Life After Death

My father did not believe in the concept of an after-life.  I personal feel that this was based upon his desire not to have to face a Creator/God/Judge for his life.  So much easier to believe in nihilism, if you were a Nazi to the day you died.  And this from a man, whom was a Jew ...  Go figure!

John, my favorite Apostle, I read this writings often, if not continually (now that I have lost all memories!)  He wrote in John 15:4-6, that we are to ABIDE in Jesus ....  Abide?  How does one do that?  Well ...

Mark 12:18-27

You have been given a worldview, test it!
How do you now see all things?
How do you now react to what you encounter?

The Sadducee's held that there was NO resurrection of the dead, nihilists like my father.  NO afterlife.  They were the privilege class.  They believed in the Torah alone.  The Temple was everything to them!  As a group, they were destroyed with the Temple, by the Romans.

They ask Jesus a question based upon the assumption of a resurrection, they did not believe in!
(you have to appreciate the irony here!)

You have a future - anticipate it!
Jesus replied:
You are in error
You do not know your Scriptures
You do not know God
Power raises the dead
God is the God of the living
You are mistaken

And they assumed that marriage exists in Heaven, which is not supported by Scripture!

You have a promise - trust it!
Remember the burning bush?
God said, I AM, not I was ..... *
Know your Scriptures!

Psalms and Job and Isaiah:
God is in this world
Living matters ...

...

* the concept of God identifing himself as, "I AM", can be taken a few different ways in English.
I AM, whom I AM.
I AM pre-existant, non created.
I AM in essence the lifeforce.
The concept of a past tense does not exist as He exists in past, present and future.  In time and out of time.

So understand that God, was being revealed by Jesus as a very real force whom knew exactly what He was doing - and they (the Sadducee's) had better as well!

So across almost 40 years of my father's exposure to a Christian Kris, I never was able to get through to him that I believed God is real, that just the ability trust in Jesus' payment was enough to cover his lifetime of failure before God.  It was not until I went to Russia twice to adopt four children, that he suddenly understood I was for real and he might be wrong.  I will never know on this Earth if he finally choose to do the right thing and reconcile with God - it is possible, and I sure hope for his eternal sake he did, It would be nice to see more than just my grandmother in Eternity ...

Of course, first up will come the resurrection ...