Chapter 20

Not Every NDE Is From God

“Even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light.” — 2 Corinthians 11:14

A. The Question on the Table

Picture a woman at a Bible study. She has just read one of the NDE accounts we looked at in earlier chapters. The evidence moved her. The person who died and came back described things no living eyes could have seen, and those details checked out. Now the woman is starting to believe that the soul really does survive death. Good. That is what the evidence shows.

But then she reads a different account. This one also sounds vivid and heartfelt. The person who came back says there is no such thing as sin. Or that all religions lead to the same place. Or that a glowing being told her she was divine and had no need of a savior. The woman feels a chill. Something is wrong, but she is not sure what. If the first NDE was real, does she have to accept the second one too?

No. She does not. And the Bible gives her clear reasons why.

We have spent many chapters building the case that most near-death experiences are genuine. The veridical evidence is strong.¹ The data from my doctoral research show that about 87% of carefully studied cases line up well with a biblical framework.² Most NDEs point toward the very things Scripture teaches: God is real, love matters, the soul lives on, and Jesus shows up more than any other figure.³

But not every NDE passes that test. At least one in ten carries clearly unbiblical content.⁴ About 12% promote reincarnation. Nearly 20% promote psychics or mediums. Some deny sin altogether. Some teach that the person is God.⁵ A careful reader of Scripture will recognize a familiar pattern here. The Bible warns, again and again, that the enemy of our souls can wrap a lie in beautiful light.

This chapter opens a new section of the book. In the chapters ahead we will look at the difference between a real experience and a false lesson drawn from it (Chapter 21), at the difficult world of distressing NDEs (Chapter 22), and at a practical field guide for testing any NDE against Scripture (Chapter 23).

But first we need to face a hard truth squarely. Not every near-death experience comes from God. Some bear the fingerprints of an enemy who has been deceiving people since the Garden of Eden.

That is not a reason to panic. It is a reason to learn how to tell the difference.

B. The Evidence in Front of Us

The Bible does not leave us guessing about whether spiritual deception is possible. It states the matter plainly. Paul, writing to the church in Corinth, warned:

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)

Read that carefully. The enemy does not always show up looking like a monster. He can appear as light. He can imitate goodness. He can produce feelings of peace and warmth that seem, to the person in the moment, exactly like an encounter with God.⁶

Paul was not the only one to sound this alarm. Jesus himself warned that false signs could fool even careful believers: "For false christs and false prophets will arise and perform great signs and wonders, so as to lead astray, if possible, even the elect" (Matthew 24:24).⁷

Paul told the Thessalonians that the lawless one would come with "all power and false signs and wonders" (2 Thessalonians 2:9).⁸ And John gave the church a short, direct command: "Test the spirits to see whether they are from God" (1 John 4:1).⁹

If spiritual deception can happen in this life, there is no reason to think it stops at the threshold of death. When a person's soul separates from the body and enters the spiritual world, the same enemy is still at work. And the Bible says he is good at his job.

In the pages ahead, I want to walk through two real cases that show what deception looks like in the NDE world. The first is the story of Brian Melvin, whose near-death experience began with a warm welcome and ended with a terrifying reveal. The second is the famous account of Betty Eadie in her bestselling book Embraced by the Light, which wraps clearly unbiblical teaching in the language of love and spiritual wonder. Both cases teach us something important. And both remind us why the Bible says to test every spirit.

These two cases represent what Tabatt calls the two faces of the enemy's work in the NDE space. In some cases, the deception is explicit and dramatic. The mask slips, and the person sees something dark behind the light. That is what happened to Melvin. But in many other cases, the deception is far more subtle. The person encounters an image of "God" that radiates light and love but remains vague, unnamed, and unknowable. This stands in sharp contrast to the NDEs where God clearly reveals Himself as the Father, the Son, or the Holy Spirit.^5b The first pattern alarms us. The second pattern should alarm us just as much, because a "God" who hides His identity is not acting like the God of the Bible, who goes out of His way to make Himself known. Both patterns require discernment. Both are answered by the same biblical tools.

C. The Heart of the Case

1. The Biblical Warning

Before we look at any NDE, we need to let Scripture set the table. The Bible gives us three clear warnings about spiritual counterfeits, and all three bear directly on what we find in the NDE literature.

The first is the warning about disguise. Satan was once a high-ranking angel. He fell through pride, and he took other angels with him.¹⁰ But his fall did not strip him of all his power. He is still able to present himself as something beautiful. Paul says he "disguises himself as an angel of light" (2 Corinthians 11:14). The Greek word here for "disguises" (Greek metaschēmatizei, "to change outward form") tells us this is a costume, not a true nature.¹¹ What you see is not what you get.

The second warning is about counterfeit power. Paul told the Thessalonians that the enemy works with "all power and false signs and wonders, and with all wicked deception" (2 Thessalonians 2:9–10).¹² This means the enemy can produce experiences that feel real and even carry a sense of the supernatural. The power is real; the source is false. Moses and Pharaoh's magicians both threw down staffs that became serpents (Exodus 7:10–12). The difference was not in the spectacle but in who stood behind it.

The third warning is the simplest and most practical. John tells believers to test every spirit: "Do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God" (1 John 4:1).¹³ Notice the word "test." It means to examine, to hold up against a standard, to check the content against what God has already revealed. The standard is Scripture.

The test is not "Did it feel good?" The test is "Does it match what God has said?"

Paul added a fourth warning that speaks directly to what we find in some NDEs. He told Timothy that "the Spirit expressly says that in later times some will depart from the faith by devoting themselves to deceitful spirits and teachings of demons" (1 Timothy 4:1).^13b

Notice the phrase "teachings of demons." These are not random lies. They are teachings. They come in a form that sounds like truth. They are designed to lead people away from the faith. That is exactly what we see in some NDE accounts: teachings that sound spiritual and loving but lead the reader away from what Scripture says.

Sabom found a striking example of this testing in the NDE literature. In one case reported by Maurice Rawlings, a man encountered a radiant spirit during his NDE. The being looked much like the "Jesus" other experiencers describe: a man in dazzling white with a glowing face. The man felt deep reverence and suspected it was Jesus. So he did something almost no other NDEr had done. He asked outright: "Are you Jesus?" The spirit answered, "No."^13c That moment is worth pausing over. The being looked right. It felt right. But when tested, it was not.

2. The Hijacking Strategy

If the enemy shows up wearing a disguise, how does the deception work in practice? Shaun Tabatt offers a helpful way to think about it. Tabatt is a Christian researcher who has spent years studying the dark side of the NDE world. In his book The NDE Conspiracy, he argues that Satan does not create from nothing. He takes something that God intended for good and twists it.¹⁴

Tabatt calls this "hijacking." The idea is that God may genuinely use near-death experiences to show people that the soul is real, that the afterlife is real, and that He exists. But the enemy steps in and tries to redirect that experience toward a false conclusion. He bends the message. He inserts a lie into what started as a true encounter.¹⁵

This fits a very old biblical pattern. In Eden, the serpent did not tell Eve that the tree did not exist. He told her a lie about what would happen if she ate from it (Genesis 3:4–5).¹⁶ The tree was real. The fruit was real. The lie was about the meaning.

That is exactly what we see in some NDEs. The experience may be real. The soul may truly be out of the body. But the message attached to the experience is false.

"Satan always tries to take something that God has intended for good and twists it to tempt and deceive people in order to lead them away from God. This is the same old trick he’s been playing on people since the very beginning."

— Shaun Tabatt, The NDE Conspiracy

I find Tabatt's framework helpful because it avoids both extremes. It does not say all NDEs are demonic, which the evidence does not support. And it does not say that deception is impossible, which the Bible would never let us believe. It says: be sober. Be alert. Test what you hear.

Michael Sabom, the cardiologist whose landmark NDE research we looked at in earlier chapters, reached a similar conclusion from a different angle. Sabom noted that angels, both good and evil, can change shape and take on familiar appearances. Evil angels can appear as "familiar spirits" that adopt the images and traits of people the experiencer already knows.^15b

This is a sobering thought when you consider what we find in some NDEs. A warm figure that looks like a deceased grandmother. A being of light that feels like Jesus. The appearance may be genuine, or it may be a costume. The only way to tell is to compare the message to the Bible.

3. A Worked Example: Brian Melvin

The case of Brian Melvin is one of the most striking examples of what a hijacked NDE can look like. I first read about Melvin's experience in my dissertation research, and Tabatt tells the story in detail in The NDE Conspiracy.¹⁷

Melvin was an atheist who experienced clinical death. When he arrived on the other side, the scene looked wonderful. He found himself in what appeared to be heaven. Family members came out to greet him. This is not unusual in NDEs. We have seen in Chapter 15 that reunions with the dead are one of the most common features. The people who came to meet Melvin looked like his deceased relatives, and he was surprised and glad to see them.¹⁸

But something was slightly off. Melvin could not put his finger on it at first. The faces were familiar, but there was a wrongness beneath the surface. The welcome felt too smooth, too rehearsed. It looked right, but it did not feel right at some deep level he could not name.

Then came the moment that changed everything. Among the welcoming figures, Melvin saw his mother coming out to greet him. This shocked him, because his mother was still alive.¹⁹ A dead relative meeting you on the other side is a common NDE feature. A living relative meeting you there is something else entirely. It is a crack in the mask.

As Tabatt and Melvin both point out, think about what would have happened if Melvin had been revived at that point, before the deception fell apart. He would have come back believing he had been welcomed into heaven by his loved ones. He would have told his friends and family there was nothing to worry about. He was an atheist going to a warm and loving afterlife. No repentance needed. No Savior needed. The deception would have worked.²⁰

But the experience continued. By what I believe was the grace of God, the scene began to collapse. The warm veneer peeled away. And Melvin saw the true forms of the beings around him. They were not his relatives. They were demonic.²¹

I want to be careful here. I am not telling this story to frighten anyone. I am telling it because it is an important case study in discernment. Melvin's experience shows us that an NDE can start with warmth and beauty and carry a lie underneath. That is exactly what Paul warned about in 2 Corinthians 11. It is exactly what Jesus warned about in Matthew 24. The disguise looked perfect, until one detail gave it away.

4. A Worked Example: Betty Eadie

If the Melvin case shows what a dramatic hijacking looks like, the case of Betty Eadie shows something more subtle and, in some ways, more dangerous. Eadie's 1992 bestseller Embraced by the Light told the story of her near-death experience in deeply moving language. The book sold millions of copies and introduced countless readers to the world of NDEs.²²

Much of what Eadie described sounds like a genuine NDE. She reported leaving her body. She described meeting a being of light whom she identified as Jesus. She felt a love more powerful than anything in her earthly life. "I knew that he was my Savior, and friend, and God," she wrote. "He was Jesus Christ, who had always loved me."²³

There is no reason to doubt that Eadie had a real spiritual experience. But what she brought back with it raises serious problems for anyone who takes the Bible seriously.

According to Eadie, the "Jesus" she met gave her detailed teachings on a wide range of subjects. He told her that "His mission was to come into the world to teach love." He told her that "We have no right to criticize any church or religion in any way." And he told her about pre-mortal existence, teaching that all people existed as spirits before birth and even took part in creating the earth.²⁴

There is more. Eadie wrote that during her experience she understood that "Jesus was a separate being from God, with his own divine purpose." She said she "knew that God was our mutual Father." Her "Protestant upbringing had taught me that God the Father and Jesus Christ were one being," she wrote, "but that she now saw otherwise."^24b This directly contradicts the Christian doctrine of the Trinity, confessed by the church since the Council of Nicaea in 325 AD. The Bible teaches that the Father and the Son are one (John 10:30).

Let me be plain. The teaching that humans existed as spirits before birth is not found in the Bible. It is a doctrine of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and Eadie was raised in that tradition.²⁵ The claim that no church or religion may be questioned contradicts the Bible's own command to test all things (1 Thessalonians 5:21). And the idea that Christ's mission was only to teach love, while beautiful on the surface, leaves out the cross, the resurrection, and the call to repentance that Jesus himself preached.²⁶

As cardiologist and NDE researcher Michael Sabom pointed out, the teachings that Eadie's "Jesus" gave her directly contradict Scripture. And the biblical Christ never contradicted Scripture.²⁷ Sabom studied Eadie's account alongside the similar NDE of George Ritchie, who also met a "Jesus" figure that gave him messages at odds with the Bible. According to Sabom, Ritchie's "Jesus" told him that the Christian belief that humanity is sinful and fallen was an error. The being reportedly said that "we also have to be gods and not lowly worms."^27b

Sabom concluded that whatever these beings were, they were not the Jesus of the Bible. He wrote that these may well have been "evil angels masquerading as Christ whose true identity is not recognized by the near-death experiencer's intuition, feelings, or powers of perception." The only reliable test, Sabom argued, is to compare what the being teaches to what the Bible says.^27c

Paul warned the Galatians: "But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach a gospel other than the one we preached to you, let him be eternally condemned!" (Galatians 1:8).²⁸ That warning was not written in a vacuum. Paul knew that spiritual beings could deliver messages that sounded good but led people astray.

Sabom raised another important point. NDE researcher Kenneth Ring noted that some NDE "revelations" may not come from the experience itself at all. They may be visions or impressions that develop afterward.^28b Ritchie's own case is a good example. In his first book he described his NDE as ending when "Jesus" escorted him back to his body. Thirteen years later, in a second book, he added an entire "precognitive vision" about future disasters. The new material was absent from the first telling.

Eadie, too, admitted that "more experiences have come to me" since her NDE. This matters for discernment. If the theological content of an NDE story grows and changes over the years, we should be cautious about treating any of it as fixed revelation.

I want to say something important here. I have no desire to be harsh toward Betty Eadie. She clearly believed what she experienced. Millions of readers were touched by her book. But as J. Steve Miller noted in his careful review of the NDE literature, Eadie's account is one of the clearest examples of an experience that mixes genuine NDE features with teaching that is out of step with what the Bible says.²⁹ Our job as readers is not to attack the person. Our job is to weigh the message against the Word of God. That is what John told us to do.

5. The Marks of a Corrupted NDE

The cases of Melvin and Eadie give us two different patterns. In Melvin's case, the deception was dramatic: false beings wearing the faces of loved ones. In Eadie's case, the deception was quieter: a real-seeming encounter loaded with teachings that contradict the Bible. Both patterns show up in the broader NDE literature. From my research and from the work of scholars like Tabatt, Sabom, and Miller, I can identify several marks that should raise a red flag for any careful reader.³⁰

First, the message contradicts Scripture. This is the clearest warning sign. When an NDE teaches that sin does not exist, that all roads lead to God, that humans are divine, or that reincarnation is real, it is teaching things the Bible explicitly denies.³¹ In my doctoral research, about 21% of cases with enough theological content to score contained elements that contradicted Scripture. About 12% promoted reincarnation. About 20% of scored cases included ideas tied to occult practices.³²

Second, Jesus is absent or denied. In my data, about 20% of NDEs involve Jesus, while less than 1% involve any other named religious figure.³³ When an NDE features a vague "light" or "presence" that avoids any connection to the biblical Christ, or when a being of light actively teaches against the uniqueness of Jesus, that is a mark of concern. As we discussed in Chapter 13, not every being of light is Jesus.

Third, occult elements appear. When an NDE leads a person toward psychics, mediums, channeling, astrology, or contact with the dead, something has gone wrong. The Bible forbids these practices in the strongest terms (Deuteronomy 18:9–14; Isaiah 8:19–20).³⁴ Nearly one in five NDEs in my research showed some connection to psychics or mediums.³⁵ As Tabatt observed, NDE conferences have become places where psychics, mediums, past-life regression, and other unbiblical practices share the stage with genuine afterlife accounts. Many people are drawn into the NDE space after losing a loved one, desperate for reassurance that the person they lost is safe on the other side. Tabatt sees this as precisely why these occult practices have gained a foothold. The enemy uses people's grief as a doorway.^35b We will look at this more closely in the next chapter.

Fourth, the message teaches "you are god." Some NDEs include the claim that the person is divine, that there is no real difference between the human soul and God, or that the universe itself is God (a view called pantheism). One NDEr in the research literature described the light she saw as "an aggregation of many multitudes of immortal souls" and concluded that each soul "is part of God."³⁶ This is not what the Bible teaches. We are made in God's image (Genesis 1:26–27), but we are not God. The difference between the Creator and the creature is one of the deepest truths in Scripture.

Fifth, the NDE denies judgment. Some NDEs carry the message that nothing a person does is truly wrong, that there are no consequences for sin, and that everyone goes to the same place regardless of how they lived. As my dissertation research noted, any spiritual being that says there is no such thing as sin cannot be the God of the Bible.³⁷

6. Why This Does Not Mean All NDEs Are Demonic

I need to pause here and hold the balance. Some Christians, when they hear about demonic deception in the NDE world, react by throwing out every NDE altogether. I understand that impulse. It comes from a good place, from a desire to protect the authority of Scripture and to stay safe from error. But wholesale dismissal is its own kind of mistake. We will deal with it at length in Chapter 25, but let me say a few words here.

The data do not support the claim that all NDEs are demonic. In my doctoral research, I analyzed 5,278 near-death experiences. About 87% of the scholarly cases showed high or moderate compatibility with a biblical framework.³⁸ Most NDEs point toward the same things the Bible teaches: that God exists, that the soul lives on, that love is central, and that Jesus is a real and present figure in the next world. We built this case in Chapter 17.

To claim that all of these are demonic is to claim that Satan is actively promoting the reality of God, the lordship of Jesus, and the truth of the Bible. That does not fit his character or his strategy. Jesus himself pointed out that a house divided against itself cannot stand (Matthew 12:25–26).³⁹

Consider the numbers. In my dissertation, the cases that included an encounter with Jesus scored the highest on biblical compatibility. Cases with both Jesus and God present scored 76.3% as highly or moderately compatible. Cases with neither scored only 40.7%. The pattern is consistent. The more clearly Jesus is present and honored, the more the experience lines up with what the Bible says. That is not the fingerprint of demonic work. It is the fingerprint of something real.

Think of it this way. The fact that counterfeit money exists does not mean there is no real money. It means you need to learn to tell the difference. That is what we are doing in these chapters. Not running from the evidence. Not swallowing it whole. Learning to test.

7. How to Respond: Test, Do Not Fear

So what should a thoughtful Christian do with all of this?

The answer is not fear. God has not given us a spirit of fear, Paul writes, but of power and love and a sound mind (2 Timothy 1:7).⁴⁰ The answer is discernment. And discernment is a skill you can learn.

In Chapter 23 we will walk through a practical testing framework, step by step. It draws on the work of Tabatt, Miller, and other careful scholars, and it gives you a set of questions to ask of any NDE account. Does it contradict Scripture? Does it honor Jesus or push Him aside? What fruit has it produced in the person's life? These are the same kinds of questions the Bible teaches us to ask about any claimed spiritual experience.

But the foundation is simpler than any checklist. The foundation is this: God is stronger than the enemy. The Bible is a lamp that exposes what is hidden (Psalm 119:105). And the Holy Spirit guides believers into truth (John 16:13).⁴¹ A Christian who reads an NDE account with a Bible in one hand and a prayerful heart does not need to be afraid. She needs to be alert. And she needs to know what she is looking for.

D. What the Researchers and Scholars Say

Two voices stand out in the scholarly conversation about discernment and NDEs, and they come from slightly different angles. Together, they give us a balanced picture.

Shaun Tabatt is the anchor voice for the discernment case. Tabatt has worked in Christian publishing for over a decade and hosts a podcast that regularly engages NDE researchers and experiencers.⁴² His book The NDE Conspiracy is the most thorough treatment I have found of the question of demonic involvement in near-death experiences. Tabatt's core argument is that God intends NDEs for good, as a way to show people that He is real and that heaven and hell are real destinations. But Satan, doing what he has always done, tries to twist that gift toward deception.⁴³

Tabatt offers a nine-point framework for evaluating whether an NDE looks like a genuine near-death experience. He pairs it with six evaluation questions that help readers test the spiritual content. Does this fit with what the Bible teaches about the afterlife? Does it match historic Christian theology? Does this account point the reader to Jesus, or is it focused on making the experiencer famous?

He adds three more: Does it fit within a recognized NDE framework? Is there something about the account that provokes discomfort in your spirit? And what fruit do you see in the life of the experiencer?⁴⁴ These are not trick questions. They are the kind of questions the Bible teaches us to ask. We will return to Tabatt's framework in detail in Chapter 23.

The balancing voice is J. Steve Miller, whose careful research we have drawn on throughout this book. Miller agrees that discernment is needed. He agrees that some NDE accounts carry false teaching. In his study of the professional NDE literature, Miller found that the best research rarely opposes Christianity or its major doctrines.⁴⁵ The unbiblical elements tend to cluster in the popular, self-reported accounts, and especially in the interpretations that NDErs develop after their experiences, not in the core experiences themselves.

Miller was honest about where the critics have a point. He wrote that Eadie's popular book "demonstrates the need" for the concerns raised by MacArthur and Hanegraaff. Her account was "very much out of character from the accounts I read in the professional literature, which are overwhelmingly devoid of doctrinal teaching." What MacArthur saw in books like Eadie's was real. The problem was not the critique. The problem was applying it to every NDE without exception.^45b

Miller's conclusion is that we should "neither dismiss nor embrace all NDE reports. Rather, we must use discernment to evaluate each case."⁴⁶ This is exactly the position I hold. Test each one. Keep the gold. Set aside the dross. That is the careful middle between credulity and wholesale rejection.

Miller also made an observation I find very helpful. When churches reject NDErs and dismiss their experiences as demonic without a hearing, some of those experiencers drift toward unbiblical communities that welcome them. This is not an abstract worry.

P. M. H. Atwater, who has interviewed hundreds of NDErs, documented case after case. One nine-year-old boy was visited weekly by his family's minister, who told the child he would "rot in hell" if he did not publicly take back what he said about his experience. Others were disowned by their families or labeled as "witches" by their communities.^46b A better approach is to take the experience seriously, listen carefully, and then walk the person through what the Bible teaches. That keeps them in the fold instead of pushing them out of it.

Michael Sabom, the cardiologist whose work on veridical NDEs we looked at in earlier chapters, reaches a similar conclusion. After more than two decades of studying near-death experiences, Sabom wrote that the NDE is "a powerful spiritual experience" whose spiritual message must be measured against the Word of God. Without that measure, Sabom warned, "Satan and his demons are free to deceive."⁴⁷

Sabom made one point I want to highlight because it is so important. He observed that the accuracy of a veridical NDE does not, by itself, prove that the spiritual content is from God. A person can accurately describe a surgical room from above and still carry back a false message. Sabom wrote that "true 'signs and wonders' can also be used by Satan to accomplish his goals."⁵⁰ The evidence and the message must be weighed separately. A veridical observation proves that the soul left the body. It does not prove that whatever the soul met on the other side was telling the truth.

Sabom also pointed to Paul's warning to the Colossian believers: "Let no one keep defrauding you of your prize by delighting in self-abasement and the worship of the angels, taking his stand on visions he has seen" (Colossians 2:18). The prize, Sabom noted, is not a return to physical life. The prize is eternal life with God. That prize comes not from standing on any vision but from holding fast to Christ.^47b

E. Meeting the Objections

This chapter makes a case that some Christians find uncomfortable and that some NDE enthusiasts find offensive. Let me address the strongest objections honestly.

Objection 1: This is paranoid fear-mongering. I hear this one often, and I take it seriously. Nobody wants to be the person who sees a demon behind every tree. But there is a difference between fear-mongering and honest warning. I am not asking anyone to be afraid. I am asking people to be alert. That is what the Bible asks. Paul did not write 2 Corinthians 11:14 to scare people. He wrote it to prepare them. The tone of this chapter is calm and careful because the truth can be stated calmly. Danger announced quietly is still danger.⁴⁸

Objection 2: If some NDEs are demonic, then we cannot trust any of them. We addressed this above. The logic does not hold. Every arena of life contains both the genuine and the counterfeit. We do not stop trusting all witnesses because some witnesses lie. We learn to evaluate testimony. The Bible's instruction is clear: "Test everything; hold fast what is good" (1 Thessalonians 5:21).⁴⁹ That verse says "test," not "reject." It says "hold fast what is good," which means some things are good and worth keeping.

Objection 3: Demons cannot produce experiences that look and feel loving. This objection sounds strongest but falls apart fastest. Paul says outright that Satan disguises himself as light (2 Corinthians 11:14). Jesus says false prophets can perform "great signs and wonders" (Matthew 24:24). If love and warmth were proof against deception, then deception would be impossible. The Bible would not need to warn us about it. The entire point of a disguise is that it looks like the real thing.⁵⁰

Objection 4: Who are you to judge another person’s sacred experience? I am not judging the person. I am weighing the message. That is not arrogance; it is obedience. The Bible commands it. John said to test the spirits (1 John 4:1). Paul said to test everything (1 Thessalonians 5:21). Isaiah said to go "to the teaching and to the testimony" (Isaiah 8:20).

A message does not become true because the person who received it was sincere. Sincerity is no shield against being misled. Saying "that message contradicts the Bible" is not the same as saying "you are a bad person." We can honor the person and still question the teaching.⁵¹

F. What This Means for Us

Let me bring this home. If you have been reading this book from the beginning, you know that I believe the NDE evidence is real, important, and largely compatible with the Bible. I have spent years studying these experiences, and I am more convinced than ever that the soul survives death and that the dying often genuinely glimpse the next world. Nothing in this chapter changes that.

But everything in this chapter adds a layer of care. We do not read NDE accounts the way we read the Bible. We read them the way we listen to any human report of a spiritual experience: with an open mind, a warm heart, and a Bible in our hands. Some of those reports will confirm what Scripture teaches, and that is a gift. Some of them will carry false teaching wrapped in beautiful language, and we need to see it for what it is.

The woman at the Bible study from the start of this chapter does not need to choose between believing all NDEs and believing none of them. She has a third option. She can learn to test. She can hold each account up to the light of God's Word. She can keep what is good and set aside what is not. That is not suspicion. That is wisdom.

I have sat with people who were shaken after reading an NDE that carried false teaching. They felt cheated. They felt confused. Some of them started to wonder whether the whole NDE field was a trap. I want to say to those people what I would say to the woman at the Bible study: the existence of the counterfeit does not destroy the real. It proves the real. No one counterfeits something worthless. The fact that the enemy bothers to twist NDEs tells you something: the genuine ones matter enough to be worth twisting.

And behind all of it stands a God who is far stronger than the enemy. The Bible says that the One who is in us is greater than the one who is in the world (1 John 4:4).⁵² Satan can disguise himself, but he cannot overpower the truth. He can twist a message, but he cannot undo the cross. He can hijack an experience, but he cannot hijack the soul that belongs to Christ.

So do not be afraid. Be alert. Be wise. And take your questions to the Word. In the next chapter, we will look more closely at the difference between a real experience and a false lesson drawn from it. And in Chapter 23, we will put the whole testing framework in your hands.