In January 2015, a 16-year-old boy named Alex Malarkey did something brave. He told the world the bestselling book about his trip to heaven wasn’t true. In an open letter he wrote, “I didn’t die. I did not go to Heaven.”
Millions had bought that book. Some had quietly built their hope of heaven on it. So if one famous near-death story was false, how do we know any are true? And a harder question: do Christians even need them?
Christian philosopher Gary Habermas has studied these stories carefully for more than 50 years. He believes some of them give real evidence. In this article we look at what he says, what science says and—most important—what the Bible says. Here’s our answer: near-death experiences can tell us a little, but they cannot tell us what heaven is like. Only God can do that. And He already has.
KEY WORDS IN THIS ARTICLE
- Near-death experience (NDE): a powerful experience reported by someone who came close to death, such as leaving the body or seeing a bright light.
- Clinical death: when the heart and breathing stop. Doctors can sometimes bring a person back.
- Evidential NDE: an NDE where the person reports something others can check.
- Materialism: the belief that only physical things exist, so your mind is just your brain.
- Intermediate state: the time between a believer’s death and the day Jesus raises our bodies from the dead.
- Heaven tourism: popular books and films that claim to describe a trip to heaven and back.
What Habermas Holds
Gary Habermas is a professor of apologetics and philosophy at Liberty University in the USA. (Apologetics means giving reasons for the Christian faith.) He is best known for his work on the resurrection of Jesus, but he has studied NDEs since the early 1970s. He sees the two subjects as linked, because both ask what happens after death.
With philosopher JP Moreland, he wrote Beyond Death: Exploring the Evidence for Immortality (1998). (Immortality means living for ever.) Here’s what Habermas holds, in simple terms:
- Most stories prove nothing. He warns that many claims about visiting heaven or hell cannot be checked.
- Some stories can be checked. He has gathered hundreds of evidential cases. By 2025 he spoke of more than five hundred cases studied over five decades.
- The best cases are the hardest to explain. He gives most weight to people whose heart and brain showed no measurable activity.
- The claim is small. At most, these cases suggest that a person’s awareness can continue for a short time while the body is failing. They do not prove heaven, and they do not prove Christianity.
- NDEs happen to everyone. People of every religion and none report them. Habermas admits they are not tied to any one worldview.
We should be thankful for this care. Habermas isn’t a heaven-tourism writer; he’s one of its critics. But his own findings lead us back to the Bible—and that’s where we must stand.
What Makes an NDE “Evidential”?
Most NDE stories are like dreams: we can only take the person’s word for them. An evidential NDE is different, because others can check it. Here are four of the best-known cases. Read the last column carefully.
4 famous evidential cases—and how strong they really are
| CASE | WHAT WAS CLAIMED | WHAT CRITICS FOUND | HOW STRONG? |
|---|---|---|---|
| Maria’s shoe (Seattle, 1977) | A heart patient said she floated outside the hospital and saw a shoe on a high window ledge. Social worker Kimberly Clark Sharp found it there. | In 1996, three sceptics argued the shoe could have been seen or heard about by ordinary means. | Disputed |
| Pam Reynolds (Phoenix, 1991) | After brain surgery in which her heart was stopped, she described the bone saw and words spoken in theatre. Cardiologist Michael Sabom recorded her case. | Anaesthetist Gerald Woerlee argued she heard these things early on, while her brain was still working. | Strong but debated |
| Vicki Umipeg (USA) | A woman blind from birth said she could see during her NDE. Kenneth Ring and Sharon Cooper studied her case. | Critics say her descriptions were too general to check. | Interesting but limited |
| AWARE study patient (UK, 2014) | A 57-year-old man correctly described sounds in the room about three minutes into his cardiac arrest. | The details were confirmed, but it was one case among more than 2,000 cardiac arrests. | Well checked, but only one case |
WHAT THIS TABLE TELLS US
Even the best cases are argued over. That does not make them false. But no Christian should build his faith on a foundation that experts are still arguing about.
What Does Science Say Today?
The biggest recent study is called AWARE II. Led by Dr Sam Parnia of NYU Langone Health in New York, it was published in 2023. It followed 567 patients whose hearts stopped in 25 hospitals, mostly in the USA and UK. Some survivors described clear, real-feeling experiences while they seemed unconscious.
The team also placed hidden pictures above some patients to test whether they could truly see. The results did not show that patients saw them. The researchers honestly concluded that their work had neither proved nor disproved the reality or meaning of these experiences.
Also in 2023, Jimo Borjigin, a neuroscientist (brain scientist) at the University of Michigan, recorded the brain waves of four dying patients as their breathing machines were switched off. Two of them showed a short burst of fast “gamma” brain waves, which are linked with alert thinking. This may explain why NDEs feel so vivid. But Borjigin’s team admitted the surge might simply be a sign of a dying brain, not of awareness.
Scientists offer several natural explanations. Each explains something. None explains everything.
Natural explanations for NDEs: what each can and cannot explain
| EXPLANATION | WHAT IT MIGHT EXPLAIN | WHERE IT FALLS SHORT |
|---|---|---|
| Lack of oxygen | Tunnels, bright lights and strong feelings | Usually causes confusion, not clear thinking |
| Brain-wave surge | Why the experience feels so vivid and real | Seen in only two of four patients; cannot explain accurate reports of distant events |
| Dream-like brain states | Floating and strange images | Does not explain details that other people can check |
| Culture and expectation | Why different religions see different figures | Does not explain checkable details either |
WHY THIS DOESN’T WORRY US
If science one day explains every NDE, our faith loses nothing. If some NDEs show that the mind is more than the brain, our faith gains a small friend. Either way, the Bible stands where it stood before.
Nearly Dead Isn’t Dead
Here’s a simple point many people miss. Every person who tells an NDE story came back. So none of them truly died in the way the Bible means:
“And just as it is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes judgement.”
Hebrews 9:27
In the Bible, death is final for this life and leads to judgement. A person whose heart starts again has not passed through that door. He has only stood near it.
Clinical death compared with death as the Bible describes it
| QUESTION | CLINICAL DEATH | DEATH IN THE BIBLE |
|---|---|---|
| What happens? | The heart and breathing stop for a time. | The soul leaves the body and returns to God (Ecclesiastes 12:7). |
| Can it be reversed? | Sometimes, with medical help. | Only by a direct miracle of God. |
| What comes next? | The person wakes and may remember an experience. | Judgment (Hebrews 9:27). |
| Who has come back to tell? | Millions of people. | Only those God raised—and the Bible records none of their reports. |
Lazarus was dead four days (John 11:39), yet the Bible records not one word from him about what he saw. Paul was “caught up into paradise,” but he “heard things that cannot be told, which man may not utter” (2 Corinthians 12:4). The Bible’s real visitors to the other side are silent. Heaven-tourism writers cannot stop talking. Jesus also said:
“No one has ascended into heaven except he who descended from heaven, the Son of Man.”
John 3:13
The Rise and Fall of Heaven Tourism
For about 10 years, heaven-tourism books were Christian bestsellers. Then the story changed.
Timeline: How Heaven Tourism Rose and Fell
- 2004: Don Piper’s 90 Minutes in Heaven is published and becomes a bestseller.
- 2010: Heaven Is for Real by Todd Burpo appears, along with The Boy Who Came Back from Heaven by Kevin and Alex Malarkey.
- 2013: Pastor John MacArthur warns against the genre in The Glory of Heaven. He calls the Malarkey book “a dangerous blend of fantasy, superstition, aberrant doctrines.”
- 2014: The Heaven Is for Real film is released. The Southern Baptist Convention passes a resolution on the sufficiency of Scripture regarding the afterlife.
- January 2015: Alex Malarkey says his story was false. His publisher stops selling the book.
- 2015: LifeWay Christian Resources, a large chain of Christian bookshops, stops selling all experiential testimonies about heaven.
When Alex took back his story, he wrote: “The Bible is the only source of truth.” A teenager saw what many adults had missed.
Who’s the “Being of Light”?
Many NDEs include a loving “being of light.” Often this figure says nothing about sin, the cross or repentance (turning from sin to God). Sometimes it tells people of other religions that all paths lead to God. The Bible gives us three clear tests.
- Test the spirit. “Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, for many false prophets have gone out into the world” (1 John 4:1).
- Remember the disguise. “And no wonder, for even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light” (2 Corinthians 11:14). Light can be a counterfeit.
- Check the message. “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” (Galatians 1:8). If an angel cannot change the gospel, a glowing hospital vision cannot.
Some Christians hope frightening NDEs will scare unbelievers into faith. But Jesus taught otherwise. In His story of the rich man and Lazarus, Abraham refuses to send a messenger back from the dead:
“If they do not hear Moses and the Prophets, neither will they be convinced if someone should rise from the dead.”
Luke 16:31
The Bible commentator Matthew Henry drew the lesson that a heart which will not bow to God’s Word will not bow to a messenger from the dead either. Sinners are saved when the Holy Spirit opens their eyes through the Word.
What the Bible Really Tells Us About Life After Death
Here is the good news: we do not need NDEs to know that the soul lives on. The Bible tells us plainly:
- To the dying thief: “Truly, I say to you, today you will be with me in paradise” (Luke 23:43).
- Paul’s confidence: “We would rather be away from the body and at home with the Lord” (2 Corinthians 5:8).
- Paul’s longing: “My desire is to depart and be with Christ, for that is far better” (Philippians 1:23).
- Jesus’ warning: “Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul” (Matthew 10:28).
The Westminster Confession of Faith (1646), a summary of Bible teaching, puts it beautifully. At death, “the souls of the righteous, being then made perfect in holiness, are received into the highest heavens, where they behold the face of God, in light and glory, waiting for the full redemption of their bodies” (32.1). The Heidelberg Catechism (1563) adds the personal comfort that “my soul after this life shall be immediately taken up to Christ its head” (Q&A 57).
But notice how little the Bible tells us about what that time is like. John Calvin warned it is “neither lawful nor expedient to inquire too curiously” into the state of souls before the resurrection (Institutes 3.25.6). God has told us enough to give us hope, not enough to satisfy our curiosity. As Moses said:
“The secret things belong to the LORD our God, but the things that are revealed belong to us and to our children forever.”
Deuteronomy 29:29
Theologian Anthony Hoekema reminded readers this in-between state is only temporary. Our final hope is not a floating soul but a raised body in a renewed creation.
So What Are NDEs Good For?
Let us be fair: NDEs are not worthless. God shows Himself through the world He made (Romans 1:20). If some evidential cases are genuine, they push against materialism. That is a real, if small, gain.
What near-death experiences can and cannot do
| NDEs CAN… | NDEs CANNOT… |
|---|---|
| Show that such experiences are common and life-changing | Tell us what heaven or hell is like |
| Possibly suggest that the mind is more than the brain | Tell us who will be saved |
| Open a conversation with a sceptical friend | Add anything to the Bible |
| Raise questions materialism cannot easily answer | Create saving faith in anyone |
Why can NDEs not do more? Because God’s Word does not need their help. John Calvin wrote that “Scripture indeed is self-authenticated” (Institutes 1.7.5). In other words, it carries its own authority from God. The Westminster Confession agrees. Good arguments can “abundantly evidence” that the Bible is God’s Word, it says, but our “full persuasion” comes “from the inward work of the Holy Spirit” (1.5). It also closes the door to new revelations: to God’s Word, “nothing at any time is to be added, whether by new revelations of the Spirit, or traditions of men” (1.6).
Here we gently go further than Habermas. He agrees that the resurrection of Jesus, not NDEs, is the centre of Christian hope. But we would never let NDEs set the agenda. We start with Scripture and look at the evidence through its lens.
OUR POSITION IN ONE SENTENCE
Near-death experiences may offer a small, secondary pointer against materialism, but Scripture alone tells us what lies beyond death—and Scripture is enough (2 Timothy 3:16–17).
Our Hope: Not a Resuscitation but a Resurrection
Here is the deepest difference of all. A person who has an NDE is resuscitated: brought back to the same weak body, which will one day die again. Jesus was resurrected. He rose with a glorious body that will never die. He says:
“I died, and behold I am alive forevermore, and I have the keys of Death and Hades.”
Revelation 1:18
Paul calls the risen Christ “the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep” (1 Corinthians 15:20). Firstfruits were the first part of the harvest, a promise of more to come. His resurrection guarantees ours.
So if you fear death, do not look for comfort in a stranger’s story about a tunnel of light. Look at the empty tomb. Jesus has truly been there and back, and He holds the keys. As Paul wrote, “What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man imagined, what God has prepared for those who love him” (1 Corinthians 2:9). No near-death story has ever seen it. But one day, every believer will.
Tough Questions, Honest Answers
Why do some people report frightening or hellish near-death experiences?
Studies suggest that a smaller number of NDEs are distressing, with darkness, emptiness or threatening figures. The cardiologist Maurice Rawlings wrote about such cases in Beyond Death’s Door (1978). These stories remind us that the Bible’s warnings about judgement are real (Matthew 10:28). But we must not treat them as maps of hell, just as we must not treat happy NDEs as maps of heaven. Both kinds come from people who did not truly die. Our knowledge of hell, like our knowledge of heaven, must come from Scripture alone.
Is Eben Alexander’s Proof of Heaven reliable?
In 2008, American neurosurgeon Eben Alexander fell into a coma caused by a rare brain infection. In Proof of Heaven (2012) he claimed he visited a heavenly world. A 2013 report in Esquire magazine raised serious questions about parts of his medical story. But the bigger problem is theological. His “heaven” says nothing about sin, the cross or Jesus as the only way to God. A vision that leaves out Christ cannot be a true picture of the place where “its lamp is the Lamb” (Revelation 21:23).
Was Paul’s trip to the “third heaven” a near-death experience?
In 2 Corinthians 12:2–4, Paul describes a man caught up to the third heaven, which most readers take to be Paul himself. He does not call it a brush with death. He calls it one of the “visions and revelations of the Lord” (2 Corinthians 12:1). God took him up; Paul did not die and drift there. He was not even sure whether he was “in the body or out of the body.” And instead of selling the details, he kept silent and boasted only in his weakness (2 Corinthians 12:9).
Can drugs like DMT or ketamine cause experiences like NDEs?
Yes, some drugs can create experiences that feel very like NDEs. In 2018, researchers at Imperial College London found that people given DMT, a powerful mind-altering drug, reported many classic NDE features. Ketamine, a medicine used in anaesthesia, can create the feeling of leaving the body. This shows that the brain plays a large part in many NDE-type experiences. It does not explain every case, especially those with checkable details. But it is one more reason not to treat the content of such experiences as a guide to the afterlife.
Does the soul “sleep” between death and the resurrection?
Some groups teach that the soul is unaware until the resurrection. The Bible does use “sleep” as a gentle word for the death of believers (1 Thessalonians 4:13), but it describes how the body looks, not the soul’s condition. Jesus promised the thief, “today you will be with me in paradise” (Luke 23:43), and the souls under the altar in Revelation 6:9–10 speak and cry out. The Westminster Confession says the souls of the dead “neither die nor sleep” (32.1). One of John Calvin’s earliest theological writings, Psychopannychia, was written to answer the idea of soul sleep.
Will we recognise our loved ones in heaven?
The Bible gives good reason to think so. When David’s baby son died, David said, “I shall go to him, but he will not return to me” (2 Samuel 12:23). Jesus said many will “recline at table with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 8:11), which assumes we will know who they are. At the transfiguration, the disciples recognised Moses and Elijah (Matthew 17:3–4). Paul comforts grieving believers with the hope of being together again (1 Thessalonians 4:13–18). Yet our greatest joy will not be seeing our family but seeing Christ.
What should I say to a friend who has had a near-death experience?
First, listen kindly. For many people, an NDE is the most powerful event of their life, and mocking it will close the door. Ask what the experience meant to them and how it has changed them. Then gently point them to what God has said, because no experience can replace His Word. If your friend is not a believer, the NDE can become a doorway to talk about death, judgement and the Saviour who truly rose from the dead. Pray that God will use your words to bring them to Christ, not just to a light.
Related Reads
- Can the Dead Contact the Living? Ghosts, Mediums and the Bible
- Why Is the Bible Silent About the Intermediate State?
- What Happens to Our Souls When We Die?
- ‘Today You Will Be With Me in Paradise’: What Did Jesus Mean?
- The Three Heavens: What Does the Bible Really Mean by Each?
- Life After Death: Can Our Deceased Loved Ones See Us Now?
- Will We Remember This Life in Heaven? What Isaiah 65:17 Means
- The Great Resurrection: What Will Glorified Bodies Be Like?
- Does Math Disprove Materialism? The Case from Numbers and Logic
