Chapter 8
What It May Mean for the Family
The hospice room had been still for hours. James, a man in his late forties, sat in the same vinyl chair he had been pulling closer to his mother's bed for three days. She had not opened her eyes since Tuesday. The nurses said it would not be long now. He held her hand and watched her breathe — the slow, uneven breathing he had come to recognize.
Then his mother opened her eyes.
She did not look at him. She looked past him, toward the corner of the room near the window. Her face — drawn and gray for weeks — softened into a smile he had not seen in months. "Oh," she said, very clearly. "You came."
James turned. The corner was empty.
"Mama?" he said.
She kept her eyes fixed on the corner. "Mama," she whispered — not to him, but to the empty space. James felt the hair stand up on the back of his neck. His grandmother had been dead for thirty-one years. He had never met her. His mother had spoken of her every Sunday after church for as long as he could remember.
"I'm ready," his mother said. Her voice was steady. Tired, but steady.
Within the hour, she was gone.
James sat in the parking garage for a long time afterward, his hands on the steering wheel, not moving. He did not cry yet. He could not yet. He kept replaying the moment — her face, the empty corner, the words. What did I just witness? he thought. Was it real? Was it the morphine? Did Mama really see her mother? And if she did — what does that mean?
Chapter Thesis: When a dying loved one reports seeing a deceased relative come to greet them — Mom, Dad, a sibling, a long-gone grandparent — the family's first instinct is often confusion or fear. But these visions, well-documented in careful clinical research and consistent with biblical teaching, can be received as a real comfort. They are a sign that the dying are not alone, that God is meeting them, and that those who have gone before may be part of how God meets us at the end. This chapter helps you understand what your family member likely witnessed — and what it may have meant.
What James saw is not strange. It is, in fact, one of the most common patterns reported around the bedsides of the dying — and one of the least talked about in our churches.
The pattern usually looks something like this. A loved one has been quiet, perhaps for hours, perhaps for days. Then, often without warning, they become alert. Their eyes open. They look toward a part of the room where no one is standing — a corner, a doorway, sometimes the foot of the bed. They smile. They sometimes speak, and what they say is almost always a name: Mama. Daddy. Bill. Margaret. The name belongs to someone who died years or even decades earlier. Sometimes there is a brief conversation, half of which we cannot hear. Sometimes there is only a sentence: "You came." "I'm ready." "It's time." Sometimes there is a smile, a sigh, a settling — and then the breathing changes, and within minutes or hours, the loved one slips away.1
Most hospice nurses have seen this many, many times. They are not surprised by it. The family, almost always, is. Most of us have never been told this happens. So when it happens to our mother or our father, we are blindsided. Some families respond with fear. Some respond with disbelief. Some try to argue the dying person back to "reality." A few simply weep, sensing — without being able to put it into words — that they have just stood at the edge of something holy.
If you have been the one in the chair, watching this happen, you are not the first. You are not imagining it. And you are not alone in wondering what it meant.
The research on this kind of experience is far more substantial than most pastors realize. Researchers usually call these moments deathbed visions or end-of-life experiences — and the deceased relative coming to greet the dying person is, by far, the most common type.2
The first major modern study was done by Karlis Osis and Erlendur Haraldsson in the 1960s and 1970s. They surveyed thousands of doctors and nurses in both the United States and India — two cultures with very different religious assumptions. Across both countries, the same pattern showed up over and over: dying patients reporting visions of deceased loved ones, who had "come to take them." The visions were typically peaceful, brief, and deeply meaningful to the patient. The researchers concluded that the experience was real to the patients in a way that ordinary hallucinations are not — and that culture did not seem to be creating the visions.3
More recent research has only strengthened these findings. Dr. Christopher Kerr, a hospice physician in Buffalo, New York, conducted a careful study of more than 1,400 hospice patients. Around 88 percent reported meaningful end-of-life dreams or visions in their final days. Visions of deceased relatives were the most common kind — and patients overwhelmingly described them not as confusing or frightening, but as comforting. Patients said the visions were "more real than real." Most rated them a 10 out of 10 for vividness.4 Peter Fenwick's work in the United Kingdom found very similar patterns: dying patients seeing deceased loved ones "come for them," typically with a sense of peace and readiness.5
One important point: the research carefully distinguishes these visions from drug-induced hallucinations. Hallucinations from medication tend to be disorganized, distressing, and visually chaotic. Deathbed visions tend to be the opposite — clear, organized, peaceful, and centered on a recognizable person whom the patient loved. Many of these visions occur in patients who are not on drugs that produce hallucinations. Many occur in patients whose mental clarity, by every other measure, is intact.6 (For more on how DBEs differ from hallucinations and delirium, see Chapter 5.)
Then there are the Peak in Darien cases. These are the cases that even careful researchers find hard to explain naturally. A dying person reports seeing a relative they did not know had died. The death is then confirmed — sometimes only after the dying person has spoken of it. Dr. Bruce Greyson, a psychiatrist at the University of Virginia, has documented many such cases.7 One that he reports is the story of a young girl named Edith, dying of diphtheria. She did not know that her best friend Jennie had died of the same illness three days earlier. Her family had carefully kept the news from her. Yet shortly before her own death, Edith looked up in surprise and said, "Why, Papa, I am going to take Jennie with me!" And then she said, "O, Jennie, I'm so glad you are here," and slipped away.8 Cases like Edith's cannot easily be explained as wishful thinking. The dying person did not even know to wish for that meeting.
What the research suggests: Across large clinical studies in multiple countries, deathbed visions of deceased relatives are common (often 50–90 percent of dying patients in hospice care), peaceful, organized, and described by patients as deeply real — not like dreams or hallucinations. A small but striking minority involve people the dying did not know had died.
The Bible does not give us a tidy doctrine of deathbed visions. It does not promise that every dying person will see a deceased relative. We must not turn one or two passages into more than they say. But Scripture does give us a framework — three considerations, in particular, that help a believing family receive these experiences with humility and hope.
First, Hebrews 12:1. The author of Hebrews, after listing a long roll of believers who lived and died in faith, writes:
"Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us." (Hebrews 12:1, ESV)
This passage is famously debated, and we explore it more fully in Chapter 24. Whatever exactly the cloud of witnesses is — whether the saints in heaven actively cheer us on or simply stand as a testimony to faithful endurance — Scripture clearly assumes that the dead in Christ are not gone. They are not dissolved. They are not asleep in unconsciousness.9 They are alive and aware, in some way present to the unfolding story of God's people. That basic truth — established in our discussion of the conscious intermediate state in Chapter 2 — opens a door. If the saints who have gone before are conscious and present with the Lord, then the suggestion that one of them might, at God's appointing, be part of how God receives a dying believer is not foreign to Scripture. It is consistent with it.
Second, the Transfiguration (Matthew 17:1–8). Centuries after their deaths, Moses and Elijah appear to Jesus on the mountain, recognized by the disciples, fully conscious, deep in conversation. They are not ghosts. They are not figments. They are themselves, alive in God's presence, and able to be seen and recognized when God chooses.10 This is treated more fully in Chapter 7, but the implication for our chapter is clear. Scripture grants that long-dead believers can, when God permits, be seen by the living. The Transfiguration is, of course, unique. We are not arguing that every deathbed vision is on the same level. But we are pointing out that God permits such visibility. It is within His repertoire of mercies.
Third, 1 Samuel 28. This is a harder text. Saul, in desperate disobedience, consults the medium at Endor. To everyone's apparent surprise, Samuel actually appears — recognizable, speaking, conscious, even rebuking Saul.11 Christians have debated for centuries exactly what happened in that room. But we can say at minimum what the text does not say. It does not say the dead are unconscious. It does not say the dead cease to exist. It does not even say the dead cannot be visible. What it does condemn — and condemn severely — is the human attempt to summon them through occult means. Scripture's prohibition on necromancy (Leviticus 19:31; Deuteronomy 18:10–12) protects the boundary that the medium violated. But the prohibition, like Saul's experience itself, presupposes a real spiritual world — not an empty one.12
Taken together, these passages will not bear the weight of a full theology of deathbed visions. But they will easily bear the weight of a humble pastoral conclusion: when a believing relative dies, and the dying person reports a glimpse of a loved one who has gone before, that report is not foreign to the world the Bible describes.
So what is the dying person seeing? Honest pastoral care requires honest humility here. Scripture does not tell us in detail. The research describes the phenomenon but cannot tell us its ultimate nature. We can name several possibilities.
One possibility is that the dying person is genuinely seeing the deceased loved one — that God, in His mercy, sometimes permits a real meeting between the conscious dead in Christ and the conscious dying who are about to join them. This is consistent with Scripture's picture of conscious life with Christ in the intermediate state (see Chapter 2) and with the moments of veil-permeability we see in passages like 2 Kings 6:17, Acts 7:55–56, and the Transfiguration.13
Another possibility is that God is granting a vision — using the recognizable form of a beloved relative to communicate truths the dying person needs at that moment: You are loved. You are not alone. It is time. I am with you. God uses such pastoral imagery throughout Scripture. He spoke to Joseph in dreams. He gave Daniel visions. He met Stephen at the moment of death with a sight of Jesus standing.14 A dying person whose mother loved her in this life may need the face of her mother to receive what God is doing.
A third possibility — not exclusive of the first two — is that the dying person is glimpsing real spiritual welcome dressed in recognizable form. The other side, in the Christian story, is not impersonal. It is not a void. It is the Father's house, and Jesus has prepared a place. There may be welcome there in forms that, when seen with mortal eyes, look very much like familiar love.
The pastoral point is not to lock down which possibility is correct. The pastoral point is that all three are consistent with Christian truth. None of them require a New Age framework. None of them turn the deceased loved one into a deity, an oracle, or a substitute for Christ. None of them violate biblical commands about the dead. We do not summon. We do not consult. We do not pray to. But we may, with thanksgiving, receive what God in His mercy chose to show.
If you have witnessed something like what James witnessed, here is the pastoral counsel.
Believe your loved one. Do not assume she was hallucinating. The research does not support that assumption, and you of all people knew her face. You knew when her eyes were focused. You knew the difference between her confusion in past months and that one clear moment when she said the name. Honor what you saw.
Do not panic. A vision of a deceased relative is not, in the Christian framework, a paranormal emergency. It is not your loved one becoming a ghost. It is not the family being haunted. Most often, it is your loved one being met. Many, many believing families have witnessed exactly what you witnessed.15
Do not assume "spirit contact" in a New Age sense. Your loved one did not summon her mother. She did not consult her mother. She did not receive a message intended for the rest of you to act on. Whatever the encounter was, it was something your loved one received at the threshold of her own death — not something to be replicated, sought, or pursued by those still living.
Pay attention to what was said. The words spoken in deathbed visions often carry pastoral weight. "I'm ready." "It's time." "You came." "I'm not afraid anymore." These are gifts to the family who hears them. They tell you something about your loved one's interior state at the end. They tell you, often, that fear gave way to peace.
Write it down. Memory of these moments fades faster than you would think. Write down the time, the words, the look on her face. You will want this in five years. Your children may want it in twenty.
A Note on Discernment: Most deathbed visions of deceased relatives are peaceful, comforting, and consistent with Christian faith. But not every reported experience around the dying must be received uncritically. Be cautious if a vision produces fear rather than peace, presents a figure who contradicts or replaces Christ, urges the dying or family toward unbiblical practices (consulting mediums, abandoning the gospel, embracing reincarnation), or leaves agitation rather than readiness in its wake. The fruit of a true God-given visitation is the fruit of the Spirit (Galatians 5:22–23). For a fuller framework, see Chapter 25.16
To James, sitting in the parking garage, hands on the steering wheel, replaying his mother's last hour:
What you witnessed is something many, many families have witnessed. You are not crazy. Your mother was not hallucinating in any cheap, dismissible sense. Hospice nurses and palliative care doctors have written entire books about exactly what you saw, and almost all of them — even the ones who came in skeptical — concluded that something real was happening.17
Here is what the Christian story lets us say, gently, with appropriate care.
Your mother was not alone at the end. The God who had been with her all her life — through her own mother's funeral, through her hard years, through her quiet faith — did not abandon her at the end of it. He sent welcome. He may have used the face of her own mother, who loved Him and went before, to communicate His mercy. He may have permitted a real meeting at the threshold. We do not know exactly. But we know that the Lord who is "the Lord of both the dead and the living" (Romans 14:9) was present in that room. He was present in the corner you could not see. He was present in your mother's smile. He is present now in your grief.
The God who sent the welcome is the God who has not let go of you, either.
Sit with these questions gently. There is no rush, and there are no right answers.
1. Have you, or someone in your family, witnessed something like what James witnessed? What do you remember most vividly?
2. Before reading this chapter, how had you been told to interpret deathbed visions of deceased relatives? Where did that interpretation come from?
3. What was the most striking thing your loved one said in his or her final hours? Have you written it down?
4. What fears or hesitations come up for you when you consider the possibility that your loved one was actually being met?
5. How does the picture of a believing relative being welcomed at death — by Christ, and perhaps by those who went before — sit with the Christian hope you already hold?
6. Is there someone in your family or church who needs to hear that what they witnessed at a bedside was not strange, not crazy, and not theirs to be ashamed of?
7. Where do you sense the Lord meeting you in the memory of that final hour?
Bedside ministry rarely prepares us for a family's first deathbed vision. The patient passes. The family is shaken. They tell you what happened, half-expecting you to laugh or correct them. Your response in that moment will shape their grief for years.
Key pastoral observation. Families are often more troubled by the deathbed vision than the dying patient was. The patient experienced peace; the family experienced something they cannot categorize. They may be embarrassed to mention it. They may wonder if they imagined the calmness in their loved one's face. They may be afraid you will think they are being superstitious. Your tone in receiving the report will matter more than the content of your theology.
What to say. Speak slowly. Speak warmly. "Tell me what she said." "What did her face look like?" "That is something many faithful families have witnessed at a bedside. It is not strange. It is meaningful." If they describe a deceased relative coming to greet the dying person, you can say, gently: "The Bible doesn't tell us everything about this, but it tells us your mother was not alone. The Lord meets His own at the end. What you witnessed is consistent with that hope." You do not need to overclaim. You just need to refuse to dismiss.
What NOT to say. Avoid: "She was just hallucinating." (You don't know that, and the research does not support that as a default reading.) Avoid: "That was the morphine talking." (Often it was not, and even if she was on morphine, that does not by itself explain the organized, recognized, peaceful encounter.) Avoid: "Don't read too much into it." (You are dismissing a moment they will never forget.) Avoid: "She probably saw an angel." (She may have, but her family clearly heard her say "Mama." Do not edit their experience to fit a tidier theology.)
Watch-outs. First, distinguish a deathbed vision from terminal agitation. Terminal agitation tends to be restless, fearful, and physically distressing. Deathbed visions of deceased relatives tend to be calm, focused, and accompanied by a settling. Both can occur in the same patient at different points; both deserve compassion; but they are not the same thing.18 Second, watch for the rare family member who tries to extract ongoing communication from the experience — wanting to consult a medium, wanting to ask the deceased relative for guidance, wanting to make the bedside vision into something it was not. Steer them gently back: this was a gift given to your mother at the threshold of her death. It was not a doorway you are now invited to walk through. Honor it as a memory, not a method.
Next steps. Encourage the family, while memory is fresh, to write down what they saw and heard. The exact words. The time. Who else was in the room. Years from now, that record will be a comfort to grandchildren and great-grandchildren who never knew the dying person but who will inherit, through the family's testimony, the conviction that the Lord receives His own. Offer to revisit the experience with them at the funeral or in a later pastoral visit. Don't preach about the vision in the funeral sermon unless the family clearly invites it — but feel free to weave the theological frame (the conscious presence of believers with Christ; God's tender shepherding of His people through death) into the message you do preach. The vision is theirs. The hope is everyone's.
Christopher Kerr with Carine Mardorossian, Death Is But a Dream (New York: Avery, 2020) — a hospice physician's careful, patient-by-patient account of the end-of-life experiences he has documented; sympathetic but not credulous.
Maggie Callanan and Patricia Kelley, Final Gifts (New York: Bantam, 1992) — two hospice nurses on what the dying communicate, including visions of the deceased; deeply pastoral.
Peter Fenwick and Elizabeth Fenwick, The Art of Dying (London: Continuum, 2008) — a leading neuropsychiatrist on end-of-life experiences in UK hospice settings.
J. Steve Miller, Deathbed Experiences as Evidence for the Afterlife, Volume 1 (Acworth, GA: Wisdom Creek Press, 2023) — the most comprehensive Christian-scholarly evaluation of the DBE evidence available today.
Diane Komp, A Window to Heaven: When Children See Life in Death (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1992) — a Yale pediatric oncologist on the deathbed visions of dying children, and how they brought her from secularism to faith.
1 For a hospice physician's first-person account of how often this pattern is seen, see Christopher Kerr with Carine Mardorossian, Death Is But a Dream: Finding Hope and Meaning at Life's End (New York: Avery, 2020), 49–72. See also Maggie Callanan and Patricia Kelley, Final Gifts: Understanding the Special Awareness, Needs, and Communications of the Dying (New York: Bantam, 1992), 87–113. ↩
2 J. Steve Miller, Deathbed Experiences as Evidence for the Afterlife, Volume 1: A Groundbreaking, Scientific Apologetic, Evaluating Death-Related Visions, Terminal Lucidity and After Death Communications (Acworth, GA: Wisdom Creek Press, 2023), chap. 1, "Defining and Categorizing Deathbed Experiences." Citation is to the project file manuscript edition; visions of deceased relatives are repeatedly identified as the most common DBE category. ↩
3 Karlis Osis and Erlendur Haraldsson, At the Hour of Death, 3rd ed. (Norwalk, CT: Hastings House, 1997), esp. chap. 14, 185–211. Their summary judgment is that "the similarities between the core phenomena found in the deathbed visions of both countries are clear enough to be considered as supportive of the postmortem survival hypothesis." Quoted in J. Steve Miller, Deathbed Experiences Dissertation (project file manuscript), chap. 4, citing Osis and Haraldsson, 192. ↩
4 Christopher W. Kerr, James P. Donnelly, Scott T. Wright, Sarah M. Kuszczak, Anne Banas, Pei C. Grant, and Debra L. Luczkiewicz, "End-of-Life Dreams and Visions: A Longitudinal Study of Hospice Patients' Experiences," Journal of Palliative Medicine 17, no. 3 (March 2014): 296–303. See also Kerr, Death Is But a Dream, 51 ("more real than real" was the typical description). ↩
5 Peter Fenwick and Sue Brayne, "End of Life Experiences: Reaching Out for Compassion, Communication, and Connection — Meaning of Deathbed Visions and Coincidences," American Journal of Hospice & Palliative Medicine 28, no. 1 (2011): 7–15. See also Peter Fenwick and Elizabeth Fenwick, The Art of Dying (London: Continuum, 2008). ↩
6 Miller, Deathbed Experiences as Evidence, chap. 2, "Distinguishing DBEs from Hallucinations and Delirium." Kerr's research team developed standardized criteria precisely to make this distinction; the patients reporting DBEs were typically described as alert, oriented, and not in delirium. See Kerr et al., "End-of-Life Dreams and Visions," 297–298. ↩
7 Bruce Greyson, "Seeing Deceased Persons Not Known to Have Died: 'Peak in Darien' Experiences," Anthropology and Humanism 35, no. 2 (2010): 159–171. ↩
8 Greyson, "Seeing Deceased Persons Not Known to Have Died," 162; recounted also in Miller, Deathbed Experiences as Evidence, chap. 7, "Peak in Darien Experiences." Greyson's broader assessment is that "these Peak in Darien cases provide some of the most persuasive evidence for the ontological reality of deceased spirits" (169). ↩
9 On the conscious intermediate state and its grounding in passages such as Luke 23:43, 2 Corinthians 5:1–8, Philippians 1:21–23, and Revelation 6:9–11, see John W. Cooper, Body, Soul, and Life Everlasting: Biblical Anthropology and the Monism-Dualism Debate, rev. ed. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2000), chap. 4–6. Citation is to the project file manuscript edition. ↩
10 See discussion of Matthew 17:1–8 in J. Steve Miller, 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, 2022), chap. 4, "The Surprising Presence of Jesus," under treatment of Old Testament figures appearing in DBEs. Citation is to the project file manuscript edition. The Transfiguration receives fuller treatment in Chapter 7 of the present volume. ↩
11 Cooper, Body, Soul, and Life Everlasting, chap. 3, "Old Testament Anthropology," under section discussing 1 Samuel 28. Cooper concludes, with most interpreters, that the text presents Samuel as actually appearing — recognizable, conscious, and continuing his prophetic role — and that the narrative thus assumes the conscious survival of the dead even as it condemns the medium's practice. ↩
12 The full discernment framework around contact with the deceased — including the distinction between God-permitted visitations and forbidden necromancy — is developed in Chapter 25 of the present volume. ↩
13 On these "veil-permeability" passages and their bearing on end-of-life experiences, see Miller, Is Christianity Compatible, chap. 4, under "Biblical Precedent for Spiritual Sight." ↩
14 Acts 7:55–56 receives fuller treatment in Chapter 10 of the present volume. ↩
15 Callanan and Kelley, Final Gifts, 87–113, where they describe their consistent experience as hospice nurses witnessing such moments at hundreds of bedsides. ↩
16 Kerr's research found that approximately 18 percent of DBEs in his hospice cohort were experienced as distressing rather than comforting; these too deserve careful pastoral attention rather than dismissal. See Kerr, Death Is But a Dream, 71. The discernment framework for distressing experiences is developed in Chapter 20. ↩
17 See, for example, the testimony of Diane M. Komp, A Window to Heaven: When Children See Life in Death (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1992), where this Yale pediatric oncologist describes how the deathbed experiences of her dying patients moved her from secular existentialism toward a robust personal faith. ↩
18 On the clinical distinction between terminal agitation and end-of-life dreams and visions, see Kerr et al., "End-of-Life Dreams and Visions," 297–298, and Miller, Deathbed Experiences as Evidence, chap. 2. ↩
Callanan, Maggie, and Patricia Kelley. Final Gifts: Understanding the Special Awareness, Needs, and Communications of the Dying. New York: Bantam, 1992.
Cooper, John W. Body, Soul, and Life Everlasting: Biblical Anthropology and the Monism-Dualism Debate. Rev. ed. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2000. Cited from project file manuscript edition.
Fenwick, Peter, and Elizabeth Fenwick. The Art of Dying. London: Continuum, 2008.
Fenwick, Peter, and Sue Brayne. "End of Life Experiences: Reaching Out for Compassion, Communication, and Connection — Meaning of Deathbed Visions and Coincidences." American Journal of Hospice & Palliative Medicine 28, no. 1 (2011): 7–15.
Greyson, Bruce. "Seeing Deceased Persons Not Known to Have Died: 'Peak in Darien' Experiences." Anthropology and Humanism 35, no. 2 (2010): 159–171.
Kerr, Christopher, with Carine Mardorossian. Death Is But a Dream: Finding Hope and Meaning at Life's End. New York: Avery, 2020.
Kerr, Christopher W., James P. Donnelly, Scott T. Wright, Sarah M. Kuszczak, Anne Banas, Pei C. Grant, and Debra L. Luczkiewicz. "End-of-Life Dreams and Visions: A Longitudinal Study of Hospice Patients' Experiences." Journal of Palliative Medicine 17, no. 3 (March 2014): 296–303.
Komp, Diane M. A Window to Heaven: When Children See Life in Death. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1992.
Miller, J. Steve. Deathbed Experiences as Evidence for the Afterlife, Volume 1: A Groundbreaking, Scientific Apologetic, Evaluating Death-Related Visions, Terminal Lucidity and After Death Communications. Acworth, GA: Wisdom Creek Press, 2023. Cited from project file manuscript edition.
Miller, J. Steve. Deathbed Experiences Dissertation. Project file manuscript edition.
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, 2022. Cited from project file manuscript edition.
Osis, Karlis, and Erlendur Haraldsson. At the Hour of Death. 3rd ed. Norwalk, CT: Hastings House, 1997.