Life after Death?

Today on Renewing Your Mind… Most people are unsure about what lies on the other side, so they'd rather hold onto the pain of this world.

But we tend to be short-sighted. We assign too much value to this life and not enough to the next. There is life after death, though, a glorious life that God has secured for those who take refuge in Him. Where am I going to be a hundred years from now? Have you ever asked yourself that question? Because as soon as we extend the calendar beyond the immediate future and roll it out into a hundred years from now, we are asking the question that Job asked, if a man dies, will he live again? It's a question that the human race seems to be preoccupied with. It's not simply a question raised by religious people, but in our own culture we've seen the attention that the media has given to people like Shirley MacLaine, who speculates about reincarnation and previous incarnations that she's had. We see as we drive through the towns of America the symbol of the hand in somebody's yard where Madam So-and-So will offer for a fee to read your palm and tell you what your history is going to be. Have you ever noticed these little places that have the sign of the palm out there that they seem to be in run-down sections of the neighborhood with dilapidated homes there? And I thought, I wonder why Madam So-and-So doesn't apply her art to the stock market if she really has this ability to read the future.

But people will pay money for that. They will watch their horoscopes every day to try and find out what the future will mean to them. In every culture there is some sense of expectancy of life after death, whether it's the Norse Valhalla or whether it is the Indian happy hunting ground or the Judeo-Christian concept of heaven, that it seems to be built into our humanity to embrace this hope that after we die there is something that goes on, some continuity of personal existence. In a poetic way and dramatic way we remember the famous words of Hamlet in his soliloquy. Remember when he begins by that dilemma to be or not to be?

He said, that's the question. What does he mean when he says to be or not to be? He says, for me to live, to continue to exist, to carry on this life, to be, or rather to not be, to end it. Suicide is what is on the mind of Hamlet in that speech. And as he's considering the alternatives of life and death and swinging between the two points, he experiences conflicting feelings.

Last night after our seminar, I had a member of our board sit down with me and look me straight in the eye. He's a former cancer patient, and he said, R.C., and I said, what? What's the meaning of life?

I thought he was kidding. What do you mean what's the meaning of life? You know, who do you think you are? Pontius Pilate asking Jesus what is truth? What is the meaning of life? I said, what do you mean what is the meaning of life? He said, well, look at what life's all about. He said, we experience so much pain, so much tragedy, that sometimes I wonder whether we'd be better off if we were never born at all. And we began to talk about that. And I said, it does seem at times as though life gives to us more failures than successes, more pain than pleasure, more unhappiness than happiness, more of a sense of loss than a sense of gain.

That's what it seems to be. And yet, in spite of all of that, we see how people will claw and fight tooth and nail to hang on to whatever it is that we call life for another five minutes, so that in spite of the pain that attends life, we somehow still value it enough that we want to keep experiencing it. Well, that's what Hamlet was experiencing, hey, you know, to live to die, to die, to sleep perchance to dream. He said, I don't know what's on the other side.

He said, that's a land from whose born no traveler returns. And he said, because the other side is shrouded in darkness, and we've never been there to see what the other side is really like, he said, we would rather bear those ills that we have than fly to others that we know not of. Thus conscience, he said, doth make cowards of us all.

Rather hang on to the pain of this world than step across the threshold into a world that we know little or nothing about. As soon as we approach death, there seems to be an accentuation of fear, not so much for those who are prepared to die themselves, but for those who journey with them to the side of the grave. If you've ever read the dialogues of Plato, and you read the dialogue that includes the death scene of Socrates, all of Socrates' students and friends are gathered around the prison as he has been sentenced to death, and he on this day has been appointed to drink the fatal hemlock as his manner of execution, and his friends are allowed to visit him one last time. And they come in, and they have this pall of gloom over their heads, and as they come to the cell of Socrates, they find him calm. They find him relaxed. They find him even in a state of eager anticipation.

And they can't figure it out. They say to their teacher, how is it possible that you can be in this state of joyous anticipation when you know this is your last day of life? And then Socrates begins to teach them philosophically of his speculation of all that he has learned from the study of nature, from the study of science that has convinced him that this is not the last day of his life, but it is the beginning of an eternal existence that is far better than what he experiences here. Now I find comfort in reading the speculation of Plato.

I find comfort in reading the philosophical musing of Immanuel Kant when he says for all practical purposes we've got to believe in life after death because if there is no life after death, then this life is meaningless. Somebody asked me a question last night about the Holocaust, the systematic extinction of six million people, genocide in World War II. And the question was, where was God in all of that?

I didn't really say what was going through my mind. But I've heard people look at that tragedy and they say, how can there be a God and at the same time genocide will take place? I think of that and I turn it around and I say, if there is not a God, there can't possibly be a Holocaust.

You say, wait a minute, why? I say, because if there is no God, ladies and gentlemen, then human life doesn't matter. And we can't really protest about the loss of life of six million undifferentiated pieces of protoplasm that have emerged by accident from the slime and are now just returning to the abyss from which they gratuitously came forth.

You can't call that a Holocaust because for something to be tragic, there first has to be value. There first has to be a foundation for ultimate meaning. And that's what Kant was saying.

But again, all of that that gives me a secondary major of comfort remains at the level of sheer speculation. The greatest comfort that I have ever found with respect to the question of life after death comes from two sources. One source is the teaching of Jesus, the words of Jesus.

The other source is the example of Jesus, the work of Jesus. Not too long ago, a poll was taken among American church members, and they were asked to identify their favorite chapter of the Bible. Now everybody I'm sure has heard of 1 Corinthians 13, the love chapter. 1 Corinthians 13 came in second. The chapter that came in in first place in terms of popularity among American church people was the fourteenth chapter of the Gospel according to St. John. Let's take a couple of minutes to look at that familiar record of Jesus' words.

You understand the scene. Jesus is with His disciples now in the upper room the night before He is to die. Chapter 14 begins with these words, let not your hearts be troubled. You believe in God, you believe also in Me.

In My Father's house are many mansions and so on. You've all heard of that text. If you haven't heard it by going to church, you've heard it at the cemetery because this text is read at almost every funeral in America. Let not your hearts be troubled.

He doesn't just come out on the stage and say, here's the beginning of My talk. Let not your hearts be troubled. As I said, there is a context to those words. Those words of exhortation take place in the midst of a very poignant discussion that Jesus is having with His friends. And to understand, I think, the thrust of His teaching, I'll just call your attention to the 21st verse of John chapter 13 where it says this, after He had said this, Jesus was troubled in His own spirit.

Isn't that interesting that Jesus is not standing there aloof as the preacher admonishing His congregation. Now I don't want you all to be troubled, but He is speaking about their being troubled out of the midst of His own trouble. In chapter 13, we are said that Jesus began to be troubled.

Well, what was troubling Him? He was troubled in His spirit, and He said, I tell you the truth, one of you is going to betray Me. And then He went on and identified the traitor as Judas, and He dismissed Judas saying to him, what you were about to do, do quickly. And then He went on to predict the subsequent denial of Peter. And then at the end of this discussion, He says in verse 33, My children, I will be with you only a little longer, and you will look for Me.

And just as I told the Jews, so I tell you now that where I am going, you cannot come. This was startling to His disciples that Jesus was now talking about separation. And one of the most difficult things that ever takes place with the experience of the death of a loved one is the moment of separation. If we go back to the Old Testament, we read the story of the prophet Elijah who was housed in this poor widow's home, the widow of Zarephath, and the widow of Zarephath had a son who was taken ill, and he died. And when Elijah came on the scene, this woman was clutching the body of her son, and she was rebuking the prophet and in her hysteria and anger, you know, saying, if you hadn't come here, if you hadn't been here, this wouldn't have happened. And Elijah is prepared now to bring this dead son back to life. And he says to the woman, let go of him and give him to me that he might live. But how difficult it was for that mother to let go. You've been there in the hospital at the side of one who is passing, and when death occurs, usually people stand there.

They don't know what to do, and they don't know what to say until somebody will inevitably say, he's gone, or she's gone, and we must take our leave. The whole ceremony and process of the funeral is to mark that time of separation. Jesus is preparing His friends for this event in their lives, and He said, in a little while, I'm going to go, and I'm going to go where you can't come. And He said, a new command I give you to love one another, and as I have loved you, so you must love one another. And all men will know that you are My disciples if you love one another. Now here is one of the most important discourses about love that Jesus of Nazareth ever preached, and there have been a million sermons preached on that text – love one another. Do you know what Peter says next in the text?

Let's know what he says. Peter asks, Lord, where are you going? He missed the whole discourse on love. All he heard was Jesus say, I'm leaving, and Peter's mind checked out.

He didn't want to hear any little sermonette about love. He just got the message, Jesus was leaving. Peter said, Lord, where are you going? And again Jesus replied, Peter, where I am going, you cannot follow now, but you will follow later.

Where I am going, you cannot follow. Do you know what those words must have done to Peter? His mind must have flashed back to the Galilean seashore where his whole life had been turned upside down by two words, follow me. And for the past three years that's all that Simon Peter did was he followed Jesus. If Jesus went to Capernaum, Peter went to Capernaum. If Jesus went to Canaan, Peter went to Canaan. If Jesus went to the Mount of Transfiguration, Peter went to the Mount of Transfiguration. He followed Christ literally. It wasn't simply a spiritual pilgrimage. He enrolled in Jesus' rabbinic school as a disciple. And now Jesus said, where I'm going, you can't follow me anymore.

But Jesus put a temporal limit to that prohibition. He said, you cannot follow me now, but afterwards you will follow me. Now I want you to hold that in your minds because that's the previous part of the discussion that's not mentioned once chapter 14 begins.

And let's go back now to chapter 14 where Jesus says, don't let your hearts be troubled. You trust in God. You believe in God.

Believe also in Me. In My Father's house are many rooms, and if it were not so, I would have told you, I am going there to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with Me, that you also may be where I am. Do you hear what Jesus is saying? He's saying, you can't follow Me now, but I'm going to My Father's house, and I'm going there to prepare a place for you so that where I am, you can be also. And there's going to come a moment when I'm going to bring you to that place where I am. Now the thing that gives me the most comfort about these words of Jesus is this. In the middle of this promise where He said, I'm going to prepare a place for you, He gives a parenthetic statement that comforts My soul.

He said, if it were not so, I would have told you. You know, you come to a place like MD Anderson that concentrates on human suffering and pain, on disease, terminal illness, on death. You know, one of the biggest problems that the physicians and the staff of this place have to deal with is the problem of false hope, because we are creatures who want to hope and times hoping against hope, which can be a very healthy thing at times, but there comes that moment in some people's pilgrimage where the hope runs out.

And then they are vulnerable to the charlatans and to the exploiters who will offer them some kind of hope that really has no substance to it. And the thing that is so sober about what Jesus says to His disciples is this. He said, look, I'm a teacher. I'm committed to the truth. My whole vocation, my whole mission is to bear witness to the truth. I am a rabbi of Israel. I understand the sanctity of truth, and I say to you that there's nothing that I teach you except what I have learned from my Father, and if this were not so, I would have told you.

I would not allow you to indulge in superstitious fantasy. I like the fact that Jesus didn't say, if it was not so, I would have told you. He said, if it were not so, that's condition contrary to fact. Even in the Greek language, the conditional statement that He uses indicates a condition contrary to fact. If it were not so, I would have told you. I would have corrected your error.

I wouldn't have allowed you to titillate yourself and build up false hopes and false expectations only to be embarrassed and ashamed and profoundly disappointed at some later time. But what Jesus is saying here, ladies and gentlemen, is this. It is so. I know where I'm going, and I'm going there to prepare a place for you, and you can't follow Me there right now. You still have some time to live out.

You still have a vocation to fulfill. You may still have to fill up the suffering that is lacking in the mission that I have been given to accomplish, but there is a moment when you will join Me in My Father's love. Therefore, He says, let not your heart be troubled. Jesus' words bring us great comfort. Christianity knows nothing of a God who is absent from our pain and grief.

We can be confident that He is sovereign over it and sovereign in it. Walking through the hardships of life bring challenges, and this week here on Renewing Your Mind, we have been pleased to feature R.C. Sproul's series Surprised by Suffering to help us see how God works in and through our common experience of pain. We'd like to provide you this full series as a digital download, six messages available to you in your online learning library. We'll also send you the hardbound edition of R.C. 's book by the same title, Surprised by Suffering. Request both resources when you give a donation of any amount to Ligonier Ministries. There are a couple of ways you can make a request.

One is online at renewingyourmind.org, or you can simply call us at 800-435-4343. In the series, as well as in the book, Dr. Sproul assures us that God allows suffering for our good and for His glory. Even though suffering is unavoidable, God has promised to help us. He's there with us through it all. Maybe you or a loved one, a friend, or a coworker are going through a challenging time of physical or emotional suffering or grief right now. Let me commend these resources to you. Our phone number again is 800-435-4343.

You can also make your request at renewingyourmind.org. Thank you for being with us this week. Next week, Dr. Robert Godfrey joins us with his series, Learning to Love the Psalms. I hope you'll join us beginning Monday here on Renewing Your Mind.