Chapter 12

The Being of Light — Encountering the Divine in NDEs

Imagine for a moment that you are a doctor watching your patient flatline. The monitors go silent. The heart has stopped. You begin CPR. Meanwhile, somewhere just beyond your reach, that patient is having the most vivid experience of their entire life. They will later tell you they met a being made of light — light brighter than any sun they have ever seen, yet not painful to look at. The light, they say, was not just light. It was alive. It loved them. It knew everything about them. And when they wake up, they insist that no earthly experience even comes close.

Of all the parts of NDE research, this is the part I find most theologically interesting. Why? Because if these patients are really meeting God, then near-death experiences are not just evidence that consciousness can survive death. They are evidence for the existence and character of the God of the Bible. And that is an enormous claim.

So in this chapter I want to walk us through what NDErs actually report when they meet what most call "the being of light." Then I'll share what Dr. Jeffrey Long discovered when he studied this question more carefully than anyone before him. After that, we'll compare these reports with what the Bible actually teaches about God. And finally, we'll think honestly about when we can identify this being as God — and when we should slow down and be more careful.

What NDErs Report: Six Common Features

When you read enough NDE accounts, you start to notice something striking. The descriptions of the being of light, no matter what country or religion the person comes from, share six features again and again. Let me walk through each one.

(a) The light itself

NDErs do not describe a normal light. They describe a light "brighter than a thousand suns" — and yet a light they could look at directly without being blinded. It does not burn. It does not hurt. Many NDErs say the light is not just something they saw. The light was the being. The light is alive. The light has a personality. One man told NDE researcher Dr. Maurice Rawlings that the light was "more brilliant than the sun, more radiant than any diamond, brighter than a laser beam. Yet you could look right into it."¹ Dr. Mary Neal, a spinal surgeon who had her own NDE, described the figures she met as "radiating a brilliance that was indescribable . . . a brilliance of light — just exploding in it, and the light was not just something you would see. . . . This was really a light born out of love."²

(b) Unconditional love

Of all the qualities NDErs report, love is the most consistent. And it is not the watered-down kind of love we sometimes use the word for in English. NDErs describe a love that is total, complete, all-encompassing, and personal. They tell us this love is not earned. It is not conditional. The being of light loves them simply because that is who the being is. One NDEr told Long, "No human can ever love with the love I felt in that light. It is all-consuming, all-forgiving. Nothing matches it."³

NDErs frequently weep when they try to talk about this love. Why? Because no language we have is big enough to carry it. Many of them say that everything good they have ever known about love on earth is just a faint shadow of what they felt in those few minutes. That should give us pause.

(c) Total knowledge

The being of light is regularly described as knowing absolutely everything about the experiencer — every thought, every secret, every shameful memory, and every kind action no one ever saw. By itself, that should be terrifying. But it usually isn't. Why not? Because the being's complete knowledge is held inside its complete love. The being knows the worst about you, and loves you completely anyway. That combination — perfect knowledge held within perfect love — is unique to the biblical God, as we'll see in a moment.

(d) A personal Being, not a force

This one is critical. The being of light is not described as a force, an energy, a vibration, or some kind of universal cosmic consciousness. It is described as a person. It has a will. It speaks. It listens. It asks questions. It makes choices. It tells people they have to go back. It tells them they have more to do. This person-ness is one of the strongest pieces of evidence in the entire NDE literature, because it means the being cannot easily be reduced to the impersonal Brahman of Hinduism, the impersonal Tao of Taoism, or the "universal consciousness" of New Age thought.⁴

(e) Communication

Communication usually happens telepathically. Thoughts pass directly between the NDEr and the being, with perfect clarity, and with no chance of misunderstanding. Some NDErs also report verbal communication. Others report both at once. Either way, the communication is two-way, warm, and conversational — not a vague, mystical merging.

(f) Joy and warmth

This last feature surprised me when I first read about it. Some NDErs report that the being of light has a sense of humor. Not a sarcastic humor, but a gentle, joyful, warm one. We don't talk about that very often in church. But it actually fits the Bible. Zephaniah 3:17 says God "will rejoice over you with gladness; he will quiet you by his love; he will exult over you with loud singing." Luke 15:7 says there is joy in heaven over a single sinner who repents. The God of Scripture is a happy God. And NDErs sometimes meet a happy Being of Light.

Long's God Study: The Largest Investigation Ever Done

Now let's talk about what is probably the most careful study of God in NDEs ever conducted. Dr. Jeffrey Long is a radiation oncologist and the founder of the Near Death Experience Research Foundation, known as NDERF. Between November 2011 and November 2014, NDERF received NDE accounts from people all over the world. Long decided to investigate one specific question: how often do NDErs encounter God?⁵

He set the study up very carefully. To avoid bias, he did not pick and choose which NDEs to include. He went sequentially, in order. No NDE was excluded because of its content. This matters. Critics often complain that researchers cherry-pick the cases that support their conclusions. Long made that impossible. As he puts it himself, the findings "are not an artificial result arrived at by including only selected NDEs that 'fit the pattern' and excluding NDEs that 'don't fit the pattern.'"⁶

420 NDEs met all the criteria. Long then asked the experiencers a careful question: "During your experience, did you encounter any specific information/awareness that God or a supreme being either does (or does not) exist?" Notice that wording. He gave them the option to say their NDE proved God did not exist. He genuinely wanted to know if any NDErs came back as confirmed atheists.

Here is what Long found. Of the 420 NDErs:

• 191 (45.5%) said yes, they encountered information that God exists
• 62 (14.8%) said they were uncertain
• 167 (39.8%) said no

And of the rest? Virtually none — practically zero — reported encountering information that God does not exist.⁷

Long was shocked. He writes, "When I first realized that over 40 percent of near-death experiencers were aware of the existence of God or a supreme being during their NDE, I was shocked. This was an extraordinary finding!" He notes that this is more common than the famous tunnel experience. More common than meeting deceased loved ones. More common than the life review. In other words, awareness of God is the single most common element of NDEs in his data.⁸

But there's more. Long also asked NDErs about their belief in God before and after their experience. Before the NDE, 39% of NDErs believed "God definitely exists." After the NDE — many years later, when they shared their experience — 72.6% believed "God definitely exists." That's an 86% increase. As Long writes, "I can't think of any specific life event other than an NDE that is associated with such an increased belief in God."⁹

And one more finding. NDErs were asked, on average twenty-two years after their experience, "What do you believe about the reality of your experience at the current time?" 96.2% said their experience was "definitely real."¹⁰ These are not people who shrugged off the experience after a while. Two decades later, they still insist it was the most real thing that ever happened to them.

Long concludes: "The evidence from the God Study is remarkable. It presents an incredible consistency among NDErs who experience God, heavenly realms, spiritual beings, and other mystical encounters."¹¹ He also notes that skeptics have proposed over twenty different naturalistic explanations for NDEs — and the very fact that there are so many different explanations suggests none of them is convincing.¹²

How These Reports Compare to the God of the Bible

Here is where things get really interesting. Compare those six features of the being of light with how the Bible describes God. The match is striking.

"God is light, and in him is no darkness at all" (1 John 1:5). When NDErs say the being is light, they are describing exactly what the apostle John wrote almost 2,000 years ago. This is not a metaphor in NDE accounts. The being is literally luminous, and the light flows out from the being like the heat from a fire flows out from the fire.

The Bible repeatedly shows God's glory as overwhelming light. Moses saw God in the burning bush (Exodus 3). After being on Mount Sinai, his face shone so brightly that the people couldn't look at him (Exodus 34:29). Paul met the risen Christ on the road to Damascus, "a light from heaven, brighter than the sun" (Acts 26:13). John saw the glorified Jesus in Revelation: "his face was like the sun shining in full strength" (Revelation 1:16). And the new Jerusalem in Revelation 21:23 needs no sun, "for the glory of God gives it light, and its lamp is the Lamb." Light is one of the Bible's most consistent descriptions of God's presence.

"God is love" (1 John 4:8, 16). The overwhelming, unconditional love NDErs report at the center of their encounter matches the Bible's most basic claim about God's nature. We don't have to argue about what is most central to the biblical God. He told us. Love.

God knows everything about us. Psalm 139:1–2 says, "O LORD, you have searched me and known me! You know when I sit down and when I rise up; you discern my thoughts from afar." Hebrews 4:13 says, "And no creature is hidden from his sight, but all are naked and exposed to the eyes of him to whom we must give account." The Greek word translated "exposed" is tetrachēlismena (τετραχηλισμένα), which carries the image of a sacrificial animal with its neck pulled back so nothing can be hidden. That total knowledge — held inside total love — is what NDErs describe again and again. There is no other major religion or philosophy where that combination is the central teaching.

God is personal. The God of the Bible speaks. He grieves. He rejoices. He listens. He decides. He calls people by name. He sends them on missions. He brings them home. The being of light in NDEs is described in exactly the same way. By contrast, the impersonal Absolute of Hinduism, the impersonal Tao of Eastern religions, and the "universal consciousness" of New Age thought do not match the NDE reports at all.¹³

I want to be honest about something here. The fit between NDE reports of the being of light and biblical descriptions of God is not perfect, and I'm not claiming that it is. NDErs sometimes describe things — like a feeling of being one with everything, or a sense that all souls are essentially the same — that I think reflects more about the experiencer's interpretation than what was actually there. (I'll explore that distinction much more carefully in Chapter 26.) But the overall fit between the being of light and the biblical God is much closer than the fit with any other major religious or philosophical system in the world. That ought to grab our attention.

When Should We Be Cautious?

Before we get too excited and assume every encounter with light in an NDE is a meeting with God, I want us to slow down. Not every luminous being in an NDE is necessarily God. The Bible itself warns us about this.

Paul writes, "And no wonder, for even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light" (2 Corinthians 11:14). And in Galatians 1:8 he writes, "But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one we preached to you, let him be accursed." (I'll discuss those passages and the broader question of demonic deception in much more detail in Chapter 25.)

So how do we tell the difference? When can we have good reason to believe that someone has met God? And when should we be more cautious? Here is how I think about it.

Reasons to identify the being of light with the biblical God:

• The being's character matches the biblical God — holy, loving, just, merciful, truthful, personal.
• The message lines up with Scripture. Anything that points the experiencer toward repentance, faith in Christ, love of neighbor, and gratitude for life is consistent with the biblical God.
• The encounter produces good fruit (Matthew 7:15–20). The NDEr comes back changed — humbler, kinder, more loving, less afraid of death, more devoted to God.
• The being identifies itself in a way consistent with biblical revelation. (Many NDErs explicitly say they encountered Jesus — the topic of our next chapter.)

Reasons to slow down:

• The being is vague and refuses to name itself. Shaun Tabatt — a Christian NDE researcher — puts the concern this way: he is "always nervous about NDE accounts where beings, especially those that the experiencer believes to be God," are "vague and nondescript. If the being claiming to be God in the experience isn't readily identifying itself, I find it suspect."¹⁴
• The being teaches things that contradict Scripture: that all religions are equal, that there is no judgment, that the experiencer has lived previous lives.
• The fruit of the experience is theological confusion or moral decline rather than humility, repentance, and love.

I think Tabatt's concern is wise. The God of the Bible is not vague. He is constantly making Himself known, constantly identifying Himself by name, constantly speaking. As Tabatt observes, "the God of the Bible is very intent on revealing Himself to all of humanity. These afterlife encounters where 'God' is veiled and vague seem out of place and out of character, which makes me wonder who or what is behind them."¹⁵ A "blob of light" that loves you but never tells you its name is, at best, ambiguous. At worst, it could be exactly what 2 Corinthians 11:14 warns about. Discernment is required.

Pulling It All Together

So what should we make of all this? Let me be plain about where I land. When I survey the data — Long's God Study, Miller's research, Burke's interviews, Sabom's careful documentation¹⁶ — I cannot read these reports without being struck by how closely they match the Bible's portrait of God. A being of overwhelming light. A being of unconditional love. A being who knows everything about you and loves you anyway. A personal, communicating being who sends people back changed. A being whose presence transforms believers and turns lifelong skeptics into worshippers.

That is the God I find on every page of the Bible. That is the God who appeared to Moses in fire, to Isaiah on the throne, to Paul on the Damascus road, and to John on the island of Patmos.¹⁷ That is the God who, in Christ, met the dying thief on the cross and promised, "Today you will be with me in Paradise" (Luke 23:43).¹⁸

Now, NDEs do not give us new revelation. They are not adding to Scripture. The Bible remains our final standard, and we evaluate everything else by it. But what NDEs do — when they are evaluated carefully — is provide powerful confirming evidence. The God of the philosophers and the God of Eastern mysticism do not show up in these accounts. The biblical God does. Again and again. Across cultures, across faiths, across centuries.

In the next chapter we will look at one of the most surprising findings in this whole field: how often NDErs from many different backgrounds specifically identify the being of light not just as a generic God, but as Jesus Christ. For now, though, let me leave you sitting for a moment with Long's conclusion: "The evidence from the God Study is remarkable."¹⁹

Yes. It is. And I believe it should encourage every Christian to look up — not down — when we think about death. The God who created us, who loves us, who watches over us in life, is the same God so many of these dying patients say is waiting for us at the threshold.