Hell, Heaven and the Hereafter
"If a man die, shall he live again, All the days of any appointed time will I wait till my change come."Job 14:14
THERE IS A longing hope within men that death does not end all existence. There is an undefined hope that, somehow and somewhere, the life now begun will have a continuation. In some this hope turns to fear. Realizing their unworthiness of a future of pleasure, many fear a future of woe; and the more they dread it for themselves and others the more they believe in it. When we speak of heaven as God's dwelling place, or the place where His presence is made manifest, we do not transgress the doctrine of His divine omnipresence. Though the Lord speaks of coming from heaven and going to heaven, He is infinite and therefore manifests Himself where He already was. Many modern theologians are trying to eliminate the concept of hell or eternal punishment from Christian doctrine. They claim that the Greek and Hebrew words translated as hell do not mean a place of eternal punishment. The Valley of Gehenna, to which Jesus likened the place of eternal punishment, is a public park in modern Jerusalem. Therein lies the problem. Many contemporary theologians have turned hell into a picnic or dismissed the concept totally. In the New Testament, the term gehenna (hell) is used by Jesus. Therefore, we cannot dismiss the concept without contradicting or doing injustice to the teaching of our Lord. This presentation discusses, hell, heaven and how the churches and religions view the hereafter.
