Living Beyond Death (3)

 

John 5:18 – 32; 8:51; Ephesians 2:1 – 10.

 

Of all the books I’ve ever read, the very best book about what we might call “The End Times” and “life beyond death” is the Last Battle by C.S. Lewis. There is no book I’ve ever read, or listened to via audio (there is a Focus on the Family Radio Theater production of this that is amazing), other than the Bible, that has the emotional and intellectual impact on me that this book continues to have. Lewis’s depiction of “heaven” is full of hope and joy and delight and Jesus – it is the best there is outside of the Bible – though on another level Dante’s Paradise is worth pondering – but that has a different flavor. As you may know, The Last Battle is the seventh and final volume of the Chronicles of Narnia – and while all of the Narnian books speak to me deeply, The Last Battle never fails to first break my heart and then raise me to joy.

 

Those who have made Jesus Christ their life in this life have a glorious and mysterious future ahead of them. The good news for us all is that it’s never too late (Matthew 20:1 – 16). When God told Adam that the day Adam ate from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil that Adam would die, God meant what He said. That act of disobedience, that sin, which I don’t think we can really comprehend, introduced spiritual death into the world, and ever since then everyone who has ever been born has been born dead – other than…of course…our Lord Jesus Christ. This is the backdrop for today’s readings.

 

 

In John 5:18 – 32, how many kinds of death is Jesus talking about?

 

How can we link John 5:24 - 25 with the Ephesians passage?

 

What does Jesus mean in John 8:51? How is this possible?