I Cor. 15:19 ... "If we have only hoped in Christ in this life, we are of all men most to be pitied."
"After death, what then?" is a question that has been asked by men since we first began to live on this planet. Various answers have been given, answers which to a large extent determine the character of the lives of those who accept them. This writer once toured the ruins of the ancient Phoenician city of Gebaal, presently Byblos in Lebanon. The native guide pointed out the area of the oldest habitation, which dated back before 3000 B.C. There, he said, archaeologists in the 1930s excavated the tombs of hundreds of people who had been buried in large clay jars. Interestingly, the bodies had been placed in the fetal position, obviously indicating that it was believed they would be born into another life in some other world. In every culture on earth people have strongly believed that death does not end human existence, but life, or some part of it, continues in a dimension of time and space different from that here.
In more recent times the growing skepticism of human wisdom has adopted the view that death means annihilation. Human existence is believed to be confined to the period between birth and death. To defend this view it is pointed out that no one who has actually died has come back from death to testify that another life awaits the human soul. Furthermore, they say, there is no scientific evidence that anything answering to a "soul" departs a body at death to fly away to some other world. Robert Ingersoll, the famous 19th Century atheist, expressed the view in these words: "Life is a narrow vale between the cold and barren peaks of two eternities. We strive in vain to look beyond the heights. We cry aloud, and the only answer is the echo of a wailing cry. From the voiceless lips of the unreplying dead there comes no word."
The central tenet of the Christian religion is that life indeed continues beyond death. The entire fifteenth chapter of First Corinthians presents, explains, and defends this conviction with zeal and solid conviction. Our text (above) declares that "if we have only hoped in Christ in this life, we are of all men most to be pitied." Many people think that death terminates one's existence, and accepting that postulate, go on with life as best they can. Their ambition usually is to crowd as much meaning and pleasure into their daily activities as they can, thinking it to be the most they can do with their life. Christian doctrine, however, urges people to adopt its view and follow it by holding out the incentive of life after death in a state that far exceeds earthly life in both quality and longevity. If this teaching is a delusion, the product of overactive imaginations, then Christians certainly are "of all men most to be pitied." For by denying themselves the meaning and pleasure that this world offers, they are forfeiting all that humans are ever able to achieve. If the central issue of Christian faith is based on delusion, then either the God who foisted it upon us is indeed heartless, or else He does not exist, and the view is of human origin.
This idea, however, can be reversed. If the Christian view is correct, then what about the person who believes his existence ends at death? After the confusion of the death event has passed, and the deceased discovers he is still existent and conscious in another world, what then? He lived his life for the moment with no reference to an afterlife, but now he "wakes up" in a very real afterlife for which he made no preparation. To this writer it seems far wiser to believe that death is a transition of life than its termination. If death ends all, I feel I have missed nothing, for I believe the temperate Christian life is far better than the one devoted to sensual and psychological pleasures. If death does transfer one's spirit into another world, for which preparation by the Gospel is necessary, then the unbeliever is the one who is in a wretched condition from which there is no possibility of recovery.
