What are near-death experiences and why have they spurred so much discussion and research over the past 50 years?

Is there good evidence they are real?

And if so, what do they tell us about God and the afterlife?

Our guest today, Dr. J. Steve Miller, is one of the leading Christian researchers on the topic.

He's authored multiple books and is a professor

at Kennesaw State University. You've been on my YouTube channel multiple times, Steve, but it's the

first time on Think Biblically. We're thrilled to have you here. I'm the host, Sean McDowell.

I'm your co-host, Scott Ray. This is the Think Biblical podcast brought to my Talbosco

Theology Biola University.

Steve, maybe a place to start with is just defined for us what is meant by an NDE and maybe how common they are.

Sure, near-death experiences are, as it says, a time when a person comes near death,

even some would call it clinical death.

For example, let's say a person has a heart attack, their heartbeat stops, their sensation

of breathing.

This is called clinical death.

And so you'd expect during that time that your consciousness

just everything evaporates quickly when your heart stops. And yet they found that these people

often, maybe a third of them having a cardiac arrest, will come to and express a very vivid experience that happened

while they were clinically dead, which no one would be expecting under naturalism.

Of course.

So, and the types of things that they encounter are similar.

Now, you would think that if it was just a naturalistic occurrence,

...