When Christian Publishing Got It Wrong: Lessons from a Bestselling Lie
In November of 2004, a six-year-old boy named Alex Malarkey was severely injured in a car accident in Ohio. Alex was paralyzed from the neck down. He spent two months in a coma. When his story was eventually told in a 2010 book co-written with his father — The Boy Who Came Back from Heaven — millions of Christians embraced it. The book described angels, encounters with Jesus, and a battle with the devil. It became a bestseller. Tyndale House Publishers marketed it widely. LifeWay Christian Stores stocked it. Pastors quoted it. Small groups studied it.1
Then, in January of 2015, Alex Malarkey — now a teenager — wrote an open letter that shook the Christian publishing world. He had not died. He had not gone to heaven. He had made it all up. He said he had wanted attention. He apologized. He asked Christians to compare every book and testimony with Scripture.2
Tyndale pulled the book. LifeWay yanked it from shelves. The book is now out of print. And Alex, who still lives with quadriplegia and the wreckage of a family that was deeply harmed by the deception, has become a quiet voice calling Christians to a different kind of seriousness about Scripture. His story is now a warning. And it is the right place to start this chapter.
This chapter is about a small but painful slice of the NDE landscape — accounts that are not what they appear to be. Some are full fabrications. Some are heavily embellished. Some are honest experiences reshaped by ghostwriters or commercial pressure. The percentage of fabricated NDEs is small. But fabricated NDEs do disproportionate damage — to the people who believed them, to the ministry of NDE accounts that are reliable, and to the trust Christian readers should be able to place in their own publishers.
My goal in this chapter is to give you tools to recognize the markers of fabrication and unreliability, and then to walk you through the pastoral fallout: how to think about Christian friends who were misled, how to keep from sliding into cynicism, and how to anchor your trust where it belongs.
There are several lessons hidden in the Malarkey story that go beyond the obvious one of "people lie."
First, even Christian publishing is not immune to commercial pressures. Tyndale House is a major evangelical publisher with a long and largely admirable record. Yet a fabricated NDE marketed to Christians moved through their pipeline and sold over a million copies before retraction.3 The lesson is not that Tyndale is uniquely careless. It is that the market for "heaven tourism" books — Christian publishing's name for the genre of extended afterlife travelogues — is huge. Where there is a large market, there is a strong incentive to publish quickly. And quick publishing makes due diligence harder.
Second, Christian content is not the same as truth. The Malarkey book had Jesus, angels, heaven, and the devil in it. None of that made it real. A fabricated account can include all the right Christian furniture and still be made up. The presence of Christian elements is necessary in a Christian NDE — but it is never sufficient.
Third, the primary source matters. The book was Alex's story, but Alex was a child whose account had been mediated through his father. Alex was not reliably interviewed independently as he grew older. When he was finally able to speak for himself, he had a different story to tell. The pattern of an account told about someone rather than by someone is a structural concern we will revisit.
Fourth, the damage from fabrication ripples outward. Christians who believed the Malarkey book and used it to comfort the dying or encourage the doubting were not foolish. They were trusting a Christian publisher and a Christian father. When the truth came out, some readers concluded "all NDE books are like this" and threw out the genuine with the false. That overreaction is one of the costs of fabrication.
Fifth, Alex Malarkey's recantation took real courage. He has not become wealthy from his correction. He has used what happened to call Christians toward the right anchor. As J. Steve Miller observes, the moral is not "all NDEs are fake" but rather: "Don't be gullible."4 The cure for being misled is not cynicism. It is discernment.
Christian content in an NDE account is necessary if the account claims to describe a Christian experience — but it is never sufficient by itself. Fabricated accounts can include angels, Jesus, and heaven. The presence of these features does not prove genuineness. We must look at the whole picture, not the surface furniture.
The Malarkey case is the loudest example of fabrication. But fabrication is only one kind of unreliability. There are several others, and they shade into one another. Understanding the categories helps us avoid the all-or-nothing thinking that does so much harm.
Category 1 — Complete fabrication. The Malarkey case. The experience never happened; the account was invented. Rare but real.
Category 2 — Embellishment. Something happened, but the account has grown over time. Specific dramatic details get added. Events are intensified. Elements borrowed from other NDE books creep in. This is common in retold testimonies, often without conscious deception. Memory is not a video recorder. Each retelling reshapes the memory a little.
Category 3 — Hallucination mistaken for NDE. The person had a real medical event with real altered-consciousness content, but it was not a near-death experience by any careful definition. They were not close to death. The Greyson Scale would not register their experience as an NDE. They are sincere. They just have the category wrong.5
Category 4 — Accounts shaped by interviewer or co-author. The NDE may be real. But the book version was shaped by a co-author or ghostwriter in ways that altered the original account. Kevin Malarkey shaping Alex's story is the high-profile example. There are gentler versions of this same dynamic in many NDE memoirs.
Category 5 — Misremembered details conflated with other sources. NDErs, over years, may absorb details from other NDE accounts they have read or heard, then unconsciously merge those details into their own memory. This is not lying. It is how memory works under exposure to similar material.
Category 6 — Commercial shaping across multiple books. An NDEr's first book is often the cleanest. Second and third books frequently include new material that was not in the first. Sometimes that new material is genuine "remembering more later." Sometimes it tracks too closely with what sells.
Category 7 — Psychiatric or psychological accounts presented as NDE. Some people with certain mental health conditions describe their experiences as NDEs. The proper response is not to mock them but to lovingly note that the medical category does not fit, and that other care may be needed. Miller's red-flag list includes "indications of mental illness" precisely because some accounts that look like NDEs are something else.6
Category 8 — Deliberate fraud for money or fame. A person who never had an NDE publishes one anyway, motivated by financial gain or notoriety. Rare, but serious enough that Scripture's warnings about deceivers (2 Peter 2:1-3) apply directly.
Notice how only categories 1 and 8 involve the cold-blooded deception we associate with the word "fabrication." Categories 2 through 7 are usually not deliberate dishonesty. They are the ordinary failures of human memory, of co-authorship, of the publishing industry, and of well-meaning people who confuse one kind of experience with another. The reader looking only for "liars" will miss most of the unreliability in the field.
If those are the categories, what are the warning signs? What features of an NDE account should make us slow down? Let me lay out eight markers. None of these is by itself proof of fabrication. But the more of them that pile up in a single case, the more careful we should be. These markers track closely with the "Gray Scale" red flags developed by J. Steve Miller and Stuart Gray, with adjustments for the kind of evaluation Christians need.7
Marker 1 — Elaborate details that are too convenient. The account features specific, dramatic Christian elements — angels with named appearances, specific Scripture quotations on specific topics, a tour of heaven that just happens to address the hot questions of contemporary readers. Genuine NDEs are usually messier and more personal. When the content is too neatly tailored to a Christian publishing audience, that itself is a flag.
Marker 2 — Inconsistencies between tellings. The account changes significantly across different interviews, books, podcasts, or conferences. Minor variation is normal — anyone retelling an event will phrase it differently each time. Major contradictions about who was present, what was said, or what the person saw are not normal. They suggest the memory is being constructed rather than remembered.
Marker 3 — Medical record absence or inconsistency. The clinical death or near-death event is not corroborated by hospital records, or the records show something different from what is claimed. Note Miller's first red flag here: NDEs by definition involve being near death. If the medical evidence of nearness to death is missing or contradicted, the experience may have been a vision, a dream, or a hallucination rather than an NDE.8
Marker 4 — Witness contradiction. Family members, medical staff, or others who were present give significantly different accounts of what happened. This was a major issue in the Malarkey case once Alex began speaking for himself.
Marker 5 — Excessive commercial prominence very early. The NDEr becomes a conference speaker, podcast guest, and book author within months of the experience, with the account growing more elaborate at each retelling. Miller flags this directly: promoting books or services introduces possible motives — financial, fame-seeking, or audience-targeting — to exaggerate or shape claims.9 By contrast, genuine NDErs are very often reluctant to share their experience at first. Many wait years.
Marker 6 — Refusal of scrutiny. The NDEr or their promoters resist investigation, dismiss critical questions, or claim that the experience is beyond evaluation. Genuine spiritual experiences withstand careful examination. Counterfeit ones often cannot. Tabatt names this dynamic directly in his discussion of why we must be willing to test what we hear.10
Marker 7 — Content that too closely matches other popular NDE accounts. Specific phrasings, images, or teachings that track too closely with bestsellers in the genre. This can happen unintentionally (the NDEr has read those books) or intentionally (the account is being constructed). Either way, it is a flag.
Marker 8 — Primary source issues. The account comes through a third party — a parent, a pastor, a co-author — rather than from the experiencer directly. The experiencer is unavailable for direct questions. Or the experiencer is a child whose voice has been mediated through an adult. The Malarkey case again sits squarely here.
No single marker proves a fabrication. But three or four markers stacking up in a single case is a serious warning. The wise reader is not looking for one knockout flag — that is rare. The wise reader is looking for patterns. Patterns tell the truth.
Alex Malarkey is the loudest case, but he is not the only one to know about. Let me name a few others, briefly and charitably.
Chaplain Dale Black, Flight to Heaven (2010). Dale Black was a young pilot in 1969 who survived a small-plane crash that killed two others. His memoir describes a glimpse of heaven during the crisis. The book has been embraced by some Christian readers and publishers. Critics have raised questions about specific elements that are difficult to verify decades after the fact. I want to engage this case carefully. Black's basic claim — that he had a powerful spiritual experience after a real and well-documented plane crash — is not in serious dispute. The legitimate questions concern certain specific details and theological interpretations layered on later. The wise posture is not "this is fabricated" but "I can read this book with appreciation while holding the unverifiable details lightly." That is the posture this book recommends for many cases that are neither obviously genuine nor obviously fraudulent.
The wider "heaven tourism" genre. "Heaven tourism" is a label coined by critics for popular NDE books that purport to describe extended tours of the afterlife with specific theological teaching attached.11 Not every book in this genre is fabricated; some are entirely sincere. But the genre as a whole has produced some of the most concerning material in the field. When an NDE memoir reads like a systematic theology written by the experiencer, with specific doctrines being taught from beyond the grave, the burden of proof is higher. Genuine NDEs typically do not produce systematic theology — they produce personal encounters that the experiencer must then integrate with Scripture and the church's teaching.
Accounts that have been quietly withdrawn or disputed. Several NDE books have been retracted by their publishers, recanted by their authors, or publicly disputed by family members. The Malarkey case is the most famous. Others have surfaced in Christian publishing controversies over the past fifteen years. The wise reader keeps a current list and is not afraid to set aside a book that the field has come to question.
I want to be clear what this kind of evaluation is — and what it is not. It is not gossip. It is not character attack. It is not a claim that a particular author is unsaved, demonically deceived, or morally bankrupt. None of those judgments are mine to make. What this evaluation is is the ordinary Christian work of testing the spirits (1 John 4:1) and weighing what is taught against the standard of Scripture (Acts 17:11). That work belongs to every believer. It is not optional. Doing it kindly is essential. Doing it at all is essential too.
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What about the Christian who trusted The Boy Who Came Back from Heaven, gave a copy to a grieving widow, and quoted it in a Sunday school lesson? What about the pastor who recommended it from the pulpit? What about the lay reader who feels foolish, hurt, or even ashamed when the book is exposed?
I want to address those readers directly, because the pastoral dimension of fabrication is often overlooked in the rush to evaluate the books themselves.
First, the existence of fabrications does not mean all NDEs are fabricated. One bad book does not invalidate a whole field. As we saw in earlier chapters of this book, the broader NDE literature contains an enormous amount of consistent, cross-cultural, medically documented material that points toward genuine spiritual experience. Sabom's Atlanta Study, the prospective hospital studies of van Lommel and Sartori, Miller's systematic NDERF analyses, and the deathbed-experience research summarized in Miller's dissertation all stand on far more solid ground than any single popular memoir.12 Throwing out the field because one book in it was fabricated is like throwing out medicine because some doctors lie. The fabrications are real. They are not the whole picture.
Second, Christians who were misled were acting in good faith. The fault lies with the deceivers, not with the trusting reader. If you bought the Malarkey book, gave it as a gift, or used it to comfort someone, you were doing what you were supposed to do — you were trusting a Christian publisher to vet what they put on the shelves. The breach of trust was theirs, not yours. You can let yourself off that hook.
Third, the response is not cynicism but more careful discernment going forward. Cynicism — the all-NDEs-are-suspect posture — is the equal and opposite error to credulity. It does just as much harm. The right response to having been misled is not to harden the heart against all spiritual testimony. It is to develop the kind of testing posture this whole book is meant to teach. Apply the seven tests of Chapter 10. Look at the markers we have just walked through. Compare claims with Scripture. That is wisdom. Cynicism is just wounded credulity in disguise.
Fourth, publishers and ministries have a responsibility to do better. The Malarkey case should have been caught. Tyndale could have insisted on independent interviews with Alex as he grew older, engaged outside theological reviewers, and slowed the publication timeline. Since 2015 the industry has, to its credit, become more cautious. But the structural pressures that produced the Malarkey book have not gone away. Christian readers are right to expect more from their publishers. Asking pointed questions of a publisher's vetting process is not unspiritual — it is responsible stewardship of the platform we are giving them.
If you trusted a fabricated NDE book and feel foolish, please hear this: you were not foolish. You were trusting people who should have been trustworthy and were not. The deception was theirs, not yours. The right response is not shame. It is to keep on loving the Lord, keep on reading widely, and bring a steadier discernment to the next account you encounter. That is not bitterness. That is maturity.
Let me close by returning to Alex Malarkey's own words, because I think they get at something the church needs to hear in this moment.
In his 2015 open letter, Alex made a very simple point about Scripture's authority. He said, in effect, that the Bible alone is the unfailing source of truth, and that anything written by human beings is fallible by comparison. He urged Christians to compare every book and every media presentation against what God has actually said in his Word.13
That is the right anchor. And notice what it is not. Alex did not say "all NDEs are demonic." He did not say "no testimony of heaven can ever be trusted." He did not say "throw out the whole field." He said something narrower and more important. He said: do not build your faith on someone else's experience. Build it on Scripture.
That posture is exactly what 2 Peter 1:16-21 commends. Peter speaks of being an eyewitness of Christ's glory at the Transfiguration — a direct, life-changing spiritual experience. And then Peter says something startling: even his eyewitness experience is secondary to "the prophetic word more fully confirmed" — that is, the Scriptures. Peter elevates Scripture above his own mountaintop vision.14 If Peter can do that with the Transfiguration, the rest of us can certainly do it with NDE memoirs.
"And we have the prophetic word more fully confirmed, to which you will do well to pay attention as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts." (2 Peter 1:19, ESV)
That is the posture this chapter has been pointing toward. NDE testimonies, even genuine ones, are secondary to Scripture. Fabricated ones are dangerous — not because they tell us about heaven, but because they tempt us to anchor our hope in human testimony rather than in the Word of God. The cure is what Christians have always called the formal sufficiency of Scripture: God's Word, properly interpreted, is enough to ground the Christian life. NDE testimonies — when they pass our tests — can encourage us, comfort us, and confirm what Scripture already says. They cannot supplement Scripture, correct Scripture, or replace Scripture. When they try, we know we are looking at one of the unreliable categories described in this chapter.15
Fabrications are real, but rare. Embellishment is more common. The eight categories cover most of what we encounter; the eight markers help us spot the patterns. The Malarkey case is the loudest warning, but it is not the only one to know. Other accounts — like Dale Black's, or various heaven-tourism memoirs — sit in a more uncertain space and call for charitable, careful evaluation.
The pastoral takeaway is not cynicism but sharper love. We love NDErs better when we test what they say. We love readers better when we name books that should not be trusted. We love publishers better when we ask them to do more. And we love the Lord most of all when we treat his Word as the final standard against which every testimony must be weighed.
The next chapter turns to a different and more common situation: not a fabricated bestseller, but a friend or family member sharing a real experience with you. How do we listen well, evaluate carefully, and walk faithfully alongside the people in our own lives whose stories from the edge of death we will encounter long before we encounter another bestseller? That is where we are headed next.
Cooper, John W. Body, Soul, and Life Everlasting: Biblical Anthropology and the Monism-Dualism Debate. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2000.
Malarkey, Alex. "An Open Letter to Lifeway and Other Sellers, Buyers, and Marketers of Heaven Tourism, by the Boy Who Did Not Come Back From Heaven." Open letter, January 13, 2015.
Miller, J. Steve. "Deathbed Experiences as Evidence for the Afterlife: A Multicultural Examination of the Literature." PhD diss., Columbia International University, 2019.
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.