What happens when man dies? Logically, there are three permutations: he is gone, he goes back, or he goes away. The first is materialism, the second is reincarnation, and the third is resurrection.
Materialism
Materialism is the belief that man is nothing more than the body. So, when man dies, he is gone. Consider these three facts.
First, if man is nothing more than the body, man is no different from animal. As with animal, there is no morality. There is no reason why man cannot do anything he likes so long as he is not caught. Accordingly, if materialists have no reason to be good, they also cannot expect others to be good or not to be bad to them. However, if, like others, they too naturally have the need to be good and have the expectation of good from others, then they cannot consistently be materialists. Man, by instinct, knows that he is something more than the body.
Second, if death is the end, life has no meaning. Man is born through the suffering of labour pain. He then suffers to get a recognised education, to get and hold a job, to raise a family, to endure sickness and the debilitation of old age, and finally to die. Is it worth living a meaningless life? No. Therefore, since time immemorial man has been searching for meaning in life resulting in the plethora of religions and philosophies. Man has the innate sense that this life is not all there is. Also, often the bad guys win and the good guys lose. There must be something after death that makes this life of sufferings meaningful and fair.
Third, latest scientific observations indicate that man is beyond the body. Radiation oncologist Dr Jeffrey Long spent a decade researching into some 1,300 cases of patients who were revived after being near dead or clinically dead i.e. whose vital organs had ceased functioning and who reported experiences of their leaving the bodies and overlooking them or travelling to an unearthly environment. In 2010, he published his findings in a book called “Evidence of the Afterlife: The Science of Near-Death Experiences” in which he wrote: “I have studied thousands of near-death experiences. I have carefully considered the evidence NDEs present regarding the existence of an afterlife. I believe, without a shadow of a doubt that there is life after physical death.“
Recently, the October 15, 2012 issue of Newsweek ran the cover “Heaven is Real: A Doctor’s Experience of the Afterlife”. In it, Dr Eben Alexander, a neurosurgeon who had taught at Harvard Medical School, wrote that he had contracted bacterial meningitis where his entire cortex – the part of the brain that controls thought and emotion and that in essence makes us human – had shut down. He lay in a deep coma for seven days at Lynchburg General Hospital in Virginia during which the E. coli bacteria that had penetrated his cerebrospinal fluid were eating his brain. Then, on the morning of his seventh day in the hospital, as his doctors weighed whether to discontinue treatment, his eyes popped open.
After his recovery, he recounted this: “… after seven days in a coma during which the human part of my brain, the neocortex, was inactivated, I experienced something so profound that it gave me a scientific reason to believe in consciousness after death… While the neurons of my cortex were stunned to complete inactivity by the bacteria that had attacked them, my brain-free consciousness journeyed to another, larger dimension of the universe: a dimension I’d never dreamed existed and which the old, pre-coma me would have been more than happy to explain was a simple impossibility… All the chief arguments against near-death experiences suggest that these experiences are the results of minimal, transient, or partial malfunctioning of the cortex. My near-death experience, however, took place not while my cortex was malfunctioning, but while it was simply off. This is clear from the severity and duration of my meningitis, and from the global cortical involvement documented by CT scans and neurological examinations. According to current medical understanding of the brain and mind, there is absolutely no way that I could have experienced even a dim and limited consciousness during my time in the coma, much less the hyper-vivid and completely coherent odyssey I underwent.”
Before this experience, this was what he believed: “I didn’t begrudge those who wanted to believe that Jesus was more than simply a good man who had suffered at the hands of the wicked. I sympathized deeply with those who wanted to believe that there was a God somewhere out there who loved us unconditionally. In fact, I envied such people the security that those beliefs no doubt provided. But as a scientist, I simply knew better than to believe them myself.”
But after this experience, this was what he said: “I’ve spent decades as a neurosurgeon at some of the most prestigious medical institutions in our country. I know that many of my peers hold—as I myself did—to the theory that the brain, and in particular the cortex, generates consciousness and that we live in a universe devoid of any kind of emotion, much less the unconditional love that I now know God and the universe have toward us. But that belief, that theory, now lies broken at our feet. What happened to me destroyed it, and I intend to spend the rest of my life investigating the true nature of consciousness and making the fact that we are more, much more, than our physical brains as clear as I can, both to my fellow scientists and to people at large… The plain fact is that the materialist picture of the body and brain as the producers, rather than the vehicles, of human consciousness is doomed. In its place a new view of mind and body will emerge, and in fact is emerging already. This view is scientific and spiritual in equal measure and will value what the greatest scientists of history themselves always valued above all: truth. This new picture of reality will take a long time to put together… But in essence, it will show the universe as evolving, multi-dimensional, and known down to its every last atom by a God who cares for us even more deeply and fiercely than any parent ever loved their child.”
Clearly, materialism is unsatisfactory not only because it cannot fulfill the natural yearnings of man but also because it cannot account for the spiritual experiences of so many throughout the ages in all cultures everywhere.
Reincarnation
Reincarnation, generally, is the belief that when man dies his soul leaves the body and enters a fetus causing the future life of the man to be born to be better or worse than his past life depending on whether he had net goodness or net badness in the past life. This universal process continues until the soul attains absolute goodness in which event he escapes the cycles of rebirth into nothingness or the source of the universal process. Hence, when man dies, he goes back. Reincarnation is not a science or a philosophy because it cannot be logically deduced from verifiable facts. It is a religious belief that presupposes the existence of a higher being, that he has set in motion the law that the past life determines the future life, and that he is keeping score of the good and bad deeds of every soul. Consider these three facts.
First, it is an undeniable truth that man suffers. Why does the higher being fling man out like a yoyo to whirl though aeons of sufferings only to recoil back to nothingness? Does it not make the higher being play a cruel game? If man by nature revolts at cruelty and he is part of the universal process the punishes badness, either the higher being is inconsistent and hence cannot be the higher being, or there is a higher being but there is no such universal process.
Second, man has no memory of his past lives yet he is to accept that he suffers in this life for the badness he did in his previous lives. Does not even a child instinctively protest against being punished without knowing what wrong he has committed? If the higher being has inbuilt this instinct in man, why did he still design the universal process that punishes man without him knowing what wrong he has committed? Further, if the soul who goes in and out of bodies is the same (which ought to be as otherwise man is being punished for another’s badness), why can’t he recall his past lives? To address these problems, some reincarnationists claim that a few can describe past events although they could not have been there, and argue that these few must have been recalling their past lives. Without speculating on the probable and rational explanations for these exceptional stories, it still remains that 99.9999999% of man have no memory of past lives, and so these problems of reincarnation remain unresolved.
Third, if over time more and more souls escape into nothingness, world population will shrink as reincarnation implies a closed system where souls are recycled; not created. The reality is world population has been growing tremendously. Where did the additional souls come from? Some reincarnationists claim that they came from lower life forms like animals. However, lower life forms are amoral; they act by natural instinct and therefore their actions are neither good nor bad. There is no cruel worm in as much as there is no charitable worm. So, what determines which worm can by reincarnation eventually upgrade into a man?
All things considered, reincarnation neither accords with the instincts of man nor with reality.
Resurrection
This leaves the third permutation – after death, man goes away. To where? Only he who has actually died and come back can tell where man goes after death. In the history of the world, only one has actually died and come back.
About two thousand years ago, in a province of the Roman Empire called Judea (now Israel), a baby was born. They called him Jesus. He grew up in a lowly family in a seedy little town. As a child, he amazed religious teacher with his understanding of God and his word.
At thirty, he went about proclaiming the coming of the kingdom of God and teaching what man must do to be with God and enjoy a life of happiness. You may have heard of these high ideals: “If anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also.” “Love your enemies.” “Do not judge, so that you may not be judged.” “Do to others as you would have them do to you.” “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” “The greatest among you will be your servant. All who exalt themselves will be humbled, and all who humble themselves will be exalted.” “It is more blessed to give than to receive.” Well, they are just a sampling of the great teachings that originated from Jesus. So effective are the teachings of Jesus that many know about, live or aspire to live by them although they may not believe in or even know about him.
Through the centuries, the teachings of Jesus have transformed lives for the better, mended broken families, and inspired thousands to open schools to educate the poor; to build hospitals, to provide homes for the orphans and destitute in slums and remote villages around the world, to risk their lives to care for the injured in war zones.
Jesus cares for you and gives you everything you need when you turn to him.
When you are burdened and stressed out, Jesus says, “Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.”
When you are troubled and paralysed by fear, Jesus says, “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid.”
When you are sick and in need, Jesus says, “Ask and you will receive, so that your joy may be complete.”
When you are lonely in this cold cruel world, Jesus says, “I am with you always.”
When your life is empty, Jesus says, “I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.”
When you are depressed, Jesus says, “I will see you again, and your hearts will rejoice, and no one will take your joy from you.”
Today, those who turn to Jesus experience the reality of his promises.
Jesus revealed that God loves man, that he is God, and that he came as a man to suffer and die to draw man back to God. He foretold that he would rise from the dead.
Jesus healed the sick, liberated the demon-possessed, opened the eye of the blind, made the lame to walk, and raised the dead. He uplifted the poor and the despised, comforted the depressed, and fed the hungry masses.
He had no money or material possession, and yet for all the good that he had done, he asked for none.
He exposed the hypocrisy of the politicians and religious leaders, and their corruption of God’s law. They wanted him dead.
Under cover of darkness, the religious leaders led a detachment of soldiers and police to arrest him. Throughout the night, they interrogated him; looking for something to charge him with. In between, they mocked him, spat at him, slapped him and beat him.
At first light, they hurried him to trial before Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor of Judea. They charged him with two counts of subversion – forbidding Jews to pay taxes to the emperor and setting himself up as a king. After hearing the case, Pilate declared, “I find no basis for an accusation against this man.” But they were insistent. Quickly, they framed a new charge against him – insurrection – stirring up the people throughout Judea starting from Galilee. When Pilate learned that he was from Galilee, and therefore under the jurisdiction Herod Antipas, the Jewish king of Galilee and Perea, he sent him off to Herod.
Herod too didn’t find him guilty of any of the charges, and sent him back to Pilate. Pilate then announced that as he was innocent and would release him. But the mob clamoured for his death. Fearing a riot, Pilate gave the verdict they demanded.
The soldiers scourged him. They pressed a crown of thorns on his head, spat on him, mocked him and struck him. They laid a cross on him to carry up a hill where he was to be crucified. He carried the cross until he came out of the city. Then he stumbled under its weight. The soldiers compelled a bystander to take over.
Upon reaching the hill, they hammered nails through his hands and feet to affix him onto the cross, and raised it up to hang him on it by the nails. As if the physical torture was not enough, the religious leaders taunted him. Yet, in the midst of all these sufferings, he pleaded, “Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing.”
Before the sun set, he gave a loud cry and died. A solder came forward and pierced his side with a spear. Blood and water came out.
His disciples took him down and buried him.
Just as he had foretold, after three days, he rose from the dead, and appeared to many. Forty days later, he ascended to heaven in the presence of many witnesses.
His resurrection is a historical fact.
First, his disciples who had witnessed it preached and wrote about it. Their writings survive and appear as the New Testament of the Bible. Preaching or writing about his resurrection was not something glamorous; rather it was something suicidal. It was outlawed by the authorities. The disciples were beaten, imprisoned and killed for doing it. None will suffer and die for a lie. If he had not risen from the dead, the disciples would not have suffered and died to preach or write about it.
Second, his resurrection was not only documented by his disciples; it was also independently reported by contemporary historians who were not Christians. One of them was Flavius Josephus. Despite his despise for Christians, around 93 A.D. this famous historian recorded this in his work “Antiquities of the Jews”: About this time there lived Jesus, a wise man if indeed one ought to call him a man. For he was one who wrought surprising feats and was a teacher of such people as accept the truth gladly. He won over many Jews and many of the Greeks. He was the Messiah. When Pilate, upon hearing him accused by men of the highest standing among us, had condemned him to be crucified, those who had in the first place come to love him did not cease. On the third day he appeared to them restored to life. For the prophets of God had prophesied these and myriads of other marvellous things about him. And the tribe of the Christians, so called after him, has still up to now, not disappeared.
The life, the works, the teachings and the resurrection of Jesus prove that he is God as he has revealed.
According to Jesus, this is what happens after man dies. Jesus will come again and resurrect those who have died and believed in him, and take them to be with him forever: ‘I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live,and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die…’ (Bible, John 11:25) ‘Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father’s house there are many dwelling-places. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, so that where I am, there you may be also…’ (Bible, John 14:1-3)
By the way, when Jesus comes again, those who live and believe in him will never die but will be changed and be caught up to be with God forever: ‘I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live,and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die…’ (Bible, John 11:25)
Then the rest of the dead will be resurrected and, together with the rest of the living, will be judged according to what they had done: ‘Very truly, I tell you, the hour is coming, and is now here, when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live… Do not be astonished at this; for the hour is coming when all who are in their graves will hear his voiceand will come out—those who have done good, to the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil, to the resurrection of condemnation. (Bible, John 5:25-29) Jesus showed John, his disciple, this vision of the future: Then I saw a great white throne and the one who sat on it; the earth and the heaven fled from his presence, and no place was found for them. And I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne, and books were opened. Also another book was opened, the book of life. And the dead were judged according to their works, as recorded in the books. And the sea gave up the dead that were in it, Death and Hades gave up the dead that were in them, and all were judged according to what they had done. Then Death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. This is the second death, the lake of fire; and anyone whose name was not found written in the book of life was thrown into the lake of fire. (Bible, Revelations 20:11-15)
To believe in Jesus is to believe that he is God, to entrust your life to him, and to obey him. When you do that, Jesus is your Lord. Your life is no longer your own. You no longer live for yourself. You live for Jesus.