One Minute After You Die: A Preview of Your Final Destination

by Erwin Lutzer

I really enjoyed the first chapter of this book: Lutzer took an approach to near-death experiences and channeling that I had not heard before. Rather than simply dismissing all such events as fraudulent, Lutzer argues why they are not dependable even if they are true: looking back to the Old Testament for repeated examples of God condemning those who tried to speak with the dead; attributing the anti-biblical messages of the “great light” at the end of the tunnel to the one who disguises himself as an angel of light in order to deceive. I’m not sure that I agree with all that Lutzer said in that first chapter, but I enjoyed it, because it evidenced that he thought outside the religious box—and he didn’t do so without Biblical support.

Then I got to the rest of the book. From that point on, it was the most inconsistent book I’ve ever read. After saying at one point that we need to be careful lest we speak outside of what the Bible tells us, he says, “We will most probably continue many of the same kinds of projects we knew on earth. Artists will do art as never before; the scientist just might be invited to continue his or her exploration of God’s magnificent creation. The musicians will do music; all of us will continue to learn” (67)—let’s make sure we’re not saying things the Bible isn’t! He bases a lot of his “literal” understanding of the afterlife on passages that are clearly figurative or a parable that Jesus spoke—not that those passages aren’t meant to teach us something about the afterlife, but we must beware not to interpret figurative passages literally. And then, after speaking against the trustworthiness of near-death experiences and channeling, he cites the deathbed experience of a “young Christian woman” as evidence that there is something else after this life (78).

I also have a couple of theological problems with Lutzer. He teaches unequivocally that a Christian who commits suicide will be saved—but that does logically follow from his basis of Christ’s imputed righteousness (which he also clearly teaches in this book). Also, in the final chapter, “Knowing Today Where You will be Tomorrow”, I found a copy of the Sinner’s Prayer, and I again I must question his understanding of what it means to being careful to not speak outside the Bible.

I wholeheartedly recommend that you don’t read this book. I stumbled across it, and its title and the browsing I did looked interesting. It’s relatively short (144 pages of fairly large print), so I figured that it couldn’t do much harm to read it—after all, another Lutzer book had been highly recommended by a friend. Well, I’ll have to check that one out later and let you know about it—this one, however, you can skip.

The Editors do not advocate everything taught by the authors of the books we review. Like us, these authors are fallible humans and those who choose to read these books should measure them by the bible, the one true standard.