559. Why I believe in Everlasting Life

This is a subject of some interest to me, now that I’m in my 88th year on earth.

Maybe I’m doing it all wrong. We were told by a Methodist professor many years ago that if we go to Heaven wanting chiefly to find our mom and dad, we’ll never see them. But if we go to Heaven wanting to see Jesus, you’ll find mom and dad, too.

Well… I don’t know. I would love to see my Lord Jesus. But I don’t think I’m ready yet. Many years ag0, I believe I got a live glimpse of Him. It was so powerful that it turned my life upside down. I hope it isn’t irreverent to say I have loved Him like crazy ever since. He has been the center and guide of my life. Somehow He has kept me with Him all these years, even in my worst moments.

But Jesus Christ now is glorified in Heaven, as John saw Him in chapter one of his book of Revelation, as Peter, James and John saw Him on the Mount of the Transfiguration, and they couldn’t handle it. Am I ready to see Him like that? No. Not yet. Nor could I handle that, not like I am now.

So my hope for Heaven (or whatever lies immediately on the “other side”) is that an angel or my parents or someone I know will be there to greet me and help me to move ahead.

Looking at it from this side of the veil, I think the first reason I believe in everlasting life is a subjective one. I cannot bear the thought of never again seeing my mom and dad and my dear wife and my son and daughter and son in law and grandchildren. I know some people say that when you’re dead you’re dead, and that’s it. I simply do not know how they cope when someone they love dies. I know this makes no sense. I mean, if we die and that’s it, we wouldn’t know anything! But that’s how I feel.

Do I love my loved ones more than I love Jesus? That’s not an answerable question. It’s a different sort of love, earthly love. I love my Lord Jesus, too, but as my Lord and God and Savior.

In what I wrote above, it’s obvious that I greatly desire everlasting life, greatly desire it. Now let’s move beyond my desires and wishes and be more objective. I believe because there is evidence for it.

Some evidence for “non-bodily existence”

This doesn’t guarantee everlasting life, but it allows for the possibility of it.

This one I know for a fact. At the Episcopal Church where I was rector (pastor) long ago, my secretary – whom I had known well for at least fifteen years, and I know she was not given to making things up – told me that when she was giving birth she went into shock, and found herself looking down from above on the doctors and nurses who were working to save her. Then suddenly she was back in her body again. They had saved her life. Afterwards, to their amazement she told them in detail exactly what they had been doing and saying while she was completely unconscious, “bodily speaking”.

Or take near-death experiences. These accounts have become not infrequent in recent times. (They were unusual in the past because in those days if people came near to death, they almost always died. Today medical technology is sometimes able to bring people back from the brink.) People who have come near to dying have sometimes reported passing through a “tunnel” of light, often guided by some sort of being. I think this is in harmony with popular Orthodox belief that we are guided through death by an angel, perhaps our guardian angel. (This is reflected in a few of our prayers, none of which I can locate it now – we Orthodox have so many prayers.) Those who arrive on the other side are often reluctant to come back. Many say their lives are changed for the better ever since.

• I’ve written before that people should be careful not to jump to an unwarranted conclusion: “Now I know what Heaven is like.” That would like someone flying into Heathrow Airport in London, then immediately returning to America, saying “Now I know what England is like. It’s like a big airport.” After all they had only a near death experience. They didn’t really die.

However, my point is that they experienced all this while outside their bodies – evidence that extra-bodily existence is possible.

I believe in everlasting life because most people on earth have believed in it…

…in one form or another, that is. This does not mean people necessarily go to Heaven, only that there is some sort of existence after death. To be more specific:

All Hindus, I think, believe in reincarnation – the progress or regress of the soul through many births and deaths till finally, if all goes well, the soul is merged into the Atman, the “world soul”. Buddhists believe in the continuation of the soul after death till finally it attains Nirvana, a safe non-existence. Egyptians believed originally that only the souls of the royalty could pass through various stages and finally attain happiness in the “Field of Reeds” *. Then later the souls of anyone who could pay for proper burial rites were allowed passage.

• Some years ago the Milwaukee Public Museum had a fascinating display of Egyptian funeral rites by which we all could walk through their post-death stages. At the end we emerged not into the Field of Reeds but into the gift shop! It seemed I alone found this hilarious: modern commercial culture taking over even the Egyptian afterlife!

Many primitive peoples (I don’t know how many) believed that the personal soul survived death in one form or another. Some believers in voodoo religion rather wished people didn’t.

Both ancient Greeks and Jews believed in life after death in a negative way – called Hades by the Greeks, Sheol by the Jews. They believed that after death the conscious soul descended into darkness, the underworld where, barring miracle *, they kept descending into “the land where all is forgotten”, “the land of forgetfulness”, “the land of oblivion” (three translations of Psalm 88:12), till finally they disappeared. Even in Jesus’ time the Sadducees disbelieved in everlasting life. Remember how they tried to make Him look foolish by setting forth the case of a woman who had been married legally and properly to seven men: whose wife would she be in the afterlife?

• We Christians believe that miracle has now taken place.

Here’s something to ponder: Up till a few centuries before the coming of Christ, all Jews served and obeyed God with no hope of reward, of eternal joy. They served God only because He was God and it was the right thing to do.

Inasmuch as we believe the story of the Jews to be the revelation of God and the essential foundation of our Christian salvation history, we Christians must accept their pre-Christian understanding of the afterlife, and of how Jesus Christ saved us from it by descending into Hades. We sing about it all the time.

So here’s what I’m leading up to. Why have most peoples on earth believed in the afterlife? without any firm evidence for it. Objectively it would seem irrational. I mean, we see people born, live and die and buried and (except for a few appearances of ghosts and what not) that’s the end of them. There they lie. Dead.

So why have people believed that’s not the end of them, nor the end of us?

Surely it must be because everlasting life exists. Correct me if my reasoning is wrong here: It appears to me that all positive human desires exist because something exists to fulfill them. We desire food and drink because food and drink exist. The desire for sex exists because sexual fulfillment is possible. We desire to breathe because there is air. And so on. This does not mean that these desires are always fulfilled. People in Gaza have been starving, but that doesn’t mean food doesn’t exist – as it does in the countries beyond their borders, still waiting to be taken in. But here’s the point: Why do people have this strange desire to live beyond death if there is no everlasting life to fulfill that desire? The answer must be this: It’s because everlasting life exists.

The Christian answer is more specific: It’s because God has built this desire into mankind.

Now we come to the substantial answer.

I believe in everlasting life because I believe in Our Lord Jesus Christ.

He taught it clearly again and again, and told us how to attain it – a “positive” form of it, that is, and how to avoid a “negative” kind of everlasting life.

If I believe in Jesus Christ, then both my personal desires and also “earthly” evidence fade into the background.

Here are only a very few examples of what He taught, and then how the Apostles built on His teaching:

“For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, so tthat whoever believes in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life” John  3:16

“Very truly I tell you, whoever hears my word and believes Him who sent me has eternal life and will not be judged but has crossed over from death to life.” John 5:24