Five Possibilities Behind a Single Phrase
A woman wakes up in a hospital bed and tells her family, "I saw a being of light. It was the most loving presence I have ever felt. I think it was Jesus." Her family nods. They believe her — and they may well be right. But the careful Christian asks a quieter follow-up question: How do you know? Not in a hostile way. Not to make her doubt something beautiful. But because the phrase "a being of light" is genuinely ambiguous, and Scripture itself tells us not every luminous presence is Christ.
The phrase "a being of light" tells us what the being looked like — luminous, radiant — and how the experiencer felt — overwhelmed, loved, awed. But appearance and feeling do not, by themselves, settle identity. A holy angel can look like a being of light. A glorified saint can radiate light. The risen Christ Himself certainly does. And, according to the Apostle Paul, so does Satan when he is doing his most dangerous work.1 So when a loved one or an author tells us about a luminous being, our job is neither to assume identification nor to leap to suspicion. This chapter walks through five possibilities and offers practical guidelines for sorting them out.
The first and most common possibility is exactly what most experiencers assume: the luminous being is the risen Christ. Jeffrey Long's God Study found that the figure encountered in many NDEs is described in language that maps remarkably well onto the biblical Jesus.2 The Apostle John, in describing the glorified Christ in Revelation 1, uses the same kind of language NDErs reach for: a face like the sun shining in full strength, eyes like a flame of fire, garments like fallen snow. John Burke notes that NDE descriptions of Jesus often include this same dazzling brightness — "brighter than the noonday sun" yet somehow bearable to look at — combined with overwhelming love.3
Chapter 14 develops in detail the criteria for positively identifying Jesus in an NDE: Christological specificity, the marks of crucifixion, holiness alongside love, biblical teaching, and the long-term fruit of biblical discipleship. I will not re-litigate that case here. In many genuine NDEs, the being of light really is Jesus.4
Scripture describes angels as luminous beings. The angel at the empty tomb had an "appearance like lightning, and his clothing white as snow" (Matthew 28:3, ESV). The shepherds at Bethlehem were terrified when "the glory of the Lord shone around them" through the angelic visitor (Luke 2:9). Cornelius saw "a man in shining garments" (Acts 10:30, ESV margin). The mighty angel in Revelation 10:1 is "wrapped in a cloud, with a rainbow over his head, and his face was like the sun, and his legs like pillars of fire." Angels, in short, look like beings of light — radiantly, terrifyingly so.
This means many "beings of light" in NDEs may be angels rather than Jesus directly. That is not a downgrade. Angels are God's messengers, sent to "minister to those who are to inherit salvation" (Hebrews 1:14). They escort the dying (Luke 16:22). To meet a holy angel in the moments around death is a glorious thing, fully consistent with biblical theology. Chapter 15 addresses angelic escorts in more detail.
How do we tell an angel apart from Christ? First, angels typically do not accept worship. When John fell at the feet of the angel in Revelation, the angel rebuked him: "You must not do that! I am a fellow servant with you... Worship God" (Revelation 19:10; cf. 22:8–9). A genuine angel is allergic to being treated as the focus. Second, angels usually identify themselves as servants or messengers, not as divine. Third, angels often act as escorts — leading the experiencer toward someone or somewhere — rather than as the climactic figure of the encounter. If the experiencer's "being of light" pointed them toward another, brighter presence, the first being was likely an angel leading them to Christ.5
A third possibility is more theologically delicate. Some experiencers report encountering "God" — overwhelming, holy, loving, powerful — without specifying that the being was Jesus or that they saw a human form at all. The being was simply light, or presence, or love personified. Long's research found that many NDErs describe God specifically in terms of light, and the descriptions differ depending on the experiencer.6
How should Christians think about this? Trinitarian theology holds that the Father has revealed Himself primarily through the incarnate Son. As Jesus said, "Whoever has seen me has seen the Father" (John 14:9, ESV). Paul calls Christ "the image of the invisible God" (Colossians 1:15), and Hebrews 1:3 calls the Son "the radiance of the glory of God." So an encounter with God that is genuinely an encounter with the triune God will, in principle, be mediated through the Son in some way — even if the experiencer does not at the time recognize the figure as Jesus specifically.
This means a non-specific "God of light" encounter is not automatically suspect. The experiencer may have genuinely met the true God and simply lacked the framework or the moment of recognition to identify Him as Christ. Where this becomes troubling is when the encounter is interpreted in ways that exclude Christ — as if the "light" is an alternative to the Jesus of the Gospels. Then we are no longer talking about partial perception. We are talking about a different theology being read into the experience (see Chapter 18).
A fourth possibility, often overlooked, is that the "being of light" might be a glorified deceased believer. The Bible suggests the redeemed in heaven shine. Daniel 12:3 says, "Those who are wise shall shine like the brightness of the sky above; and those who turn many to righteousness, like the stars forever and ever" (ESV). Jesus said, "Then the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father" (Matthew 13:43, ESV). If departed saints already share in the reflected glory of Christ, then a deceased Christian grandmother might appear to her dying granddaughter as a luminous figure — recognizable as her grandmother, but radiating with a borrowed brightness.
The interesting feature here is that the experiencer might describe the figure as "a being of light" without initially recognizing the person. The brightness can overwhelm the features. Only later does the experiencer sometimes realize: this is Grandma. Chapter 15 addresses these reunions in more detail. The point is simply that "being of light" does not always mean "supernatural being." It can sometimes mean "deceased loved one in glory."
The fifth possibility is the one Christians most often forget and the one Paul most insistently warns about. Paul writes: "And no wonder, for even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light. So it is no surprise if his servants, also, disguise themselves as servants of righteousness" (2 Corinthians 11:14–15, ESV). The Greek verb is metaschēmatizetai (μετασχηματίζεται), "to transform oneself in outward appearance, to disguise." It does not mean Satan actually becomes beautiful or holy. It means he makes himself look beautiful and holy.7
Chapter 7 develops this passage at length. The implication for our chapter is direct. If Paul's warning is true, then a being's luminous and loving appearance does not, by itself, prove the being is from God. It proves only that the being is presenting that way. The deeper question is: what does the being teach, what does it ask the experiencer to do, and what fruit does the encounter produce over time?
Beauty alone is not evidence of holiness. Love alone is not evidence of God. Both can be counterfeited at the surface level. The biblical test is not whether a being looked impressive but whether its content aligns with Scripture (Galatians 1:8) and its long-term fruit aligns with Christ (Matthew 7:16). This is not paranoia. It is the apostolic instruction.
Five categories, then. The being of light could be Christ, a holy angel, the triune God in non-specific manifestation, a glorified saint, or a deceptive spirit. Most genuine NDEs feature one of the first four. A meaningful minority involve the fifth. Discernment is the work of telling them apart.
Let us walk through five concrete cases. The first three are types we encounter again and again in the literature. The fourth and fifth are specific named accounts — one a famous case where the identification fails, and one where it succeeds.
An experiencer reports encountering Jesus, and during the encounter Jesus tells her she has lived many lives, that the soul reincarnates until it learns its lessons, and that she will return again. The experiencer publishes this account as a Christian NDE.
The biblical Jesus did not teach reincarnation. Hebrews 9:27 is explicit: "It is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes judgment" (ESV). The whole logic of the once-for-all atonement (Hebrews 9:24–28; 10:10–14) presupposes that humans live one life. So either the being was not Jesus, or the experiencer misheard or has reframed the message over time, or some mixture. In any of these cases, the "Jesus" of this account is not the biblical Christ. The teaching disqualifies the identification, no matter how loving the encounter felt.8
Same analysis. The biblical Jesus said, "I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me" (John 14:6, ESV). A being of light who teaches that all religious paths converge equally is not teaching what Jesus taught. The content fails the Christological test. This does not mean every NDEr who reports a universal-sounding message is consciously lying or fabricating — Chapters 18 and 25 address how universalist framing often gets read into a real encounter from a non-Christian worldview. But the "being of light" who actively preaches universalism is not Jesus.
An experiencer reports being told by a luminous being that he has been chosen, that he has psychic abilities, that he should begin doing readings, channeling, or communicating with the dead. Scripture is uniformly negative on this category: "There shall not be found among you anyone... who practices divination or tells fortunes or interprets omens, or a sorcerer or a charmer or a medium or a necromancer or one who inquires of the dead, for whoever does these things is an abomination to the LORD" (Deuteronomy 18:10–12, ESV). An angel from the LORD would not direct someone toward what the LORD calls an abomination. The being was almost certainly deceptive. Chapter 26 develops this in connection with the broader occult crossover in some NDE literature.
Betty Eadie's 1992 bestseller describes multiple luminous beings, including a figure she identifies as Jesus Christ. The figure tells her, among other things, that all paths lead to God, that Lucifer was misunderstood, and that there is something like a council of heavenly beings. Eadie's framework draws heavily on Latter-day Saints theology — the pre-existence of souls, multiple heavenly parents, and theosis as becoming gods.9
Apply the criteria. The teaching attributed to "Jesus" in Eadie's account directly contradicts the biblical Jesus on multiple points — John 14:6 (one way to the Father), Isaiah 14 and Ezekiel 28 (Lucifer's fall as judgment, not misunderstanding), and the historic Christian doctrine of God (one God in three Persons, not a council). Eadie's identification of this being as the biblical Jesus cannot be correct. The most charitable reading is that her experience was filtered through her LDS framework so thoroughly that what she received and what she now teaches no longer match the biblical Christ. A more sober reading is that some or all of the encounter involved deceptive spiritual content. J. Steve Miller, while broadly hopeful about the NDE literature, agrees that Eadie's book illustrates exactly the kind of account in which Hank Hanegraaff and others were rightly raising alarms.10 Either way, Eadie's "Jesus" is not the Jesus of the Gospels. Chapter 30 develops this evaluation more fully.
A different result. Storm, a hostile atheist art professor, lost consciousness in a Paris hospital and found himself in a horrific place, tormented by cruel beings. In desperation, he remembered fragments of childhood prayers and the song "Jesus Loves Me." When he cried out the name of Jesus, a brilliant light came and drew him out of the darkness. Storm later identifies this rescuer as Christ.11
Apply the criteria. The being arrived in response to the name of Jesus — not a generic deity. The being's character was holy as well as loving; the encounter produced deep conviction of sin, not flattery. The teaching that emerged was biblical: repentance, the centrality of Christ, the reality of judgment, the call to love. The fruit was conversion from atheism, decades of pastoral ministry, and ongoing engagement with Scripture and the church. (As Chapter 29 will note, some of Storm's later teaching warrants discernment, but the original encounter and its core meaning remain consistent with biblical Christianity.) The identification holds. The being who rescued Howard Storm really does appear to have been Jesus.12
Notice how the criteria work. We do not declare a being to be (or not to be) Jesus based on the experiencer's confidence, the brightness of the light, or the warmth of the feeling. We test the identification against (a) the being's content (does it match the biblical Christ?), (b) the experiencer's response (worship and conviction, or flattery and detachment from Christian faith?), and (c) the long-term fruit (Christ-shaped discipleship, or drift into syncretism?). The same tools work in the kitchen of pastoral conversation and in the study of professional NDE literature.
When you read or hear an NDE account that includes "a being of light," six questions help sort identification:
First, was the being identified specifically as Jesus during the encounter, or was that label applied later? A specific, unforced recognition of Christ — especially one that fits the biblical Jesus — carries different weight than a label assigned afterward to fit the experiencer's developing framework.
Second, did the being display marks of crucifixion, the wounded hands and side, or any other biblical identifier? Chapter 14 develops these signs at length. Their presence is not required, but their presence is significant.
Third, what did the being teach? Does the content align with Scripture, or does it teach reincarnation, universalism, human divinity, occult practice, or some other doctrine the Bible denies? Galatians 1:8 is decisive here: even an angel from heaven preaching a different gospel is to be rejected.
Fourth, how did the being's presence affect the experiencer? With awe, conviction, holy fear, and worship — the responses Scripture records when humans encounter the holy God? Or with casual comfort, flattery, and a sense that the experiencer is themselves divine?
Fifth, what did the experiencer's life look like in the years after? Did the encounter produce growing conformity to Christ — repentance, love, service, engagement with Scripture and the church? Or did it produce drift toward syncretism, occult engagement, or the belief that ordinary biblical Christianity is now beneath them?
Sixth, is there any concrete reason to think the being might have been deceptive? Direct contradictions with Scripture, instructions toward forbidden practices, claims that flatter the experiencer at the expense of the cross — these are warning signs.
These questions sound demanding because, in print, every nuance must be spelled out. In practice, most encounters reveal themselves quickly. A grandmother who dies peacefully, saying she has seen Jesus, with a lifetime of trust in Christ behind her, does not require an interrogation. The questions are most useful in harder middle cases — and especially when evaluating published NDE accounts whose theology is at least partly visible on the page.
A pastoral question follows naturally. What do we say when someone we love reports a "being of light" whose identity is genuinely uncertain? Do we tell them, "It probably wasn't Jesus"? Do we nod and say, "That sounds wonderful," and leave it at that?
Neither extreme serves the person. The better move is to stop pressing for a confident identification and instead focus on content and fruit. Ask gentle questions. What did the being say? What did the encounter make you want to do next? Has it drawn you toward Scripture, or away from it? Does anything the being said sit uneasily with what you have known of Jesus from the Bible? These questions surface the diagnostic information without forcing the loved one into a defensive posture about the encounter itself.
Most loving "beings of light" in genuine NDEs are exactly what they appear to be — Jesus, His angels, or saints reflecting His glory. Cases that fail the criteria are real but are not the majority. So the default posture is charitable: assume genuine encounter unless content or fruit gives clear reason to doubt. This is where Chapters 33 and 34 (on family conversations and pastoral care for NDErs) become important. Discernment is meant to clarify love, not to replace it.
When a loved one reports a "being of light" they identify as Jesus, our first response is rarely to argue. Our first response is to listen carefully, ask warm questions, and watch what unfolds over months and years. Identification is often clearer in retrospect than in the moment. Time and fruit are reliable witnesses.
Two harder questions deserve a brief word.
First: Does Satan's ability to impersonate Jesus mean Jesus is not sovereign over His own identity? No. Counterfeit currency does not threaten the value of real currency; it presupposes it. Counterfeits exist only because the real has worth worth counterfeiting. God's sovereignty over the spiritual realm includes His permission of testing (Deuteronomy 13). The existence of deceptive spirits does not undermine Christ's lordship. It simply means that, this side of the consummation, discernment is part of discipleship.
Second: What about NDErs who simply report a loving presence and say little theologically about who the being was? Most accounts fall in this middle space. The experiencer met "a loving being" and was sent back; nothing extensive was taught. In these cases, positive identification with Jesus may not be possible from the data alone. The encounter may well have been with Christ, especially if the experiencer's life and faith are Christ-centered. Or it may have been with an angel, or with God in a non-specific manifestation. The right posture is appropriate humility: recognize the encounter as likely genuine, identify Christ where the criteria support it, and refrain from overclaiming where they do not. This is not cynicism. It is honesty.
The phrase "a being of light" hides at least five possibilities. Most encounters with luminous beings in genuine NDEs are encounters with Jesus, His holy angels, or departed saints reflecting His glory. A meaningful minority involve deceptive spirits, and a separate set involve genuine encounters that have been wrongly identified through the experiencer's own framework. Each case deserves a different response. Discernment is the work of giving each case the response that fits.
The point is not to make readers suspicious of every NDE account. It is to free us from a kind of automatic pattern-matching — "luminous + loving = Jesus" — that does not match what Scripture itself tells us about the spiritual realm. Scripture knows that Christ is the brightest light of all, that holy angels share that radiance, that saints reflect it, and that deceptive spirits sometimes counterfeit it. The Christian who carries all four truths into NDE conversations will be more careful, more charitable, and more accurate than the one who carries only the first.
The dying grandmother who says, "Jesus is here. He's so beautiful. He's come to take me home" — almost certainly met Jesus. The conference speaker whose "Jesus" teaches reincarnation and universal salvation apart from the cross — almost certainly did not, whatever the speaker felt. Most cases land on the gentler end of that spectrum, and most are genuine. But the spectrum exists, and learning to read it well is a gift to the people we love. Chapter 20 takes up the closely related issue: what to do when an experiencer reports a real encounter with divine love and then draws a wrong theological inference from it.
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Burke, John. Imagine Heaven: Near-Death Experiences, God's Promises, and the Exhilarating Future That Awaits You. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 2015.
Cooper, John W. Body, Soul, and Life Everlasting: Biblical Anthropology and the Monism-Dualism Debate. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2000.
Long, Jeffrey. God and the Afterlife: The Groundbreaking New Evidence for God and Near-Death Experience. New York: HarperOne, 2016.
Miller, J. Steve. Is Christianity Compatible with Deathbed and Near-Death Experiences? The Surprising Presence of Jesus, Scarcity of Anti-Christian Elements, and Compatibility with Historic Christian Teachings. Acworth, GA: Wisdom Creek Press, 2023.
Sabom, Michael. Light and Death: One Doctor's Fascinating Account of Near-Death Experiences. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1998.
Storm, Howard. My Descent into Death: A Second Chance at Life. New York: Doubleday, 2005.
Tabatt, Shaun. The NDE Conspiracy. Shippensburg, PA: Destiny Image, 2025.