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Is there an afterlife?

Is there an afterlife? 

It is indeed a very intriguing question because every single one of us will die. While none of us has any choose in being born and in dying we would like to know: what, if anything, awaits us and our loved ones afterwards. 

All religions past and present think that they have this one covered. However in this brief essay we focus on the Christian version seeing it is the dominant world view in South Africa and in the world. 

If you are born in South Africa you would know all about Heaven and Hell and how to get there by the time you are five years old. So what does the Christian have to say about the afterlife? 

Christian beliefs about the afterlife vary slightly between Christian denominations and individual believers, but the vast majority of Christians believe Heaven is a place where believers go upon dying in order to enjoy the eternal presence of trinity God, as well as loved ones that have made it and other celebrity believers like Paul, David and Moses. 

In Heaven, people are freed from sin and all its various manifestation, like suffering and pain. The Bible teaches that Heaven is an actual place and people will have new “glorified” bodies like when they were thirty three years old. 

Hell is a place of judgment and punishment. In several New Testament passages, the description of Hell includes fire which literally means people will experience the sensation of burning forever.   

Jesus is the Christ (Messiah) and is also the son of God incarnate, whose; teachings, suffering and death absolve mankind of its original sin and make possible salvation and eternal life in heaven. 

Adam and Eve, the first man and woman, were created by God and lived in the Garden of Eden which was free of suffering and death. God forbade Adam and Eve to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, the serpent (Satan) beguiled them and tempted them to fall. They did not follow God’s command and so were cast out of the Garden, as sinners, and made subject to death and suffering. 

This first or “original” sin of mankind means, that all humans are born as sinners, unworthy of God’s grace and destined to die (humans are not naturally immortal, but immortal only because of God’s grace). The life and death of Jesus Christ provides a means by which one might be absolved of this sin and achieve eternal life. Christians believe that persons have freedom of the will (free will) and they must choose to accept this gift of salvation or reject it. 

Those that accept are born again of the spirit by being given power to become sons of God. They are entitled to live in heaven with God after death because they are part of the family of God. 

Those that reject the Gospel of Salvation in Christ Jesus have chosen to forfeit heaven in lieu of an eternity of torment in hell. 

So is there an afterlife? No, there’s not. In order to believe Christian teachings, you would have to be willing to radically alter our fundamental understanding of physics on the basis of almost no evidence whatsoever. 

Death marks the end of all biological processes in the body. It is improbable if not impossible that something happens after life ends. And there is no evidence of a soul either, which is necessary for an afterlife. 

Instead of creating and propagating intricate fantasies of eternal life in some magical dimension beyond time and space we should appreciate the fact that our time here is limited and we should make the most of it.

We live in a world where facts and fiction get blurred
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