“Yet we have this assurance: those who belong to God shall live again! Those who dwell in the dust shall awake and sing for joy! For God’s light of life will fall like dew upon them.”1
Dr. Billy Graham, world-renowned speaker who is well-known for his radio and television programs, says that the question most often asked him was, “Is there life after death?”
This is an age-old question. From earliest times people have believed that life does not end with the grave. “Indeed,” writes Dr. Raymond A. Moody, Jr., in his book, Life After Life. “graves from very early sites all over the earth give evidence of the belief in human survival of bodily death.”2
Is man’s desire for life beyond death just wishful thinking? Or is there evidence to support this belief?
Modern science seems to support it. For example, many people who have been pronounced “clinically dead” have come back to life and have given vivid accounts of being fully conscious after they had been pronounced dead by medical personnel.
For over a half-decade, Dr. Moody, who is (or was) also a psychiatrist from the University of Virginia Hospital, made a study of more than a hundred of these cases.
One of these persons described his experience this way: “I heard the doctors say that I was dead and that’s when I began to feel as though I were tumbling through this blackness, which was some sort of enclosure. Everything was very black, except that, way off from me, I could see this light, but not too large at first. It grew larger as I came nearer and nearer to it.
“I was trying to get to that light at the end, because I felt that it was Christ, and I was trying to reach that point. It was not a frightening experience. For immediately, being a Christian, I had connected the light with Christ who said, ‘I am the light of the world.’ I said to myself, ‘If this is it, if I am to die, then I know who waits for me at the end, there in the light.’”3
To be continued . . .
Suggested prayer: “Dear God, thank you for the promise from your Word that ‘those who belong to God shall live again.’ This is a wonderful hope. Please help me to live with this assurance of eternity and with eternal values in view. Thank you for hearing and answering my prayer. Gratefully, in Jesus’ name, amen.”
Note: To be sure that you are prepared for life after death, read: “How to Be Sure You’re a Real Christian—without having to be religious” at: http://tinyurl.com/real-christian.
1. Isaiah 26:19 (Living Bible)(NLT).
2. Raymond A. Moody, Jr., Life After Life, pp. 17. Mockingbird Books, Inc. Covington, GA 30209. Copyright 1975. Used by permission.
3. Ibid, P. 48.
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