The Dead Know Nothing? Near-Death Experiences at the Boundary of Scripture and Neuroscience

Faith & Science Conversation
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Near-death experiences present an unusual challenge at the intersection of Scripture and science.

Some people who survive cardiac arrest or other life-threatening events report extraordinarily vivid experiences: separation from the body, movement through darkness or a tunnel, brilliant light, encounters with deceased relatives or religious figures, profound peace, life review, or the sensation of entering another realm. Others who survive equally serious events report nothing at all.

The experiences deserve to be taken seriously. They have been documented in prospective clinical studies and have become a legitimate subject of neurological, psychological, and medical research. Yet taking an experience seriously is not the same as accepting every interpretation of that experience.

For believers, another question arises.

What happens when the apparent testimony of an extraordinary experience seems to conflict with the Scriptural testimony concerning death?

That question becomes especially interesting when modern neuroscience is added to the conversation.

What Does Scripture Mean by Death?

The Hebrew Scriptures begin their anthropology not with an immortal soul temporarily inhabiting a body, but with the creation of a living human being:

“And YAH Elohim formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.”
— Genesis 2:7

The sequence is significant. The human being does not merely receive a nephesh as an independently conscious entity. The human becomes a living nephesh when the formed body receives the neshmat chayim, the breath of life.

Death is subsequently portrayed as a reversal:

“Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was: and the spirit shall return unto Elohim who gave it.”
— Ecclesiastes 12:7

Elsewhere, the Hebrew record becomes more explicit:

“For the living know that they shall die: but the dead know not any thing.”
— Ecclesiastes 9:5

Psalm 146 describes the person’s breath departing, the body returning to earth, and his thoughts perishing. Daniel describes the dead as those who “sleep in the dust of the earth” until they awaken. Yahshua uses essentially the same imagery concerning Lazarus: “Our friend Lazarus sleepeth; but I go, that I may awake him out of sleep” (John 11:11).

Paul likewise places the believer’s hope in resurrection. In 1 Thessalonians 4 he speaks of those who “sleep,” followed by the return of Messiah and the resurrection of the dead. In 1 Corinthians 15, resurrection—not the escape of an immortal consciousness from the body—is the great answer to death.

This produces a coherent Scriptural proposition:

Life is embodied and conscious; death is described as sleep; resurrection is the awakening.

That is the theological proposition I want to place beside the scientific evidence—not assume that science has proved it.

What Are Near-Death Experiences Actually Evidence Of?

One of the most important distinctions may be hidden in the name itself.

A near-death experience is not necessarily an experience of irreversible death.

Modern resuscitation medicine has made it possible to restore circulation after cardiac arrest. Consequently, a person may undergo a period of profound physiological crisis and later survive to report what was experienced.

But when during that sequence did the experience occur?

Before loss of consciousness?

During cardiac arrest?

During cardiopulmonary resuscitation?

As cerebral circulation was being partially restored?

During emergence from coma?

During later reconstruction of memory?

Those are scientific questions, and they matter enormously.

The 2001 prospective Dutch study by van Lommel and colleagues followed 344 successfully resuscitated cardiac-arrest patients. Sixty-two—18 percent—reported an NDE. The majority did not.

A 2024 scoping review of prospective cardiac-arrest studies found reported NDE rates ranging from 6.3 to 39.3 percent, with considerable methodological differences among studies.

Whatever NDEs ultimately prove to be, therefore, they are not an inevitable subjective consequence reported by everyone who survives cardiac arrest.

What Is the Brain Doing?

The assumption that the brain simply becomes completely and instantaneously inactive during the dying process has also become more complicated.

A 2023 study of dying human patients reported surges of gamma activity and connectivity in two of four patients following withdrawal of ventilatory support. The authors were appropriately cautious: electrical signatures associated with conscious processing are not themselves proof that the patients were consciously experiencing anything. Nevertheless, the findings demonstrate that the neurophysiology of dying can be more complex than a simple on/off model.

The AWARE-II study examined 567 in-hospital cardiac arrests at 25 sites. Fifty-three patients survived, 28 completed interviews, and 11 of those interviewed reported memories or perceptions suggestive of consciousness. Researchers also detected EEG patterns consistent with organized brain activity as late as 35–60 minutes into CPR in some cases.

Yet another part of AWARE-II deserves equal attention.

Researchers attempted objective audiovisual testing. No participant identified the hidden visual image, while one of 28 interviewed survivors identified the auditory stimulus.

That does not prove that out-of-body perception is impossible.

Neither does it prove that consciousness left the body.

It tells us something more modest: the question remains open, and the evidence must not be made to say more than it actually says.

A major 2025 review in Nature Reviews Neurology proposed an integrated neuroscientific model involving interacting physiological, neurochemical, electrophysiological and psychological processes. Significantly, the authors describe the phenomenon in terms of consciousness arising in near-death conditions before brain death.

That distinction deserves emphasis:

Near death is not necessarily dead.

Can the Brain Produce an Experience That Feels Transcendent?

An additional experiment complicates the question.

In 2018, researchers administered intravenous N,N-dimethyltryptamine (DMT) or placebo to 13 healthy volunteers. All 13 participants scored above the conventional threshold for an NDE following DMT, and researchers found substantial phenomenological overlap between the DMT experiences and reports from people claiming actual NDEs.

These volunteers were not dying.

That does not demonstrate that actual NDEs are caused by DMT, nor does it establish that the human brain releases a decisive quantity of endogenous DMT during death. Those are different claims.

What the experiment does demonstrate is narrower and important:

An experience containing features strongly resembling an NDE can occur in a living brain without the person having crossed the boundary of death.

Therefore, the subjective conviction that “I left my body” cannot, by itself, establish that consciousness actually separated from the body.

The experience may be authentic as an experience while its interpretation remains uncertain.

Why Do the Experiences Differ?

This brings us to one of the most fascinating problems.

NDE accounts contain recognizable common features across populations, but they also demonstrate cultural and religious variation.

Cross-cultural research has found both similarities and differences in reported NDE phenomenology. A 2008 review concluded that language, culture, religion, education and individual belief can influence how these extraordinary experiences are interpreted and described.

Earlier research in India likewise found features differing from American reports, while appropriately cautioning that cultural variation alone does not prove that NDEs are merely cultural constructions.

More recent scholarship reaches an equally nuanced conclusion: NDE reports across cultures and history exhibit both remarkable similarities and considerable diversity.

That presents an epistemological problem.

If NDEs are direct observations of one objective postmortem reality, how should we understand experiences interpreted through different—and sometimes mutually incompatible—religious frameworks?

We should be careful here. It would be an oversimplification to claim that every Christian sees Yahshua, every Hindu sees a Hindu deity, or every person’s experience simply reproduces prior beliefs. Research does not support so neat a formula. Indeed, some studies challenge the proposition that NDE phenomenology is merely copied from prevailing cultural expectations.

Nevertheless, culture appears capable of influencing at least the interpretation and expression of these experiences.

This means that the experience and the explanation of the experience must remain distinguishable.

Experience Is Not the Same as Revelation

Suppose someone sincerely reports:

I left my body. I encountered a being of overwhelming light and love. I saw deceased relatives. I was told that there is ultimately no judgment and that everyone reaches the same destination.

Several different propositions have just been combined.

The person had an experience.

The experience felt completely real.

The person believes the experience occurred while clinically dead.

The person interprets the beings encountered as objectively existing outside the brain.

And the theological message communicated during the experience is objectively true.

Those propositions do not carry the same evidentiary weight.

We can respect the first without automatically accepting the fifth.

Put another way:

Phenomenological certainty is not necessarily epistemological certainty.

A dream can feel real. A hallucination can feel real. Psychedelic experiences can feel transcendent. An NDE can feel more real than ordinary waking consciousness. The intensity or sincerity of an experience does not by itself establish the external cause of the experience or the truth of every proposition perceived within it.

For the Scriptural believer, this becomes particularly important because Scripture itself does not authorize supernatural appearance as the final test of truth.

Paul warns that even Satan can disguise himself as an “angel of light” (2 Corinthians 11:14). Deuteronomy 13 goes further: even an extraordinary sign does not authorize Israel to abandon what Yah has already commanded.

That does not permit us to diagnose an NDE scientifically as demonic. Such a claim lies outside what neuroscience can establish.

It establishes something narrower within the Scriptural worldview:

An apparently supernatural experience cannot acquire theological authority merely because it is extraordinary.

Its message must still be tested.

So Are Scripture and Neuroscience Actually in Conflict?

Perhaps not—at least not yet.

Neuroscience has established that remarkable conscious or consciousness-like phenomena can occur around severe physiological crises. It has identified unusual electrical activity in the dying brain and has demonstrated that pharmacologically altered living brains can produce experiences phenomenologically similar to NDEs.

Other researchers contend that conventional brain-based explanations remain insufficient and argue that NDE evidence should keep open the possibility that consciousness is not entirely reducible to brain activity. That position also exists within the scholarly literature and should not simply be dismissed.

Science therefore has not rendered a unanimous verdict.

But neither position has demonstrated that a permanently and irreversibly dead human being remains consciously active.

And that distinction matters to the Scriptural claim.

The biblical proposition is not that nothing unusual can occur while a person is dying. It is that the dead await resurrection.

An NDE occurring somewhere during the physiological process of dying, resuscitation, restoration of circulation, or recovery would not necessarily contradict that proposition.

The Question I Am Left With

Perhaps near-death experiences require us to distinguish three things we too easily collapse:

dying, death, and resurrection.

Science can investigate the first with increasing sophistication.

It can define biological and neurological criteria associated with the second.

The third belongs to the Scriptural promise and cannot be reproduced in a laboratory.

So I am left with several questions that I would particularly welcome scientists, physicians, neuroscientists, biblical scholars and other believers here to challenge:

What evidence would be necessary to establish that consciousness in an NDE occurred during irreversible loss of brain function rather than somewhere within the process of dying or recovery?

How should we interpret the combination of cross-cultural similarities and religious differences in NDE reports?

If neuroscience eventually fails to provide a complete explanation for NDEs, would “unexplained” constitute evidence of postmortem consciousness—or merely identify the limits of our present knowledge?

And finally:

If an extraordinary experience appears to communicate a theological proposition contrary to prior Scriptural revelation, what should determine authority for the believer—the experience or the text?

I do not think the responsible answer is to dismiss the experiencer.

Nor do I think it is responsible to convert the experience immediately into doctrine.

Perhaps the better place to begin is simply to ask what each form of evidence—Scriptural, neurological, medical and experiential—is actually capable of establishing.

Sources and Further Reading

Primary Scriptural Sources

Hebrew Scriptures: Genesis 2:7; Deuteronomy 13:1–5; Psalm 6:5; Psalm 115:17; Psalm 146:4; Ecclesiastes 9:5–6, 10; Ecclesiastes 12:7; Daniel 12:2.

Apostolic Writings: John 11:11–14, 23–26; Acts 24:15; 1 Corinthians 15:12–23, 35–55; 2 Corinthians 11:14; 1 Thessalonians 4:13–18.

These passages form the Scriptural framework developed more fully in The Great Sleep: creation as dust joined with divine breath, death as the reversal of that condition, the dead described as sleeping, and resurrection as their awakening.

Primary Scientific and Clinical Studies

Greyson, B. “The Near-Death Experience Scale: Construction, Reliability, and Validity.” Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease 171, no. 6 (1983): 369–375. doi:10.1097/00005053-198306000-00007. This foundational paper developed the 16-item Greyson NDE Scale used extensively in subsequent research.

van Lommel, P., R. van Wees, V. Meyers, and I. Elfferich. “Near-Death Experience in Survivors of Cardiac Arrest: A Prospective Study in the Netherlands.” The Lancet 358, no. 9298 (2001): 2039–2045. doi:10.1016/S0140-6736(01)07100-8. Prospective study of 344 resuscitated cardiac-arrest patients; 62 reported an NDE.

Timmermann, C., et al. “DMT Models the Near-Death Experience.” Frontiers in Psychology 9 (2018): 1424. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2018.01424. Placebo-controlled experimental comparison of DMT-induced experiences with NDE phenomenology.

Xu, G., et al. “Surge of Neurophysiological Coupling and Connectivity of Gamma Oscillations in the Dying Human Brain.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 120, no. 19 (2023): e2216268120. doi:10.1073/pnas.2216268120. Reports neurophysiological activity in a small sample of dying human brains.

Parnia, S., et al. “AWAreness during REsuscitation—II: A Multi-Center Study of Consciousness and Awareness in Cardiac Arrest.” Resuscitation 191 (2023): 109903. Prospective multicenter investigation using interviews, audiovisual testing, EEG and cerebral oxygen monitoring during CPR.

Secondary Scientific and Scholarly Sources

Kovoor, J. G., et al. “Near-Death Experiences after Cardiac Arrest: A Scoping Review.” Discover Mental Health 4 (2024): 19. doi:10.1007/s44192-024-00072-7. Review of prospective cardiac-arrest NDE studies; reported incidence varied from 6.3% to 39.3%.

Borjigin, J. “Consciousness and the Dying Brain.” Anesthesiology (2024). Reviews epidemiological and neurobiological evidence concerning NDEs and neurophysiological activity around cardiac and respiratory arrest.

Martial, C., et al. “A Neuroscientific Model of Near-Death Experiences.” Nature Reviews Neurology 21 (2025): 297–311. doi:10.1038/s41582-025-01072-z. Develops an integrated model involving psychological, neurophysiological, cellular, electrophysiological and neurotransmitter processes.

Belanti, J., M. Perera, and K. Jagadheesan. “Phenomenology of Near-Death Experiences: A Cross-Cultural Perspective.” Transcultural Psychiatry 45, no. 1 (2008): 121–133. doi:10.1177/1363461507088001. Examines similarities and differences among NDE reports across cultures.

Pasricha, S., and I. Stevenson. “Near-Death Experiences in India: A Preliminary Report.” Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease 174, no. 3 (1986): 165–170. doi:10.1097/00005053-198603000-00007. Documents Indian NDE reports and differences from American samples.

Shushan, G. “Diversity and Similarity of Near-Death Experiences across Cultures and History: Implications for the Survival Hypothesis.” International Review of Psychiatry 37, no. 2 (2025): 95–101. doi:10.1080/09540261.2024.2402429. Considers both universality and cultural diversity and their implications for competing interpretations.

Angeli-Faez, B., B. Greyson, and P. van Lommel. “Near-Death Experience during Cardiac Arrest and Consciousness beyond the Brain: A Narrative Review.” International Review of Psychiatry 37, no. 2 (2025): 130–141. doi:10.1080/09540261.2025.2503729. Presents a contemporary argument that current evidence may not be adequately explained by conventional brain-based models alone; useful as a counterpoint to neuroscientific models.

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The Forgotten Calendar of Jesus - What Happened to the Biblical Festivals?
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Good review, My opinion was as you stated:

Or as Miracle Max said…


  1. Inigo Montoya    : He’s dead. He can’t talk.
  2. Miracle Max: Whoo-hoo-hoo, look who knows so much. It just so happens that your friend here is only MOSTLY dead. There’s a big difference between mostly dead and all dead. Mostly dead is slightly alive. With all dead, well, with all dead there’s usually only one thing you can do.
  3. Inigo Montoya: What’s that?
  4. Miracle Max: Go through his clothes and look for loose change.
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The problem is that there are other verses that run in the opposite direction.

Luke 23:39–43: “To day shalt thou be with me in paradise.”

This is interesting because the thief asks to be remembered when Christ comes into his kingdom, but Christ’s answer goes further: “Today you will be with me in paradise.”

On the plain reading of the sentence, Christ is promising personal communion with him that very day, after bodily death, which is difficult (to put it mildly) to reconcile with the proposition that the thief would cease to exist as a conscious personal subject at death and would not be with Christ until the future resurrection.

Then there is the account of the rich man and Lazarus. Luke 16:19–31. Whatecer degree of symbolism one assigns to this account, what Christ actually depicts is clear, because rich man has died and been buried, yet he retains:

  1. personal identity;
  2. consciousness;
  3. memory of his earthly life;
  4. memory of his brothers;
  5. concern for people who are still alive on earth;
  6. the capacity to speak and reason.

Lazarus likewise remains personally identifiable after death.

And the final resurrection has plainly not yet occurred.

Why would Christ construct the entire story around conscious personal existence after death if conscious personal existence after death were actually impossible?

Another passage is the Transfiguration in Matthew 17:1–8.

Now, Elijah is admittedly a special case because Scripture describes him as being taken up in a whirlwind, but Moses is not.

Deuteronomy 34:5–6: “So Moses the servant of the LORD died there in the land of Moab, according to the word of the LORD. And he buried him in a valley in the land of Moab, over against Bethpeor: but no man knoweth of his sepulchre unto this day.”

Moses died and his body was buried, yet centuries later Moses appears at the Transfiguration as Moses, personally identifiable, and speaks with Christ.

Luke’s account makes the point even more explicit:

Luke 9:30–31: And, behold, there talked with him two men, which were Moses and Elias: Who appeared in glory, and spake of his decease which he should accomplish at Jerusalem.”

I’m not denying that the verses you cited imply that the dead are asleep and neither perceive nor act, the thing problem is that there are other passages that imply the opposite, so this is one of those cases in which appealing to Scripture doesn’t settle the issue, because the real question becomes how the different passages are to be interpreted and harmonized and, If you are entitled to say that the passages suggesting conscious existence after death must be interpreted in light of the “sleep” passages, then I am equally entitled to argue that the “sleep” passages must be interpreted in light of the passages that suggest a conscious intermediate state.

At that point, simply citing more verses doesn’t resolve the dispute.

In other words, I think it’s difficult to establish the theory you are proposing from Scripture, because Scripture itself contains passages that also point in the opposite direction.

But that’s beside the point, because what i really wanted to ask you is this: if a person truly ceases to exist at death, and God later recreates that person perfectly at the resurrection (with the same memories, personality, body, and history), what makes the resurrected person numerically the same person who died rather than merely a perfect copy? In other words, what preserves personal identity across the gap between death and resurrection if nothing of the original person continues to exist?

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IMO, there’s nothing to be gained by starting with a wheelbarrow full of bits and pieces from scripture and no rhyme or reason for sorting the bits and pieces into piles of related things.

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Yeah which is why i said that for this argument scripture doesn’t really work: because there are many passages pointing in different directions, so it’s not really helpful.

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Ha! my point isn’t that there is nothing to be gained from scripture at all, but that if anybody is going to try to get anything from scripture, they’re going to have to approach it with reason.

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Thank you, Phil. And Miracle Max may have stated the distinction more memorably than I did!

That really is the critical point. “Near death” and “dead” are not interchangeable categories. Whatever we ultimately conclude about the remarkable experiences people report during these episodes, the fact that they returned means we should be cautious about treating those experiences as direct testimony concerning the state of the irreversibly dead.

That distinction is what I wanted to place at the boundary between the scriptural claims and the neuroscience rather than asking either discipline to say more than the evidence permits.

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How many factually dead people in scripture ever “came to life” again and resumed their lives among the living?

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Massimiliano, thank you. This is precisely the kind of objection I hoped the article would invite, because I agree with one important point you have made: simply accumulating additional “sleep” passages does not resolve the question. If Luke 23, Luke 16, and the Transfiguration genuinely teach a conscious intermediate state, they have to be accounted for rather than ignored.

I would, however, interpret those passages somewhat differently.

Luke 23:43 presents a well-known punctuation question because the earliest Greek manuscripts did not contain the comma supplied by modern editions. Thus the issue is whether the sense is “I tell you, today you will be with me in paradise” or “I tell you today, you will be with me in paradise.” I would not build the argument upon punctuation alone.

There is also a larger contextual issue. The thief does not ask Yahshua to take him somewhere that day. He asks, “Remember me when you come into your kingdom.” His expectation is future-oriented. The manifested Messianic kingdom belongs to the future reign associated with Yahshua’s return, resurrection, and kingdom rule. Moreover, after Yahshua himself is raised, he tells Mary, “I have not yet ascended to the Father” (John 20:17). For those reasons, I do not think Luke 23:43 can simply be assumed to establish that the thief consciously entered heaven on the day of the crucifixion.

Luke 16 is more interesting. I agree that merely saying “it is a parable” is insufficient. The question is what the parable is teaching. Its climax is striking: “They have Moses and the prophets; let them hear them,” followed by, “If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded, though one rose from the dead.” The narrative employs the dead as characters, but its stated theological burden concerns hearing Moses and the prophets, repentance, judgment, and ultimately resurrection. I therefore hesitate to turn the narrative apparatus of the parable into a literal map of postmortem anthropology.

The Transfiguration also deserves attention, particularly because Moses unquestionably died (Deut. 34:5–6). But Matthew gives us an important interpretive detail afterward: Yahshua tells the disciples, “Tell the vision [horama] to no man” (Matt. 17:9). Consequently, Moses appearing in the vision does not by itself establish that Moses had remained consciously alive during the centuries between his death and that event. That conclusion would still have to be demonstrated.

There is also a larger question that I think the conscious-intermediate-state interpretation has to answer: What, then, is the necessity and function of resurrection?

If the righteous dead are already consciously alive in heaven with Messiah, why does the apostolic proclamation place such extraordinary weight upon their future resurrection?

When Paul comforts believers concerning those who have died, he does not tell them that their loved ones are presently conscious in heaven. He tells them that “the dead in Christ shall rise first” when the Master descends (1 Thess. 4:13–17). Likewise, in 1 Corinthians 15, Paul’s argument is not that denial of resurrection merely leaves conscious believers in heaven without bodies. He says that if the dead are not raised, “then they also which are fallen asleep in Christ are perished” (1 Cor. 15:18).

That raises a question worth considering. Under the conscious-intermediate-state model, are we to understand that the deceased believer consciously goes to heaven at death, remains there until Yahshua returns, then somehow returns from heaven to be reunited with a resurrected body, and thereafter participates in the resurrection and Messianic reign? If that is the sequence, where is that sequence actually described?

By contrast, the sequence explicitly presented in 1 Thessalonians 4 is remarkably direct: believers have fallen asleep; Yahshua descends; the dead in Messiah rise; the living are gathered together with them; and together they meet the returning Master.

That brings me to your final question, which I think is the deepest one you raised.

If the dead are genuinely unconscious, what makes the resurrected individual numerically the same person rather than a perfect copy?

I would distinguish unconsciousness in death from the proposition that the person’s identity has ceased to exist in relation to God.

Biblical resurrection does not appear to locate continuity of identity in an independently conscious immortal component of the human being. It locates that continuity ultimately in God, who remembers, knows, and raises the person who died.

Daniel is particularly striking. He is not told that God will someday create an indistinguishable copy of Daniel. He is told:

“You shall rest, and shall stand in your lot at the end of the days” (Dan. 12:13).

The grammatical subject remains Daniel: you rest; you stand.

Yahshua similarly says that “all that are in the graves shall hear his voice, and shall come forth” (John 5:28–29). Paul’s seed analogy in 1 Corinthians 15 likewise preserves both continuity and transformation: what is sown is what God raises, although its condition is transformed.

So I would question whether the alternatives must be either (1) an immortal conscious self continuing uninterrupted through death or (2) God manufacturing a perfect duplicate after the original person has vanished.

There is a third possibility, and I believe it is closer to the biblical anthropology I was describing: personal identity is preserved by the Creator even when creaturely consciousness has ceased. Death interrupts our consciousness; it does not interrupt God’s knowledge of who we are or His ability to raise the same person.

That is also why “sleep” is such an appropriate biblical metaphor. From the standpoint of the dead person there is no experienced interval. Whether one has been dead for three days or three thousand years, the next conscious moment would be resurrection.

So perhaps the underlying question is not simply whether Scripture contains imagery that can be read as conscious existence after death. It plainly does, and those passages deserve serious treatment. The larger question is which interpretation best accounts for the whole biblical sequence: death, sleep, the return of Messiah, resurrection, judgment, and the kingdom.

And regarding personal identity specifically: must identity depend upon uninterrupted subjective consciousness, or can the identity of the dead be preserved by the Creator who promises that the one who rests is the one who will stand?

I would argue for the latter.

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I will point out that the OT view of death is (1) not unanimous and (2) conflicts with the NT view.

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I also would like to point out that it isn’t “YAH-Elohim”, it’s YHWH-Elohim; and it isn’t
“Yahshua”, it was most likely pronounced “Y’shua” with a barely-pronounced schwa where the ’ is. Second most likely is “Yeshua”, followed by a possible “Y’hoshua”.

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Which, IMO, raises a question: The OP appears to be an article, although I could be wrong, from a Journal or Magazine. If so, it doesn’t cite which, if any. And a search for the logo:

image
image288×288 36.8 KB

doesn’t help me find it.

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I Wonder how many Believing Souls during the last breath, recite “Father I commend my Spirit to You” like Jesus. David indicates similar to this while alive in Psalm 31:5.

What did Robert Redford say before he died?
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One of the lions has passed’: Hollywood remembers Robert …Robert Redford’s final words were, “Be brave. Stay kind. Make art.”

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Before he passed away on September 16, 2025, at his home at Sundance Mountain Resort, he shared several final reflections

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Terry, thank you for asking. The article is my own work, and the logo you reproduced is the branding for The Apostolic Record, my independent publication and research platform. It was not reproduced from an outside journal or magazine, so there is no separate journal citation associated with it.

The Apostolic Record publishes longer-form apologetic work examining questions of Scripture, history, doctrine, and evidence, of which this article is one example.

The image below is the website masthead, and the site can be found here:

The Apostolic Record

site logo
site logo1774×887 312 KB

I posted this particular article here because the subject sits at the intersection of Scripture, theology, and neuroscience, and I was interested in seeing how the argument would stand up under scrutiny from readers here.

So the logo identifies the source of the article—The Apostolic Record—rather than an external periodical.

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Thank you, St. Raymond. A couple of distinctions may help clarify both my terminology and the hermeneutical approach behind the article.

Regarding the first point, I would hesitate to speak of an “Old Testament view” that conflicts with a “New Testament view” as though that observation itself resolves the matter. Yahshua and the apostles did not possess a New Testament as a separate body of Scripture from which they developed an anthropology contrary to Israel’s Scriptures. When they appealed to “Scripture,” they repeatedly reasoned from the Torah, the Prophets, and the Writings.

That matters because Yahshua himself says, “the scripture cannot be broken” (John 10:35), while the Hebrew Scriptures declare, “I YHWH change not” (Mal. 3:6). Isaiah likewise gives the principle, “To the law and to the testimony” (Isa. 8:20).

Consequently, if an apostolic passage appears to contradict Moses, the Prophets, or the Writings concerning death and resurrection, I do not think we can resolve the problem simply by labeling one an “OT view” and the other a “NT view.” The apparent conflict is precisely what requires interpretation and reconciliation.

There are not two different Gods—an “Old Testament God” and a “New Testament God”—whose teachings may simply contradict one another. There are different collections of writings, certainly, but our interpretations of those writings are human interpretations and remain open to examination against the texts themselves.

That is central to the method of my article: if the Scripture cannot be broken, apparent contradictions should cause us to reexamine our interpretation rather than simply conclude that one portion of Scripture contradicts another.

Regarding the divine name, I certainly recognize יהוה as the four-letter Tetragrammaton conventionally represented as YHWH. But that does not make my use of “Yah” incorrect. The Hebrew Scriptures themselves explicitly preserve the shorter form יָהּ — Yah.

Psalm 68:4 is particularly clear:

“Sing unto God, sing praises to his name: extol him that rideth upon the heavens by his name YAH, and rejoice before him.”

The form also occurs elsewhere in the Hebrew Scriptures and survives transparently in Hallelu-Yah—“Praise Yah.”

So I am not substituting “Yah” for YHWH because I am unaware of the Tetragrammaton. I recognize YHWH. I am deliberately using the biblically attested form Yah.

There is ancient testimony for that distinction as well. Theodoret of Cyrus, while discussing the Tetragrammaton, reported different vocal traditions: the Samaritans called it Iabe, while the Jews called it Ia—the Greek representation associated with Yah. So the distinction between the written Tetragrammaton and the shorter vocal form is hardly a modern invention.

As for “Yahshua,” I agree that Yeshua is a historically attested form, and I would not claim that the ancient pronunciation can be reconstructed with absolute certainty. But the matter is not quite as settled as your wording suggests. Yeshua itself is a shortened form of the fuller Yehoshua, and both forms are historically attested. There is also epigraphic evidence that the divine theophoric element appearing in Israelite personal names was vocalized in antiquity with forms such as Yah and Yahu, before the later Masoretic vocalization system.

For that reason, forms such as Yahoshua—and, by contraction, Yahshua—are not simply arbitrary modern inventions. They reflect a particular reconstruction of an older theophoric form of the name meaning, in substance, “Yah saves.”

I recognize that Yeshua is widely preferred by scholars and was certainly used in the Second Temple period. My use of Yahshua is therefore deliberate, but I do not need to claim that every historical linguist must agree with that reconstruction in order for the substantive argument of the article to stand.

I would prefer, however, not to allow a transliteration question to displace the substantive subject of the article. The argument concerning death, consciousness, and resurrection should stand or fall upon whether its scriptural and evidentiary case survives examination.

If my interpretation of those texts is wrong, that is where I welcome the challenge.

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There’s no contradiction, there’s a change from OT to NT. The question is why the change. And BTW, greater weight should be given to the words of the New Covenant.

Actually it does since you were quoting a (translation of a) verse, and that verse does not use the short form. For that matter, “YAH-Elohim” does not appear in the OT at all; it is always YHWH-Elohim. Further, since the combination is a name with an added title (or a title with an identifying name), the full form of the name is the one to use; this is made stronger by the fact that “YHWH-Elohim” is in essence a covenant term.

The name there is part of a construct, where abbreviated forms are common. In fact most use of the shortened form is in constructs, among which “hallelu-yah” is perhaps most frequent.

Yet without knowing the biblical pattern for its use.

That pronunciation is philologically impossible and is never found in any known Hebrew texts. It is thus a false construct and should not be used. It should also not be used since it originated in occult practices!

To get the pronunciation “Yahshuah,” one has to fundamentally alter Hebrew grammar rules, change vowel structures, or add letters that are completely absent from the actual Hebrew scriptures. This pronunciation/orthography is still an ungrammatical, modern invention that did not exist in ancient Hebrew.

That’s Grok’s summary of the matter.

I raise the issue because in general such misspellings of the divine Name arise from cults and the occult.

19

St.Roymond, I think there are now two separate discussions developing here, and I do not want the nomenclature question to obscure the substantive argument of the article.

On one point, I am willing to sharpen my terminology. Yeshua and Yehoshua are historically attested Hebrew forms, whereas Yahshua should not be presented as though that particular pronunciation were established by surviving Second Temple Hebrew evidence. Likewise, יה (Yah) and יהוה (YHWH) are distinct textual forms. My point concerning Yah was that it is itself a biblically attested form of the divine name, not that every occurrence of יהוה in the Hebrew text is written יה. Where a particular verse contains יהוה, I recognize that distinction.

I am therefore quite willing to distinguish between what is textually attested and what represents a later reconstruction. Evidence should govern the claim.

Regarding your statement that Yahshua “originated in occult practices,” however, the historical question needs to be stated more precisely.

I am aware of the Renaissance Christian esoteric tradition involving the so-called Pentagrammaton, commonly represented as YHShVH, in which shin was inserted into the Tetragrammaton and the resulting five-letter construction was associated with Jesus. That tradition subsequently appears in Western esoteric and occult literature.

But the existence of that construction does not, by itself, demonstrate that the later form Yahshua, as used in Sacred Name traditions, historically originated from that occult practice. Similarity is not the same thing as provenance.

If the claim is specifically that modern Yahshua usage derives from the Renaissance Pentagrammaton tradition, then what would establish that claim is evidence of historical transmission: Pentagrammaton/YHShVH → an identifiable line of influence → later Sacred Name usage of Yahshua. I would be interested in seeing evidence establishing that connection.

Quoting Grok does not establish that provenance. Even the quotation you supplied makes a linguistic claim—that the pronunciation is a modern construction and is not attested in ancient Hebrew. It does not establish the additional historical claim that modern users of Yahshua derived the form from occult practice.

Those are two different propositions. I am willing to concede the limits of the historical attestation. I am not willing to infer an occult genealogy without evidence demonstrating it.

Having said that, I think this discussion about names is becoming secondary to the much more consequential claim you made concerning the actual subject of the article.

You wrote:

“There’s no contradiction, there’s a change from OT to NT. The question is why the change.”

That is precisely the proposition I would like to examine.

Where does the New Testament actually teach that the condition of the dead changed from the Old Covenant to the New Covenant?

I am not asking for a New Testament passage that can be interpreted as compatible with conscious existence after death. I am asking where Scripture teaches the change you have proposed—where we are told that those who died were formerly unconscious in death but, with the inauguration of the New Covenant or some other redemptive event, the dead thereafter entered a state of conscious existence.

If such a change occurred, it would be a significant development in biblical anthropology. We should therefore be able to identify its scriptural basis, its cause, and its timing.

Your further statement that “greater weight should be given to the words of the New Covenant” does not by itself establish such a change. Later revelation can certainly clarify earlier revelation and disclose what was previously unrevealed. But later revelation cannot simply make earlier revelation false. Yahshua himself said that “the Scripture cannot be broken.”

That is why I raised the principle of apparent contradiction in the first place. If one interpretation of a New Testament passage appears to contradict clear testimony elsewhere in Scripture, the existence of later revelation does not relieve us of the responsibility to reconcile the witnesses. It requires us to examine whether our interpretation is correct.

And the resurrection remains central to that examination. Paul still places the transformation of the dead in the future: Messiah returns, the dead are raised, mortality puts on immortality, and death is swallowed up in victory. That sequence requires explanation if the righteous dead have already been consciously alive in heaven before the resurrection.

So I am quite willing to separate the nomenclature issue from the central argument and to correct my terminology wherever the historical or linguistic evidence requires it.

But I would like to apply that same evidentiary standard to the proposition you have now advanced:

What New Testament text actually teaches that the state of the dead changed from unconscious death under the Old Covenant to conscious existence after death under the New?

If that change is the explanation for the apparent difference you perceive between the Old and New Testaments, then establishing that change from Scripture seems to me the necessary next step in the argument.

20

Not the way you’re using it, and not when the text actually says YHWH.

21

Here’s a key one:
“He is not the God of the dead, but of the living”
Matthew 22:32, Mark 12:27.

Jesus says this in connection with the great resurrection, but it points to the faithful who have passed away still being alive.

22

Thank you. This brings us back to the actual subject of the article, so I will leave the separate nomenclature discussion there.

You offer Matthew 22:32 and Mark 12:27 as a key text for your claim that the condition of the dead changed from the Old Testament to the New:

“He is not the Elohim of the dead, but of the living.”

But the context is decisive here.

The Sadducees were not asking Yahshua how consciously living people exist between death and resurrection. Matthew explicitly identifies them as those “which say that there is no resurrection” (Matthew 22:23). Their seven-husbands scenario was a challenge to the doctrine of resurrection itself.

Yahshua answers them first concerning marriage in the resurrection and then directly addresses the doctrine they denied:

“But as touching the resurrection of the dead…” — Matthew 22:31

Mark is even more explicit:

“And as touching the dead, that they rise…” — Mark 12:26

And Luke:

“Now that the dead are raised, even Moses shewed at the bush…” — Luke 20:37

That is what Yahshua says he is proving: the dead will rise.

This creates a serious problem for using his words as proof that Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob were already consciously alive while dead. If Yahshua’s argument were simply that the patriarchs were already consciously alive, then he would not have answered the Sadducees’ denial of resurrection. He would instead have established conscious existence without resurrection.

But that is not how Matthew, Mark, or Luke frame his argument. Yahshua appeals to YAH’s continuing covenant identification as the Elohim of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob precisely as proof that death cannot permanently hold them. They must rise.

That is why Matthew calls the argument “the resurrection of the dead,” Mark calls it “the dead, that they rise,” and Luke says Moses demonstrated “that the dead are raised.”

So the statement “He is not the Elohim of the dead, but of the living” does not eliminate the need for resurrection. It establishes the certainty of resurrection. YAH’s covenant purposes for Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob will not terminate in the grave.

And this brings us to the larger difficulty with the interpretation you are proposing: if the righteous dead are already consciously alive in heavenly bliss, what is resurrection actually accomplishing?

Scripture does not portray resurrection as the ceremonial return of an already consciously living person to a body. Paul places the victory over death at resurrection:

“The dead shall be raised incorruptible… this mortal must put on immortality.” And only then is “Death swallowed up in victory.” — 1 Corinthians 15:52–54.

Indeed, Paul says that if there is no resurrection, “they also which are fallen asleep in Messiah are perished.” — 1 Corinthians 15:18.

Daniel likewise says those who “sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake” (Daniel 12:2). Yahshua says those “in the graves shall hear his voice, and shall come forth” (John 5:28–29). Paul says “the dead in Messiah shall rise” at Messiah’s coming (1 Thessalonians 4:16).

The testimony is coherent: the dead sleep; Messiah comes; the dead are raised; mortality puts on immortality; death is swallowed up in victory.

Matthew 22 therefore does not undermine that sequence. It belongs to it.

There is another problem with offering this passage as evidence for the specific proposition you made.

You said there was “a change from OT to NT.”

Yet Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob all died long before the New Covenant. Matthew 22 identifies no transition in the condition of the dead whatsoever—no time when it occurred, no event that caused it, and no distinction between those who died before and after the New Covenant.

So the text you have offered does not establish the proposition for which you offered it.

The burden therefore remains:

Where does Scripture teach that the condition of the dead changed from the Old Testament to the New Testament? What changed? When did it change? What caused the change? And where did YAH reveal that transition?

If you have another text that establishes that transition, present it and we can examine it. But the proposition must ultimately be established from Scripture or withdrawn as the explanation.

How does one resurrect the living? If the person is already alive, what is being resurrected from death?

The standard remains the same for both of us: the Scriptures cannot be broken, and no witness may be used to erase another witness.