What Lies Beyond?

by Kenneth R. Wade

Suddenly I was awake. The driver was on the brakes hard. People and equipment in the back of our heavily-loaded pickup truck flew forward, slamming against the cab. Time slowed to tortoise tempo.

But our truck wasn’t slowing down. At least not fast enough.

Cramped into the front seat of an old Toyota with three other men on a narrow, dark highway in central Thailand, I looked eternity square in the face. Now, a year-and-a-half later, my mind can still replay the scene as though it had happened five minutes ago.

Mr. Lon, a professor at a small college two hours' drive from Bangkok, had met me at the airport late that night to take me to his college to teach. He and I and a student rode in the pickup's cab. A half-dozen other students wedged themselves in among supplies in the back.

An hour into the journey Mr. Lon got sleepy and asked one of the students to drive. It was after midnight, and we were nearing our destination when a dump truck careened into our lane from a parking area on the left.

I was sitting on the left side of the cab, beside the passenger’s door (traffic drives on the left in Thailand). The tires began to whistle, then squeal, then shout. My life did not flash before my eyes. My mind was too busy calculating the height of the truck bed in front of me and plotting our projected course. With speed exceeding a supercomputer’s I determined that I was about to be decapitated.

Neurons throughout my body went on full alert, adrenaline poured into my bloodstream, and I leaned hard right, ducking down into Mr. Lon's lap. And then suddenly it was over. We whizzed past the dump truck, missing it by millimeters. Our driver exercised all the skills he had learned through years of jockeying vehicles over Thailand’s chaotic roads, and wove us back into our own lane without hitting any oncoming vehicles.

But what if my calculations had proven accurate? Where would I be now?

Facing death can change how we live life.

Jeff was working at a nursing home the day a resident died. The doctor came by and pronounced the crotchety old man, who had spent his days wheeling up and down the halls yelling and cursing at the staff, dead in his wheel chair. Jeff had to place the body on a gurney to await the mortician. Just as he began to lift, the man took a deep breath, opened his eyes, looked around, and asked what was going on!

When he learned that he was on his way to his own funeral, it sent shock waves through his brain that completely changed his outlook on life. Within a few days he was wheeling up and down the halls, apologizing to those he had cursed before, and doing everything in his power to make their lives brighter.

Looking at life's end

Perhaps we all could benefit from stopping once in a while to ask the big question about what happens after this life.

Almost every philosopher and religious leader has felt compelled to address the "what comes next?" question. Plato opted for belief in a form of reincarnation, but most of his Greek contemporaries thought that after death the soul migrated to a shadowy netherworld called Hades.

Buddha, whose philosophy permeates Thailand and much of the Orient, devoted himself to an ascetic's search for answers. Finally, after meditating under a pipal tree for six weeks, he found an answer that satisfied him. Essentially, he decided, the purpose of life is to find a way to quit living--to escape the sentence of continued suffering. His belief in reincarnation, coupled with his observation that life seems to be an endless round of suffering, led him to conclude that the best thing to strive for is a blowing out of life's candle. He taught his disciples that they should overcome desire so that they would not have to come back and suffer further in future lives.

I've often had cause to wonder how much effect that philosophy has on the highway habits of the Thai people. Driving sixty miles per hour on narrow country roads at dusk, one often has to dodge groups of farm workers who have congregated in the traffic lanes to walk back to their village after the day's work. Bicyclists dressed in black, and with no reflectors or lights of any kind, pedal slowly down the middle of the road, seeming to dare motorists to send them on to their next life.

Americans who spend much time living in the Orient soon gain the impression that individual human lives in that part of the world seem to be valued in lower denominations than they are in the West. Everything in life is valued on the basis of its usefulness plus its uniqueness. A paper clip is a very useful thing, but there are gajillions of them in the world, so they sell for less than a penny apiece. The Mona Lisa, on the other hand, is not particularly useful except for decorative purposes. But the fact that it is a unique work created by a master artist raises its value beyond estimation.

The value of a life

What is the value of an individual human life?

In the western world, it has traditionally been high. Based on the Christian tenet that "man is destined to die once, and after that to face judgment" (Hebrews 9:27 NIV), each life has been valued as a unique one-in-the-world masterpiece created by God. Hospitals devote large budgets to getting the latest equipment to help people fan the last embers of life. Our churches invest in evangelism and mission outreach to try to introduce people to God so they can prepare for the judgment. Most people would do anything they could to help save a neighbor's life.

But in recent years our underlying philosophy of life has begun to break down, and as a result human life itself has been devalued. We hear often about a seemingly ordinary citizen who suddenly "snapped," loaded up the car with an assortment of pistols and assault rifles, and headed out to "settle the score" by killing as many strangers as possible before using the last bullet on himself.

These homicidal maniacs probably don't sit down and think philosophically about their actions before they set out. But if they believed in the value of human life, and in a resurrection and judgment that follow death, they might seek out a less violent way of working out their frustrations. They might consider that a bullet to the head will not absolve them of all life's consequences.

Consider the future

Basically there are only three possible views of what comes after death. Either the spirit of life simply goes out, never to be heard from again; or perhaps it reincarnates or transmigrates to another form and continues living. Or perhaps it goes back to God, Who passes judgment on it either for salvation or damnation. There are multitude variations on these themes, but only three basic possibilities.

In the years since World War I, popular sentiment in the western world has trundled from staunch belief in a spirit that returns to God, awaiting the resurrection of the body at the second coming of Jesus, to a despairing doubt of any life beyond the grave, and now in reaction to the hopelessness that view led to, toward belief in reincarnation.

But why should we abandon our hope of the resurrection? This is the hope that Jesus gave to His disciples in some of the most-beloved passages of the Bible:

For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son that whosoever believeth in him should not perish but have everlasting life (John 3:16 KJV).

Let not your heart be troubled: ye believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father's house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also (John 14:1-3 KJV).

Brothers, we do not want you to be ignorant about those who fall asleep, or to grieve like the rest of men, who have no hope. We believe that Jesus died and rose again and so we believe that God will bring with Jesus those who have fallen asleep in him. . . . For the Lord himself will come down from heaven, with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. After that, we who are still alive and are left will be caught up with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will be with the Lord forever. Therefore encourage each other with these words (1 Thessalonians 4:13-18 NIV)

 

Does belief in reincarnation bring any more sense or hope to life?

Reincarnation, as people in the West tend to believe in it (which is quite different from the belief system of the East), teaches that we go through an endless cycle of rebirths that gradually lead us to higher and higher forms of life. Everything is works-based, and the only way to advance is to learn from mistakes made in past lives and try harder in this life. But the problem is that the only way to discover what we need to know is to go through past-life regression--a dubious new development in the world of pop psychology that often finds poorly-trained "therapists" hypnotizing people and attempting to take them back in their memory past the day of their conception. Most regressed people sooner or later "discover" that they were Cleopatra or some close associate of Jesus in a past life.

The results of belief in reincarnation are no different in the West than in the East. Human life has less value because each individual is just one manifestation among many of an eternally recyclable spirit.

But we shouldn't make decisions about what we will believe based on the perceived propaganda value of the competing models. We must search for truth--for testimony from someone who actually knows what comes after death.

Testimony from one who knows

Jesus didn't just talk about resurrection, He demonstrated it.

First there was the Widow of Nain's son. Jesus halted that funeral procession and turned the mother's wailing to laughter by raising her son from the dead (see Luke 7:11-15). Then there was Lazarus, whom Jesus brought out of the tomb after he had been dead four days (see John 11:1-44).

But most compelling of all was Jesus' own resurrection. He rose three days after having been certified dead by the Roman legionnaires who crucified Him.

Because Jesus rose from the tomb, we can know that there is life beyond the grave for all who accept Him as Saviour. We can come back to life to live, not as some slightly-improved model of our old self that still has thousands of years of mistakes to work through, but as re-created people, made over by the grace of God in the image of God.

After His resurrection Jesus appeared to hundreds of people, including the pharisee Saul, who had been persecuting Christians. Like the crotchety old man at the nursing home, Saul's encounter with eternity turned his life around. He changed his name to Paul, and became the leading Christian missionary, going from place to place risking his life to share the good news of God's grace that would make resurrection available to all who would receive it.

"But Christ has indeed been raised from the dead," he wrote to the Corinthians, "the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. For since death came through a man, the resurrection of the dead comes through a man. For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive. . . .

"The body that is sown is perishable, it is raised imperishable; it is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory; it is sown in weakness, it is raised in power . . . .

"Listen, I tell you a mystery: We will not all sleep, but we will all be changed--in a flash, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed" (1 Corinthians 15:20-22; 42, 43, 51, 52 NIV).

Paul explained the basis of this grace that would make the resurrection possible. The basis, he said, was their acceptance of the Holy Spirit into their lives: "And if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through His Spirit, who lives in you" (Romans 8:11 NIV).

When and how

Many people believe that when a person dies, he or she goes immediately to live eternally either in heaven or hell, but that ideas comes from the Greek philosophers, not from the Bible. When Jesus visited with Lazarus's sister Martha, she expressed the hope that Jesus had given her: "'I know he will rise again in the resurrection at the last day'" (John 11:24 NIV).

Jesus expressed it in these words: "'Do not be amazed at this, for a time is coming when all who are in their graves will hear his voice and come out--those who have done good will rise to live, and those who have done evil will rise to be condemned'" (John 5:28, 29 NIV).

Putting together all the Bible texts that we have cited, it becomes clear that the when and how of resurrection point to a time in the future--at the second coming of Christ--when those who have accepted Christ as their Saviour will be caught up to join Christ in the clouds of heaven. Both the dead and the living will go to meet Him on the same day. The time when those who have died in rebellion against God will face condemnation and torment in hell is also in the future.

In other words, no one has yet gone to their eternal reward. Both the dead and living await the glorious day when the dead will be resurrected, and all who have died with faith in God can be reunited to live with one another, and with God for ever.

I looked eternity square in the face that night in Thailand. Yes, the thought of dying frightened me. But the thought of what lies beyond death does not. Because of what Jesus taught, and more so because of what He did, I need not fear what lies beyond.

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