We are confident, I say, and would prefer to be away from the body and at home with the Lord.
—2 Corinthians 5:8
Is this dying? Why, this is bliss . . . Earth is receding; Heaven is opening; God is calling. I must go.
—Dwight L. Moody, just before his death
My eyes fluttered. They opened and struggled to focus. My mind fought confusion. I was on my back, stretched out on a firm surface below a bright light. A face came into view, looking at me—a doctor, his surgical mask pulled down.
“You’re one step away from a coma,” he said. “Two steps away from dying.”
My eyelids sagged shut. I drifted back into unconsciousness—a welcomed relief from the grotesque hallucinations that had plagued me.
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At times like this, hovering over the hazy border between life and death, the afterlife is no longer a mere academic topic to be researched, analyzed, and debated. Heaven and Hell, our existence beyond the grave, become desperately relevant. They’re all that matter.
I know what you’re thinking: Poor guy; he almost died. But here’s what I’m thinking: Just wait until it happens to you!
Because it will. One way or another, next week or in decades, you’re going to creep up to the dividing line between now and forever. When you slip from this world, what will you find? A void of nonexistence? A dark realm of regret and recrimination? Or a reality that’s more vivid, more exhilarating, more rewarding, more real than anything you’ve ever known? At that moment, in the midst of that existential transition, nothing will be more important. And if it will matter so much then, isn’t it worth investigating now?
When I was an atheist, I thought I knew what awaited me after my heart stopped pumping and my brain waves flattened. Nothing. My existence would cease. Activity in the world would continue unabated, but I would be absent. It was difficult—and disconcerting—to imagine.
After my wife announced that she had become a follower of Jesus, I used my journalism and legal training to investigate whether there was any credibility to Christianity or any other religion. I concluded after nearly two years that there’s persuasive evidence that Jesus indeed is the unique Son of God. I ended up leaving my newspaper career to tell others what I had learned.
Of course, the Christian faith gave me a whole different picture of eternity. The Bible talks about a vivid postmortem realm. Though this is embedded in overall Christian theology, I never really studied whether there was specific evidence or compelling logic to support this heavenly vision. Essentially, I set much of the issue aside for a while. After all, I was young and healthy.
Then came that Thursday evening in the summer of 2011 when Leslie found me unconscious on our bedroom floor. The ambulance took me to a hospital in nearby Parker, Colorado, where the emergency room physician gave me the dire news that I was on the precipice of death.
It turned out I had a rare medical condition called hyponatremia, a frighteningly sharp drop in my blood sodium level that caused my brain to swell and threatened to snuff out my existence. Suddenly, it wasn’t enough to have a few inchoate suppositions about the world to come. It was insufficient to cling to some antiseptic-sounding doctrines that had never been adequately examined. I needed to know for sure what happens when I close my eyes for the final time in this world.
After recovering from my medical trauma, I decided to embark on a quest to get answers about the afterlife to satisfy my heart and soul. I traveled to South Bend, Indiana, and Portland, Oregon, to San Antonio, Denver, Chicago, and beyond as I sat down with scholars to quiz them about how they know what they know about this all-important matter.
I discussed Heaven with them, but so much more. Can neuroscience tell us whether we have a soul that can survive our body’s demise? Might the intriguing accounts of near-death experiences reveal something about our future? What insights can physics, history, and philosophy provide about our existence beyond this world? And what about Jesus, the one who was dead and gone but then reportedly was encountered alive a few days later? What light might he shed on the subject?
I wanted to know whether spending forever in a blissful paradise makes rational sense. And who gets to go to Heaven anyway? Some Christians believe everyone wins a ticket to paradise—even our pet dogs. And how about the awful reality of that “other place”—wouldn’t it be more humane for God to quickly extinguish people who are headed for Hell rather than consigning them to an eternity of suffering? More and more pastors are saying so.
I also explored alternatives to the Christian worldview—for instance, reincarnation. Shouldn’t we listen to people who say they’ve lived in the past? Maybe life is cyclical, as Eastern religions teach—birth and death followed by more of the same until we’re ultimately absorbed into The Absolute. Millions of people
believe that’s true.
Let’s face it, there’s a lot of controversy about life after death—and sometimes religious leaders aren’t much help. When Union Theological Seminary president Serene Jones was asked by a reporter what happens when we die, her first words were, “I don’t know! There may be something, there may be nothing.”
Ask a cross section of Americans the same question, and one out of six will shrug their shoulders. They have no idea what occurs after death. Only a slim majority (54%) believe they’ll end up in Heaven.
As for atheists, I suspect many of them think about death more frequently than some of them admit. At least, I did when I was a spiritual skeptic, staring at the ceiling in the middle of the night and shuddering at the prospect of my ultimate demise.
“For me, the fear of death is far and away the most immediate and challenging aspect of my atheism,” one humanist told The Atlantic. “Death affects me in a profound way.” Even Bart Ehrman, the agnostic New Testament scholar, once conceded, “The fear of death gripped me for years, and there are still moments when I wake up at night in a cold sweat.”
Many people get to the closing moments of their life—often a time of angst and abject fear—without any certainty about what to expect next. One author tells of asking a 31-year-old friend who was on his deathbed what dying was like. “I don’t know,” the man replied. “I don’t really know. Sometimes it seems like some blackness coming toward me. And sometimes it doesn’t feel like anything.”
That’s not poetic, but it’s honest. He sincerely had no idea what would transpire in those fateful moments to come. What is hidden inside that ominous approaching darkness? Will he feel anything after he breathes his last?
Truly, what’s more important than answers to questions like these? Wouldn’t you rather investigate these issues now instead of being tormented by them on your deathbed? Think about how your life might change today—your priorities, decisions, and worldview—once you ascertain with confidence what awaits you at the conclusion of your time in this world. After all, if there really is an afterlife, you’ll be spending a lot more time there than here.
________
Taken from The Case for Heaven: A Journalist Investigates Evidence for Life After Death by Lee Strobel. Click here to learn more about this book.
Bestselling and award-winning author Lee Strobel interviews experts about the evidence for the afterlife and offers credible answers to the most provocative questions about what happens when we die, near-death experiences, heaven, and hell.
We all want to know what awaits us on the other side of death, but is there any reliable evidence that there is life after death? Investigative author Lee Strobel offers a lively and compelling study into one of the most provocative topics of our day.
Through fascinating conversations with respected scholars and experts—a neuroscientist from Cambridge University, a researcher who analyzed a thousand accounts of near-death experiences, and an atheist-turned-Christian-philosopher—Strobel offers compelling reasons for why death is not the end of our existence but a transition to an exciting world to come. Looking at biblical accounts, Strobel unfolds what awaits us after we take our last breath and answers questions like:
- Is there an afterlife?
- What is heaven like?
- How will we spend our time there?
- And what does it mean to see God face to face?
With a balanced approach, Strobel examines the alternative of Hell and the logic of damnation, and gives a careful look at reincarnation, universalism, the exclusivity claims of Christ, and other issues related to the topic of life after death. With vulnerability, Strobel shares the experience of how he nearly died years ago and how the reality of death can shape our lives and faith.
Follow Strobel on this journey of discovery of the entirely credible, believable, and exhilarating life to come.
Lee Strobel, atheist-turned-Christian, is a former award-winning legal editor of The Chicago Tribune and a New York Times bestselling author of more than forty books and curricula that have sold fourteen million copies. He was described in the Washington Post as “one of the evangelical community’s most popular apologists.” He currently leads the Lee Strobel Center for Evangelism and Applied Apologetics at Colorado Christian University. Lee and his wife, Leslie, have been married for nearly fifty years. Visit him at LeeStrobel.com.
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