Appendix C
A working manual for pastors, lay leaders, and Christians engaging NDE testimony
A pastor I know got a phone call one Tuesday afternoon. A woman in her congregation had just been resuscitated after a cardiac arrest. She was in the hospital, awake, and she had something to tell him. He drove over. She held his hand and said, “Pastor, I went somewhere. I saw my grandmother. And I saw a Light. The Light told me everyone’s path leads home, that we’ve all lived before, and that I’m here to learn lessons.”
He sat there. He didn’t know what to say. He had read about near-death experiences in passing. He had not thought he would ever need to know what to say. But here was a woman he had baptized, a woman who came to the prayer meeting on Wednesdays, telling him that a Being of Light had taught her reincarnation. He wanted to honor her. He did not want to deny what she had clearly experienced. He also did not want to nod along while she absorbed teachings that the church has rejected for two thousand years.
That conversation, in some form or another, is now happening in churches across the country every week. The reason is simple. Resuscitation works better than it used to. More people are being brought back from clinical death than at any time in human history. And more of them are talking.1 The pastor on the phone is going to be many pastors. The question this appendix takes up is how to be ready for that call.
Chapter 30 develops the theological framework for Christian discernment of NDE content — the biblical basis, the five criteria, the four categories of content, the deeper engagement with discernment as a Christian practice. That chapter is the place to start. This appendix takes the framework and turns it into a working tool. Think of it as the manual a pastor or lay leader can keep on the shelf and pull down when the call comes.
When you sit with an NDEr — in a hospital room, in your office, at a coffee shop — you are not running a doctrinal exam. You are listening to a person who has been to the threshold of death and come back changed. The five criteria from Chapter 30 are not a checklist to recite at them. They are the questions you carry inside your own head while you listen, so that you can hear what is happening underneath the words.
Listen for who is at the center. Was the encounter with a Person, or was it with an impersonal force? An impersonal “light” that gives wisdom but has no name and asks nothing of you is not the Christ of the New Testament. The Christ of the New Testament is a Person who knows you, loves you, and calls for response. NDErs across cultures often describe meeting Someone who fits exactly that description — even when they don’t name Him as Christ. The first question is not “Did they say Jesus?” The question is, “Did they meet a knowing, loving Person?”
Listen for the moral content. Did the encounter take their life seriously? Was there something like a life review — a re-experiencing of how their actions touched other people? Real encounter with the holy God always carries weight. It is not flattering. It is not weightless. Jonathan Edwards, in Religious Affections, made the point three hundred years ago: a true work of God on the soul produces humility, not self-congratulation.2 An NDE that produces only the message, “You’re wonderful exactly as you are, never change a thing,” is suspect on Christian grounds. Real love changes us.
Listen for the fruit. The strongest signal in the long run is not what the experiencer says happened during the NDE. It is what their life looks like a year later, five years later, twenty years later. Are they kinder? More humble? More drawn to Christ? More serious about prayer and Scripture? Or are they speaking on the spiritual-conference circuit, selling a book, and shading further from the church? Galatians 5:22–23 still applies. The Spirit’s fruit is recognizable.
You can’t score an NDE on a worksheet while you are sitting with the person. You can, however, train your ear. Certain phrases signal certain things.
Phrases that signal biblically compatible content sound like this: “He knew everything about me, but He still loved me.” “I saw my grandmother, and she was waiting for me.” “I felt every moment of pain I had caused other people, but I also felt forgiveness pouring through me.” “I came back wanting to live differently.” “I knew I was loved, and I knew I had work to do.” The dissertation found this kind of content in roughly 87% of qualitative NDEs analyzed — broadly compatible, in other words, with biblical anthropology and eschatology.3 That is a striking number. It is the strong base on which our discernment of the harder cases stands.
Phrases that signal compatible-but-needs-care content sound like this: “I felt one with everything.” “The Light told me there is no judgment, only love.” “I realized we are all part of the same energy.” These phrases are not always wrong. The first one might be a clumsy translation of the experience of being in the presence of God, in whom “we live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:28). The second might be a misreading of the suspension of condemnation that the loving encounter sometimes feels like — a real feature of grace, badly worded. The third may simply be reaching for vocabulary the experiencer didn’t have. The pastoral move here is gentle clarification, not refutation.
Phrases that signal theologically problematic content sound like this: “I learned I have lived many lives.” “Every religion is a path to the same God.” “There is no need for forgiveness because there is no sin.” “I am God; you are God; we are all God.” These cross a clear line. They contradict the gospel directly. They cannot simply be left in place inside a Christian framework. They have to be addressed — not by attacking the experiencer, but by pointing back to Scripture as the rule of faith and asking how this content fits.
Phrases that signal something darker sound like this: “A presence told me to leave Christianity behind.” “I was told that prayer is for the weak.” “The voice told me to pursue practices my conscience says are wrong.” The Christian tradition has always held that not every spiritual experience is from God. 1 John 4:1 commands us to test the spirits. 1 Thessalonians 5:21 commands us to hold fast what is good. Some experiences fail the test. We do not have to baptize them.
Three categories of NDE content cause the most pastoral trouble in evangelical settings. Each one calls for a slightly different approach.
Reincarnation imagery. This is the issue in the opening scenario. The NDEr believes she was told she has lived before. The pastoral move is not to immediately call her experience demonic. The careful move is to ask her to describe the moment in detail. Did the Being of Light say, in clear language, “You have lived many lives”? Or did she see images that she has since interpreted as past lives? In many cases, the actual content of the experience was image-based and ambiguous, and the “reincarnation” interpretation was added later, often after reading popular NDE books. Help her to separate the experience from the interpretation. Then point her to the biblical witness: “It is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes judgment” (Hebrews 9:27).4 Reincarnation is not the framework Scripture gives us, and an NDE does not have the authority to overturn Scripture.
Pluralist content. “All paths lead to the same God.” This is the most common theologically problematic claim in the popular NDE literature. The pastoral move is to honor the depth of love the NDEr felt and ask, gently, where they got the doctrine. Did the Being of Light say, in words, “All religions are equally valid”? Almost never. What the NDEr usually felt was a love so vast that it included people they had been taught were excluded. That feeling is a real datum. The Christian answer to that feeling is not pluralism. It is the wideness of God’s mercy — the descent of Christ to all souls, the genuine offer of Christ to every person regardless of background, the cross-cultural reach of the gospel itself.5 In other words, the felt content of the NDE is usually closer to evangelical inclusivism than to pluralism. The pastor’s job is to give the experiencer the better category.
Anti-Christian elements. Direct instruction to abandon Christ, to disregard Scripture, to engage in practices the Bible forbids. These are rare in the literature but real. Here the pastoral move is more direct. Take the experience seriously enough to test it — and then say plainly that what passed the test in the experiencer’s heart was not the Christ of the New Testament. Pray with them. Walk with them. Do not be alarmist, but do not be silent.
The contemporary NDE-publishing market is a gold rush. Since Raymond Moody’s Life After Life (1975), and especially since the runaway sales of Eben Alexander’s Proof of Heaven (2012), there has been money in NDE memoir. Some of the books are careful and Christian. Some are careful but theologically post-Christian. Some are uncareful and openly New Age. Christians need to know how to tell the difference.6
The largest umbrella organization in the field is IANDS, the International Association for Near-Death Studies, founded in 1981 around the early work of Kenneth Ring and Bruce Greyson. IANDS publishes the Journal of Near-Death Studies, hosts conferences, and runs many local sharing groups. The journal itself is a serious peer-reviewed scholarly venue. The conferences and groups are a mixed bag, theologically. Some sessions are valuable case-study presentations. Other sessions promote crystals, channeling, past-life regression, or open universalism without atonement. Christians who attend can benefit from the case research and the company of fellow experiencers but should expect to filter steadily. Pastors should not refuse to attend on principle, but neither should they treat the IANDS culture as a Christian space. It isn’t.
The same kind of filtering applies to the popular books. Below is a working reading list. Please remember that these notes are pastoral guidance, not personal attacks. Many of the authors have been through extraordinary experiences. The point is to help readers and pastors set expectations.
Strongly recommend. John Burke, Imagine Heaven (Baker, 2015) — the major contemporary evangelical synthesis of NDE evidence with biblical theology, organized around the Christ-encounter pattern. J. Steve Miller, Near-Death Experiences as Evidence for the Existence of God and Heaven (Wisdom Creek, 2012) — an evangelical scholarly synthesis written for the educated lay reader. Pim van Lommel, Consciousness Beyond Life (HarperOne, 2010) — not Christian but careful, the work of a serious cardiologist; pair it with biblical framing. Bruce Greyson, After (St. Martin’s, 2021) — the career-summary book of the field’s leading academic; not Christian, but invaluable as research overview.7
Use with discernment. Howard Storm, My Descent into Death (Doubleday, 2005) — the famous distressing-NDE-to-conversion account, deeply Christian in framing, though some of his postmortem theological speculation goes beyond the data and is best read with a careful hand. Don Piper, 90 Minutes in Heaven (Revell, 2004) — biblically compatible at its core, though closer to devotional memoir than to careful evidential argument; useful for the pastoral horizon. Mary Neal, To Heaven and Back (Waterbrook, 2012) — an evangelical orthopedic surgeon’s account; readable, broadly compatible, light on theological precision. Crystal McVea, Waking Up in Heaven (Howard, 2013) — Christian framing, sincere, useful pastorally.
Read for understanding only, not as devotional guidance. Eben Alexander, Proof of Heaven (Simon & Schuster, 2012). Alexander is a neurosurgeon whose case has real evidential value — a well-documented bacterial meningitis with severe cortical compromise. The structure of his experience is broadly compatible with the standard NDE pattern, including a Person-encounter. But Alexander’s post-NDE interpretive framework drifts toward a vague universalist mysticism, and his sequel The Map of Heaven (2014) leans further. Read him for the case; read someone else for the theology.8 Raymond Moody, Life After Life (Mockingbird, 1975) — the founding book of the field; not Christian, but historically essential. Read it as a primary source.
Read critically, not as guidance. Betty Eadie, Embraced by the Light (Gold Leaf, 1992) — a Latter-day-Saint-influenced framework with reincarnation imagery and pre-existence claims that contradict orthodox Christology. Anita Moorjani, Dying To Be Me (Hay House, 2012) — a New Age framework explicitly rejecting traditional theism. Both books contain genuine NDE phenomenology but read it through frameworks the historic church does not share. If a parishioner brings either to your office, read it with them, locate the genuine elements, and locate the framework problems. Do not simply forbid these books. Forbidding them adds appeal. Walking through them removes confusion.
The first thing to say in such a conversation is some version of: “I believe you. Tell me what happened.” Many NDErs have already been laughed at by relatives, dismissed by doctors, and quietly avoided by friends. Their experience was overwhelming. They have been told they imagined it, that it was the medicine, that it was a dying-brain illusion. They are tired. They need someone to take them seriously. The pastor who can do that has done most of the work before saying a word about theology.
The second thing to say, eventually, is some version of: “Your experience was real, and Scripture is the rule we use to understand what was real about it.” This is the correct order. Real first, then framework. The pastor who reverses the order — framework first, experience tested to see if it survives — will lose the conversation, because the experiencer will feel that the pastor is trying to take something away from them.
The third thing, often, is a long pastoral walk. Not all of the experiencer’s questions resolve in the first meeting. Some take years. The encounter at the threshold seems to leave many NDErs with an enlarged appetite for God and a destabilized vocabulary. The pastor’s steady use of Scripture, prayer, and the historic Christian tradition gives them new vocabulary that fits the appetite.
One specific pastoral practice helps: ask the NDEr to write the experience down, slowly, in detail, in their own words, without using language borrowed from any NDE book they have read. The discipline of writing without borrowed vocabulary often surfaces a more biblically compatible core than the experiencer realized was there.
The working principle for Christian discernment of NDEs is the same principle the church has used for two thousand years to discern any spiritual experience: test the spirits, hold fast what is good, and let Scripture be the rule. The novelty in our time is the volume of accounts and the sophistication of the research. The principle is old.9
The other working principle is that NDEs are not Scripture and were never meant to be. They are personal experiences at the boundary of death — sometimes profoundly biblically compatible, sometimes confused, occasionally dark. They confirm what Scripture already teaches; they do not replace it. The dissertation analyzed 5,278 cases and found roughly 87% of qualitative reports broadly compatible with biblical anthropology and eschatology. That is the strong base. The remaining 13% is what discernment is for.
If you are a pastor reading this with a phone you expect will ring, here is a simple working approach. Start by listening. Honor the experience as a real event. Use the five criteria from Chapter 30 as the questions you carry inside your head. Watch for fruit over time. Recommend the careful evangelical books. Walk through the harder ones with the parishioner. Pray. Be patient. The Christ who descended to the dead, who meets every soul at the threshold, can be trusted with these conversations. Our work is to be the kind of pastors who can hold the conversation when it comes.
↑ 1. Sam Parnia’s long-running AWARE program (AWARE I, 2008–2014; AWARE II, 2014–2022) has documented continued conscious experience in patients during cardiac arrest with documented absence of cortical activity. See Sam Parnia et al., “AWARE—AWAreness during REsuscitation—A Prospective Study,” Resuscitation 85, no. 12 (2014): 1799–1805; and Sam Parnia, Lucid Dying: The New Science Revolutionizing How We Understand Life and Death (New York: Harmony, 2024). The dissertation that grounds this volume analyzes 5,278 cases drawn from peer-reviewed literature and the NDERF and IANDS databases; see Matthew Friend, Near-Death Experiences as Evidence for Substance Dualism within the Conditional Immortality Debate (Th.D. diss., Trinity College of the Bible and Trinity Theological Seminary, 2025), Chs. 2 and 4.
↑ 2. Jonathan Edwards, A Treatise Concerning Religious Affections (1746), Part III, esp. signs 6 (“evangelical humiliation”) and 12 (“Christian practice”), in The Works of Jonathan Edwards, vol. 2, ed. John E. Smith (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1959). Edwards’s framework remains the most rigorous Protestant treatment of the question how to discern whether a religious experience is the work of God’s Spirit, and his standing principle — that genuine encounter with the holy God produces deepening humility rather than self-exaltation — applies directly to the discernment of NDE testimony.
↑ 3. Friend, Near-Death Experiences as Evidence for Substance Dualism, Ch. 5, summarizing the qualitative-compatibility analysis: 87% of cases analyzed showed high or moderate compatibility with biblical anthropology and eschatology; 13% contained elements requiring critical discernment. The analysis used the five-criterion framework that grounds Chapter 30 of the present volume.
↑ 4. The interplay between experience and interpretation is well-attested in the NDE-research literature; see, e.g., Allan Kellehear, Experiences Near Death: Beyond Medicine and Religion (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), 27–52 (on cultural framing of after-image content); and Bruce Greyson, After: A Doctor Explores What Near-Death Experiences Reveal about Life and Beyond (New York: St. Martin’s Essentials, 2021), Chs. 9–10. On reincarnation imagery as an interpretive overlay rather than a phenomenological core, see also the dissertation Ch. 5 and Appendix B.
↑ 5. The descent and inclusivist tradition develops this point at length. See Clark Pinnock, A Wideness in God’s Mercy: The Finality of Jesus Christ in a World of Religions (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1992); Jeffrey Trumbower, Rescue for the Dead: The Posthumous Salvation of Non-Christians in Early Christianity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001); James Beilby, Postmortem Opportunity: A Biblical and Theological Assessment of Salvation After Death (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2021), esp. Ch. 8. The point is that the Christian alternative to pluralism is not a narrow particularism but the wide reach of Christ’s descent.
↑ 6. On the popular NDE-publishing landscape and the need for evangelical discernment, see John Burke, Imagine Heaven: Near-Death Experiences, God’s Promises, and the Exhilarating Future That Awaits You (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2015), introduction and Chs. 1–3; J. Steve Miller, Near-Death Experiences as Evidence for the Existence of God and Heaven (Acworth, GA: Wisdom Creek, 2012), esp. the methodological chapters; and the dissertation Appendix B, which classifies the major popular NDE titles by theological category.
↑ 7. Pim van Lommel, Consciousness Beyond Life: The Science of the Near-Death Experience (New York: HarperOne, 2010); Greyson, After; Burke, Imagine Heaven; Miller, Near-Death Experiences as Evidence. For a fuller annotated treatment of the major works, see Appendix B.
↑ 8. Eben Alexander, Proof of Heaven: A Neurosurgeon’s Journey into the Afterlife (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2012); and The Map of Heaven (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2014). For careful evangelical engagement with Alexander’s case, see Burke, Imagine Heaven, and the dissertation Ch. 4. Alexander’s neurological documentation is unusually strong; his post-experience theology is not the gospel.
↑ 9. 1 John 4:1; 1 Thessalonians 5:21. For a contemporary phenomenological framework that is theologically illuminating without being adopted as a complete eschatology, see R. Zachary Manis, Sinners in the Presence of a Loving God: An Essay on the Problem of Hell (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019), Part III (“The Divine Presence Model,” Chs. 7–8). Manis’s model — that the same encounter with God is experienced as joy by the prepared soul and as terror by the unprepared — offers a useful diagnostic for distinguishing genuine encounter-with-the-holy from flattering pseudo-encounter. The author retains Manis’s phenomenological insight without endorsing his ECT framework.