Chapter 23

NDEs, Postmortem Opportunity, and the Question of Universalism

I want to begin with a confession: this is the topic in this book that has cost me the most sleep. The questions we are about to wrestle with — Who is ultimately saved? Does God give people a chance to respond to the gospel after death? Will everyone eventually accept that offer? — are among the most contested in all of Christian theology. Sincere, Bible-loving Christians have landed in different places on these issues for two thousand years. I will not pretend to settle the matter in a single chapter. What I want to do is more modest: show that the data from near-death experiences is consistent with — though it does not prove — a view with significant biblical support, namely, that God provides opportunity for salvation even at and beyond the threshold of death.

The thesis is straightforward. NDEs do not teach universalism. They do not establish that everyone, no matter what they believed or how they lived, ends up safely in heaven. But they are powerfully consistent with the idea that God is actively reaching out to people right up to (and possibly beyond) the moment of physical death. The prominence of Jesus in NDE reports — including encounters reported by atheists, Muslims, Buddhists, and people who had walked away from the faith — fits naturally with what we might call the postmortem opportunity view: the conviction that God's love does not give up the second a person's heart stops.

What Some NDErs Actually Report

Let's begin with the data, because critics of NDEs often raise this concern first. Some near-death experiencers come back saying things like, "I was told that everyone goes to heaven." "I learned that religion doesn't matter." "There is no hell." "All paths lead to God." These reports are real. They show up in the literature. And they are part of why some Christian critics dismiss NDEs wholesale as promoters of a feel-good universalism that contradicts the Bible.¹

I do not want to minimize this concern. If NDEs were systematically teaching that Jesus is irrelevant and judgment is a fiction, that would be a serious problem for any Christian engagement with this evidence. But here is the first thing to notice: such reports, while they exist, are far less common than the popular impression suggests. Steve Miller, who has read more NDE accounts than almost anyone, observes that NDErs proclaiming "everyone is headed for heaven" are "so rare as to be anomalous" within the broader literature.² The vast majority of NDErs do not return as universalist preachers.

Sabom's Atlanta Study confirms this empirically. He carefully tracked the religious aftereffects of NDEs in his cardiac patients. His finding? "A belief in reincarnation and in Eastern, universalist religion is not a direct aftereffect of the near-death experience."³ If anything, his patients moved toward more conservative Christian belief, not away from it. Of the four NDErs in his study who changed their doctrinal commitments, every single one moved toward a more conservative Christian position.⁴ That is not what we would expect if NDEs were systematically teaching universalism.

So the first move is to get the data right. Universalist messages exist, but they are the exception. With that in mind, what should we make of the cases where they do appear?

Layer One: Distinguishing Experience from Interpretation

Here is one of the most important distinctions in the entire book — a distinction we will explore at length in Chapter 26 but need to introduce briefly here. The NDEr's experience and the NDEr's interpretation of that experience are two different things.

Imagine an NDEr bathed in overwhelming, unconditional love — love more real than her own body, more real than her family. Now imagine she comes back saying, "I learned that everyone goes to heaven." Did the divine being actually say those words? Or did she experience love so profound that she concluded, by her own theological reasoning, that no God who loves like this could ever judge anyone? In many cases, when researchers carefully probe these reports, the universalist conclusion turns out to be the experiencer's own inference — not a quoted message.⁵

This matters enormously. The experience may have been completely genuine. The love may have been real. The being of light may have been who they believed Him to be. But the theological conclusion drawn from that experience is the NDEr's own work — and it can be wrong. As Miller puts it, NDErs do not come back as "seasoned theologians."⁶ They come back stunned, transformed, and trying to make sense of what happened — using whatever theological tools they brought with them.

So when an NDEr says, "I learned that everyone is loved," I take that seriously. When the same NDEr says, "Therefore, no one ever faces judgment," I gently note that the second claim does not necessarily follow from the first.

Layer Two: NDEs Are Not the Final Destination

The second layer builds on a point I have made elsewhere but that needs stating again. An NDE is not the person's final death. The NDEr is being sent back. They are returning to earthly life, often with years or decades still ahead of them. Whatever they experience on the other side, they experience as a temporary visitor, not a permanent resident.

This is hugely significant. The Bible teaches a final judgment that takes place after the return of Christ (Matthew 25:31-46; Revelation 20:11-15). That is the moment of definitive reckoning. NDErs are not present at that judgment. They are getting a glimpse — a real, life-changing glimpse — of the intermediate realm. But the love they encounter, the welcome they receive, the gentleness of the divine being toward them — none of these things prove that final judgment will never come. They only prove what we should already know from the Gospels: that God is patient, kind, and "not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance" (2 Peter 3:9).

An analogy helps. Imagine your child is dragged from a near-fatal car accident and rushed to the emergency room. Do you immediately scold them about reckless driving? Of course not. You weep, you hold them, you tell them you love them. The conversation about choices comes later. NDEs, I would suggest, are the ICU embrace, not the eventual conversation. Jesus' love toward NDErs is exactly what we would expect from the Jesus of the Gospels — the friend of sinners, the one who runs to embrace the prodigal before any confession is made (Luke 15:20).⁷

Layer Three: The Biblical Case for Postmortem Opportunity

Here we come to the heart of the chapter. My own position — held tentatively but seriously — is that Scripture itself opens the door to the possibility that God provides opportunity for salvation even after death, with the last possible moment for response being at or during the final judgment. I want to walk through the key passages.

1 Peter 4:6 — The Gospel Preached to the Dead

Peter writes: "For this is why the gospel was preached even to those who are dead, that though judged in the flesh the way people are, they might live in the spirit the way God does" (1 Peter 4:6, ESV). The Greek phrase translated "to those who are dead" is nekrois (νεκροῖς) — a plain, ordinary word for the deceased. The verb "was preached" is euēngelisthē (εὐηγγελίσθη), the standard New Testament term for evangelism. The text says, in the most natural reading, that the gospel was preached to dead people.

Some commentators try to soften this. They argue Peter means the gospel was preached to people who heard it while alive but are now dead. But this strains the grammar. The participle structure naturally reads "those who are dead [now]" — the people receiving the preaching are dead at the time of preaching, not the time of writing. And here is the key question: why preach the gospel to anyone if there is no possibility of response? Preaching by definition aims at response. Peter is telling his readers that God's outreach extends even into the realm of the dead.

This passage stands in close connection with 1 Peter 3:18-20, where Peter describes Christ "proclaiming" (the verb is ekēryxen, ἐκήρυξεν) to "the spirits in prison." That passage is treated in detail in Chapter 19, but its bearing here is clear: between His death and resurrection, Christ Himself entered the realm of the dead and proclaimed something. The picture in both passages is of a Savior whose reach extends past the grave.⁸

John 5:28-29 — All Who Are in the Tombs Will Hear His Voice

Jesus says: "Do not marvel at this, for an hour is coming when all who are in the tombs will hear his voice and come out, those who have done good to the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil to the resurrection of judgment" (John 5:28-29). Notice the word "all" — Greek pantes (πάντες). All who are in the tombs will hear His voice. Not just believers. Not just those who heard the gospel during their earthly lives. All.

What does it mean to "hear His voice"? Throughout John's Gospel, hearing Christ's voice is closely connected to the possibility of life. "Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life" (John 5:24). "My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life" (John 10:27-28). At the resurrection, every human being will hear Christ's voice. This does not by itself establish postmortem opportunity, but it strongly suggests that no one stands before the final judgment without having genuinely heard the voice of the One judging them.

Matthew 25:31-46 — The Sheep, the Goats, and the Surprise of the Saved

Jesus' parable of the sheep and the goats has always struck me as one of the most theologically rich passages in the New Testament. The Son of Man returns in glory and gathers all the nations before Him. He separates them — sheep on the right, goats on the left. The sheep are welcomed into the kingdom; the goats are sent away. So far this looks like a standard judgment scene.

But notice what happens next. Both groups are surprised. The righteous ask, "Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you drink?" (Matthew 25:37). They didn't know they were serving Christ. They were simply caring for their neighbors. And the King's response is striking: "As you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me" (Matthew 25:40). They are welcomed into the kingdom on the basis of love expressed in concrete acts of mercy — without explicit recognition that they were serving Jesus.

I am not suggesting that Matthew 25 teaches salvation by works. I do not believe it does. But the parable sits uncomfortably with the strict claim that no one can be saved without explicit, conscious knowledge of the gospel. The "least of these" includes people who never preached, but who lived lives of compassion that, on the day of judgment, are recognized as service rendered to the King.

Miller's Parallel Argument

Miller adds a powerful theological argument that I find compelling. He observes that two categories of people are widely affirmed by Christians as saved without having heard the gospel in the standard way: Old Testament saints, who lived before the cross, and infants who die before the so-called "age of accountability."⁹ Both groups had no opportunity to consciously place faith in the historical Jesus, the cross, or the resurrection. Yet most Christian traditions affirm that they are saved by grace, with the merit of Christ's atonement applied to them.

If we grant these special cases, we have already conceded the principle that God can apply Christ's atoning work to people who never had a fair hearing of the gospel. Why should the same principle not extend to others — say, the unreached tribesperson in a remote jungle, or the woman raised in a closed Muslim country who only heard distortions of who Jesus is, or the modern atheist whose only exposure to Christianity came through abusive family members? If God is capable of saving Old Testament saints and infants without an explicit gospel hearing, He is at least capable of doing the same for others. Miller writes, "if we must receive Jesus' forgiveness, this would seem to commit Him to giving everyone a fair chance to ask for forgiveness of sins."¹⁰

This is exactly where NDEs become relevant. If God is committed to giving everyone a fair chance, then we might expect Him sometimes to break in personally — through visions, dreams, or near-death encounters — to reach people whom the normal channels have failed to reach. The remarkable prevalence of Jesus in the NDEs of non-Christians, including Muslims and atheists, fits this hypothesis to a T.¹¹

Layer Four: NDEs Fit the Postmortem Opportunity Hypothesis

Step back and look at the overall pattern. We see Jesus appearing to atheists, Muslims, Hindus, lapsed Christians, and people in active rebellion against God. We see Him appearing without condemnation, radiating love, sometimes asking the experiencer to choose. We see some NDErs who, in the course of the experience, call out to God or Jesus and are rescued from a distressing realm into a glorious one.¹² What hypothesis best explains this pattern?

One option says all of this is demonic deception — but that runs aground on the spiritual fruit. NDErs return praying more, reading Scripture more, attending church more, and showing greater compassion toward others.¹³ Another option says God is being inconsistent — loving here, harsh elsewhere — but that contradicts the unity of the divine character. The hypothesis that fits the data most naturally is that God really is reaching out to people at the threshold of death, exactly as we might expect from the God of John 3:16 and 2 Peter 3:9.

This does not mean every NDEr is automatically saved. The opportunity is not the response. But it does mean NDEs are not a theological problem for those of us who hold to postmortem opportunity. They are exactly what we would expect.

Layer Five: Why I Stop Short of Universalism

Why do I stop short of full universalism, even given the loving God we encounter in NDEs? Several reasons.

First, the New Testament treats final judgment with seriousness. The parable of the sheep and the goats ends with two very different destinies (Matthew 25:46). The book of Revelation describes a lake of fire from which there is no return (Revelation 20:14-15). I do not think these passages are merely metaphorical scare tactics. They warn us that the consequences of refusing God's offer are real.

Second, human freedom matters. If God's love is genuinely a gift, then it must be possible to refuse it. C. S. Lewis put this memorably: in the end, there are only two kinds of people — those who say to God, "Thy will be done," and those to whom God says, "Thy will be done." The doors of hell, Lewis wrote, are "locked from the inside."¹⁴ Universalism, in its stronger forms, struggles to honor this dimension of human freedom.

Third — and this is where conditional immortality enters — I do not believe Scripture teaches that God will eternally torment those who, after every reasonable opportunity, finally reject Him. The biblical language of "destruction" (apōleia, ἀπώλεια) and being "consumed" suggests, at least to my reading, that the final fate of the irreversibly impenitent is annihilation, not unending torment. NDE evidence does not directly settle this either, but it does support the broader picture of a God whose primary disposition is love and rescue, not eternal retribution.

So I land here: God's outreach is wider than many of my evangelical brothers and sisters have allowed. But His love does not coerce. Some, perhaps, will refuse to the end. NDEs show us a God of overwhelming love reaching out — but they do not prove that everyone, in the end, will accept that outstretched hand.

Answering the Romans 10:14 Objection

The most common objection to postmortem opportunity is built on Romans 10:14: "How then will they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching?" Critics argue this passage establishes an absolute rule: no one can be saved unless they hear the gospel preached by a human evangelist during their earthly life.

I think this misreads Paul. In context, Paul is making a passionate case for missionary preaching. He is exhorting the church to send preachers because preaching is God's ordinary means of bringing people to faith. He is describing the normal, expected, divinely-blessed pattern. He is not laying down a metaphysical limit on what God can do.

Consider the analogy. If I say, "How will the patient get well unless the doctor prescribes medicine? And how will the doctor prescribe unless he is sent to the bedside?" — I am making a strong case for sending doctors. I am not declaring that God Himself, the Great Physician, is incapable of healing without a human intermediary. Likewise, Paul's stress on preaching does not preclude God breaking in directly when normal channels fail.

And here is the killer point: God Himself broke this "rule" in the very pages of the New Testament. He preached the gospel to Saul of Tarsus on the Damascus Road without a human preacher present (Acts 9:1-9). Saul was not handed a tract; he was handed a vision of the risen Christ. If God has done this once, He can do it again — and the NDE literature suggests He may be doing it more often than we knew.¹⁵

A Pastoral Word

I want to close with something more pastoral than scholarly. The God we meet in NDEs is, by the consistent testimony of millions, a God of staggering love — love that pursues, love that runs to embrace, love that does not give up. This is the same God Jesus revealed in His earthly ministry. It is the same God who in the parable of the prodigal son sat at the gate watching for the return of his wayward boy.

If you have ever lost a loved one outside the visible bounds of the Christian faith — a parent, a sibling, a child — and have lain awake wondering whether God could possibly have reached them, I want you to know this: the question is not closed. Scripture leaves room for hope. NDEs are at the very least consistent with the picture of a God whose pursuit does not end at physical death. I cannot tell you what happened in any specific case. But I can say, with confidence rooted in both Scripture and the evidence we have surveyed, that God's love is wider, deeper, and more relentless than many sermons have suggested.

And if there is real opportunity at and beyond the threshold of death, the appropriate response is not complacency but awe — and renewed urgency to share the good news now, where the channels of grace are clearer. Postmortem opportunity is no excuse for evangelistic apathy. It is a glimpse of how seriously God Himself takes the salvation of every soul. If God is willing to chase people that hard, surely we, His people, can speak up over coffee.