Proof of Heaven?

Ecclesiastes 3:18-22; 2 Corinthians 5:1-8

I am preaching on your suggestions this summer, and one of them was about the afterlife and the soul. The person making the suggestion was wondering how in the light of modern science and human evolution, people can believe any more in an afterlife and a soul. She asked, when did the belief in an afterlife begin? It is a valid question. Many people have their doubts about any type of continued existence after death. Scientific materialism is a powerful worldview, and many people think that it disproves all things religious and spiritual. Some of the most knowledgeable and wisest people in all history have wondered what we can know – if anything - about what happens after death. 

The author of Ecclesiastes, traditionally considered to be Solomon, asked the question. He writes in chapter three, “I said in my heart, “Concerning the condition of the sons of men, God tests them, that they may see that they themselves are like animals.” 19 For what happens to the sons of men also happens to animals; one thing befalls them: as one dies, so dies the other. Surely, they all have one breath; man has no advantage over animals, for all is vanity. 20 All go to one place: all are from the dust, and all return to dust. 21 Who knows the spirit of the sons of men, which goes upward, and the spirit of the animal, which goes down to the earth?”

Ecclesiastes sounds very modern. Many people consider human beings as nothing more than self-conscious animals. We are a little smarter than other primates because we have a larger brain but not really much different. Just mortal beings who come into existence at birth and cease to exist at death. How can we know that we are anything more than that? How do we really know that there is a soul that survives death? Isn’t that more likely just wishful thinking that we might somehow survive the dissolution of our bodies? 

There was a famous experiment done in 1907 by a physician name Dr. Duncan MacDougall of Haverill, MA. He postulated that the soul could be proven to exist by weighing the bodies of people immediately before and after death. He thought the soul had weight and mass, and therefore a person would weigh less immediately after death. He did six experiments involving six patients and concluded that the human soul did exist and that it weighed and average of ¾ of an ounce or about 21 grams. He repeated the experiment on 15 dogs and found that there was no weight loss, and therefore that dogs did not have souls. So I guess all dogs don’t go to heaven! Four years later he attempted to take pictures of the soul leaving the body with x-rays. Those experiments were not so successful.

We might think that such experiments are a little comical, but we have similar claims today. Dr. Eben Alexander, 54-year-old neurosurgeon, had a near death experience, which according to him proves that there is a soul and a heaven. His book is accordingly entitled “Proof of Heaven.” To me it is not much different than Dr. MacDougall, but a lot of people think otherwise. His book has been on The New York Times bestseller list for 30 weeks.

Is there a soul? Is there an afterlife? There is evidence that man from earliest times have believed in some continued existence after death. Neanderthals buried their death in such a manner with possessions to lead anthropologists to conclude that they thought there was some type of continued existence. Nearly all the religions of the world since ancient times have held to some concept of an afterlife, from ancestor worship in ancient China, to the tombs of the Pharaohs in ancient Egypt, to the idea of reincarnation in ancient India, to elaborate scenarios of heavens and hells in Tibetan Buddhism.  As long as there have been humans there has been some understanding of an afterlife. What about our Christian Scriptures? What do they teach?

I. The ancient Hebrews of the OT did not really speculate about an afterlife. There is a mostly silence in the Hebrew Scriptures when it comes to an afterlife. The OT saints were much more focused on this life, and they did not think much about the next life. But there are hints of something after death. We have references to a state called Sheol, a shadowy type of existence similar to the ancient Greek concept of Hades. We have the OT story of the ghost of Samuel brought back from the grave by the Witch of Endor at the request of King Saul. And we have hope of being with God after death in the famous 23^rd Psalm, which ends with the words, “And I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever.” That has brought comfort to people at countless funerals. Although some modern translations have changed the wording to “I shall dwell in the house of the Lord my whole life long.” That changes the meaning significantly. But the truth is that there is scant evidence in the OT for an afterlife.

II. That changes completely when we come to the NT. Jesus talks a lot about heaven and also about hell for that matter – something we don’t talk much about. Who can forget Jesus’ famous parable about Lazarus and the rich man? Lazarus is pictured residing in a paradise described as Abraham’s bosom. Whereas the Rich man, named Dives in Christian tradition is pictured in Hades, which has been transformed from the shadow world of the Greeks to a place of torment and fire. In another parable Jesus spoke about a Final Judgment and separating people into two groups like a shepherd separating sheep from the goats. He concludes his story saying, “Then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life.” Jesus clearly believed in and taught an afterlife. These well known words of Jesus ar also often used at funerals: “Let not your heart be troubled; you believe in God, believe also in Me. 2 In My Father’s house are many mansions; if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. 3 And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to Myself; that where I am, there you may be also.”

Elsewhere in the NT we have ample evidence of the belief in the afterlife. The Apostle Paul says in our Epistle Reading: “For we know that if our earthly house, this tent, is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. 2 For in this we groan, earnestly desiring to be clothed with our habitation which is from heaven, 3 if indeed, having been clothed, we shall not be found naked. 4 For we who are in this tent groan, being burdened, not because we want to be unclothed, but further clothed, that mortality may be swallowed up by life. 5 Now He who has prepared us for this very thing is God, who also has given us the Spirit as a guarantee. 6 So we are always confident, knowing that while we are at home in the body we are absent from the Lord. 7 For we walk by faith, not by sight. 8 We are confident, yes, well pleased rather to be absent from the body and to be present with the Lord.”

I love that idea that when we are absent from the body we are immediately present with the Lord. That takes the sting away from death. Paul talks elsewhere about resurrection of the dead and having a spiritual body. The concept of an afterlife is clearly taught in the NT.

III. But now we return to the question: How do we know for sure that there is an afterlife? I have three ways that I believe that we can be confident that there is existence beyond death. I am not calling them proof of heaven. I don’t think you can prove the existence of an afterlife any more than you can prove the existence of God. But I think there are convincing reasons to believe that what the there is life after death.

1. The first reason is the testimony of people who have died. This is my least favorite reason and I put it first for that reason. Previously from this pulpit I have expressed my skepticism of much of the Near Death Experience phenomenon in our culture. Everybody and their cousin seem to have taken a trip to heaven and returned to write a book about it. It seems like every other month there is a new bestseller describing somebody’s adventures in the afterlife – going through a dark tunnel toward a light and then seeing loved ones and/or an angel or Jesus. These books have been coming in waves for decades, and right now we seem to be experiencing another wave of such books.

I have read many of them. I see good reason not to believe many of them. I guess I just don’t trust people who are making money off heaven. But every once in a while I come across an account that makes me doubt my doubt. One such account is that the Rev. John Price, a retired pastor and hospital chaplain, in his book “Revealing Heaven.” Like me Price scoffed at reports of near-death experiences because he thought they reduced religion to ghost stories. His attitude changed, though, after a young woman visited his Episcopal church one Sunday with her 3-year-old daughter. Price had last seen the mother three years earlier. She had brought her then-7-week-old daughter to the church for baptism. Price hadn't heard from her since. But when she reappeared, she told Price an amazing story. She had been feeding her daughter a week after the baptism when milk dribbled out of the infant's mouth and her eyes rolled back into her head. The woman rushed her daughter to the emergency room, where she was resuscitated and treated for a severe upper respiratory infection. Three years later, the mother was driving past the same hospital with her daughter when the girl said, “Look, Mom, that’s where Jesus brought me back to you.” “The mother nearly wrecked her car,” Price said. “She never told her baby about God, Jesus, her near-death experience, nothing. All that happened when the girl was 8 weeks old. How could she remember that?”

Another account is related by Raymond Moody, a physician and psychiatrist who was the first one to write a bestselling book on Near Death Experiences entitled “Life after Life” in 1975. He tells the story that got him interested in the topic. It was the testimony of George Ritchie, who also was a psychiatrist. It was December 1943, and Ritchie was in basic training with the U.S. Army at Camp Barkeley, Texas. He contracted pneumonia and was placed in the hospital infirmary, where his temperature spiked to 107. The medical staff piled blankets on top of Ritchie’s shivering body, but he was eventually pronounced dead. “I could hear the doctor give the order to prep me for the morgue, which was puzzling, because I had the sensation of still being alive,” Ritchie said. He even remembers rising from the hospital gurney to talk to the hospital staff. But the doctors and nurses walked right through him when he approached them. He then saw his lifeless body in a room and began weeping when he realized he was dead. Suddenly, the room brightened “until it seemed as though a million welding torches were going off around me.” He says he was commanded to stand because he was being ushered into the presence of the Son of God. There, he saw every minute detail of his life flash by, including his C-section birth. He then heard a voice that asked, “What have you done with your life?"

These are just two stories. There are other stories that are also impressive. I personally have heard stories during my ministry from people in my congregations who have not written books, not widely publicized their accounts, and have nothing to gain. These stories are not proof of heaven. But they seem to me to be more than just the hallucinations of a dying brain. They make me think.

2. The second reason I believe in heaven is because of faith. When it comes down to it we are not going to have proof. But we still have to make decision based on the evidence that we have.  I guess some people would say that we don’t really have to make a decision. You can be always an agnostic on the subject if you want, and just say you don’t know and can’t know and leave it at that. I can’t do that. I think one has to make a choice based on the information we have. That takes faith.

I have faith in Christ. I believe that Jesus actually said the things the Gospels say he does about the afterlife, and that they were not placed in his mouth by the gospel writers much later. I think the historical and literary evidence points in that direction. I trust that if Jesus taught about the afterlife that he knows what he is talking about. He says to Nicodemus, “11 Most assuredly, I say to you, We speak what We know and testify what We have seen, and you do not receive Our witness. 12 If I have told you earthly things and you do not believe, how will you believe if I tell you heavenly things? 13 No one has ascended to heaven but He who came down from heaven, that is, the Son of Man who is in heaven.” Jesus says he was in heaven before his birth. I believe him.

I also believe he knows about the afterlife because he experienced it. The Gospels say that he died and rose from the dead on the third day. The evidence for Jesus’ resurrection is a whole other topic, which I have preached regularly, especially at Easter time, and I can’t redo it here and now. I think the evidence points to the fact that Jesus really did rise from the dead. And if so, then Jesus did not just have a Near Death Experience; he had a real death experience. He was dead from Friday afternoon until Sunday morning. He was dead and lying cold in a tomb, and he came back to life. And he said, “I am He who lives, and was dead, and behold, I am alive forevermore. Amen. And I have the keys of Hades and of Death.”

You have to trust somebody when it comes to matters beyond your own information and experience. The key is to trust trustworthy people. I think Christ is trustworthy. I trust Jesus. If I am wrong I am wrong. But I throw in my lot with him; I tie my fate to his. If I am wrong and there is no God and no afterlife, then the worst thing that could happen is that when I die I cease to exist. Then death is nothing more than a dreamless sleep, and we should not be afraid of it any more than we are afraid to go to sleep at night. We should not be afraid of dying any more than we were afraid of being born. Actually the worst thing would be if the Muslims are right. If Islam is right then we Christians are blasphemers for calling Jesus the Son of God, and we can expect to be cast into hell by Allah. But I will place my faith in what Jesus says in the Gospels over what Mohammad says in the Quran. You have to put your faith somewhere and in someone. I place my faith in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior.

3. The third reason I believe in heaven is because of personal experience. I have not had a Near Death Experience, nor taken a spiritual express from the hospital emergency room to the Pearly Gates. But I do experience eternal life. I experience eternal life every day.  Jesus said, “the kingdom of God is within you” or I think it is better translated, ‘The Kingdom of God is in your midst – all around you.” That is my spiritual experience. For me the presence of God is as real as the presence of the sun or the wind on my face.

Of course I could be living a fantasy and deceiving myself. That is possible for any of us. But we tend to trust our own experience. I trust my own experience. And I experience God. I experience the Spirit of the risen Christ. I experience the Kingdom of God around me. I understand heaven to be simply the continuation of what I already know of the presence of God, only more so. Paul says that “now we see through a mirror dimly, but then we shall see face to face. Now we know in part but then we shall know fully even as we are fully known.” The most convincing evidence for me of eternal life after death is eternal life before death. We don’t have to wait till our hearts stop beating to enter the kingdom of heaven or see the kingdom. Heaven is where God is. And God is here now when we have the eyes to see. That is the closest I have to proof of heaven.