Some critics of today’s “after-death” experiences have already pointed out the similarity of the “being of light” to the “spirit guides” and “spirit friends” of mediumistic spiritism. Let us therefore look briefly at the spiritistic teaching where it talks about “beings of light” and their messages. One standard spiritistic text (J. Arthur Hill, Spiritualism, Its History; Phenomena and Doctrine, George H. Doran Co., New York, 1919), notes that “the spirits’ teaching is always or practically always in line with high moral standards; in the matter of belief it is always theistic, always reverent, but not much concerned with intellectual niceties such as occupied the minds of Bishops in Church Councils” (p. 235). Further, this book states that love is the “key-note” and “central doctrine” of spiritistic teaching (p. 283); that “glorious knowledge” is received from the spirits, causing spiritists to undertake the missionary labor of spreading “the knowledge that life after death is a certainty” (pp. 185-86); and that the “advanced” spirits lose the “limitations” of personality and become more like “influences” than persons, becoming more and more full of “light” (pp. 300-301). Indeed, spiritists in their hymns literally invoke “beings of light”:
All of this is enough to make one quite suspicious of the “being of light” who is now appearing to people who are quite unaware of the nature and subtlety of the workings of demons. Our suspicion is only increased when we hear Dr. Moody report that some describe this being as “a fun person” with “a sense of humor” who gives the dying person “a good time” and “fun” (Life After Life, pp. 49, 51). Such a being, with his message of “love and understanding,” does indeed sound remarkably like the trivial and often good-humored “spirits” at seances, who are unquestionably demons (when the seance itself is not fraudulent).
This fact has led some to condemn the whole “after-death” experience now being reported as a demonic deception. One book, by evangelical Protestants, declares that “we feel that there are certain new and unfamiliar dangers to this whole life-after-death deception. Believing even vaguely in the reported clinical experiences, we feel, can have serious consequences for Bible-believing people. More than one sincere Christian has totally bought the fact that the Being of Light is none other than Jesus Christ and, unfortunately, these people are in a perfect position to be fooled” (John Weldon and Zola Levitt, Is There Life After Death? Harvest House Publishers, Irvine, Calif. 1977, p. 76). To back up this point, the authors of this book cite some remarkable parallels between some of today’s “after-death” experiences and the experiences of mediums and occultists in recent times, in addition to pointing out the undoubted fact that a number of researchers in “after-death” experiences are also interested in the occult and even have had contact with mediums (pp. 64-70).
There is, of course, much truth in these observations. Unfortunately, without the full Christian teaching on life after death, even the most well-meaning “Bible-believing people” go astray, dismissing the true experiences of the soul after death together with experiences that may indeed be demonic deceptions. Such people themselves are open to the acceptance of misleading “after-death” experiences, as we shall see.
Drs. Osis and Haraldsson, who both have had “extensive firsthand experience with mediums,” note some similarity between the apparitions of the dying and the experiences of spiritism. However, they note a basic “glaring discrepancy” between these two kinds of experience: “Instead of a continuation of the mundane sort of life (which mediums describe), postmortem survival appears to plunge into a radically new mode of existence and way of experiencing” (At the Hour of Death, p. 200). Indeed, the realm of “after-death” experiences does seem on the whole to be quite distinct from the realm of ordinary mediumism and spiritism; but it is still a realm in which demonic deceptions and suggestions are not only possible, but are positively to be expected, especially in the latter days in which we live, when we are already seeing ever newer and more subtle spiritual temptations, even great signs and wonders, so as to seduce, if possible, even the elect (Matt. 24:24).
It befits us, therefore, to be very suspicious (at the least) of the “beings of light” who seem to appear in the moment of death. They seem very much like demons posing as “angels of light” in order to seduce, not only the dying person himself, but even more those to whom he will later tell this tale if he is resuscitated (concerning the chances of which, of course, the demons are well aware).
Ultimately, however, our judgment of this and the other “after-death” phenomena will have to rest on the doctrine which emerges from them, whether given by some “spiritual being” seen in the moment of death, or simply implied by or deduced from the phenomena. We shall approach the question of this judgment after our examination of the phenomena themselves is finished.
Some people who have “died” and returned — usually those who are or become the most “religious” — have identified the “being of light” which they encounter not as an angel, but as the invisible “presence” of Christ Himself. In such people this experience is often bound up with another phenomenon which for Orthodox Christians is perhaps, at first glance, the most puzzling one to be encountered in today’s “after-death” experience: the vision of “heaven.”
CHAPTER FOUR
The Contemporary Experience of “Heaven”
In Life After Life Dr. Moody remarks that the people he has interviewed do not seem to have experienced anything like “the mythological picture of what lies hereafter” and even tend to disbelieve in the usual view of heaven and hell and the whole “reward-punishment model of the afterlife” (p. 70).
In Reflections on Life After Life, however, he states that his later interviews have indeed revealed widespread after-death experiences of “other realms of being which might well be termed ‘heavenly’” (p. 15). One man found himself in “a countryside with streams, grass, and trees, mountains” (p. 16); one woman was in a similar “beautiful place,” and “off in the distance ... I could see a city. There were buildings — separate buildings. They were gleaming, bright. People were happy in there. There was sparkling water, fountains ... a city of light I guess would be the way to say it” (p. 17).
In actual fact, as some of the other new books reveal, this experience is a rather common one. The Protestant authors mentioned above believe that this experience (at least when its imagery is distinctively Biblical) is a Christian one and is to be sharply distinguished from most of the other “after-death” experiences, which they believe to be demonic deceptions. “Unbelievers seem to experience false doctrine of a kind specifically attributed to Satan in the Bible; believers experience doctrinally accurate events, which might come right out of the scriptures” (Levitt and Weldon, Is There Life After Death?, p. 116). Is this actually true, or are the experiences of believers and unbelievers really much closer than these authors imagine?