For thousands of years, humans have sought to find the key to
living forever, or the detail of another life after death. Perhaps the greatest
monuments to this endeavour are the pyramids of Egypt.
The concept of life after death, depends on two essentials:
1
God is – He is a supernatural spirit, above and
beyond the limitations of time and space. He is in control of both the natural
realm and the unseen spiritual.
2
We are more than flesh and blood. We are body,
soul and spirit. This gives humans the capacity to live in the natural world,
but also to interact with the spiritual. This assumes that the higher part of
humans can consciously exist outside of the body.
Are these things verifiable? So much in the natural realm shows evidence
of a greater, yet unseen creator and sustainer.
History records such an one
interacting with people in various ways.
We are occupied very much with
things we can see, feel and hear, but like the spirit world, so much of our
natural world is invisible. For example the air, the wind, light, water ,
electricity, radio, magnetism, data etc. As for spiritual existence apart from
the body, many thousands of people testify to having died , left their bodies
and consciously moved into another consciousness. A chap I worked with was totally
convinced by his near death experience. He left his body and moved to another
room where he could see and hear. Yet another man I met, had been to hell and
back again. Many I have talked to, have had such ‘spiritual’ experiences. I do
not build my hopes on these varied experiences, except to say they do testify
that we are more than just natural, chemical bodies.
The teaching of the Lord Jesus Christ.
From the beginning of His
teaching e.g. Matthew 5, He taught about heaven and the very real possibility
that it could hold enjoyment for us
there. Rewards and riches would be given in heaven to those who faithfully
followed Him. He spoke of heaven as the dwelling place of God the Father. It was
the place to which He said He would return.
He taught that things would be
different there. People would relate to one another as the angels do. Acquaintance
with one another would be spiritual, not physical.
His prayer for His disciples was “that
they might be with Him, that they might behold His glory” (John 17) . This was
more than the splendour of earth or the anticipated kingdom. This was His glory
as exalted at the Father’s right hand.
Just as He taught about heaven,
so He taught about hell. He described it as a place of outer darkness, a place
of torment where weeping wailing and gnashing of teeth prevailed. He described
the horror of being on the outside of a
shut door. He spoke of the eternal destruction of the disobedient and the
graphic horrors of self gratifying religious leaders. The Old Testament
pictured the hopelessness of the grave, but the Lord identified the trauma of
hell as a place of torment. Physical words are used to describe spiritual
realities.
I recommend you take your Bible
and notice, in the teachings of the Son of God, how often He referred to the
unseen world, and our connection to it.
Paul put it this way “the things
that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal’ (2
Corinthians 4.18)
If you don’t have a Bible, I may
be able to supply one to you free.
The next question to be answered
is ‘Who goes to heaven?’ and ‘who goes
to hell?’
I hope to answer this in my next
post.
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