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May 9, 2025 - Jim Bakker Show
28:27
The Jim Bakker Show with Shaun Tabatt
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Near-Death Deception 00:15:15
Welcome to the Jim Baker Family Show.
Today, Sean Tabbitt tells us what really awaits us behind the veil.
Please welcome your co-host, Reverend Mondo De La Vega.
And now here's your host, Pastor Ricky Baker.
Welcome.
You're watching the PTL Television Network.
We're excited to have you here with us today.
Today we have Sean Tabott.
He's worked in the Christian publishing industry for over 10 years and he currently serves as a publishing executive at Destiny Image Publishers.
And Mondo, we love Destiny Image.
They bring some of the best guests, some of the best books, and we're glad to have you.
Brother Sean, thank you for being here with us today.
Good to see you.
Good to be back.
Listen, friends, we're going to be talking about something that, Mondo, not a lot of people have really delved into, and it's the near-death experience.
I feel like everybody knows somebody who can say, I've had a near-death experience, but you're the first person who really, really dove into it from what I can tell.
And it says the near-death conspiracy.
So we're going to dive right into that, Mondo.
I didn't know it was a conspiracy.
What I love about you, Sean, is that you go where no man wants to go into.
I want to figure it out.
I want to know how it works, even if it's dark and a little gloomy.
Oh, man.
But I want to tell you, get ready.
You're in for a treat.
And if you had some of these experiences, my question is this.
What does the Bible have to say about some of the things that we go through, we experience?
You know, a lot of people base their stories on stories.
Right.
But at the end of the day, what does the Bible have to say about this issue and this subject matter?
So stay tuned.
I can't wait to hear what you wrote about and really your personal experiences as well.
Well, I want to know what's really going on with near-death experiences.
What are these things?
And Sean, you know, for many of those watching, they may be new to a near-death experience and even it being called a near-death experience conspiracy.
Right.
So kind of explain to me why you titled the book The Near-Death Experience Conspiracy.
In terms of the conspiracy aspect, you know, I started out very naive.
I work in the Christian publishing space and in God's Providence, started working on books with other people who've had near-death experiences.
And from that, got into doing interviews with my good friend Randy Kaye.
So he himself is an experiencer.
I'm kind of an investigative journalist, podcaster guy.
And we just started talking to other men and women who've died and went to heaven or went to hell.
And while we saw a lot of great things in these stories, we also saw things that were concerning or even disturbing where I began to wonder like what's happening.
People would sometimes have an experience where it was seemingly hijacked.
It went into an extremely deceptive experience where things weren't as they appeared.
Like they, it seemed as if they were in heaven, but they were actually taken into a hell experience.
There are a whole series of near-death experiences where people encounter this vague being that's like a ball of light and they're like, oh, it's all love and I'm in everything and everything's in me and everybody goes to heaven and where they come back with really poor theology and some bad ideas.
But the interesting thing with those experiences is it's very unclear who they're encountering.
Is it God?
Is it Satan or demons masquerading as an angel of light?
And in my experience with the majority of the heaven or hell, maybe those more traditional experiences, it's very clear who God is.
God shows up as Jesus or God the Father or even sometimes the Holy Spirit.
In a hell experience, it's very clear who Satan and demons are in those sorts of experiences.
So I just began to wonder, was there something at work behind the scenes hijacking these experiences that on the one hand, it can lead the experiencer into deception, but also those that read their stories and listen to their interviews, it can lead them into deception as well.
I think when you talk about that, I think about, and maybe you're thinking as well, but I think about Heaven is for Real.
Right.
The book.
There's been a lot of books that have been published about this type of experiences.
What do you make of them?
Yeah.
Well, it is interesting.
I'm a guy who cut my teeth in Christian retail in the late 90s.
In the late 90s to the early 2000s, that was the heyday of they called them the heaven tourism books.
So, heaven is for real is a big one.
And there's a handful of others where you began to see people recant their stories, saying they lied or they embellished and maybe told a little more than actually happened.
And I feel like that put a bad taste in people's mouths for these sorts of books, these sorts of stories.
Even when my good friend Randy Kay, I got a book proposal for his book, Dying to Meet Jesus, I was super skeptical.
I'm like, man, why do we need an NDE experience from this executive guy?
Is this edifying?
Is this really going to help anybody?
And for me, that, along with John Burke's book, Imagine Heaven, reopened the conversation for me.
And really, John's book reopened the whole conversation for the Christian publishing space.
Where you have tons of NDE books coming out now.
But I think that the big thing is we have to realize not all near-death experience stories are the same.
Some are edifying and point us to Jesus.
Others point us down potentially very dark paths.
So there's a whole discipline away from Jesus.
So there's a whole discernment factor that not everybody talks about.
You have been the last seven years interviewing near-death experiences stories.
Right.
As a journalist, like you mentioned, what patterns?
I love patterns, right?
Because patterns lead you somewhere.
So what patterns concerning all of these experiences that you write about in your new book?
What is it that we look for?
Right.
Well, the beautiful thing is, God is a God of order, and He's given us lots of structure as how we see the world is set up.
And it's the same sort of thing in near-death experiences.
You start reading books, you start talking with people, and you'll begin to see that it's structured, it's ordered.
Things tend to proceed in a way that you can almost predict.
Where they die, they have a catastrophic experience.
They enter into an out-of-body experience.
Then they are drawn towards a light or a tunnel and they transition to the other side.
And then what unfolds in the heaven or hell experience, it's very orderly, structured, and almost predictable.
So I feel like when you see that, you can almost predict what should be in a more legitimate experience.
And when you see experiences where you have less of that, I start to question: like, why do you not have all the things that somebody encounters in what I would consider a more viable or traditional experience?
In terms of, you know, heaven and hell, you know, people encounter God as Jesus, the Holy Spirit or the Father.
You know, they'll see angels.
They'll see heavenly structures like mansions where people are going about their business, living life and doing things in heaven.
You know, when people talk about hell, you know, they'll talk about kind of fire and sulfur and people experiencing punishment or torture.
You know, things that are very much in line with scripture and very consistent.
And then you have this whole other body of more deceptive experiences where it lacks all those things, where there's maybe just enough truth to seem fairly good, but there's almost always a tell that gives it away that something's off, something's not quite right.
But as we would expect, anything that God creates, very structured, very orderly, yet I think Satan's come along trying to take something that was good and bend it to his means to lead people astray, lead people away from Jesus.
That's right.
So you're a Christian author, you're a podcaster as well.
How did this mold really the direction you went with the near-death experience, even research?
I mean, you're able to interview people on your podcast and you're also doing, like you said, investigative journalism.
Right.
So, I mean, have you?
I know if people want to watch, let's just go ahead and say there.
If they want to watch the podcast that you do or go and see any of the work you've done, can you give them a website?
Maybe Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, whatever.
I mean, the easiest place, Google or YouTube, search for two Christian dudes, and that's the podcast Randy Kay.
Two Christian dudes.
That's Randy Kaye and I.
We interviewed a bunch of experiencers for about two years.
And then the Sean Tabbatt show is my main podcast.
And not unlike your show, there's a lot of variety.
It's kind of who I want to talk to or what I'm interested in.
Yeah, if you look me up, you can find all kinds of near-death experience conversations.
I like that.
So how did this influence your approach to the near-death experience?
Yeah, you know, I think for me, I wrote the book I wish I'd had when I started out working in this space seven years ago.
Again, because I was naive.
Like, I had no clue that there was this whole dark side in the space.
Probably the most eye-opening experience I had last year, Tina Pugh, who's a friend of the show as well.
We went to this.
major secular NDE conference, not really knowing what we were stepping into, but I wanted to see, like, people have told me it's dark, but how dark is it really?
And that's where we're exposed to, you know, their pet psychics in the Expo hall wanting to help you know how fluffy's feeling and what he's never been able to tell you.
There were mediums keynoting, talking about the work they do where they think they're helping people reconnect with their lost loved ones.
But, you know, I would say from a biblical perspective, they're channeling demons, and these are familiar spirits masquerading as their lost loved ones.
You had people sharing about past and pre-life memories, which as I talk about in the book, I feel is kind of demonic in nature and meant to be deceptive.
Okay, I got to ask you something.
I know someone that the first thing they say to me is, I'm a good person.
And they are a good person.
And I know these people.
They're really good people.
There's no evil witchcrafts in their lives, but they have this gift, they say, that they channel the spirit of their dad or someone.
What do you explain that to me?
How can good people be able to channel some things like this?
You know, I think in the same way that God has set up the world with order and structure, I actually had an opportunity to interview a practicing medium once on the podcast.
I know that we had him on your podcast.
On my podcast.
I gave a disclaimer at the front of the show saying, hey, this guy wrote a book in the NDE space.
I like some of his research, but you have to know, like, we have opposing worldviews.
We come at things from very different directions.
But it was fascinating because he was willing to let me ask some hard questions.
Now, as a guy who's been in the charismatic publishing and ministry space for a decade plus, I've had all kinds of prophetic training and worked on and read lots of prophetic books.
And I began to ask him, like, what, you know, you talk about in the book, when spirits come in the room, you know, kind of your spidey sense tingles off.
You feel this, you feel that in your body.
And a lot of what he shared as the conversation went on was very similar to how I was prophetically trained to work with the Holy Spirit, to discern things, to give people prophetic words.
And so I think people can be in circumstances where we even see those who are just gifted at birth with prophetic ability, prophetic talent, even, if you will.
And it can be used with one team or the other.
You know, they can be partnering with the Holy Spirit or they could be partnering with ultimately what would be demons.
If you talk to psychics or mediums who are, in effect, retired, they follow Jesus, they've backed off from their old life.
They'll tell you at the time, they often don't even believe that demons are real.
They thought they were working with altruistic spirit guides and the souls of deceased people.
But they now see on the other side of it, these were demons.
These were familiar spirits masquerading as these lost people.
And so, again, we see a lot of order and structure in how God sets things up.
But in the case of psychics and mediums, they might be operating in what we would call prophetic gifting.
I would say they're just playing with the wrong team.
They're partnering with Satan and demons.
That's right.
Friends, I want you to go to our Nori Media affiliate.
You can go to jimbakershow.com or you can call that number on the screen.
Scan the QR code, Mondo.
I'm always trying to get people, hey, start scanning that QR code.
You go to restaurants during the COVID outbreak and you see, hey, it's scanning for the menu, but QR codes become our friend.
So scan that.
You can see it right there on the screen.
We want you to go and get this book.
It is with an affiliate program we have with Nori Media.
It's Destiny Image.
I believe it's also Harrison House.
All those books, an incredible partnership we have with them.
I want to say thank you for purchasing those books because what that does is obviously that gives you a library of information that you can just have into your home.
Also, you can do Wednesday night Bible studies with them we've seen.
But also, that goes to support this ministry to allow us to continue to preach the gospel around the world.
Because, Mondo, every book purchase allows us to continue to preach the gospel.
Order the book.
My option is always this: order several copies today because you're going to want to share it with your friends.
The key is this: Christians, you have to start Bible studies in this subject because one idea will spark another idea.
That's right.
And the pieces will come together by the end of the Bible study.
You're going to leave with tools to understand a lot of the subject matter that maybe you're hearing about, maybe you have experienced as well.
So, again, order several copies, start a Bible study, and start the conversation today.
That's right, friends.
We want you to go and do that.
You know, you mentioned a nine-point near-death experiences framework in your book, and I want to go over that.
You know, could you briefly explain this framework to us and its significance?
Yeah, one of the things I noticed as I began to read and research, not only in the Christian space, but the secular conversation around near-death experiences, a lot of the scientists and medical professionals who went at this from their angle rather than a spiritual angle, they like structure and order and systems.
And so, they basically broke down what happens in a near-death experience step by step.
And I'd not really seen that much in the Christian publishing side of this conversation.
So, in my previous book called Near-Death Experiences, and also in this new one, I go into this nine-point framework, and basically, I've set it up as a way for somebody to be able to kind of understand what should happen in a near-death experience, how things should unfold.
You know, we cover things from like, okay, how did your spirit leave your body?
You know, you probably had some kind of an accident or a catastrophic health situation.
You know, past that, you would step into, as we talked about earlier, an out-of-body experience.
You know, ironically, out-of-body experiences don't just happen when people are having a near-death experience.
I get into this early on in the book, just trying to personalize it a little bit more because I'm not myself a near-death experiencer.
My late wife, Lynette, passed away about a year ago from brain cancer.
And about eight months before she died, God gave her two different experiences that actually are on the nine-point framework.
The first was an out-of-body experience, where one morning she told me, Hey, I couldn't wake you up last night.
You know, I yelled, I tried to get your attention, but no matter what I did, I just couldn't wake you up.
And thinking through it logistically, you know, she was in a hospital bed in the room, I was on an air mattress on the floor.
There's no way she could have seen me, yet what she described is it was almost like she was above me looking down on me.
And I told her, I think you had an out-of-body experience.
And so, that was the first thing that happened.
And then that same week, she talked to me about having this open vision of meeting her welcoming committee.
And in near-death experiences, especially heavenly experiences, it's not uncommon for somebody to come to what are the gates of heaven and they'll encounter loved ones who had preceded them in death, friends who have gone on to heaven before them.
So, in her case, she saw her maternal grandparents, her father, and her older brother who had all preceded her in death.
And I really wrestled with this for a while because, again, this was eight months before she passed.
Judgment Seat Experience 00:01:37
And we had talked through, you know, what that welcoming committee, what it means.
But I asked a couple of my near-death experiencer friends, like, hey, what do you make of this?
And they told me they really felt this was God getting her ready for what she was going to experience when she did go home to heaven.
And what's beautiful about that, you know, God used my work in NDEs to allow me to encourage her and comfort her along our 19-month cancer journey.
But that eight months out, her mind was still very sound.
So she could understand and accept things and take things in.
And in that time, shortly after, her mind really began to deteriorate quickly.
And so it was just a beautiful thing that I was able to minister to her about near-death experiences.
Once you get past the welcoming committee, it's not uncommon for people to have like a life review where Jesus will show up and review a person's life, going over the good and the bad, the things that happen.
I think that's a representation of the judgment seat or the judgment we'll experience when we go into the afterlife.
And then beyond that, the framework just breaks down what people may encounter in heaven.
God as the Father, Son, or Holy Spirit, they might see beautiful structures, beautiful landscapes where people talk about even the grass and the trees and the flowers and the praises of God in heaven.
We get into some of the things that you would expect to see in a hell experience.
And then to cap it off, what it looks like for re-entry.
What does it look like for the soul to go back into the body?
Cardio Miracle Benefits 00:03:41
And those can range from, hey, I just woke up to it was very jarring and like my soul got smushed back into my body and Jesus said to come and smooth me back out so I fit again.
So, but again, the intent with the framework is to let you know what to expect.
And you can almost use it as a scoring system where those near-to-the experiences that have more of those points and what they experienced, you can likely assume it's a little more verifiable.
It's more of a legitimate experience.
You know, in the case where it only might have one, two, three of those things, it may be a valid near-death experience, but I'm going to wonder more about it and want to investigate it a little more because it doesn't have all the hallmarks of what I expect to happen.
That's right.
Friends, if you're just tuning in, we were with Sean Tappitt.
We're talking about the near-death experience conspiracy.
We're about to ask him what scripture should believers should reference when evaluating the validity of afterlife experiences.
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I want to say thank you to Cardio Miracle.
They help continue to let us spread the gospel of Jesus Christ through the means of television.
So I want to say thank you for also getting that and being a part of this journey that allows us to do what we do, Mondo, which is tell people Jesus is coming soon.
Whether soon is two years, whether soon is 20 years, whether it's 100 years, he's coming back and we have to be a bride that is ready for him.
You know, we've been talking about the near-death experience conspiracy, and we always go back to this: hey, if there's anything on the show, we got to be able to back it up with the Bible.
Do you have any scripture references?
Maybe a believer should reference whenever they're either having a near-death experience, they had one, or they have a friend who's coming to them and saying, I think I may have had a near-death experience.
Yeah, you know, the Bible doesn't use the term NDE or near-death experiences.
Defining Spiritual Transformative Experiences 00:08:32
So we got to really search the scriptures for Bible verses that are going to be helpful.
I think the place to start is with the Apostle Paul in 2 Corinthians, where he talks about, I knew a guy who went to the third heaven.
And in Jewish cosmology, the third heaven is where God dwells.
And he talks about, you know, seeing things that are almost indescribable, things that, you know, he can't speak of.
And I feel like God gave us that experience with Paul in the Bible to say, hey, near-death experiences are a real thing.
When we look back at the life of Paul, he was stoned, he was bitten by a snake, he was shipwrecked.
We could assume he likely had a near-death experience, if not multiple near-death experiences.
So I feel like that's the starting point to go.
Even God kind of acknowledges that these things are real.
Another place that's helpful is to look at the stoning of Stephen in Acts 7, where we see Stephen seeing into heaven, seeing Christ at the right hand of the Father.
And that aligns very much with part of the conversation around near-death experiences around shared death experiences or deathbed experiences where, and a lot of us who've had loved ones go home to heaven, we've been in the room with them in the hospital where they might be looking off into the distance and smiling and talking to people or talk about how they're seeing Jesus or angels or even a loved one who's come back to the Apostle John,
the revelator, could that be an experience that you're talking about?
Or is it different?
It could be similar.
It could be different.
We have different terminology in the book that we use to kind of differentiate.
So in a circumstance where somebody didn't necessarily die or be sick or near death, I would refer to that more as a spiritual transformative experience.
Now, somebody who's going through a dark night of the soul, I've interviewed people where they have a legitimate experience just like a near-death experience, but they weren't sick or dying.
I think when we step into like prophetic or ecstatic experiences, I would definitely categorize that as more of a spiritual transformative experience.
With those kinds of things, I think we can use a lot of the same tools to discern, you know, like how does what this person coming back with, does it fit with what we read in scripture?
Does it fit with Orthodox historic Christian teaching?
You know, there are a lot of folks who will write books.
I had a revelation of heaven, I had a revelation of hell.
And to that person, they want to say it's the same thing or as legitimate as a near-death experience.
My only counter or pushback to that is just it's not qualitatively the same thing because they didn't die.
You know, the soul leaving the body and going through the process of crossing the veil.
Yeah, it's different.
It's significant in a whole new way.
So for some of that stuff, I push back and say, you know, was that meant to be edifying or was that more for your personal prayer journal?
So not necessarily bad to share, but in the same way with discerning near-death experiences, prophetic visions, that sort of thing, we have to be discerning there as well.
You cover amazing topics.
Let me just read a few.
There's a conspiracy afoot.
What is the NDE stuff all about anyways?
All my friends went to heaven and all I got was a stupid t-shirt.
And I love this one.
NDEs and alien encounters.
I mean, he's got a plethora of different options that I know is going to hit home.
Go to the website today, jimbakershow.com, or better yet, give us a call, 1-888-988-1588.
How does the Bible guide us through this process?
Because understanding the afterlife and how should we be influenced and learning how to interpret this type of encounters.
Right.
I think we always have to use the Bible as our guide.
As we read scripture, we see much about heaven, hell, and the afterlife, all throughout the scriptures.
And so we need to remember that's primary.
I think there's a want of elevating these experiencers almost like they're gurus.
And I get it, man.
These experiences are beautiful and wonderful and fascinating.
But there's always this want of saying, you know, let's interpret the lens of scripture or what we know about heaven or hell through these experiencers' experiences.
And that's just not the best path to take.
You know, we always need to remember that scripture has to be primary.
My good friend John Burke in his book, Imagine Heaven, I feel like he has one of the best statements about this.
He talks about, you know, well, again, I feel like these, he doesn't say this, but that they give us aha moments or fill in the gaps for us a little bit.
But John's caution is let's not take these experiences and make the Church of Randy Kay, where we're basing our theology about the afterlife on one man's experience.
Again, it can inform us about things in heaven and maybe make things a little more vivid for us.
But scripture always has to be over a person's experience and the lens we use to interpret it.
I love that.
Do you think that people could use a near-death experience as a tool for false witness?
Yeah, yeah, I could definitely see where somebody could, I don't necessarily think there's a lot of people faking that they've had a near-death experience because you would probably be able to verify a lot of what did or did happen to them.
But I think people can have deceptive or false experiences where more in that ball being of light and love where they come back with universalism and everybody goes to heaven or just bad ideas.
Like one case I share in the book, a woman died during surgery, had too much anesthesia, and the being told her things like rape and murder and cannibalism, those aren't bad.
They're just like spiritual growth, growth for what comes next.
And you don't need half a moral compass to know that's all very bad.
But yeah, you can definitely have those more deceptive stories, those more deceptive accounts, making it into interviews and in popular books.
And so I do very much feel like these more negative experiences can lead other people astray if they take them in and just believe them wholeheartedly.
Yeah, you know, we just have a few minutes left in the broadcast.
I want to ask you a question.
You know, Mondo was talking about a loved one he knows that, you know, maybe talks to what they think is an old spirit, an old family member.
I've known people, you know, throughout my military time and that, and they claim, oh, I can go to a medium and talk to my dead grandmother and she gives me advice.
You know, what would you say to a Christian, a believer, someone who has professed Christ with their mouth who says, you know what, maybe I have sought out mediums or maybe it's still something that I dabble in because I miss grandma or I miss mom or I miss dad.
But they still say Jesus with their mouth, but they're still doing these things.
How would you guide them to get out of that?
But then also, what advice would you give them?
Yeah, and I get the appeal.
A lot of people are attracted to the near-death experience space because either they've had an experience themselves or they've lost a loved one and they want the hope of that they're in heaven.
They want reassurance that they're okay on the other side.
And that's something we can take to God and allow him to comfort us and give us that reassurance.
Or we can kind of take a shortcut and consult a medium or a psychic who will, you know, often they're able to channel spirits that will mimic and pretend to be grandma or whoever it is.
But the Bible is very clear.
That's not a good path.
We look at Saul and the witch of Endor.
That ends very poorly.
There's a reason the Bible pushes back on consulting mediums.
It's a doorway to the demonic in your life.
And I would say if you've gone down that path, you're not necessarily going to become possessed or have the demonic completely wreak havoc in your life, but you've opened a gateway.
You've opened a door.
I'm just looking for you.
It's something I would pray about.
It's something I would consult my pastor or a ministry leader that I'm under and just walk out that journey.
You may need deliverance after something like that, but something to definitely take seriously and get worked out.
Amen.
Friends, I want you to go to jimbakershow.com and go to our affiliate page with NORIMED.
It's also, it says a little destiny image logo as well as the Harrison House logo.
It's all in one little button.
You can click that and you can find this book, The Near-Death Experience Conspiracy, or the NDE Conspiracy.
It says, can we trust eyewitness accounts of heaven, hell, and of the afterlife?
Or you can call that number.
It's 1-888-988-1588 or scan that QR code on the screen.
What that'll do is you pull up your smartphone, scan the QR code on the screen, and it'll take you right to the page where you can order this book directly.
Sean, I want to say thank you for being on the show with us today.
Thank you.
Please come back and do a second broadcast with us.
You can follow that.
Download the PTL television app on your iPhone, Android, any device, and you can watch and stay tuned.
I want you to remember this.
Don't let anybody convince you otherwise.
God loves you.
He really does.
Bye-bye for today.
Dad's Words: Remember Love 00:00:19
Sean, I want to say thank you for being on the broadcast with us.
We want to thank you for your prayers and support.
We would not be able to be here without you.
If you want to see more from us and our family, go to watchjimbakershow.com.
And as my dad always says, remember, God loves you.
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