Near death experience

A recent TV documentary presented the case of near death experience and return from visiting heaven. The question asked of me, was essentially: "Is this an acceptable Christian viewpoint?"

There is no scriptural reference. Many were raised from the dead in the New Testament. No reference to what they experienced "while dead." The Old Testament has reference to bones coming back to life and growing sinew on dried bones. One person was resurrected when thrown on the bones of a prophet. Again no commentary on the individual's experience between death and resurrection.

 

I remember about twenty years ago reading a reference book on this. The name I remember was "Into the light." The current book on Amazon by that name has a 2007 copyright and was not the book I read.  Accounts have been detailed in other reference books as an aside to the theme of the book. The stories of revival from death experience are numerous and cross centuries, cultures, and religions. They invariably reference a brilliant white light. After the white light there is little commonality. The experiences range from fuzzy (foggy) to sharp (HDTV). The individual's past to their future. Familiar surroundings to an unfathomable place. Billy Graham's "Angels, Angels, Angels" contains some instances.

 

Some of these people were saved (I have a Pastor friend who had such an experience. It was what led him to become a Pastor. He was saved but ignoring God). And, of course the unsaved. For the unsaved, the resurrection was followed by either salvation or increasing paranoia and eventual insanity.

  

Basically, it is not a tool God uses for our knowledge of Salvation, since there is no clear reference in Scripture.  There are enough stories of a similar nature to suggest some sort of supernatural phenomenon. Whether God, Satan, drugs, or illness induced fever I have no answer.