Life After Death

It is truly important to consider, and if possible, to know, what happens to us after we die. Some, who believe we are just accidental physical systems in an ultimately meaningless universe would have us believe that we have no existence after we die. Our personhood is finished as we become dead, rotting meat. This view generally equates mind with brain, and denies the existence of the spiritual world. In this view, your brain activity is just a product of physical laws. "Your" decisions are outcomes of the laws of physics. Don't congratulate yourself if you have this view. If you are right, you only have this view because of the way certain particles just happen to react with each other.

Two main theories are proposed in the modern world as alternatives to this view. One is reincarnation - the other is spiritual existence and eventual resurrection. There are also those who believe in physical resurrection but do not believe that human beings have a spirit that can exist apart from their body. I have written a few remarks on this view here.

An interesting note: A great book to read on this subject is by Dr Maurice Rawlings, and is called "To Hell and Back". He is a heart surgeon who resuscitated a number of clinically dead people whose experiences were ... interesting. He discusses a lot of interesting things related to Near Death Experiences (NDEs) in that book.

Rawlings noted that a lot of people had hellish NDEs. Actually these people were clinically dead, not just "nearly dead". Secular psychologists have tried to downplay the importance of these hellish NDEs and instead like to focus on the NDEs which are all sweetness and light. I personally think that an NDE which teaches that the "Supreme Being" accepts all people without judgment is just a lie from Satan. Its a clear contradiction of the teaching of Scripture for a start. Maybe you do not believe in the existence of Satan or hell, but Jesus Christ taught something very different. I mistrust spirits which teach a different doctrine to what Jesus taught. Jesus was in a better position to tell us the truth than people are today. Christians are exhorted by God to test the spirits, to see if they are from God. Not every spiritual experience is true. Some of them can be the "good" side of the "tree of knowledge of good and evil" - which is still as deadly and poisonous as anything else the devil offers.

Do the Dead ever rise?

We will leave aside for the moment the many reports of people being raised from the dead in Christ's name. I believe that this can and does happen, but you'd probably have to actually meet people who saw it or to whom it happened, as I have, before you would consider the possibility of such a thing. Let us go instead to the matter of Christ's resurrection.

The evidence for the physical resurrection of Christ is far more powerful than most people realise. The link above outlines just a few of the basic arguments that help us see this.

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