Appendix E
The Most Common Questions, with Brief Answers and Directions to Fuller Treatments
Condensed Edition
Every new idea meets resistance, and a proposal as wide-reaching as this one draws questions from every direction. Good. Hard questions deserve honest answers. This appendix gathers the objections readers raise most often and answers each one briefly. The goal is not to settle the matter in a few sentences but to give you a clear reply and a pointer to the chapter where the full argument lives.
Each entry follows the same pattern: the objection stated plainly, a concise response, and a cross-reference. If an answer here satisfies you, move on. If it does not, follow the link.
The objection: Hebrews 9:27 says it is appointed for people to die once, and after that comes judgment. That rules out any opportunity beyond death.
It does not. The verse teaches that death is a one-time event, not repeated, and that judgment follows it. It says nothing about how soon judgment follows, or what happens in the interval. Most scholars read the "judgment" here as the final, eschatological judgment at Christ's return, not an instant verdict at the bedside.1 More important for this book: the encounter we propose takes place during the dying, before soul and body fully separate. It is part of the single death, not an event "after" it. The verse and the model are fully compatible. For the five-point case, see Chapter 24.
The objection: The parable of the rich man and Lazarus shows a fixed chasm after death. No crossing over. No second chances.
The chasm is fixed for the rich man because his encounter is already past. By the time we see him in Hades, his refusal is complete. The parable does not say the chasm was fixed before any meeting with God took place. It depicts the consequence of a settled "no," not the absence of an offer. Also, the story is set before Christ's resurrection, in the two-chamber arrangement of Sheol that Chapter 20 describes. For the full treatment, see Chapter 23.
The objection: If everyone meets Christ at death, why bother sharing the gospel now?
For the same reasons you share good news with anyone you love: obedience to Christ's command, the desire to spare people needless suffering, and the privilege of being part of what God is doing in the world. Evangelism shapes how a person lives, not only how they die. A lifetime of knowing Christ is immeasurably richer than meeting him only at the last moment. And the antemortem witness may be part of the very grace God uses to prepare a soul for the encounter.2 The missionary call is not weakened; it is deepened. See Chapter 32 and Chapter 18.
The objection: You are saying everyone gets a chance. That is universalism with extra steps.
No. Universalism says everyone will be saved. This book says everyone will be offered the chance to be saved, in a fully informed, genuinely free encounter. Some may refuse. The book is compatible with all three major views of final destiny: eternal conscious torment, conditional immortality, and universal reconciliation. It takes no position on which is correct.3 A real offer does not guarantee a "yes." See Chapter 29.
The objection: Romans 1:18–20 says God's nature is plain from creation, so the unevangelized are without excuse. They had their chance.
Romans 1 teaches that creation reveals God's existence and power. It does not say that general revelation is enough for saving knowledge of Christ. Paul himself asks, "How shall they believe in him of whom they have not heard?" (Romans 10:14). The moment-of-death encounter answers Paul's question: they will hear, because Christ himself will speak. General revelation leaves the unevangelized responsible for what they know. The encounter gives them what they have never had: a direct, personal meeting with the risen Lord. See Chapter 32.
The objection: Doesn't Reformed theology teach that God chooses who will be saved? The moment-of-death encounter sounds Arminian.
The encounter is compatible with several views of election. A Calvinist can hold that God's electing purpose is carried out through the encounter: the elect receive irresistible grace at the moment of death, just as they might receive it at any other moment. A Molinist can hold that God knew, by middle knowledge, who would freely say "yes" and arranged circumstances accordingly.4 An Arminian can hold that prevenient grace enables a free response at death as in life. The book's thesis does not require one particular doctrine of election. It requires only that the encounter is real and that the response is genuine. See Chapter 28 and Chapter 33.
The objection: If this were true, someone would have noticed in two thousand years.
Someone did. Ladislaus Boros proposed a "final decision" at the moment of death in 1962. Karl Rahner engaged a similar idea. The Eastern Orthodox tradition has long held a more open posture toward the intermediate state than the Western church. The early church's robust descent theology (Christ preaching to the dead, 1 Peter 3:18–19) kept the door open for centuries before it narrowed in the Latin West.5 What is new in this book is the convergence with NDE research, which was not available until the late twentieth century. Good theology sometimes waits for new data. See Chapter 16 and Chapter 33.
The objection: This sounds like the Catholic doctrine of purgatory. Protestants reject that.
It is not purgatory. Purgatory, in Catholic teaching, is a place of purification after death for those who already belong to Christ. The moment-of-death encounter is an offer of salvation to all the dying, not a cleansing of the already saved. Jerry Walls (a Protestant philosopher) has argued that some form of post-death transformation is defensible even on Protestant grounds, and his concept of optimal grace deeply informs this book. But the encounter itself is distinct from purgatory in purpose, timing, and audience.6 See Chapter 28 and Chapter 33.
The objection: Giving everyone a last-minute chance cheapens the seriousness of sin and the urgency of repentance.
It does the opposite. The encounter is not a loophole. It is a face-to-face meeting with the holy God in which every sin, every motive, and every self-deception is laid bare. Think of the NDE life review: people report reliving every act and feeling its impact on others. There is nothing "soft" about standing in the full light of Christ with nothing hidden. The encounter takes sin more seriously, not less, because it brings every person before the one whose holiness exposes all pretense. See Chapter 11 and Chapter 19.
The objection: The Bible does not clearly teach that infants are saved. Isn't this book reading its own hopes into silence?
Scripture is largely silent on the destiny of infants who die, and the book respects that silence. It does not claim certainty. What it proposes is that the moment-of-death encounter is fitted to the soul's capacity. For an infant, the encounter would take a form suited to a pre-rational soul. God, who knows every heart perfectly, is not limited by the child's age or ability.7 This is more hopeful than the alternatives, and it is grounded in the character of a God who desires all to be saved (1 Timothy 2:4). See Chapter 30.
The objection: NDEs are hallucinations produced by a brain shutting down. Oxygen deprivation, endorphins, or DMT could explain the whole thing.
The dying-brain hypothesis cannot explain veridical NDEs, in which patients report verified details they could not have known by any ordinary means. Pam Reynolds described her bone saw and surgical conversation while her brain showed a flat-line EEG. Blind patients have reported accurate visual observations during their NDEs.8 The cross-cultural consistency of NDE elements also resists a purely neurological explanation. Oxygen deprivation produces confusion, not the structured and coherent experiences NDErs report. The book does not claim NDEs prove the afterlife. It claims the data are significant and best explained by substance dualism. See Chapter 8.
The objection: Some people report terrifying, dark NDEs. Doesn't that undermine the idea of a loving encounter?
Hellish NDEs are part of the evidence, not a problem for the model. Howard Storm's experience is the classic case: initial terror and darkness, a remembered prayer, a desperate cry for help, and then rescue by Christ. The dark phase may be the opening movement of a tailored encounter, not a verdict. For some souls, felt separation from God is what it takes to awaken a genuine cry for him. The darkness is not God's absence; it may be the first step in God's approach. See Chapter 12 and Chapter 28.
The objection: If a person has a terrifying NDE and is then resuscitated, does that reveal their eternal destiny?
No. An NDE is not the completed moment-of-death encounter. The person was resuscitated; their dying was interrupted. The dark experience may have been only the opening phase of an encounter that, had it continued, would have led to rescue. We should not read a partial experience as a final verdict. God's pursuit does not end at the first heartbeat of fear. See Chapter 12.
The objection: Many NDErs report a "being of light" without identifying it as Jesus. Hindu NDErs see Hindu figures. How is this a Christ-encounter?
The book proposes that the being of light is the risen Christ, encountered through the cultural and personal categories the dying person brings to the moment. A Hindu with no knowledge of Jesus may meet the same Person and recognize love, holiness, and truth without knowing the name. Christ is not limited to the labels people carry. The consistent core across cultures (unconditional love, moral clarity, life review, offer of relationship) fits a single Person meeting many souls in many ways. See Chapter 18.
The objection: A few minutes of cardiac arrest cannot hold hours or days of experience. That's science fiction.
It is well-documented science. Subjective time-distortion is an everyday fact: emergencies unfold in "slow motion," dreams span apparent hours in minutes of REM sleep, and deep concentration compresses whole afternoons. The NDE data take this ordinary phenomenon to its extreme. Multiple peer-reviewed studies document extended, coherent, content-rich experiences during periods when the brain was barely or not at all active.9 The philosophical distinction between clock-time and experienced time is ancient, tracing back to Augustine. What is new is the application to dying. See Chapter 10, Chapter 14, and Appendix I.
The objection: Your argument rests on contested theories about time. If the philosophy is wrong, the whole thesis collapses.
The thesis rests on one modest claim: that subjective experience is not rigidly locked to clock-time. This claim is not speculative. It is supported by cognitive science, neuroscience, and everyday human experience. The deeper philosophical questions (A-theory versus B-theory, divine temporality versus timelessness) are explored in the Part Two appendices, but the core thesis does not require settling those debates. Even on a B-theory of time, the soul's experienced duration during dying can exceed the clock's measurement. See Appendix H and Appendix I.
The objection: Not all Christians accept substance dualism. Your model requires it.
Yes, the model works most naturally on a dualist framework. But substance dualism is the historic majority position in Christian theology and is well represented among contemporary analytic philosophers of mind. The book argues for dualism on both philosophical and empirical grounds (veridical NDEs provide significant evidence). Chapter 8 builds the positive case. Readers who hold a different view of the mind should still engage the NDE data on their own terms.
The objection: Joel Green, Nancey Murphy, and others hold that the soul is not separable from the body. They reject the intermediate state entirely.
The book takes this position seriously and engages it at length. Its central conclusion is that physicalist conditional immortality cannot account for the moment-of-death encounter because it has no conscious soul to encounter Christ between clinical death and resurrection.10 Physicalist Christians can still affirm God's sovereign salvation of the dying, but they will need a different mechanism than the one this book proposes. See Chapter 9.
The objection: Some deaths are so sudden that there is no subjective "moment" to extend. An explosion, an aneurysm, decapitation. Where does the encounter fit?
Even instantaneous deaths involve a process. The soul does not vanish the instant the body is destroyed; it separates. The book proposes that the encounter occurs in the window of separation itself. The subjective time-extension documented in NDEs does not depend on a long dying process. Veridical reports come from patients whose hearts stopped in a single moment. The "moment" is the soul's moment, not the body's. See Chapter 15.
The objection: Dementia patients lose cognitive function gradually. By the time biological death occurs, there may be no recognizable "self" left to meet Christ.
On a dualist view, the soul is not the brain. Alzheimer's damages the brain's ability to express the soul's capacities, but it does not destroy the soul. When the body finally dies and the soul separates, those capacities are released. The phenomenon of terminal lucidity, in which patients with severe dementia suddenly recover full clarity just before death, offers striking anecdotal support.11 The soul that meets Christ is the whole soul, not the diminished person the disease made visible. See Chapter 31.
The objection: Christian hope centers on bodily resurrection. Your model seems to focus entirely on the soul at death. Does the body matter?
Absolutely. The moment-of-death encounter is not the final chapter; it is the threshold. After the encounter, the soul enters the intermediate state (for those who accept, conscious fellowship with Christ; for those who refuse, the book leaves the question open). The bodily resurrection at Christ's return remains the ultimate Christian hope. The encounter determines the soul's relationship with Christ; the resurrection completes it in a glorified body. Nothing in this model replaces or diminishes the resurrection. See Chapter 29.
The objection: If God knows the counterfactual truth about how you would respond, then the encounter is just God acting out what he already knows. It adds nothing.
Counterfactual knowledge is not the same as actual doing. God's knowledge that you would say "yes" under certain conditions does not replace your actually saying it. A marriage proposal is not a formality just because the groom already knows the answer. The encounter matters because it is the moment where possibility becomes reality, where a soul that would have said "yes" actually does. Middle knowledge gives God the wisdom to design the perfect approach. The encounter gives the soul the dignity of a real response.12 See Chapter 28, Section 10.
The objection: If God tailors the encounter for each soul, why would he let anyone's experience begin with terror or felt separation?
For the same reason a surgeon causes pain to bring healing. Some souls are so defended, so armored against love, that the direct approach would only harden them further. A moment of felt absence can do what a flood of light cannot: awaken the deepest hunger for God. The darkness is not cruelty. It is part of the optimal approach, the opening movement of a grace designed for that particular soul. Howard Storm's experience is the clearest example: utter darkness, then a remembered hymn, then a desperate cry, then rescue. The darkness did not defeat grace; it was grace in disguise. See Chapter 28 and Chapter 12.
The objection: I have read the book. I find it interesting but not convincing. Does that put me in danger?
Not at all. This book offers a theological proposal, not a required belief. Your salvation does not depend on accepting the moment-of-death thesis. It depends on your relationship with the risen Christ. If you know him now, the question of what happens at death is already answered for you. If you are unsure of him, the book's invitation is the same as the gospel's: come to him now, not later. The point has never been to give anyone a reason to wait. It has always been to give everyone a reason to hope.
The goal of this book, from the first page to the last, is to show that the love of God is wider, deeper, and more relentless than we have dared to imagine. If you finish the book unconvinced of its mechanism but more confident in God's love, the book has done its work.
↑ 1. The Greek μετὰ δὲ τοῦτο (meta de touto, "after this") gives sequence but not timing. The parallel in Hebrews 9:28 pairs human judgment with Christ's second appearing, placing the "judgment" of v. 27 at the eschatological parousia rather than immediately at the bedside. See the fuller treatment in Chapter 24.
↑ 2. Jerry L. Walls addresses the missionary objection directly: the obligation to share the gospel stands regardless of what God may do at death, because our obedience to the Great Commission has its own integrity. See Walls, Hell: The Logic of Damnation (Notre Dame, 1992), ch. 4, §III. Cf. Beilby and Eddy, eds., Postmortem Opportunity, ch. 7.
↑ 3. The book's eschatological neutrality is set out in Chapter 29. For the distinction between a universal offer and universal acceptance, see Chapter 27.
↑ 4. Timothy A. Stratton, Human Freedom, Divine Knowledge, and Mere Molinism, 2nd ed. (2026), ch. 13, defines "mere Molinism" as the conjunction of two pillars: God possesses middle knowledge, and humans possess libertarian freedom. This framework is compatible with a range of soteriological positions. See also William Lane Craig, The Only Wise God, for the integration of middle knowledge with election.
↑ 5. Ladislaus Boros, The Mystery of Death (1962; English trans., 1965). For the patristic descent tradition, see Chapters 20–22. On Orthodox openness to postmortem development, see Chapter 33.
↑ 6. Jerry L. Walls, Purgatory: The Logic of Total Transformation (Oxford, 2012), ch. 5, "Purgatory and Theories of a 'Second Chance,'" section "When Seconds Matter." Walls's concept of optimal grace informs this book's thesis but is distinct from the Catholic doctrine of purgatory as a place of purification for the already redeemed.
↑ 7. Walls engages the infant-salvation question in Purgatory, ch. 5, discussing Curtis's postmortem-maturation proposal alongside Tiessen's infant-faith view. The book follows Walls's caution against assuming that all who die in infancy are automatically saved, while affirming that God's salvific will extends to every soul.
↑ 8. Michael Sabom, Light and Death (1998), on Pam Reynolds. Kenneth Ring and Sharon Cooper, Mindsight: Near-Death and Out-of-Body Experiences in the Blind (1999). Sam Parnia et al., "AWARE—AWAreness during REsuscitation," Resuscitation 85, no. 12 (2014); and the AWARE II results (2023).
↑ 9. Pim van Lommel et al., "Near-Death Experience in Survivors of Cardiac Arrest: A Prospective Study in the Netherlands," The Lancet 358 (2001): 2039–45. See also Bruce Greyson, After: A Doctor Explores What Near-Death Experiences Reveal about Life and Beyond (2021), on the coherence and content-richness of NDE reports during documented cardiac arrest.
↑ 10. See the extended argument in Chapter 9. Cf. Joel B. Green, Body, Soul, and Human Life (2008); Nancey Murphy, Bodies and Souls, or Spirited Bodies? (2006). For the dualist response: J. P. Moreland, The Soul: How We Know It's Real and Why It Matters (2014); John W. Cooper, Body, Soul, and Life Everlasting, rev. ed. (2000).
↑ 11. Terminal lucidity is documented in Michael Nahm et al., "Terminal Lucidity: A Review and a Case Collection," Archives of Gerontology and Geriatrics 55, no. 1 (2012): 138–42. Chapter 31 develops the theological significance.
↑ 12. The distinction between counterfactual knowledge and actual event is developed in Chapter 28, Section 10. Cf. Stratton, Mere Molinism, 2nd ed., ch. 13; William Lane Craig, The Only Wise God, on the difference between God's knowing what would happen and God's actualizing what does happen.