After Here, What's Hereafter Pt 1 Series

AFTER HERE, WHAT’S HEREAFTER? (PART 1)

This morning we are going to embark on a difficult topic. I’ll be saying some things that may be hard to hear, but they are from the Bible and are truth.

We will discover what is meant by “Sheol, Hades, and Hell.”

We will look at what the Bible reveals to us about some things we can know about the hereafter.

1. We all wonder what’s behind that curtain.

a. Denial, anger, fear, depression - helpless resignation- all these feeling erupt in the souls of those who face death. Each of us must face this ultimate experience individually. No one can endure this moment for us; the dying one must disappear behind the veil alone.

b. Analogy: Someone said that when we face death we are like a hen before a cobra, incapable of doing anything at all in the presence of the very thing that seems to call for the most drastic and decisive action.

i. There is, in fact, nothing we can do. Say what we will, dance how we will, we will soon enough be a heap of ruined feathers and bones, indistinguishable from the rest of the ruins that lie about. It will not appear to matter in the slightest whether we met the enemy with calmness, shrieks, or a trumped-up gaiety, there we will be.

2. Naturally we would like to know in advance what we can expect on the other side.

a. We look for some clues, some hint we might receive from someone who is about to cross over.

b. Anxious to hear something good.

c. Assurance that all is well.

d. Michael Landon on deathbed confided to friends

i. the bright light

ii. eased fears

iii. made him look forward

iv. Died calmly anticipating “quite an experience.”

3. Hollywood movies about reincarnation

a. Altered states of consciousness.

b. Glad reunion

c. Popular at box office

4. Fear of death replaced by blissful feelings about a hereafter where everyone ends happily reunited.

a. No judgment

b. No review of one’s life

c. Death has mystery but not to be dreaded have fear about the great beyond for all.

i. What do you think?

5. How real are these reported glimpses from behind the parted curtain?

a. Many convinced immortality of the soul now confirmed by these paranormal experiences.

i. No other explanation

6. We agree the soul does survive death of the body, but………

a. How much info can be transmitted back to earth by those who tell us what they have seen on the other side?

7. Let’s look at three kinds of evidence sometimes used to assure us that all will be well.

a. Some people claim to have talks with the dead

i. In his book “The Other Side” Bishop James a. Pike described in detail how he made contact with his son, who had committed suicide. Using a spirit medium the bishop had what he believed to be several extensive conversations with the boy.

1. “I failed the test, I can’t face you, can’t face life,” Pike’s son reportedly said. “I’m confused….. I am not in purgatory, but something like Hell, here…yet nobody blames me here.” Jesus, the boy said was an example, but not a Savior.

ii. A surprise was the alleged appearance in spirit of a friend, Paul Tillich, a well-know German-American theologian who had died several months before. Pike was caught off guard when he discerned his deceased friend’s German accent passing through the lips of the medium….or chandler.

b. Pike, liberal theologian that he was, did not realize that demons impersonate the dead to create the illusion that the living can communicate with the dead.

c. Word study reveals medium/spiritists as those who have “familiar spirits.”

d. These spirits have astonishing knowledge of the dead person’s life since they carefully observe individuals while they are living. Through the power of deception, they can mimic a deceased person’s voice, personality, and even appearance.

e. God strongly warns against using “mediums and/or spiritists.

i. Leviticus 19:31

1. “Do not turn to mediums or seek our spiritists, for you will be defiled by them. I am the Lord your God.”

ii. Leviticus 20:6

1. “I will set my face against the person who turns to mediums and spiritists to prostitute himself by following them, and I will cut him off from his people.”

iii. Leviticus 20:27

1. “A man or woman who is a medium or spiritists among you must be put to death. You are to stone them, their blood will be on their own heads.”

f. God seems abundantly clear in his instructions to us concerning mediums/spiritists……. Aka fortune tellers.

8. Sometime the story of Samuel and Saul is used to justify communication with the dead.

a. Read 1Sam 28:3-15