June 7, 2014.

Let’s ask that question that no one wants to think about, or at least so seems to be the case often. What is going to happen to you after you die? It’s a legitement question. Sometimes we get in this mindset of “modern man” where we think we are much smarter than we actually are. Some are confident that nothing will happen. You will simply cease to exist. Some are confident that we cannot know. Some honestly don’t care (these are usually people who aren’t very old). And still others believe they have an idea. Who is right? Is there any way to know?

In one way, there honestly is not a clear way to know. That may not sound like a Christian answer, but hear me out. No one can say that they have died and have experienced what happens after death. When we die, we die. The one who does die knows what happens, but those of us who are alive don’t. So, in some sense, we can’t know. But in another very real sense, we can know.

“I have seen the business that God has given to the children of man to be busy with. He has made everything beautiful in its time. Also, he has put eternity into man’s heart, yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end.”
(Ecclesiastes 3:10-11)

Since the first recorded history, we can see that mankind has always been in search for God, or at least some type of god. I think there is a reason for this. I think Solomon writes the above passage because he knows that man is in constant search for things eternal. And I think God meant for it to be this way. Listen to how Paul puts it in Romans:

“For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse.”
(Romans 1:19-20)

God has made Himself plain simply though his creation. I was sitting through a organic chemistry lecture one day learning about all the complexity of simple sugars and how everything had to be just right for them to operate correctly. After class, a guy from the class came up to me and overheard a conversation I was having about God and starkly said “Oh, there is no god.” I was speechless at the time, but later I thought of what I should have said. I should have asked if he just sat through the same lecture I did. If so (which he did), how could he say there is no God. If simple sugars are that complicated and precise, how does the world not demand a creator. Not suggest. Demand.

This is one of the reasons I love science. True science will never disprove God. God created science, or at least what science studies. I do not believe He is afraid of our scientific knowledge. I honestly am inclined to think he laughs at what we think we know, but that’s just my opinion. In physics, there are a certain number of fundamental constants (I think there are 15, but I’m not sure about the exact number) that the universe depends upon that simply have no explanation. They just are. And you wouldn’t believe how specific these constants are. Did that just happen? Did we all just get super lucky? What cause us to even have the opportunity to get so lucky?

I say all this to simply justify my question. What is going to happen to you when you die? Think about this, because it is a serious question. I once heard it said that people spend all their life preparing for the next event, but we forget to prepare for the one event that every human being will someday face. Death. We have time to prepare, and the God of the universe has revealed himself to us. We can either pursue his truth or turn a blind eye to him. In the end, every knee shall bow regardless of what your answer is now. However, then it will be too late.

Today is the day of salvation. Tomorrow may be too late. What is it going to be?

Suggested Daily Reading: Luke 12, John 1, Acts 2, I Thessalonians 5.

Grace and peace.

-Walter