eath’s door is ajar.  People just won’t disappear.  Death does not blot them out.  Time will not erase who we are.  Birth brought us out of an enclosed, dark, inner space to an open, light-filled world; death will bring us to a greater, brighter, and more significant place.  Life and death are like a small black dot in the midst of an infinitely expanding, illuminated eternity.

How can we say these things and how can they be known?  The Bible informs the darkness and penetrates into eternity.  The Bible speaks volumes about life after death and presents the person of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who entered human life from eternity and came back from death.

How do we know that people are immortal?  Here are the reasons that life after death exists.  In Genesis 1, God said, “Let us make humanity in our image.”

The first reason life exists after death is that we are an analogy of the divine. God wove into our make-up attributes and abilities similar to His own.

He can think and determine; so can we, because we share similarities.  He feels, reflects, and relates;  so do we, because we are in His image and likeness.  He is eternal;  therefore, we are everlasting.

God has made us an analogy of the divine, so much so that we cannot go away.  Even though the body dies, the spirit or personality lives on.  We have an instinct sense for this that God has placed within us, and that is why a book of the Bible states:

Everything He has made beautiful in its season; also, He has placed eternity in humanity's heart, except that a person will never discover the work that God has done from the beginning to the end. Ecclesiastes 3:11

We have eternity in our hearts but we will not discover the reality of eternity from within ourselves.  All of us have within us a sense of being eternal.  It is unimaginable to think of a time when we were not, but logically, we know that we had a beginning.  It just does not feel that way.  The verse from Ecclesiastes goes on to say that we are incapable of searching out that reality.  Instead, the Bible has to give us the information our searching hearts need.

The Bible assumes life after death because we are made in the image of God.  Even if we wanted to, we could not disappear.  God made humans to be physical representations of Himself, but He also imbued humanity with an everlasting spirit.

The second reason why life exists after death is the person of Jesus Christ.  Jesus Christ is the Son of God, taking on the form of humanity to communicate on our level.  A man speaking to ants could not communicate, but if a man became an ant, then communication could take place. The Bible puts it this way:

. . . although He existed in the manifested form of God, He did not regard equality with God a thing to be desperately held on to, but He emptied Himself, taking the form of a slave, being made in the likeness of humanity.  Philippians 2:6-7

This the Son of God did so that we would be met on our own terms, so that we would understand God in our very own language.  Throughout His ministry on the earth, He proclaimed the eternality of persons and life after death.  He said:

For I have come down from Heaven not to do my own will, but the will of Him who sent Me. . . .  For this is the will of my Father, that everyone who sees the Son and believes in Him may have eternal life, and I myself will raise him up on the last day.  John 6:38-40

In a sense, the person who deals with Jesus Christ is faced with an ultimate decision: do I want a God who would come from heaven to earth to help and who came to die in my stead to take away my wrongdoing?  If I decide to trust in Christ, I can be all right with a righteous God.  Furthermore, Jesus promised a glorious physical restoration or resurrection for all of humanity who trusted in Him.

The Bible teaches that Jesus Christ, in His resurrection from the dead, is the first part of a great harvest.  God intends to raise all of humanity from the grip of death.  The Bible assumes that since humanity is made in a physical likeness and image of deity, God intends to restore that physical image by that glorious transformation called the resurrection.

But before that future resurrection, when a person physically dies the spirit or personality continues to exist and enters the next life.  Those who have trusted that God actually loves humanity and sent His Son to rescue us will be escorted into heaven.  Personal consciousness never ceases.

How can we trust that the resurrection of Christ is a sufficient basis to believe in the after-life?  First, we can believe, because He was physically raised from the dead.  He showed that death had been conquered.

All of us sense that we are involved in something beyond ourselves.  Throughout our lives, we have a sense of eternity in our hearts.  That instinct prepares us for the Biblical truth of eternity and the invasion of God into this world through Jesus Christ.  God has always existed and will always exist.  He inhabits eternity.  We have been made like Him so we share a similar quality, and that is being everlasting.  We cannot disappear.  That is why heaven and hell exist.  One is for those who want to be around God, and one for those who do not.

Then, the issue is not will we continue to exist, for we will.  The issue is, whether or not we want to spend that existence around a God who has died for us?  If we want a God who loves us and has dealt with our wrongdoing through His Son, Jesus Christ, we have to believe the Gospel.  The Gospel is that Christ has died for us and has risen from the dead to protect us forever.  Through trusting in Him and His death and resurrection, we are all right with God forever.

Priscilla:  "Dr. Eckman’s lecture, along with the interaction and experience from the small group discussions, enabled me to have a personal relationship with God." "My fear of death was eliminated once I learned that Christ saved me from my sins."

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