What? Don’t I believe that Ravi Zacharias was saved? That when he died recently he went directly to heaven, to meet the Savior he so boldly proclaimed all over the world for 57 years? Of course I believe that, absolutely! What I mean by that question, or want to imply, is that I have a really hard time believing in an afterlife, that there is an actual eternal, forever life after we die. Don’t you too? It’s intuitively easier for me to believe that when we die we just become worm food, and that’s it. We pass out, the heart stops beating, the brain goes silent, and it’s darkness forever. Part of the reason for my incredulity is that the communications apparatus of the entire Western world is secular from beginning to end: our education, media, entertainment, all of it asserts and implies, 24/7, that this life is it! So of course it’s difficult to believe that this life isn’t it!
The problem I have with this secular view of reality, however, is that is only seems easier to believe. In fact, whenever I doubt that an eternal life with Christ, and eventually in a spiritually new, physically resurrected material body is our future, I just ponder how absolutely impossible is that secular view! My perspective on this comes from my favorite apologetics tool, something I call the consideration of the alternative. So I wonder, is Ravi, or any other saint who has died, really at this very moment still alive? Is what Jesus said to Martha, the sister of his friend Lazarus whom he would shortly bring back from the dead, actually, really true?
25 Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, 26 and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die. Do you believe this?”
That is the question! But another question is just as important: If I don’t believe in this, what will I believe? Jesus says, you believe in him, you don’t die, ever. Even when you physically did, you don’t die. If this isn’t true, what is? Something has to be! Right? Agnostics don’t get off the hook on this one. We die, and something or nothing happens; there is no relativism, true for you, but not for me, in the grave.
The options are few. The least plausible to me is the materialist/atheist option. There is no God, material reality is all that exists, everything is a cosmic accident with no purpose (we’re just lucky dirt), we die, and it’s over. For me it takes way, way more faith to believe that everything came from nothing for no reason at all, then it is to believe Jesus. To accept the materialist/atheist account you have to believe:
- Chaos produces order
- Lifeless matter produces life
- Non-information produces information
- Chance produces intelligence
- Accidents produce purpose
You want me to believe that? I can’t. Mediating upon those bullet points is a perfect recipe for doubt. In fact, the skeptic may want to start doubting his doubts! You do know it goes both ways, right? Doubt isn’t just for we Christians, those who do believe in eternal life, and a resurrection of the dead. Every worldview is susceptible to doubts because every worldview makes certain claims about the nature of reality, claims that must rest on faith.
The other option is the pantheism of the Eastern religions, but these are only slightly less plausible that the materialist/atheist option. To believe them you have to believe the universe is eternal and impersonal. We know the former is untrue, and that the world is filled with persons! Why would the fundamental nature of reality be impersonal if persons inhabit it? And pantheistic Eastern religions offer no explanation or solution to the problem of evil. Either evil has some kind of eternal karmic justice which we can never escape, or the escape is into the obliteration of our being into the ocean of nothingness.
If there are other options than these three, I’m not aware of any. And of the religions that believe in some form of life after death, it is only Christianity that claims that an actual historical human being, Jesus of Nazareth, came back to life and conquered death forever. It claims hundreds of eyewitnesses to this fact, many who gave their lives for that claim. Even a man who came to be known to Western history as “Doubting Thomas” because he would not believe in the resurrection of Jesus until he saw and touched him, acknowledged Jesus as Lord and God. So yes, Ravi really is with Jesus, hanging out at this very moment with his mentee, Nabeel Qureshi, who went to be with Jesus way too young, and all the other saints who have gone before us. We’ll be with them soon.
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