ETERNAL LIFE

I received two interesting emails today. One was from a friend who has been struggling with believing in heaven and eternal life. She had responded to a recent email of mine where I explained that eternal life is not only scriptural (God declares and promises eternal life), but is validated by reason, experience, and tradition.

The next email I opened today was from Christianity Today. It included an article about how scientific thinking bolsters the case for life after death. I was especially interested in this statement in the article:

"But revolutionary discoveries in the past 25 years suggest that there is dark matter and dark energy that make up 95 percent of all the matter in the universe. All materialist generalizations about matter are immediately rendered partial, because how can you claim to know something if you've seen only 5 percent of it?"

When I read that statement I remembered hearing Dr. J. Edwin Orr speak many years ago. Orr was a world traveler who earned two doctorates, including a PhD from Oxford. He shared an experience he had with a sailor on a ship during World War II.  The sailor declared he was an atheist. Orr responded with the comment that it is estimated we use little more than 5% of our brain capacity.  He continued with the query, is it not possible that God exists in the other 95% outside of his knowledge?

The question of dark matter and dark energy is a fascinating subject. Not only do the attempts to answer those questions address the issue of worlds beyond our understanding, but also what holds the universe together. It will be interesting to see what secrets are revealed by the Large Hadron Collider as it goes back into operation after a malfuntion that sidelined it for over a year after its start last year. Click here to see what I wrote last year about that project.

Back to the topic of eternal life and heaven ... click here to read the article I mentioned at the start of this post about the implications of some scientific inquiry about eternal life. It is an interview with Dinesh D'Souzsa about his book, Life After Death.

Interesting and compelling as such evidences are, the reality of heaven and the after life is accepted by faith, just as we receive the gift of life, abundant and eternal, through faith in Jesus Christ.