The Occult Crossover
Picture a large hotel ballroom at a national near-death conference. Hundreds of attendees mill around the exhibit hall. There are books for sale, of course, and lanyards, and coffee. But there is something else, too. In one corner, a woman offers fifteen-minute psychic readings. Across the aisle, a "pet psychic" promises to translate what your dog has been trying to tell you for years. Down the hall, a session is filling up — a medium will help bereaved parents reconnect with their dead children, for a fee. Shaun Tabatt, an evangelical publisher who has interviewed dozens of NDErs, attended such a conference in 2024 and described being struck that, in his words, psychics and mediums seemed to be everywhere.1
This is the world we are entering in this chapter. Some of the most popular streams of the NDE movement do not stop at "I saw heaven and came back." They keep going. They cross a line that Scripture draws, again and again, with great clarity. They cross into mediumship, channeling, "after-death communication" by appointment, psychic development, contact with "spirit guides," and the rest of what the Bible simply calls the occult. We need to understand this crossover. We need to recognize it. And, where it appears in our own families and friendships, we need to know how to respond — gently, honestly, and biblically.
The pattern goes something like this. A person has an NDE. The NDE convinces them that the spiritual realm is real. They come back changed. They feel "more sensitive" than before — more open to spiritual perception, more aware of unseen things. So far, none of this is unusual or unbiblical. Many genuine NDErs report this kind of heightened awareness, and many of them go on to walk faithfully with Christ.2
But some NDErs take a different turn. Lacking strong Christian community, they explore. They attend NDE conferences. They find teachers who tell them that their new "sensitivity" is actually a gift — the beginning of psychic ability, mediumship, channeling. They are invited to develop these abilities. They start by giving readings to friends. Then they build a practice. Some end up making it a full-time ministry or career. The original NDE — which may have been entirely real and genuinely from God — becomes the founding story of a practice the Bible explicitly forbids.
This is not a small subculture on the edges of the NDE world. Tabatt rightly observes that psychics, mediums, ghost hunters, and channelers have become a major part of NDE conferences, podcasts, and streaming-platform content.3 J. Steve Miller, an evangelical NDE researcher, tells of widowers writing to him after reading his books, asking whether it would be okay to consult a medium to talk to a deceased spouse.4 The line between NDE testimony and occult practice has become very thin in much of the popular literature. Christians who care about these issues need a clear biblical frame for thinking about it.
Scripture is not subtle here. The Bible's stance on consulting mediums, practicing divination, and communicating with the dead is one of the most clear-cut moral stances in the entire Old Testament. It is reaffirmed in the New Testament. There is simply no biblical case for occult practice, no matter how it is dressed up.
The most comprehensive single passage is Deuteronomy 18:9–14:
When you come into the land that the Lord your God is giving you, you shall not learn to follow the abominable practices of those nations. There shall not be found among you anyone who burns his son or his daughter as an offering, 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. And because of these abominations the Lord your God is driving them out before you. (ESV)
Notice the sweep of this list. Several Hebrew terms stand behind the English translations. The phrase "practices divination" is qosem qesamim (קֹסֵם קְסָמִים), meaning roughly "one who divines divinations" — a fortune-teller who reads patterns to predict the future. The word for "medium" is 'ov (אוֹב), an old term for one who calls up familiar spirits. "Necromancer" translates doresh el-hammetim (דֹּרֵשׁ אֶל־הַמֵּתִים), literally "one who inquires of the dead." Every major category of what we today call "the occult" is named and forbidden. The reason given is striking: "for whoever does these things is an abomination to the Lord." This is some of the strongest moral language in the Hebrew Bible.
Two passages in Leviticus drive the point home. Leviticus 19:31 says, "Do not turn to mediums or necromancers; do not seek them out, and so make yourselves unclean by them: I am the Lord your God." Leviticus 20:6 adds, "If a person turns to mediums and necromancers, whoring after them, I will set my face against that person and will cut him off from among his people." The language of "whoring after them" is the language of spiritual unfaithfulness. Consulting a medium is treated as a betrayal of God Himself.
The narrative center of all of this is 1 Samuel 28 — Saul's late-night visit to the medium at Endor. King Saul, abandoned by God for his disobedience, is desperate. The Philistines are about to attack. So he disguises himself, sneaks to a medium, and asks her to summon Samuel from the dead. Whatever actually happened that night — whether God Himself permitted Samuel to appear as a one-time judgment, or whether a deceiving spirit impersonated him — the verdict is the same. Saul died on Mount Gilboa. The biblical writer's summary in 1 Chronicles 10:13 is blunt: "Saul died for his breach of faith. He broke faith with the Lord… and also consulted a medium." Saul's act is presented as one of the reasons God removed him.5
Isaiah keeps the pressure on. In Isaiah 8:19–20 the prophet asks, "And when they say to you, 'Inquire of the mediums and the necromancers who chirp and mutter,' should not a people inquire of their God? Should they inquire of the dead on behalf of the living?" The implied answer is obvious. God's people do not consult the dead. They consult Him.
The New Testament does not soften this picture; it confirms and extends it. In Acts 16:16–18, Paul meets a slave girl in Philippi who has, in Luke's words, a "spirit of divination." The Greek phrase is pneuma pythōna (πνεῦμα πύθωνα), "a spirit of Python," referring to the snake associated with the Delphic oracle. Luke's evaluation is unmistakable: her fortune-telling power is demonic. Paul casts the spirit out. In Acts 19:18–19, new believers in Ephesus respond to the gospel by burning their occult books in public — a costly, decisive break from former practices. Paul lists pharmakeia (φαρμακεία), "sorcery" or "magic arts," among the works of the flesh in Galatians 5:19–21, and warns that those who keep practicing such things "will not inherit the kingdom of God." Revelation closes the canon by twice listing "sorcerers" among those excluded from the New Jerusalem (21:8; 22:15).
From Deuteronomy through Revelation, Scripture treats divination, mediumship, necromancy, fortune-telling, and channeling as a single category — and forbids it without exception. There is no Christian way to practice these arts. They are not gifts to be developed; they are abominations to be repented of.
When we look closely at how NDErs end up in occult ministry, the path tends to follow a recognizable pattern. Naming it can help us see it coming.
Stage 1: The NDE itself. The person has a real near-death experience that opens them to spiritual reality. The experience may have been genuinely from God. It may have included an encounter with Jesus. The problem is not the experience. The problem starts later.
Stage 2: Heightened spiritual sensitivity. After the NDE, the person reports feeling more attuned to the unseen. They have vivid dreams. They have moments of unusual perception. They feel "different." Many sincere Christian NDErs describe similar feelings without ever drifting into the occult. Sensitivity is not the problem either.
Stage 3: Exploration without biblical formation. Here is where things go wrong. The NDEr, often unchurched or only loosely connected to a Christian community, looks for a framework that explains the new sensitivity. They find one — but in the NDE community, not in Scripture. Teachers tell them their experience is the doorway to a "psychic gift," that mediumship is the natural next step, that everyone has these abilities and they have simply been awakened.
Stage 4: Practice. The NDEr begins giving readings — first informally, for friends. Then they hear voices, see images, sense presences. They believe they are communicating with the dead, with spirit guides, with their "higher self." Demonic deception, when it takes this form, is rarely terrifying at first. It is helpful, gentle, even loving in tone. That is how it works.
Stage 5: Ministry or career. The reading becomes a practice. The practice becomes a brand. The original NDE — which may have been a real and gracious encounter — is now used as the founding credential for activity that Scripture forbids. The story almost preaches itself: "I died, I came back, and now I help others connect with their loved ones on the other side." It is a powerful story. It is also, biblically, a tragedy.
Faithfulness requires names. We are not slandering anyone by observing what they themselves teach in published work; we are evaluating teaching, not persons. Consider four figures whose work appears in nearly every NDE bibliography.
Dannion Brinkley, struck by lightning in 1975, told the story of his NDEs in Saved by the Light. After his experiences, Brinkley built a public ministry around future predictions, psychic impressions, and contact with the deceased. Whatever was real or unreal in his original experience, the practice he has built since clearly falls under the Deuteronomy 18 prohibitions. The Bible's evaluation does not depend on whether his predictions are accurate. The practice itself is forbidden.
Robert Monroe was not strictly an NDEr but became hugely influential through his book Journeys Out of the Body (1971) and the founding of the Monroe Institute. The Institute teaches "Hemi-Sync" techniques and other methods for inducing out-of-body experiences and "exploring consciousness." Whatever the experiences are — psychological, parapsychological, or spiritual — deliberately seeking out-of-body travel and contact with disembodied entities is precisely the territory Scripture warns against. Christians should not pursue this, even from curiosity.
James Van Praagh represents a movement called "evidential mediumship," which emphasizes specific verifiable details — names, dates, the nickname only Grandma used. The argument is: if the medium produces details they could not have known, the practice must be real and good. We will return to this argument below. For now, note simply that Van Praagh's books and television appearances have made him one of the most influential mediums of the last quarter century, and that his entire practice falls squarely within the biblical prohibitions.
Mellen-Thomas Benedict, Sandra Champlain, and a growing list of NDE-platform personalities mix genuine NDE testimony with channeling, psychic instruction, and what might be called "afterlife coaching." Some of their content is unobjectionable; some of it is biblically off-limits. Discernment, not blanket dismissal, is what is required — but where occult practice is being taught, the line has been crossed.6
Here is the most important question Christians ask about mediumship, and it deserves a careful answer. "If the medium really does come up with specific, accurate details about my deceased grandmother — her favorite hymn, the nickname only the family used, the exact location of the lost wedding ring — isn't that evidence the practice is real and therefore good?"
The honest answer is that the question rests on a faulty assumption. Scripture does not forbid mediumship because it is fake. Scripture forbids mediumship because some of it is real — and the spirits contacted by forbidden means are not safe. The biblical and theological case rests on three points.
First, demonic impersonation is a serious possibility. Scripture warns repeatedly that fallen spiritual beings deceive (2 Corinthians 11:14; 1 Timothy 4:1). Demons have observed your family for as long as your family has existed. They know things. They have every motive to impersonate the deceased — to pull grieving people into ongoing contact, to confirm unbiblical doctrines through "messages from the other side," to build trust that can be exploited later. Specific accurate details from a medium are not, by themselves, evidence of a benign source. A trustworthy spirit does not need to violate God's command in order to deliver a message. An untrustworthy spirit will gladly do so.7
Second, even if it is somehow the actual departed person, the practice is still forbidden. The 1 Samuel 28 narrative seems to allow that, on at least one occasion, God Himself permitted Samuel's spirit to appear — and Saul was condemned for the consultation anyway. Whatever happened at Endor, it does not give us a green light. The command is clear. We do not seek the dead. The mechanism does not change the prohibition.
Third, much of what happens in mediumistic readings is mundane. Decades of investigative work have documented "cold reading" techniques — fishing for clues, exploiting confirmation bias, reading body language, leveraging public information. Some mediums are sincere; some are practiced performers; some are both. The point is that "evidence" of supernatural knowledge is rarely as clear-cut as it seems in the moment of grief. Even when it is real, point one above applies.8
The argument "the medium really knew things, therefore it's okay" misses the point of the biblical prohibition. Scripture does not say "do not consult mediums because they are frauds." Scripture says "do not consult mediums" — full stop. Real contact with a deceiving spirit is the worst possible outcome, not the best.
A related but distinct phenomenon needs careful handling. After-death communications, or ADCs, are experiences in which grieving people sense the presence of a deceased loved one — a sudden feeling of being hugged, a vivid dream, a familiar scent in the room, an inexplicable moment of peace at the exact hour of a friend's death across the country. Are these occult? Are they always demonic? Christians have given different answers, and the question is worth getting right.
The crucial distinction is between sought and unsought. ADCs that come unsolicited — that simply happen, without ritual, without a medium, without seeking — are not the same category as mediumship. They are not always genuine, and they are not always from God; some are psychological (the mind processing grief), some are random events read as signs, and some may be genuinely God-orchestrated comforts. But because they are not sought through a forbidden practice, they do not fall under the Deuteronomy 18 prohibition. The bereaved widow who unexpectedly senses her husband's presence at the kitchen sink three weeks after the funeral has not consulted a medium, performed a ritual, or attempted contact. She has had an experience. Most of the time, the right pastoral response is gentle: "That may be a sweet gift from the Lord, or it may be your heart processing real love. Either way, hold it loosely, and don't go looking for more."
ADCs become a problem when they are pursued. When a grieving person begins setting up rituals to induce contact, performing daily attempts to "reach" the deceased, or scheduling sessions with mediums, they have moved from receiving an unsought experience into seeking what God forbids. At that line, biblical guardrails apply.
What do you do when a friend, a family member, or a fellow church member is drifting toward a medium, a psychic, or an NDE teacher who promotes occult practice? Five principles can help.
One: Name the issue gently and biblically. Don't argue from your discomfort. Argue from Deuteronomy 18 and Leviticus 19. If possible, read these passages with them. Let Scripture do the speaking.
Two: Distinguish the experience from the practice. If they had a genuine NDE, you do not need to attack the experience to oppose the occult drift. You can affirm what was real and still call the present practice into question. "The encounter you described sounds like it really may have been from God. What you are doing now, though, is something Scripture warns against — and I don't want you to be hurt by it."
Three: Pray for them. Spiritual deception is, in the end, a spiritual matter. No argument alone will dislodge a deception that has spiritual roots. Pray steadily, and ask others to pray.
Four: Offer alternatives. Point them to biblical discipleship, to a faithful local church, to honest prayer, to Scripture, to godly Christian friends who have walked through grief without going to mediums. People drift toward the occult partly because they feel unmet by the church. Be the kind of friend who meets them.
Five: Be patient but be clear. Truth, with love. Do not soften the biblical prohibition to keep the relationship comfortable. Do not be harsh. Stay in the conversation as long as the conversation is open.
Most people who drift into mediumship are not malicious. They are grieving. They miss someone. They want connection. The biblical answer to grief is not contempt for the grieving but a better community, a deeper prayer life, a fuller hope of resurrection — and a refusal to let the bereaved be exploited by practices Scripture forbids. Grief deserves the church's gentlest, longest patience and its clearest truth.
It is easy, when teaching against occult practices, to leave grieving people feeling robbed. "You can't do this. You can't do that. Stop seeking comfort over there." But the Bible never simply says no. It always says yes to something better.
God has not left us without communication with Himself. He has given us prayer — direct, immediate, personal access to the Creator of heaven and earth, through the mediation of His Son. We do not need to consult a stranger to ask whether our loved one is at peace. We may ask the One who holds them. He has given us Scripture — His own settled, sufficient revelation, in which He tells us all we need to know about the dead in Christ, the intermediate state, and the resurrection to come (1 Thessalonians 4:13–18; Philippians 1:21–23; Revelation 21:1–4). He has given us "the communion of saints" — not as a séance but as the mystical reality that all the redeemed, living and dead, are united together in Christ. The dead in Christ are not gone; they are with the Lord. We will see them again. That is more than mediumship can ever offer.
And He has given us Himself — the Holy Spirit, who comforts the grieving, who prays within us when we cannot find words, who bears witness to our spirits that we are children of God (Romans 8:14–17, 26–27). Christians do not need spirit guides. We have the Spirit of the living God.
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The crossover from NDE testimony into occult practice is one of the most serious problems in the contemporary NDE movement. It is not the whole movement. Many NDErs walk faithfully with Christ and never go near a medium. But a meaningful stream of NDE literature drifts in this direction, and Christians need to recognize it without flinching and without panic.
The biblical witness is clear from Genesis to Revelation: divination, mediumship, necromancy, channeling, and the rest are forbidden — not because they are powerless, but because they are dangerous. The spirits contacted through these practices are not safe. The God who loves the grieving has provided a better way: prayer, Scripture, the communion of the saints, the Holy Spirit, and the sure hope of resurrection. We do not need the occult. We have Christ. And in Him, even our dead are not lost. They are simply ahead of us, waiting at the table of the Lamb.
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Farris, Joshua R. An Introduction to Theological Anthropology: Humans, Both Creaturely and Divine. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2020.
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.
Tabatt, Shaun. The NDE Conspiracy. Shippensburg, PA: Destiny Image, 2025.