A bright light. A long, narrow tunnel. Angels singing. Warmth. Comfort. Heavenly bliss. These descriptions are often followed with an account of a man or woman hovering above his/her lifeless body watching medical professionals frantically attempt to bring life to an unresponsive corpse. Are these descriptions accurate? Did these individuals really have an out-of-body experience?
Did they really visit Heaven and return to tell willful listeners about its beauty? What is being described above is generally termed a “near-death experience” or NDE. The Oxford English Dictionary defines a NDE as “an unusual experience taking place on the brink of death and recounted by a person on recovery, typically an out-of-body experience or a vision of a tunnel of light.” According to the Near Death Experience Research Foundation (www.nderf.org), as many as 774 near-death experiences occur every day . Given the sheer number reported, and one can easily surmise many are not reported, it would be irresponsible to deny that something is at work here.
The capacity for the human mind to conceptualize the afterlife has long been a goal of Christian and unbeliever alike. Much of the motivation for this speculation is rooted in the fact that there are no tangible evidences to which we can compare our own ideas of life after death. It should therefore be no surprise that literature describing near-death experiences have become increasingly popular over the past few years.
Books such as 90 Minutes in Heaven  by Don Piper provide a bridge between the physical realm to which we are all familiar and the unseen realm of Heaven. In a book entitled Heaven is for Real , the reader is provided with a child’s perspective on the heavenly realm. While these accounts are well-written and beautifully descriptive, they lack the backing of sound Biblical teaching. This is not to say that what these authors experienced is a fabrication; it may not, however, represent a real interaction with the spiritual realm.
Some have suggested that the memory of a NDE is nothing more than waking from a very vivid dream dealing with Heaven. This is certainly possible and given the media saturation of the topic it follows that a person could subconsciously recall the images of a bright light and a tunnel. This seems especially true when we consider that often the person who encounters a NDE is brought back to consciousness in an operating room or emergency room with a bright light shining down. Recently, several controlled studies have shown this to be a possibility and that there very well might be a scientific explanation for the phenomenon.
Jimo Borjigin, of the University of Michigan, just completed a study using laboratory rats in which it was determined at the point of death the brain goes into a mode of “heightened activity” as it attempts to save itself from death. Michael Marsh, commenting on another controlled study has noted, “Therefore, the brain is capable of manufacturing illusory states of a supposedly otherworldly realm, generated and acutely remembered and recalled  over a very short measured time-frame” (pg. 40). What studies such as these can prove is that what an individual may experience at the point of death is nothing more than a heightened amount of brain activity that is then recalled upon revival.
So what does all of this mean for the Bible believing Christian? It would be fascinating to talk to individuals such as the widow of Zarephath’s son, or Dorcas, or Lazarus, or even all of the saints who were raised at the death of Jesus. These men and women had often been dead for days, not simply unresponsive for several minutes as many of the modern accounts attest. What was it like? What did you see? Feel? We might ask. Undoubtedly these questions were posed, but interestingly there are no recorded conversations about their experiences. Whether it is because they did not remember or if in God’s providence we are simply not meant to know is not known.
It is equally interesting to consider why Paul records matters regarding Heaven, but admits through inspiration that there were things “that cannot be told” (2 Corinthians 12:4). John too was commanded to refrain from reporting everything he had seen (Revelation 10:4). But their accounts of the heavenly realm were special, inspired cases, for we are told in Hebrews 9:27 that man will only die once, and then the judgment. Once the gulf of death has been traversed, there is no returning to report on anything, even on matters pertaining to the salvation of others! (Luke 16:26-31).
The full details of what is happening in the mind of a person who has had a NDE may never be known. This fact does not change the reality though that Heaven is real and that Jesus, “died for us so that whether we are awake or asleep we might live with Him” (1 Thessalonians 5:10). Live so that when you do face death, it is the greatest experience of all!
By Ryan Gallagher

Bibliography:

– Michael N. Marsh, Modern Believing 52 no 2 Ap 2011, p 38-47.

– Rob Stein, “Brains Of Dying Rats Yield Clues About Near-Death Experiences,” August 12, 2013 http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2013/

08/12/211324316/brains-of-dying-rats-yield-clues-about-neardeath-

experiences.