A Questioning Faith:

1. A Questioning Faith: What does the Bible say about life after death?

2. Compelling Question “To be is to have a future. As soon as our future is eliminated, we cease to exist. When we sense that our future is about to be taken away from us or even constricted, we become anxious…We may not have the power of our own future in our own hands, but God has a future…God comforts our anxiety over time by offering us eternity.” Ted Peters

3. Not as Much as we think!! Alternative narratives Old Testament development New Testament Worldview Two key options Reformed witness Guidelines for after death questions

4. Alternative narratives of life after death • Scientific naturalism • Platonic Immortal souls • Hindu Reincarnation • New Age astral projection • African Ancestral Presence

5. Old Testament Development No belief in life after death “By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread until you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; your are dust, and to dust you shall return.” Genesis 3:19

6. Sheol or the Pit

7. Shadowy place of darkness and silence “Are not the days of my life few? Let me alone, that I may find a little comfort before I go to the land of gloom and deep darkness, the land of gloom and chaos, where light is like darkness.” Job 10:20-22

8. A place of sleep but we will never awaken “But mortals die and are laid low…so mortals lie down and do not rise again; until the heavens are no more, they will not awake or be roused out of their sleep.” Job 14:10,12

9. Hints of a changing thought • Possibility of awaking “Then Samuel said to Saul, ‘Why have you disturbed me by bringing me up?’” 1 Samuel 28:15

10. Beginning belief in Resurrection • Resurrection of the dead in Book of Daniel • Influence of Persian culture “Many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt.” Daniel 12:2

11. New Testament Worldview • Resurrection is hot issue of debate “When Paul noticed that some were Sadducees and others were Pharisees, he called out in the council, ‘Brothers, I am a Pharisee, a son of Pharisees. I am on trial concerning the hope of the resurrection of the dead.” Acts 23:6

12. Resurrection at end of age “Jesus said to her, ‘Your brother will rise again.’ Martha said to him, ‘I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day.’” John 11:23-24

13. Jesus’ Resurrection Changed everything Belief that the end of the age had arrived

14. “And Jesus said to the disciples, ‘Truly I tell you, there are some standing here who will not taste death until they see that the kingdom of God has come with power.” Mark 9:1

15. Paul Shared this conviction “For this we declare to you by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord…” 1 Thessalonians 4:15

16. Interim Perspective “But do not ignore this one fact, beloved, that with the Lord one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like one day. The Lord is not slow about his promise, as some think of slowness, but is patient with you, not wanting any to perish, but all to come to repentance.” 2 Peter 3:8-9

17. Biblical Witness: Two Scenarios • After death we will remain in the earth until the final resurrection “For the Lord himself, with a cry of command, with the archangel’s call and with the sound of God’s trumpet, will descend from heaven, and the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up in the clouds together with them to meet the Lord in the air; and so we will be with the Lord forever.” 1 Thessalonians 4:16-18

18. Immediately upon death we will be with God “Then he said, ‘Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.’ He replied, ‘Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise.’” Luke 23:42-43

19. Reformed Witness • Combined the two options into one “We are to believe that, at the last day, there shall be a general resurrection of the dead, both of the just and the unjust; when they that are then found alive shall in a moment be changed; and the selfsame bodies of the dead which are laid in the grave, being then again united to their souls forever…” The Larger Catechism

20. Concerns with this view Body and soul division is unbiblical Final judgment makes no sense New Testament does not reconcile the two positions

21. Guides to asking the right questions

22. We must not want to know too much “The nature of eternal life is sketched only in its essential elements in the New Testament. The emphasis throughout is on a basic assurance of eternal life, not on a fanciful depiction of details.” Robert Van Voorst

23. Biblical language about the future is metaphorical/symbolic “Biblical language is not to be taken as a literal description of how things will be but as a symbolic description of the fact that at the end of our individual lives and at the end of history God will be there as Judge and Savior.

24. The Bible uses earthly human categories of time and space not to describe literally where we will be and how we will exist ‘after time’ but to describe who we will be. It is not primarily interested in ‘the furniture of heaven’ or in the ‘temperature of hell’ but in people and what it will mean for them to be together with or separated from God.” Shirley Gutherie

25. The best insight we have into what God will do is found by looking at what God has done “What we look forward to is not the destruction but the renewal of the life of our created world and our creaturely lives in it. To look forward to a final judgment of the world is not to look forward to the annihilation of the world and a purely spiritual, otherworldly kingdom of God,

26. But to look forward to a ‘new heaven and a new earth’ – the completion and perfection of this world, which in itself always has been and always will be God’s good creation.”

27. What can we affirm • Jesus’ resurrection inaugurates the Final Days • We believe in the resurrection of the body, not the immortality of the soul • We will never be separated from God • At the end of the age we will enjoy God’s kingdom forever