Listening with love, evaluating with discernment, walking the long road home
Your sister-in-law calls. She has been in the hospital. Two days ago, during a cardiac event, her heart stopped for seventeen seconds. While she was "out," she experienced something. She wants to tell you about it. She is nervous. She has held this in for two days because she does not know how you will react. She is not even sure what it all means. The phone rings, you pick up, and there she is, voice shaking a little, saying, "Can I tell you something strange?"
What you do in the next sixty seconds matters more than you know.
Most Christians will never read a single book on near-death experiences. They will never attend a conference, listen to a podcast on the subject, or read a research study. But many of them — perhaps most — will at some point sit across from a loved one who lived through a cardiac arrest, a serious accident, or a slow death from cancer, and who wants to share something they cannot easily explain. The previous thirty-two chapters of this book have built a careful framework for evaluating NDE and DBE accounts. This chapter exists to make sure that framework actually helps real people in real moments. Discernment, when someone you love is sharing, is not first the work of pronouncing verdicts on what your sister-in-law just said. It is first the work of loving her well so that, over time, truth has a chance to do its slow work in her heart.
Here is the thesis of this chapter, and I want to put it as plainly as I can: when someone you love shares an NDE or a DBE with you, your first responsibility is love. Discernment is your second responsibility. It is real, and it matters, and we will get to it. But if you lead with discernment, you will almost always fail at love — and you will almost always lose the chance to do discernment well later.
Why is love first? Because the experiencer is taking an enormous risk by talking to you at all. J. Steve Miller, who has spent more than a decade studying experiencers, observes that people resist sharing their NDEs and DBEs because they are afraid you will not believe them or will think they are crazy.1 If she is talking to you, it is because she trusts you, or because she is desperate. Maybe both. Whatever you say next will either confirm her courage or punish it.
I have heard heartbreaking stories from NDErs about Christian friends and pastors who, the moment they began to share, smiled awkwardly and said something like, "Well, you have been through a lot, and that medication can really do a number on you." That is the conversational equivalent of slamming the door. The experiencer almost never knocks again. Years pass before they try a second person. Some never do.
Love does not mean uncritical acceptance. It means presence, warmth, attentiveness, and honor for the person and for what happened to them. It means slowing down. It means listening before you speak. It means not turning a sacred conversation into a lecture or an interrogation. The biblical foundation we built earlier in the book — that the soul really does survive bodily death and can really meet the living God in that moment2 — is exactly what makes these conversations sacred in the first place.
"The greatest of these is love" (1 Corinthians 13:13). Paul's words apply directly to discernment. A right judgment delivered without love is, in his picture, "a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal" (1 Cor 13:1). The spiritual gift of discernment, severed from the spiritual fruit of love, becomes a weapon. We are commanded to test the spirits — but never at the cost of failing to love the person standing in front of us.
Let me lay out a simple sequence for the first conversation. This is not a formula. It is more like a posture you can rehearse so that, when the moment comes, you do not freeze.
Make the conversation safe right away. Try something like: "I am so glad you are telling me this. Take your time." A short, warm sentence does an enormous amount of work. It tells her that you are not embarrassed by the supernatural, that you are not about to shut her down, and that she can keep going. Then — and this is the hard part — stop talking. Do not interrupt. Do not start firing off pointed questions. Do not begin evaluating the account in your head while she is mid-sentence. Listen the whole way through.
When she has said what she is ready to say, ask questions that show real curiosity. "What was it like? What did it feel like? Do you remember what you saw? Was anyone there?" Open-ended questions invite people to tell more, while yes-or-no questions tend to flatten the conversation.3 Notice the questions you are not asking yet: "Did you see Jesus?" (leading); "Did anything contradict what the Bible teaches?" (testing); "Have you been reading any New Age books?" (suspicious). Those questions can come later. For now, you are gathering, not grading.
After she pauses, say back the heart of what she said in your own words. "It sounds like you felt overwhelming peace, and a sense that someone was with you, and then a feeling of being sent back." Reflection does two things at once. It shows her that you actually heard her, and it lets her correct you if you misunderstood. People who feel deeply heard are far more open to being walked with later.
In this first conversation, do not rush to a verdict. Even a positive verdict — "Wow, that was clearly Jesus!" — can be premature. Instead, try: "What a profound thing. Thank you for trusting me with it." Gratitude honors the experience without committing you to a final reading of it. This matters because the same experience often looks different a month later, after the experiencer has had time to sit with it. You do not want to lock yourself into an interpretation you will need to walk back.
End with an open door. "If you ever want to talk more about this as you keep processing it, I am here. These things take time to make sense of." Now you have signaled what matters most: you are in this with her for the long haul. Discernment, when it comes later, will come in the soil of a real relationship, not a one-time evaluation.
The first conversation is almost never the place for theological correction. If something genuinely troubling comes up — say, an explicit teaching that "all religions are one" — you can gently note that you would like to talk more about that part later, but you should not, in the same breath as the experiencer's first telling, begin marshaling counterarguments. The relational ground is not yet laid. Without that ground, even your true words will land like rocks.
Real life is messier than principles. Here are seven scenarios you may encounter, and how to think about each one.
Your elderly mother, a devout believer for sixty years, had a cardiac event and woke up describing Jesus, the warmth of His presence, a glimpse of your late father, and a clear sense that her time was not yet finished. This is the easy case. Rejoice with her. Pray together. Thank God. Gently affirm that what she experienced is consistent with what Scripture teaches about heaven and Christ's love for His own.4 Her account does not need a public defense. Receive the gift.
Your coworker, who has been spiritually wandering for years, had an NDE in which he clearly encountered Jesus and was sent back with a sense of mission. This is a precious moment. Help him understand whom he met. Connect him with a healthy local church, with a Bible-reading friend, with trustworthy resources (Chapter 29 lists Christian NDE authors he can read with confidence). Pray for him. This may well be the door God is using to bring him fully home.
Your sister had an NDE filled with beautiful Christian content — and a few elements that do not fit biblical teaching. Maybe she mentions a memory of a "past life," or a feeling that "all paths are one," or instructions about psychic gifts. Now what?
In the first conversation, do not reject anything. Welcome her sharing. Listen fully. Love her. The first conversation is the wrong place to sort genuine from corrupted elements. In later conversations — days, weeks, sometimes months later — you can gently introduce the experience-interpretation distinction we developed in Chapter 9. Try something like, "I really do believe you experienced something real. I have been thinking about that one part where [the concerning element]. What do you think it meant?" Explore it together. Bring Scripture in slowly. Help her integrate.
What you must not do is dismiss the whole experience because of those concerning elements, correct her harshly, make her feel judged, or sever the connection. You are working in the soil of a long relationship. You have time.
Your friend had an NDE and came back convinced that all religions are equal, that Jesus is unnecessary, and that her job now is to teach these new "truths." This one is harder.
The shape of the steps is still the same, but the stakes are higher. Listen all the way through. Honor the person without endorsing the conclusions: "I can see this was profound for you, and I love you, and I really want to understand what you went through." Then — not in the first conversation — begin to share your concerns gently. Use ownership language: "I want to share something I have been thinking about, if you are open to it." Engage specific claims with Scripture rather than dismissing the whole experience. Offer ongoing relationship. Be patient. Pray for her. Trust the Lord with the timing of fruit.5
Your grandmother is dying of cancer. One afternoon her eyes drift toward the corner of the room and she says, very quietly, "Jesus is here. He has come for me."
This is sacred ground. Do not analyze. Do not interrupt. Do not test the spirits in the moment your grandmother is meeting hers. Sit with her. Hold her hand. Say, "Grandma, that is so beautiful. He loves you so much." Pray together. Cry. Receive the gift. There is time later to talk to family; right now this moment belongs to her. The deathbed-vision literature consistently shows that this kind of experience is, in the overwhelming majority of cases, a real and deeply comforting encounter near the doorway of death.6 You can address its theology another day. Today, just be there.
Your child was in an accident, and afterward she told you she "saw Jesus" or "saw Grandpa." Children's experiences should be received warmly but never inflated. Ask simple, open questions: "What did you see? What did you feel?" Do not lead. Do not suggest details. Do not turn her experience into a story you tell at the next church potluck for effect. Children are easily shaped by adult enthusiasm, and what begins as a real experience can be subtly re-narrated into something her parents wanted to hear. Receive it as a gift, hold it gently, and let it stay hers.
The literature on children's deathbed visions is striking precisely because young children often report things they had no theological framework to expect.7 If your child reports something that surprises you, that surprise is itself often a small mark of authenticity.
Your uncle had what he calls a "dark" NDE and is struggling to make sense of it. He may be terrified, ashamed, or confused. This is real spiritual care territory, and it may exceed what one friend can handle. Walk with him. Pray with him. Connect him with a pastor who is equipped to engage these experiences (Chapter 34 develops the pastoral framework for this). Do not tell him "it was just a hallucination," and do not jump to "you went to hell." Distressing NDEs come in several types — Hades visits, demonic encounters, fear-filtered experiences, even disciplinary experiences for believers (Chapter 21 sorts these carefully). Real distressing NDEs require care, not slogans.
Here are the six places I see Christians most often stumble. Watch for them in yourself.
Mistake 1 — Immediate theological correction. The experiencer shares; the Christian, full of zeal, immediately points out everything wrong with the account. Relational trust collapses. The chance to walk with the person in long-term integration is forfeited in a single conversation.
Mistake 2 — The dismissive response. "It was just your dying brain." "It was the medication." "It was a dream." This denies the reality of the experience and communicates rejection. Even if some accounts do involve neurological factors, the dismissive response treats the experiencer as foolish for taking it seriously.
Mistake 3 — Uncritical enthusiasm. Accepting everything — including elements that contradict Scripture — because you do not want to seem cold. This is a failure of love in the opposite direction. The experiencer needs truth, too.8
Mistake 4 — Making it about yourself. "Oh, I read a book about these. I know all about it." She does not need your knowledge yet. She needs to be heard.
Mistake 5 — Turning it into apologetic debate. Some Christians, hearing an NDE, immediately want to debate consciousness, dualism, and epistemology. The experiencer wants to share an experience, not get drafted into a philosophy seminar.
Mistake 6 — Demanding immediate theological integration. "So what does this mean for your faith?" Asked too early, this question feels like a quiz. Let integration unfold over time.
If you have read widely on NDEs — Tabatt, Miller, Burke, Sabom, Long — the temptation will be strong to display what you know.9 Resist it. Knowledge is a tool to serve love, not a stage on which to perform. Most experiencers do not need a tour of the literature; they need a friend who will not flinch.
Sometimes the right words simply will not come. Here are a few you can borrow:
"I am honored you trusted me with this." "I do not have all the answers, but I am here to walk through this with you." "What was the most meaningful part of the experience for you?" "Have you been able to talk with anyone else about it?" "I have been thinking about something. Could I share it with you sometime?" "I love you, and I love that you are taking this seriously."
Notice the tone. These phrases are warm, curious, and patient. They do not commit you to interpretations you have not made. They do not shut anything down. They keep the door open for the next conversation, and the one after that.
Integration of an NDE or DBE often takes years.10 The Christian friend who walks with the experiencer over time has more influence than the one who delivered "perfect theology" in a single tense conversation a decade earlier. Patience does what argument cannot. Prayer does what speeches cannot.
I know this can feel slow. If your sister has come back from her NDE convinced that "all paths lead to the same God," it is tempting to want to fix it tonight. But God works on different timetables than we do. The same Christ who patiently bore with His own slow-to-understand disciples is patient with your sister now. Your job is to stay close, stay loving, stay biblical, and stay in it. Years from now, you will likely look back and see how the slow drip of love and Scripture across a long relationship accomplished what no single confrontation could have.
This is not soft theology. It is the way truth actually works in human hearts. Even the empirical research that has tracked NDErs over decades shows that integration is a long road, not a moment.11
A woman I will call Maria had a syncretistic NDE in her thirties and spent fifteen years drifting through New Age teachings. Her sister — an ordinary believer with no special training — did almost nothing dramatic. She just stayed. She invited Maria to family dinners. She prayed. She listened. Now and then, when Maria brought up an NDE topic, the sister would gently ask, "Have you ever thought about how Jesus described that?" After many years, Maria came back to Christ. She later said it was not any single conversation that did it. It was the constant, quiet presence of someone who would not let go and would not lecture.
· · ·
If someone you love has shared an NDE or a DBE with you, you have been given a real privilege. They picked you. Out of everyone in their life, they trusted you with something almost no one else has heard. The Lord put you in their path for a reason.
So receive it well. Lead with love. Discern over time. Stay in the relationship for the long haul. Bring Scripture in gently and faithfully. Trust God with the outcome.
You are not the experiencer's judge, and you are not their savior. You are their friend, walking with them at the edge of something holy, and your kindness today may be the doorway through which truth walks tomorrow.
The chapters that follow will go deeper into pastoral care for NDErs (Chapter 34), how to answer Christians who dismiss all NDEs (Chapter 35), and the broader vision for walking the narrow path between credulity and cynicism (Chapter 36). But the most important moment is the next time someone you love says, "Can I tell you something strange?" When that happens, take a breath, set down the agenda, and listen. That is where discernment really begins.
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.
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. Deathbed Experiences as Evidence for the Afterlife, Volume 1: A Groundbreaking, Scientific Apologetic. Acworth, GA: Wisdom Creek Press, 2021.
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.