{"id":5142,"date":"2026-01-07T09:56:51","date_gmt":"2026-01-07T14:56:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/?p=5142"},"modified":"2026-01-07T09:56:51","modified_gmt":"2026-01-07T14:56:51","slug":"deathbed-visions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/2026\/01\/07\/deathbed-visions\/","title":{"rendered":"Deathbed Visions"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast,<\/em>\u00a0click here<\/a>
\u00a0
Life isn\u2019t over when it\u2019s over.
\u00a0
That\u2019s one of the New Testament\u2019s bedrock assertions.
\u00a0
More than a few people, of course, wish they had more than just a few Bible verses to cling to. Is there any tangible evidence, in the here and now, that the world we access with our senses is not all there is to reality, and that death is not the end of life?
\u00a0
Lee Strobel, the atheist journalist-turned Christian apologist, addresses such questions in his new book Seeing the Supernatural<\/em>. Through a series of interviews with professors, researchers, and theologians, he presents the evidence for angels, demons, and the human soul (all of which are dismissed out of hand by modern materialists), and explores contemporary reports of miracles, near-death experiences, vivid dreams, and deathbed visions.
\u00a0
Concerning that last category, it\u2019s amazing how many families can share remarkable stories with regard to the last words spoken by loved ones.
\u00a0
William Barrett, professor at Ireland\u2019s College of Science, reported the account of a young woman named Doris who, having just given birth, was dying. Barrett\u2019s wife, the attending physician, recalled the details:
\u00a0
Suddenly, she looked eagerly towards one part of the room, a radiant smile illuminating her whole countenance. \u201cOh, lovely, lovely,\u201d she said. I asked, \u201cWhat is lovely?\u201d \u201cWhat I see,\u201d she replied in low, intense tones. \u201cWhat do you see?\u201d \u201cLovely, brightness \u2013 wonderful beings.\u201d It is difficult to describe the sense of reality conveyed by her intense absorption in the vision.<\/em>
\u00a0
Then \u2013 seeming to focus her attention more intently on one place for the moment \u2013 she exclaimed, almost with a kind of joyous cry, \u201cWhy, it\u2019s father! Oh, he\u2019s so glad I am coming. He is so glad. It would be perfect if only W [her husband] would come, too.\u201d<\/em>
\u00a0
Her baby was brought to her to see. She looked at it with interest, then said, \u201cDo you think I ought to stay for baby\u2019s sake?\u201d Then turning toward the vision again, she said, \u201cI can\u2019t \u2013 I can\u2019t stay; if you could see what I do, you would know I can\u2019t stay.\u201d<\/em>
\u00a0
On looking at the same place again, she said with a rather puzzled expression, \u201cHe has Vida with him,\u201d turning again to me saying, \u201cVida is with him.\u201d Then she said, \u201cYou do want me, Dad. I am coming.\u201d Then, Doris died.<\/em>
\u00a0
Who was Vida?
\u00a0
She was Doris\u2019 sister, who had died three weeks earlier \u2013 a fact that had been kept from Doris so as not to upset her.
\u00a0
When he learned of this experience, Barrett was propelled into a lifetime of studying the words sometimes spoken by those at the threshold of death. He presented his discoveries in a book called Deathbed Visions<\/em>. \u00a0
\u00a0
It turns out that such visions are far more common than one might think.
\u00a0
Strobel reports his conversation with Stephen Miller, professor of religion at Kennesaw State University in Georgia. When Miller looked into deathbed experiences as part of his doctoral dissertation, he had hoped to find at least a handful of reputable inquiries. He was surprised to discover more than 800 scholarly resources. \u201cThe frequency of these stories still astounds me,\u201d he says.
\u00a0
Many of the accounts come from previous generations. That\u2019s because, prior to the advent of modern medicine, most people died in their beds at home with family members gathered around.
\u00a0
Today it\u2019s more common for people to slip away in hospitals or in the gentle embrace of hospice \u2013 their pain and discomfort addressed by meds that might limit communication.
\u00a0
As a pastor, however, I have heard some amazing stories \u2013 from people I know well \u2013 concerning deathbed visions.
\u00a0
One young mom from our church (who was, ironically, an oncology nurse) was coming to the end of her own battle with cancer. In the middle of the night, her husband was sleeping in the chair beside her hospital bed. He was awakened by a gentle breeze. Turning towards his wife, he was surprised to see her staring intently around the darkened room. \u201cYes,\u201d she said, nodding toward something he could not see. \u201cYes,\u201d she said again, with happy expectation, then closed her eyes and died.
\u00a0
It\u2019s fair to ask whether such \u201cglimpses of the afterlife\u201d happen only to those who cling to a belief in the next world.
\u00a0
As a young man, Charles Templeton was one of Billy Graham\u2019s closest friends. While Billy became the world\u2019s most famous evangelist, Templeton became known as Canada\u2019s most famous agnostic. Late in life he anguished, with tears, \u201cI miss him\u2026 I miss Jesus<\/em>.\u201d
\u00a0
On his deathbed, Templeton called out to his wife, \u201cMadeleine, do you see them? Do you hear them? The angels! They\u2019re calling my name! I\u2019m going home! \u2026Oh, their eyes, their eyes are so beautiful!\u201d Then he called out, \u201cI\u2019m coming!\u201d
\u00a0
What are we to make of such stories?
\u00a0
Christians \u2013 those who have enrolled as apprentices of Someone who came back from the dead \u2013 feel assured that dying people don\u2019t just fade into nothingness. They step into a new reality. Followers of Jesus embrace what we might call the afterlife hypothesis.
\u00a0
Materialists prefer the dying brain hypothesis.
\u00a0
Deathbed visions, they insist, can be explained by something other than the supernatural. What people \u201csee\u201d must be the result of dehydration, medication, hallucinations, or perhaps memories churned up at the end of life by grief.
\u00a0
It makes sense that materialists think it\u2019s necessary to settle on a naturalistic explanation.
\u00a0
But the startling nature of these stories, and their constancy through every human culture of every generation, makes them a compelling part of the conversation about whether there is an invisible world.
\u00a0
In particular, the visions spoken by dying children \u2013 who sometimes report things they could not possibly have known, such as the existence of siblings who preceded them in death, about whom they had been told nothing \u2013 are extraordinary.
\u00a0
What did Miller come to believe through his doctoral research?
\u00a0
\u201cMost convincing to me was the convergence of multiple streams of evidence. I can reflect on thousands of thousands of deathbed experiences collected globally by competent researchers, with case after case testifying to extremely real encounters with God, the afterlife, deceased relatives, and angels\u2026 [We] can reasonably project that millions of people will have such experiences.\u201d
\u00a0
Standing outside the fresh grave of his friend Lazarus, Jesus said,\u00a0\u201cI am\u00a0the resurrection and the life.\u00a0The one who believes\u00a0in me will live, even though they die;\u00a0and whoever lives by believing\u00a0in me will never die\u201d (John 11:25-26).
\u00a0
Life, in other words, isn\u2019t over when it\u2019s over.
\u00a0
And death \u2013 for those who have abandoned themselves to Jesus \u2013 is just the beginning of something none of us will ever be able to put into words<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast,\u00a0click here\u00a0Life isn\u2019t over when it\u2019s over.\u00a0That\u2019s one of the New Testament\u2019s bedrock assertions.\u00a0More than a few people, of course, wish they had more than just a few Bible verses to cling to. Is there any tangible evidence, in the here and now, that the world we access with our senses is not… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":5143,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1051,1052],"class_list":["post-5142","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-life-after-death","tag-supernatural"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5142","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5142"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5142\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5144,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5142\/revisions\/5144"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5143"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5142"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5142"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5142"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}