Joyce Evans is alive and living in England. But no one will ever be able to convince her that she didn’t “die” in 1972, when complications arose during the birth of her son, David.1
David was delivered through cesarean section when just about everything that could go wrong did. Mrs. Evans’ doctor told her later that he considered her survival a miracle.
What Joyce remembers is that all of a sudden, she found herself traveling rapidly through a dark tunnel, approaching a bright light at the other end.
“I knew very clearly that I was dying. There was beautiful music playing; the air was filled with it. The light at the end of the tunnel was very bright,” Joyce says. “I can remember thinking, It’s the end of the line for you, yet I felt absolutely no fear.”
When she reached the end of the tunnel, Joyce was overjoyed to see her father waiting there, smiling at her, looking exactly the way she remembered him from her childhood. She recognized him immediately, even though he had been dead for fourteen years.
“I was so pleased to see him and be with him, and there was an overwhelming feeling of peace and tranquility,” Joyce remembers. But just before she reached his side, he put his hand up to stop her.
“It’s not your time,” he said. “Go back! Go back! You have a baby who needs you.”
Joyce doesn’t remember anything further until she found herself regaining consciousness in her hospital room. She was very ill and had a long period of recuperation facing her. Still, she was happy to be alive. She didn’t want to leave her husband or children.
“I felt I had been given a second chance,” she says. “But at the same time, I also know that I’ve seen what death is like, and there’s nothing to be afraid of. I saw how well and happy my father looked, and that was very reassuring. But most of all, I remember the lovely feeling I had all the time I was in the tunnel.”
Millions of people around the world say they’ve had experiences similar to the one Joyce Evans describes. Today we call them near-death experiences or NDEs. A Gallup Poll revealed that an estimated eight million Americans have had these experiences, and many tell stories quite similar to the one Joyce Evans told.2
They, too, remember traveling through a dark tunnel, racing toward a bright light at the other end. They often tell of seeing dead relatives waiting for them in the light. Sometimes they see Jesus or a benevolent being “of light” whom they believe to be Jesus. Then they hear a voice, or someone comes to them and tells them they have to go back. And the next thing they know, they’re back in the operating room, or at the site of the car crash, or wherever they were when they “died.”
Most also say they were very disappointed when they were told they couldn’t stay. Unlike Joyce, they didn’t want to come back. They also report that the experience has changed them forever. They no longer fear death. And finally, many say they understand how important it is to be loving and kind.
One man, interviewed on his near-death experience, said:
If my wife was listening I would have to tell you that the most important thing that ever happened to me was meeting and marrying her. But the truth is my NDE is the most important event in my life. It changed me more than any other thing. It shaped me. It changed my personality—and even though my wife has been trying for years to do that, she’s never succeeded. Having an NDE is the most profound thing anyone could go through, apart from death itself.3
Even though near-death experiences have been around for centuries, it was only around forty years ago that they became really big news. That’s when Raymond A. Moody, Jr. published a book titled Life After Life. Dr. Moody decided to write his book when several people who had been resuscitated after “dying” told him about amazing experiences they’d had.
Life After Life sold millions of copies all over the world and began an intense debate on the nature and believability of such accounts. His book was hailed as a breakthrough because it was the first time anyone from the scientific community seemed to take the phenomena of near-death experiences seriously. Dr. Moody had removed near-death experiences from the realm of myth, folklore, and superstition and made them respectable.
As for Dr. Moody, he was convinced something very real had happened to these people who had “died” and then come back to life. He didn’t try to explain it away or chalk the whole thing up to imagination or hallucination. And he came very close to insisting these experiences were proof of life after death.
In Life After Life Dr. Moody lists several common characteristics of the typical near-death experience. These include:
• An awareness of being dead.
• A feeling of peace and freedom from pain.
• A journey through a tunnel.
• Emergence from the tunnel into a world of light, peace, and tranquility.
• An encounter with a “being of light,” who radiates love and understanding.
• A review of the life the person has lived.
• A rapid return to the body.4
In the stories Dr. Moody collected, almost all had one other common element: They were nearly all positive—barely one frightening moment in the whole bunch.
Certainly it would be wonderful to think we have nothing to fear from death. Wouldn’t it be great to believe we were all going to wind up in a happy place, where the sun shines all the time and everything is beautiful? But on the other hand, would that be fair? Could it really be true that it doesn’t matter what we believe or what we do during this life?
The fact is, not every near-death experience is peaceful and serene. Some of them are downright terrifying.
Researcher Dr. Michael Grosso, who has interviewed dozens of people who have had near-death experiences, tells about a man who tried to kill himself with an overdose of drugs and suffered a massive heart attack as a result.5 Friends found him and quickly called paramedics. But by the time they arrived, his heart had stopped; he wasn’t breathing; and his body had already turned blue.
According to his account, his soul was on a journey to a place he never wants to see again. There was no tunnel, no bright light, and no comforting presence. Instead the man found himself descending into an inferno, where horrible-looking creatures grabbed and scratched at him with their claws. He later recalled he had a difficult time breathing and felt claustrophobic.
Fortunately for him, paramedics were able to get his heart beating again, and he suddenly found himself back in his body. He said he had made significant changes in his lifestyle because he didn’t want to go back to that horrible place.
Cardiologist Maurice Rawlings, in his book Beyond Death’s Door, writes:
Before gathering material for this book, I personally regarded most after-death experiences as fantasy or conjecture or imagination. Most of the cases I had heard or read about sounded as if they represented euphoric trips of an anoxic mind. Then one evening in 1977 I was resuscitating a terrified patient who told me he was actually in hell. He begged me to get him out of hell and not let him die. When I fully realized how genuinely and extremely frightened he was, I too became frightened. Subsequent cases with terrifying experiences have burdened me with a sense of urgency to write this book. Now I feel assured that there is life after death, and not all of it is good.6
Dr. Rawlings describes the patient discussed above as having “a grotesque grimace expressing sheer horror. His pupils were dilating and he was perspiring and trembling—he looked as if his hair was ‘on end.’“7
The doctor worked feverishly to save the man’s life—and succeeded. As a cardiologist he’s accustomed to life-or-death situations. But he couldn’t get this frightening experience out of his mind. That’s why, a few days later, when the patient was stabilized, the doctor asked him why he had been so frightened. Had he seen flames or monsters? Perhaps even the devil himself?
But surprisingly enough the man didn’t know what his doctor was talking about. He didn’t remember a thing.
Dr. Rawlings writes, “Apparently, the experiences were so frightening, so horrible, so painful that his conscious mind could not cope with them; and they were subsequently repressed far into his subconscious.”8
Dr. Rawlings now believes, from his experience with this patient and others like him, that “when patient interviews are delayed in any way, this may allow enough time for the good experiences to be mentally retained and reported by the patient and the bad experiences to be rejected or obliterated from recall.”9
He has also come to believe terrifying near-death experiences may be just as common as the positive ones, and he reports that some of the patients he has brought back from the edge of death actually do remember a few details of their negative experiences. They recall entering a dark, dim world, where grotesque people lurk in the shadows or stand along the shore of a lake of fire. He says, “The horrors defy description and are difficult to recall.”10
For some people the horror has been the realization they were heading away from God instead of toward him. Beyond Death’s Door tells the story of a woman who was struck by lightning while on a camping trip. She says:
In the moment that I was hit, I knew exactly what had happened to me. My mind was crystal clear. I had never been so totally alive as in the act of dying. At this point in the act of dying, I had what I call the answer to a question I had never verbalized to anyone or even faced: Is there really a God? I can’t describe it, but the totality and the reality of the living God exploded within my being and He filled every atom of my body with his glory. In the next moment, to my horror, I found that I wasn’t going toward God. I was going away from Him. It was like seeing what might have been, but going away from it.11
In her panic this woman says she cried out to God, telling him she would live for him from now on if he would spare her life. He did. She found herself back in her body and within three months, had completely recovered.
Jean Ritchie, in her book Death’s Door, cites a study in which modern accounts of near-death experiences were compared with those recorded in medieval times. Many elements were the same: the feeling of being out of the body, traveling through a tunnel, undergoing a review of one’s life. But that study found one major difference … in medieval times, negative experiences were far more frequent. People spoke more often of seeing demons, devils, and hell.
Why the difference between then and now?
One theory is that back then, people believed in hell. Now, for the most part, they don’t. A few hundred years ago, people who lived sinful lives knew full well they were going to wind up in hell when they died. They were prepared for it and, in fact, expected it. Today most people seem to have the attitude that a loving God would never send anyone to hell. We think, It doesn’t really matter what I do. God will forgive me. We expect the pearly gates of heaven to swing open for us the moment we die.
It could be that people don’t see hell simply because they don’t believe in it. This could mean either of two things:
1. A near-death experience is really nothing more than a hallucination that has no real connection to what happens after we die.
2. People who are given a glimpse of hell are so shocked and stunned by the sight of something they never believed in—nor thought would ever happen to them—that their minds simply can’t retain it.
If we believe the Bible, we must also believe in the existence of hell. Jesus taught that hell exists. He said that on the day of judgment, the unrighteous “will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life” (Matthew 25:46).
He also said, “If your hand causes you to stumble, cut it off. It is better for you to enter life maimed than with two hands to go into hell, where the fire never goes out” (Mark 9:43).
The book of Revelation tells us that when the dead are judged, anyone whose name isn’t written in the book of life will be thrown into the lake of fire (Revelation 20:15).
The Bible also seems to teach that some will be able to escape hell by the narrowest of margins, as happened to the man Dr. Rawlings revived. The apostle Paul says that on the day of judgment, each man’s “work” will be tested by fire: “If what he has built survives, he will receive his reward. If it is burned up, he will suffer loss; he himself will be saved, but only as one escaping through the flames” (1 Corinthians 3:14–15).
As we can see, the Bible tells us that hell is a very real place.
And so is heaven.
Jesus told his disciples:
Do not let your hearts be troubled. You believe in God; believe also in me. In my Father’s house are many rooms; if that were not so, would have told that I am going there to prepare a place for you?
And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you with me that you also may be where I am.
(John 14:1–3)
Jesus also said that on the day of judgment, the righteous will be told, “‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world” (Matthew 25:34).
The Bible not only tells us that heaven exists, but it also gives clear-cut directions for getting there. We’ve probably heard this a million times, but it makes it no less true: “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16).
When Jesus told his disciples they would follow him to heaven, Thomas objected, “‘Lord, we don’t know where you are going, so how can we know the way?’
“Jesus answered, ‘I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me’” (John 14:4–6).
Even though the Bible says that those who have accepted Christ will go to heaven—and those who haven’t accepted him will not—it doesn’t tell us exactly when this will happen, nor does it say precisely what occurs the moment we die. What it does tell us is that “people are destined to die once, and after that to face judgment” (Hebrews 9:27).
Some believe that when we die, we go to a holding area, a place of sorting, to await that judgment. If this is true, it’s likely that those who have had near-death experiences have only experienced the holding area and haven’t truly glimpsed their final destination.
In Beyond Death’s Door, Maurice Rawlings writes:
It is interesting that all of my patients who report a continuance from one life to another, whether it was good or bad, usually met previous loved ones in a type of sorting place that often had a barrier preventing entrance into a more permanent type of existence.12
Of course no one wants to hear bad news. It would be easy for us to look at all the positive stories and say, “Life after death is just great for everybody!” But we can’t let selected experiences take precedence over what the Bible says. God’s Word is the final authority in everything—especially matters of life after death.
Incidentally, Dr. Rawlings says there’s one area in which near-death experiences have been almost universally negative, and that is in cases involving attempted suicide. He tells of a 14-year-old girl who tried to kill herself by gulping down an entire bottle full of aspirin. As doctors fought to save her life, she cried out, “Mama, help me! They’re trying to hurt me!” She also said that those “demons in hell” had hold of her and wouldn’t let her go. Later, after she had completely recovered, she remembered nothing of the incident.13
In Life After Life, Dr. Moody writes:
A man who was despondent about the death of his wife shot himself, “died” as a result and was resuscitated. He states: “I didn’t go where [my wife] was. I went to an awful place…. I immediately saw the mistake I had made…. I thought, ‘I wish I hadn’t done it.’“14
Another woman who took an overdose of drugs reported:
I remember going down this black hole, round and round. Then I saw a glowing, red-hot spot getting bigger and bigger until I was able to stand up. It was all red and hot and on fire. The earth was like slimy mud that sank over my feet and it was hard to move. The heat was awful and made it hard to breathe. I cried, “Oh, Lord, give me another chance.” I prayed and prayed. How I got back, I’ll never know.15
Do I mean to suggest that all suicide victims go to hell? Of course not.
God alone is the judge of that. But these experiences seem to back up the truth that suicide is always the worst way out of any problem.
Before we leave the subject of near-death experiences, I think it’s important to note that many experts believe there’s a scientific basis for them that has nothing to do with life after death. Instead, they feel such experiences occur during the dying process, when the brain is shutting down. They say the sensation of flying through a tunnel could be the result of the collapse of the visual field in the occipital lobe. Some scientists also believe the light that seems to shine at the end of the tunnel may be produced by a lack of oxygen.
Dr. Susan Blackmore of the Brain and Perception Laboratory at Bristol University in England points out that the visual cortex of the brain is one of the last areas to die and says:
The vital cells that normally regulate the activity in the visual sector of the brain—the visual cortex—are seriously inhibited by the increasing lack of sensory information. This destabilizes the normal visual controls, producing stripes of irregular activity. As this information travels between the retina of the eye and the brain, the stripes are interpreted as being concentric rings, tunnels or undulating spirals, light in the center and darker at the edges…. The mind latches on to these tunnel images and accepts them as a new actuality.16
There’s no way to know for sure, this side of heaven, exactly what near-death experiences are. The only thing we can know for certain is that Christians have absolutely no reason to fear death. We can have confidence in the words of Jesus, who said, “I am going there to prepare a place for you” (John 14:2).
As we wrap up this chapter, I think of the death of Dwight L. Moody, one of the most famous evangelists America has ever produced. As he lay dying, Moody shouted out, “Earth recedes! Heaven opens before me!” And then, turning to his son, “This is no dream, Will. It is beautiful! If this is death, it is sweet. God is calling me and I must go! Don’t call me back!”17
Truly, for Christians, “‘Death has been swallowed up in victory’” (1 Corinthians 15:54).
1. Jean Ritchie, Death’s Door (New York: Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, Inc., 1994) 75–76.
2. Randles and Hough, 226.
3. Ritchie, 20.
4. Raymond A. Moody, Jr., M.D., Life After Life (Harrisburg, PA: Stackpole Books, 1976).
5. Randles and Hough, 223.
6. Maurice Rawlings, M.D., Beyond Death’s Door (New York: Bantam Books, 1978) xii-xiii.
7. Rawlings, 3.
8. Rawlings, 5.
9. Rawlings, 6.
10. Rawlings, 45.
11. Rawlings, 64.
12. Rawlings, 35.
13. Rawlings, 94–95.
14. Moody, 143.
15. Rawlings, 96.
16. Phillips, 231
17. Rawlings, 53–54.