a being she identifies as Jesus. But the figure who speaks in her account teaches things that line up not with the New Testament but with Latter-day Saints (Mormon) and New Age frameworks: pre-mortal existence of human spirits, human spirits volunteering for earthly missions in a pre-mortal council, the experiencer herself helping to design the earth, an injunction against criticizing any religion. Sabom's analysis, careful and fair, demonstrates these alignments in detail and notes that since these teachings contradict Scripture — something the biblical Christ never did — Eadie's "Jesus" is not the same as the historical Jesus of the New Testament.⁹

Christological — fails. The figure named "Jesus" teaches a non-biblical theology and resembles biblical Christ in name only. Doctrinal — fails. The teaching contradicts the historic Christian creeds at multiple points. Moral — mixed; the call to love is biblical, but the call to suspend critique of any religion is not. Ecclesiastical — fails; the framework draws the reader toward a privatized spirituality. Fruit-over-time — uncertain; the book's continuing influence has been to teach Mormon and New Age theology under a Christian-sounding wrapper. Pattern-match — fails; the experience flatters the experiencer (you helped design the earth) and supplies new revelation. Whole-person — the verdict here is not about Betty Eadie as a person but about the teaching of her book, which fails the framework on multiple points.¹⁰

This is the kind of case that requires the framework precisely because the surface presentation sounds Christian. Without testing, a reader could finish the book and not realize the teaching she had absorbed was Mormon and New Age rather than biblical.

Alex Malarkey — Fabrication, Not Discernment

The Alex Malarkey case is different in kind. It does not test the framework; it sits beside it. Alex was a six-year-old paralyzed in a car accident. The book The Boy Who Came Back from Heaven was published under his name and his father's. Years later Alex publicly retracted the entire account, declaring that he had never died, had never been to heaven, and had said the things he said for attention.¹¹

Run the seven tests on Alex Malarkey and the framework returns "not applicable." There is no experience to evaluate. The case belongs to a different category — fabrication — which Chapter 32 treats fully. The point here is simple: the seven tests are for evaluating spiritual experiences, not for catching liars. Catching liars requires different tools (corroboration, retraction, internal contradiction, financial trail). Christians need both kinds of tools, and we need to know which kind a given case calls for.

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Limits, Cautions, and the Opposite Error

The seven-test framework has limits, and honesty requires naming them.

First, the tests do not deliver certainty. They deliver strong indicators. Reasonable Christians will sometimes weigh the same case differently. Some cases give mixed signals. Some cases require time, watching the fruit unfold, before a confident verdict is possible. Discernment is not algebra.

Second, the tests are for theological content, not for surface description. A vivid landscape, a poetic phrase, a culturally specific image — these are not failures. The unusual colors, the unfamiliar architecture, the music, the strange sense of time: Scripture says little about the texture of paradise, and what it does say is heavily imagistic. We should not run an NDE through the framework expecting every detail to match a verse. The tests focus on what the experience teaches.¹²

Third, the framework can be misused as a weapon. A reader who comes to an NDEr with a checklist in hand, ready to interrogate them line by line, has not understood the spirit of these tests. The tests are for the discerner, not for the experiencer.

Fourth, the opposite of credulity is not cynicism. The Bible never tells us to assume that every spiritual claim is fake. It tells us to test. We can be alert to deception without becoming hostile to spiritual reality. Most NDEs that come our way will pass most of these tests. We will spend more time rejoicing than warning. That is the right ratio, given the data, and it should be reflected in our tone.¹³

Conclusion — Tools, Not Weapons

The seven tests do not replace the Spirit's work. They do not replace the local church, the elders, the wise older Christian friend, or the steady ministry of Scripture. They sit inside that larger context as one helpful instrument among many.

But they are a real instrument. They give the Christian discerner something concrete to do when an NDE shows up in conversation, on a podcast, in a relative's living room, in a hospital chaplaincy. They keep us from the two errors that have wrecked so many Christian responses to this material — the credulity that swallows everything, and the cynicism that dismisses everything. They give us a third path: take it seriously, test it carefully, hold what is good, and gently set aside what is not.

"Do not quench the Spirit. Do not despise prophecies, but test everything; hold fast what is good. Abstain from every form of evil." (1 Thessalonians 5:19–22, ESV)

The rest of the book applies this framework. Parts III and IV walk through marks of genuine NDEs and DBEs and the patterns of hybrid experiences. Parts V and VI move into counterfeit elements and specific teachers. Throughout, the seven tests will keep returning. The reader who carries them forward — even imperfectly — will be far better equipped than the reader who tries to evaluate every NDE on instinct alone.

The tests are also a gift to the NDEr. Many experiencers — especially Christian ones — long for somebody who will neither dismiss what happened to them nor swallow it whole, but who will help them sort what was God from what was their own mind. The Christian friend with the seven tests in mind is exactly that somebody.

May the framework serve love. May the tests serve the people they are used on. And may Christ, the Person at the center of every test, be found by every experiencer who is willing to look for him.