So What Really Happens After Death?

I had promised in my previous blog that I will write today on the Biblical perspective on death and after life, in which I strongly believe.

Bible, in the Old Testament (OT), the scripture of the Jews/Israel, continued as the Scripture of the Christians as OT, does not clearly mention much about after life. Psalmist writes about not being left in the grave to rot (Psalm 16:10) and Job talks about seeing his Redeemer alive after death (Job 19: 25-26). There is a hint of resurrection and judgment in the life to come in these, but quite vague.

The main idea is that the dead go to the realm of the dead, called Sheol, a Hebrew word, may be a place deep down in the pit or just go to sleep in their graves, forgotten by everyone, including God (Psalm 88:3-4). When the Hebrew Bible (OT) was translated into Greek, called Septuagint, around 285 BC, during the reign of Ptolomy II Philadelphia, Egypt, the word Sheol was replaced by the Greek word Hades, which meant the underworld.

 It is only by the time of Prophet Daniel a clear idea of the dead coming to life again and facing judgment of God and being assigned specific places, emerges. “And many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life and some to shame and everlasting contempt,” writes Daniel in Daniel 12:2. Daniel lived as an exile in Babylon, during the reign of Kings Nebuchadnezzar, Darius and Cyrus, around 530 BC.

After the return of Jews from exile to Jerusalem, around 538 BC, during the reign of the Persian Emperor, Cyrus the Great, Sheol was seen as a place of darkness below earth, where both the good and the bad souls go after death, but to separate compartments, the bad to torment and punishment and the good to comfort and solace, a sort of temporary abode for the dead.

This idea was reflected by Jesus himself when he narrated the story of the rich man and Lazarus, the beggar, in Luke 16:19-31. In the afterlife, while the rich man was being tormented in a hell-like place, Lazarus was comforted in the bosom of Abraham, both separated by a great gulf.

During Jesus’ time, Pharisees, the most orthodox Jews, believed in resurrection, while the Sadducees, consisting of aristocratic Jews collaborating with the Roman rulers, did not believe in resurrection.

A human being, according to the Hebrew thought, prevailing at the time of Jesus, which has come into Christianity, consisted of three parts, the physical body, the soul or the inner person and the spirit. The physical body is meant mainly for life on earth and once we die, it decays and returns to dust from where man was originally taken during creation.

Genesis 2:7 narrates that “the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living being.” After the Fall, that happened due to the disobedience of the first couple, Adam and Eve, when God handed over their respective punishments, He told Adam, “For dust you are, and to dust you shall return.” Genesis 3:19.

The soul, or the inner man or the real man, consists all that makes him/her a human being. His/her rational thinking power or the mind which analyses any situation, the will which takes the decision under any situation and the feelings or emotions associated with any and every situation. These make what we are in our daily human life.

This soul of a human being on death is lodged in a temporary abode, either in the hell-like place, if the person was bad and tormented or in a heaven-like place, where good persons go and are comforted. Jesus, while hanging on the cross, called this latter place Paradise, for imminent as his death was, he promised the thief who hung by his side and acknowledged him as Lord, that “…today you will be with Me in Paradise.” Luke 23:43.

The spirit of human beings is the part that communicates with his/her Maker, Creator. This is the spirit given to us during our creation and this is the part that got disconnected during the Fall. We have been asked to “worship God the Father in spirit and truth,” for “God is Spirit.” John 4:23-24.

To understand about the spirit of a human being, think of a car being driven by a driver. Men and women are the physical body with the soul, both being driven by the spirit. It is the spirit of human being that really maneuvers the human personality to make it take a certain course of action or path in life, just like a car is being driven by the driver, who decides where to go. So we say that the human spirit is indomitable.

In accepting Christ as our Lord and Savior, we put our spirits under the control of God’s Spirit, that is, the Holy Spirit, who maneuvers our life to the right path according to the will of God. When our spirits rule, we are usually selfish, determined to go our way and do bring innumerable sufferings to ourselves and others.

On death our spirit returns to its Maker, God. Ecclesiastes 12:7, “and the spirit will return to God, who gave it.” 

Now, back to where we began. On death the body perishes, the soul goes to sleep as it were, but is conscious and is either suffering or comforted, as the case may be, and the spirit returns to God. Then what? For how long these remain so? What happens ultimately?

The death, burial and the resurrection of Jesus on the third day as prophesied by him brought in clarity to a subject shrouded in mystery till then. Jesus Christ rose from the dead, was resurrected by God and appeared to His disciples many times, during a period of 40 days, before He was take to the heavens. Eyewitnesses have written about this in the gospels, and in the historical documents called the Acts of the Apostles. Acts 1:3, 9.

The resurrection of Jesus showed us without doubt that at the end of the age, we all, both good and the bad, saved and unsaved, will be raised from the dead, that is, resurrected to face judgment of God. We will have glorious bodies, not our earthly physical bodies, which have decayed on our death, but will be clothed in a glorious, resurrection body, suitable for life in the spirit realm. I Corinthians 15:44.

Apostle Paul writes in detail about these matters in his First Epistle to the Corinthians, chapter 15. The end of the age as we know will be marked by the Second Coming of Jesus Christ, who will come in power and glory. On His return to earth, the dead will rise again and those who believed in Him, but not yet dead, will be transformed in a trice and taken to heaven. Everyone will be transformed and face the judgment of God. 

Judgment scene itself is described in the Book of Revelation, the last book in the Bible, in the New Testament. Revelation 20:11-15. All the dead will stand before God’s throne. Based on the deeds done on earth, recorded in books, God will judge the nations and the individuals.

Those who believed in Christ and the good will go to inherit heaven and live for eternity in glory and in the presence of God and Christ. No further death for them.

Those who denied Christ and the wicked will be cast into hell fire along with the enemies of God, Satan, his followers and death itself, to be tormented for eternity, in the darkness, without the glorious presence of God and Christ. Bible calls this the Second Death. Revelation 20:14.

So is the urgent call by the believers to others to repent and accept Christ as their Savior and inherit eternal life and not face that horrible Second Death. Those who accept this call will find eternal life. This experience is called the 'conversion,' and such persons become 'born again.' 

God help you to find the right path.   

After Death, then what?

This is a question that confronts everyone, whether young or old, rich or poor, male or female, including in today’s parlance, black or white! I might as well add high caste or low caste, Brahmin or Dalit! It is one phenomenon that equalizes every one. In this world of uncertainty, one thing is certain that is, every one of us will, one day or the other, die.  

World religions and philosophies have tried their best to answer this question from ages past, but without great success. Why is it so difficult? Mainly because no one who has gone to the other world or the netherworld has come back to tell us as to what it is or how it is.

Though these days YouTube abounds with videos of people who swear that they have gone to hell and come back to warn us or gone to heaven and described the beauty of it. How far these accounts are reliable, we do not know. One may have to take in these with a liberal pinch of salt!

Then there are people who are declared clinically dead, but are revived after a few minutes. Such people describe their spirits or souls rising above their mortal remains, hovering over their dead bodies and witnessing their relatives crying over their bodies or doctors struggling to revive them. Many such people have felt that they were travelling at tremendous speed through a hole or a tunnel of light, before reentering their bodies and living again to tell the story.

In Hinduism, after death the soul rises up and according to the accumulated karma or deeds it had committed during the previous lives and that life, takes a suitable body and returns to earth and takes its place in the hierarchy of the caste system. The soul or Atman is indestructible and keeps on going in the repeated cycle of life and death, until it exhausts all its bad karma/deeds and attains mukti or liberation from the worldly life and merges with the all pervasive Brahman or God or Paramatman.   

When one does not believe in God or creation by God, an atheist, life is just an accident of evolution and after death there is nothing, nothing at all. This leaves them in a very comfortable state as there is nothing to be elated about enjoying in heaven or worry about burning up in hell. Life just ceases at death; there is nothing more to it.

Buddhism takes on the law of karma and reincarnation from Hinduism, but believes that the cycle of birth and death should be avoided by achieving nirvana, or nothingness. This is also another type of extinction of life. They do not hold that there is an eternal soul.

Muslims believe that after death the souls go to a sleep state and are awakened to face judgment by Allah, who judges the resurrected souls according to their deeds on earth and assigns them either to hell or heaven. Souls after purgation in the purgatory are released into heaven.

Catholic Christians also believe in purgatory, where the souls after death spend some time according to the bad deeds committed by them during their life on earth, and then are released to heaven after judgment.

Among Protestant Christians, the belief is that the souls, after death, leave the earthly ‘tent,’ the body and go either to the paradise, if it is a good soul or hell-type of place, if it is a bad soul. On the judgment day, the souls enter the resurrection bodies prepared for them and Christ will judge the nations and assign good souls to heaven, where they enjoy the company of God and Christ forever and bad souls to hell to be tormented forever.

So which one of these narratives is true? Is there rebirth, life after life, at infinity? Or do we just cease to exist? Or do we languish in a purgatory till we pay off for our bad deeds? Or reach heaven or hell after judgment day, according to our deeds on earth? Soul searching questions!

What I believe is the biblical perspective. To read that you may have to wait till 15^th February, when I post my next blog, but I assure you, you will not be disappointed!

  

St. Teresa of Avila: Oh, What a Life!

Yes, what a life it was! What a glorious life! Incredibly a close walk with the Lord, and the recipient of favors from the Lord to a large measure, which cannot be imagined by anyone living today!

Teresa was born in 1515 AD, at Avila, Spain, born into a noble family. At the age of 21 she ran from home and joined the Incarnation of the Carmelite nuns at Avila, without telling her father who was opposed to it. Once she joined he relented. For three years she suffered from Malaria which left her very sick and during that time she developed mental prayer to Jesus Christ.

Once she was well, she started to practice her prayer life. As she started to get divine visions and visitations, she was scared and upset thinking these may be delusions from the devil and gave up her method of prayer and just lived as a nun under very relaxed conditions of convents of those days. Almost 20 years passed when a priest to whom she confessed exhorted her to continue these prayers, assuring her that these visions are not from the devil but from Christ himself.

Thereafter she started to practice her prayers again and she quickly started to receive divine favors, including visions, interior voices, revelations, ecstasy, rapture and visitations of angels and Christ himself. She was again plagued by doubts whether these are from the Lord or from Satan, who was trying to deceive her! But she never gave up her prayer life this time.

In spite of all these heavenly favors, she felt that she was a wicked person living on earth, worst sinner, and not in the least meriting any such favors from the Lord. What genuine humility! It might have been harsh self-criticism, but shows the caliber of a person of saintly nature.  

St. Teresa, on being coaxed to write about her experiences and her method of prayer writes her autobiography, which I happened to read recently. She also wrote other books like “The Way of Perfection,” “The Interior Castle,” “The Foundations” and “Meditations on the Songs.” Each one I am sure is worthy of reading.

The Ascent of the soul through prayer, according to St. Teresa, is achieved in four stages: Devotion of heart, where mental prayer, contemplating on the passion of Christ is engaged in; next stage is Devotion of Peace, where the will is completely surrendered to God; the third level is Devotion of Union, where the soul becomes absorbed in the goodness of God and is in a state of rapture submerged in the love of God and finally the Devotion of Ecstasy, where the spirit almost leaves the body to commune with God, inducing trance and even levitating.

The Protestant Christians may not even know about the existence of St Teresa, for they shun anything Catholic, because of Reformation literature and tradition. I would consider this attitude as a huge loss. Many of St. Teresa’s experiences, her own Carmelite order considered as induced by Satan and she was emotionally persecuted for the same. But for a few of her confessors and their encouragement to her, we would have lost all these!

Even I used to have doubts whether these could be true! But the Lord had assured St. Teresa that it was all from Him. If it were from the Devil, there would be no peace and quiet produced in the soul. The soul would be in turmoil and agony and be distraught.

More over every experience must be in conformity with the Scripture. Hasn’t Paul the Apostle written about visions and revelations? In the Second Epistle to Corinthians chapter 12, verse 2, he writes like this: ‘I know a man in Christ …who was caught up to the third heaven. Whether it was in the body or out of the body I do not know – God knows...this man … was caught up to paradise and heard inexpressible things, things that no one is permitted to tell.” It is about such favors that St. Teresa writes, having experienced them herself.

Every religion has it mystics, Sufi saints of Islam, great ascetic swamijis of Hinduism (not the 21^st century swamijis discredited with sex and money scandals!) and St. Teresa is the Spanish mystic of the Roman Catholic church, belonging to the order of Carmelite convent.

St. Teresa was a Reformer of Catholic church during the movement of Counter Reformation. Amidst strong opposition, founded 12 Reformed Carmelite Order, St. Joseph’s Carmelite Monastery, all over Spain, where only 13 girls were admitted as nuns and they took vows of absolute poverty, austerity, contemplation, obedience and chastity. The monastery did not have financial provision or endowment, but was only based on faith in the Almighty Provider. Today they exist in almost all parts of the world, known for their piety, quite contemplative life and social work.   

How great it is even to think of such an order, where young people would join just to lead a life of contemplation of Jesus Christ, discarding the great materialistic attraction of the world and to live in self-imposed privation and poverty! Admirable to say the least!

Along with St. John of the Cross, she founded Decalced Carmelite order which could be called as Barefoot Carmelites, a Catholic mendicant order. These are for men and women and are found today all over the world.

St. Teresa died in 1582, and forty years after her death she was canonized and was also awarded the title of Doctor of Prayer for her expositions on the methods and power of prayer.

It is not without effort she became such a great Saint. I think she read almost all available literature on prayer and spiritual discipline and ways of close walk with Jesus Christ, known as mystical theology, written in Spanish or translated into Spanish.

She says in her autobiography, she used to think of Jesus Christ as present within her and it was in that way she prayed. She says she desired nothing neither the world nor anything that is worldly, and nothing seemed to give her pleasure unless it came from Him. Everything else seemed to her a heavy cross.

Her mental prayer was a sort of friendly communication and frequent solitary converse with Him. She sought solitude and quiet where she could concentrate on her Beloved. She used to imagine she was with Christ in his loneliest of times, like in the Garden of Gethsemane and meditate on that, which helped her to understand the severity of human sin and the great price Jesus paid for it.

She further states that all these help to develop within us a love of God entirely devoid of self-interest and that a person stats to desire periods of solitude in order to have such times with Him alone. The soul is not satisfied by the pleasures of the world and has no desire for them, because it has found its joy in God. It is a life lived to please God and not man or the world.

She never ceased from prayer; even when asleep, she writes, she seemed to be praying, for this made her grow in love. The Lord had promised her that He would readily do whatever she asked Him. Of course, she knew that she would never ask Him anything which He would not grant. Hasn’t Jesus said in the Gospel of John, chapter 16, verse 23, “…Very truly I tell you, My Father will give you whatever you ask in my name.”

The Lord Jesus Christ had assured her, St. Teresa writes, that He would never leave her and as a sign of His great love he said, “Now thou art Mine and I am thine.” How great and what a wonderful life! Are we not the Bride of Christ, getting ready for His Wedding Banquet?

Hasn’t the Lord said in the Gospel written by the Apostle John, chapter 15, verse 4, “Abide in Me and I in You?” How wonderful it would be, if we could learn how to abide in Him, as St. Teresa had learnt and have a close walk with Him as Enoch in the Bible had lived! (Genesis 5:24).

God grant us this grace so we could learn to live a life pleasing to the Lord Jesus Christ, as shown by these great souls.