When people approach the entrance to heaven or hell during near-death experiences (NDEs), they may meet spirit beings there who want to communicate with them: angels (especially their guardian angels, who accompany the dying into the afterlife), or loved ones such as family members and friends who have already died. Here's what may happen during such NDE meetings:

Serving as Guides and Gatekeepers

As they escort the dying through NDE journeys, angels and loved ones who have already died act as tour guides of the afterlife, taking dying people only as far as God permits them to go before they reach a crucial point: either crossing over permanently to heaven or hell, or returning to life in their earthly bodies.


Angels and deceased family and friends in NDEs both “function as both guide and gatekeeper," writes Rosemary Ellen Guiley in her book The Encyclopedia of Angels. "They take the person along on their after-death journey until they reach a threshold, such as an entrance or a bridge to a building or beautiful garden, or a place that the person intuitively knows marks the final boundary between life and death. The beings then tell their charges that they must go back because they have unfinished business. Sometimes the beings ask their charges if they wish to stay or return. Most people say they wish to stay, but usually a relationship such as a spouse or child pulls them back to the realm of the living.”

Introducing Souls to Each Other

Guardian angels often make introductions between the dying people going through NDEs and their loved ones who have already passed away.

In their book Beyond Death: Exploring the Evidence for Immortality, Gary Habermas and J.P. Morgan include a woman’s NDE case in which she describes meeting a friend who had died that same day: “…she went to heaven and saw an angel, along with a familiar young man.

She exclaimed, ‘Why, Tom, I didn’t know you were up here!’ Tom responded that he had just arrived, too. But the angel told the woman that she would be returning to Earth. … Then she found herself back on the hospital bed with the doctor looking over her. Later that night her husband got a call informing him that their friend Tom had died in an auto accident.”

Giving People a Sense of Peace

People who have met angels or loved ones during a positive NDE (one that involves traveling to the brink of heaven, rather than hell) often report that they received a sense of peace during the encounters.

In her book Angelic Pathways: An Angel Medium's Guide to Navigating Our Human Experience, Chantel Lysette writes that souls who meet "luminous beings" like angels and loved ones tend to receive messages that assure them all will go well for them. "Regardless of whether a person passes peacefully during sleep or in a tragic car accident, there will always be a representative from the Realm of Spirit there to calm, comfort, and guide the soul back home. … There is always a sense of peace that overcomes the soul when it realizes there is nothing to fear. The general consensus is that there’s a sense that everything is going to be all right – not just for the soul, but also for those being left behind.”

Stuart A. Kallen writes in his book Angels (The Mysterious & Unknown): “During this time they are accompanied by angel guides as they walk toward the light. Feelings of bewilderment are replaced by sensations of calm and acceptance as the angel guides introduce the victims to dead relatives and friends who are also in the company of angels.”

Helping People Overcome Evil with Good

If someone having an NDE is headed toward hell, angels, relatives, and friends may reach out to try to help them while there's still time for their souls to be saved.

A teenage boy's NDE experience that Pierre Jovanovic describes in his book An Inquiry into the Existence of Guardian Angels: A Journalist's Investigative Report mentions the intervention of God's top spiritual warfare angel -- Archangel Michael -- as well as some of the boy's family members when he was surrounded by evil spirits: "Rising, I felt myself enveloped by a force, an agreeable influence, as if an angel were repulsing the malevolent spirits around me. ... A stranger over six feet tall advanced toward me. He told me he was the Archangel Michael. He walked with me and showed me the surroundings. I met a dozen near and dear ones, like my dead grandfather, who was only in his 20s here and no longer afflicted by an invalid's body. He seemed very happy. I met my future brother, who was to be born four years later. And other brothers and sisters dead long before my own birth. I had not known that my parents had children before me."

After the boy returned to his body lying in his bed at home, he told his parents what he had experienced during the NDE, and they rushed him to the hospital, which ended up saving his life -- giving him another chance to build a close relationship with God.

In her bookWisdom of Near-Death Experiences: How Understanding NDEs Can Help Us Live More Fully, Dr. Penny Sartori includes the NDE case of a patient who had a frightening experience: “Some ‘red angels’ who I later perceived to be ‘devil’s demons’ asked me to join them. After refusing this request … I can vaguely recall a ‘heavenly angel’ piercing a ‘devil’s demon’ in his/her heart with a spear. … this experience gave me cause for concern because because I felt that if the ‘devil’s demons’ had thought it worthwhile approaching me I had been (am) such a bad person that I might deserve to rot in hell.”

After coming back to life, the patient reports, “I have been [spiritually] reborn since”.

Delivering Messages

Angels and loved ones may also deliver messages to people during NDEs that will help improve their lives or others' lives after they return to their bodies and resume life on Earth again.

In An Inquiry into the Existence of Guardian Angels, Jovanovic describes guardian angels giving messages to a doctor who had an NDE after an emergency in his hotel room. The doctor recalls: "They say that they are my guardians, that they have been with me before at critical times and that in fact they are with me always, but that I am not usually in a state to perceive them."

Sartori writes about a deceased family member giving a message to one her patients, in Wisdom of Near-Death Experiences: "Following his NDE, which occurred during a period of deep unconsciousness, patient 11 communicated with a dead relative who gave him a message for one of his living relatives. When he regained consciousness he gave this message to his living relative, who was absolutely astounded that he should know this information. During a time when he was deeply unconscious, this man gained knowledge of something he had not previously been aware of – how was this possible? According to the current explanation that consciousness is a by-product of the brain, this should not be possible. Yet it has clearly been captured…”.