Future Life

In the summer of 2023, Heather Beville felt something she hadn’t in a long time: a hug from her sister Jessica, who died at age 30 from cancer. In a dream, “I hugged her and I could feel her, even though I knew in my logic that she was dead.”

Like fellow Christians, Beville is sure that death is not the end. But she’s also among a significant number who say they have continued to experience visits from deceased loved ones here on earth.

In a recent Pew Research Center survey, 42 percent of self-identified evangelicals said they had been visited by a loved one who had passed away. Rates were even higher among Catholics and Black Protestants, two-thirds of whom reported such experiences.

Interactions with the dead fall into a precarious supernatural space. Staunch secularists will say they’re impossible and must be made up. Bible-believing Christians may be wary of the spiritual implications of calling on ghosts from beyond. Yet more than half of Americans believe a dead family member has come to them in a dream or some other form.

Researchers say most people who report “after-death communications” find the interactions to be comforting, not haunting or scary. Professor Julie Exline says, “They’re often very valuable for people. They give them hope that their loved one is still there and still connected to them. These experiences help people, even if they don’t know what to make of them.”

There are several factors that come into play for a person to turn to supernatural explanations for what they’ve experienced. Prior belief in God, angels, spirits, or ghosts, combined with a belief that these beings actually do communicate with people in the world is one condition. Another factor is the relationship between a person and their loved one—“the need for relational closure” amid prolonged grief. And women are more likely to report the phenomena.

Possible Preaching Angle:

The spiritual realm described in Scripture comes with strong warnings. The text repeatedly advises against calling on spirits outside of God himself, with several Old Testament verses specifically addressing interactions with the dead (“necromancy” in some translations). Deuteronomy 18, for example, decries anyone who “is a medium or spiritist or who consults with the dead” as “detestable to the Lord” (vv. 11, 12).

Pastors can attest that grieving Christian spouses occasionally believe they have seen shadows or objects in the home moving after the death of a loved one. We can rest on the absolute truth of God’s Word that “absent from the body and at home with the Lord” (2 Cor. 5:8). At death, believers are immediately in the presence of the Lord and not wandering the earth (Phil. 1:23).

A tourist in Las Vegas hit the jackpot on a slot machine, but he was never informed due to a malfunction in the machine, according to gaming officials. Now after an exhaustive search, the Nevada Gaming Control Board says they have identified the winner of the nearly $230,000 prize.

A man, later identified by officials as Robert Taylor, played a slot machine at Treasure Island Hotel and Casino. Due to a communications error, according to gaming officials, the slot machine malfunctioned and didn't notify Taylor or casino personnel that he was a winner. By the time the error was noticed, casino personnel were unable to identify the man, who was from out of state. The gaming board took on an exhaustive search to make sure the man would be awarded his prize.

To identify the winner, gaming officials combed through hours of surveillance videos from several casinos, interviewed witnesses, sifted through electronic purchase records, and even analyzed ride share data provided by the Nevada Transportation Authority and a rideshare company. The jackpot winner was determined to be Taylor, a tourist from Arizona.

Possible Preaching Angle:

We too are the inheritors of a great wealth, the Kingdom of God, but we go through life living unaware. How would it change the way we live today if we truly understand the vast riches of tomorrow?

Why do people believe they have seen ghosts? Research suggests that the brain may summon spirits as a means of coping with trauma, especially the pain of losing a loved one. Just as most amputees report what’s known as “phantom limb,” the feeling that their detached appendage is still there, surviving spouses frequently report seeing or sensing their departed partner.

One 1971 survey in the British Medical Journal found that close to half the widows in Wales and England had seen their partners postmortem. These vivid encounters, which psychologists call “after-death communication,” have long been among the most common kinds of paranormal experience, affecting skeptics and believers alike.

Experts think that such specters help us deal with painful or confusing events. A 2011 analysis published in the journal Death Studies looked at hundreds of incidents of supposed interaction with the deceased. The paper concluded that some occurrences provided “instantaneous relief from painful grief symptoms,” while others strengthened preexisting religious views.

There’s also evidence that sightings have other mental benefits. In a 1995 survey, 91 percent of participants said their encounter had at least one upside, such as a sense of connection to others.

Possible Preaching Angle:

Afterlife; Heaven – Pastors can attest that grieving Christian spouses occasionally believe they have seen shadows or objects in the home moving after the death of a loved one. We can rest on the absolute truth of God’s Word that “absent from the body and at home with the Lord” (2 Cor. 5:8). At death, believers are immediately in the presence of the Lord and not wandering the earth (Phil. 1:23).

In an interview with AARP The Magazine, actor George Clooney reflected upon his scooter accident in 2018, and mortality.

I’m not a particularly religious guy. So, I have to be skeptical about an afterlife. But as you get older, you start thinking. It’s very hard for me to say, once you’ve finished with this chassis that we’re in, you’re just done. My version of it is that one one-hundredth of a pound of energy that disappears when you die and you’re jamming it right into the hearts of all the other people you’ve been close to. That energy tells me to put down my phone, buy real estate, shun premade salad dressing, write letters, repair my house, gather loved ones around a big circular table … and be curious about others.

On the final episode of the podcast Dolly Parton’s America, Dolly offered various responses to the question: “What is the theology of Dolly Parton?”

After stating that she was “spiritual not religious,” Parton said, “The Bible says let every man seek out his own salvation, and that means to save himself. Whatever it takes to save you, and if you can get to that place and find your own peace then you can do good for other people if you are at peace with yourself.”

When asked about the afterlife, Parton responded, “You don’t really know, you just hope, and you have faith. That’s what faith is. I think it’s not the end of me. I don’t think it’s the end of any of us. I think we’re recycled and if nothing else we just go back into that great flow of divine energy and hopefully we spread ourselves around in other wonderful ways.”

In an interview on the Fresh Air podcast regarding his film The Irishman, Martin Scorsese commented about growing up in New York City's Little Italy. As a kid he spent a great deal of time surrounded by images of saints and martyrs at St. Patrick's Old Cathedral. He said, “Those images certainly stayed with me. As did the sermons, which often focused on ‘death approaching like a thief in the night.’ You never know when. You never know how.”

Scorsese says the film is also an expression of his "religious beliefs or concerns or obsessions”—particularly in the way it explores morality and what happens to gangsters at the end of their lives. He says, “I realize gangsters are bad. Can a person change? And can a person be redeemed? ... What are we capable of?"

Asked what he believes about death now, Scorsese responds:

I do believe in something beyond the material. I do believe in this machine we're in, this body, wouldn't be the same without the spiritual part of it, whatever that is. And people would say, “Well, that's the brain and synapses.” Yes, but the brain is just a piece of meat, in a sense. There's something that happens that's transcendent. I think it approaches sometimes when we create something and we feel something from what we create that gets us close, I think, to a sense of transcending the material. And if we go there and stay in that space of transcendence, maybe that's where we wind up. Of course, we don't know, because it's probably the same place we were before we were born.

In an interview with AARP, comedian John Cleese was asked: What do you think is the meaning of life? He replied:

I believe that there’s an afterlife, although I can’t explain it. I think the evidence is too strong that there’s something going on there that contemporary science knows nothing about. If I have anything useful to do, apart from making people laugh now and then, it’s to persuade people that this stuff ought to be looked at – without making great assumptions about what it means or how it happens.

In an interview for the Howard Stern Show, former First Lady Hillary Clinton was asked about her faith.

“I have a deep faith,” she said before saying she believes there is a God and that when we die, we’re going to go “somewhere.” “We’re learning more and more about what holds the universe together. Dark matter makes up most of the universe. We really don’t quite know what it is. It’s energy. I think religious belief and science are compatible, unlike those who reject one or the other. I think that energy doesn’t die. Energy keeps going.”

Stern replied, “That’s comforting.”

James Bedford was a psychology professor at the University of California. Prior to his death from cancer, Bedford expressed his desire to be cryogenically frozen. His hope was that his body could be repaired and his consciousness revived with more advanced future technology. Bedford willed $100,000 for the preservation of his body.

However, when he died in 1967 everyone was caught off guard. The science of cryogenics was little more than a fringe idea and there was no cryonics industry equipped to preserve a body. To honor his wishes, Bedford’s nurse reportedly ran up and down the block collecting ice from home freezers of neighbors. She then called the Life Extension Society, founded to promote cryonic suspension of people, and Bedford became the first human to be cryogenically frozen.

After 50 years the cost of preserving his body has long exhausted the $100,000 Bedford had set aside. Frustrated by the high cost of storage, Bedford’s son moved his father’s body to a self-storage facility and periodically topped the container with liquid nitrogen himself. In 1982, Bedford’s body was entrusted to Alcor Life Extension Foundation, but how well his body was preserved is open to question.

With the prospect of reviving a frozen body so improbable that there are many within the scientific community who believe that selling even the hope is unethical. Even if a medical breakthrough is made, it is highly unlikely that Bedford, with his crude vitrification process, could ever be brought back to life.

But the hope that the future will change continues to drive customers to cryonics facilities. Over 300 bodies and brains are currently preserved in between them, with 3,000 more signed up to join them.

Simon Davis, writing for Religion News Service, tells us, “Since atheist blogger Martin Hughes left Christianity, he hasn’t missed believing in God or in hell. But he does miss heaven.”

Hughes said, “I wish that there was one to go to, and that’s the truth.” He went on to say he knows his view is not “atheistically correct.” But he says that in his own version of heaven, he would “understand everything.” There would be “deep, rich happiness that feels like Mom’s sweet potato pie on Thanksgiving.”

Davis then writes:

Hughes may not be alone in his desire to keep believing in a more secular version of heaven. According to a recent analysis in the journal SAGE … the general trend over the past few decades is broadly toward less religiosity (both public and private). However, the one indicator that seems to buck this trend is belief in the afterlife, where a slight increase was recorded in recent years.

He was just a little fellow. His mother died when he was just a child. His father, in trying to be both mommy and daddy, had planned a picnic. The little boy had never been on a picnic, so they made their plans, fixed the lunch, and packed the car. Then it was time to go to bed, for the picnic was the next day. He just couldn't sleep. He tossed and he turned, but the excitement got to him. Finally, he got out of bed, ran into the room where his father had already fallen asleep, and shook him. His father woke up and saw his son. He said to him, "What are you doing up? What's the matter?"

The boy said, "I can't sleep."

The father asked, "Why can't you sleep?"

In answering, the boy said, "Daddy, I'm excited about tomorrow."

His father replied, "Well, Son, I'm sure you are, and it's going to be a great day, but it won't be great if we don't get some sleep. So why don't you just run down the hall, get back in bed, and get a good night's rest."

So the boy trudged off down the hall to his room and got in bed. Before long, sleep came--to the father, that is. It wasn't long thereafter that back was the little boy. He was pushing and shoving his father, and his father opened his eyes. Harsh words almost blurted out until he saw the expression on the boy's face. The father asked, "What's the matter now?"

The boy said, "Daddy, I just want to thank you for tomorrow."

When I think of my past and the fact that a loving Father would not let me go, reached down in his divine providence, and lifted me off of the streets of Harlem, when I think of what he has done for me and then think that he is planning a new thing for me that will surpass the past, let the record show this night in this place that Benjamin Reaves testified, Father, I want to thank you for tomorrow!

In Hot Springs, Arkansas, you'll find the Morris Antique Mall. Nothing on the inside distinguishes this antique store from dozens like it in town. There's a musty smell and dusty relics from the past.

But if you look closely at the outside of the Morris Antique Mall, you'll see something that makes it distinct: before it was an antique store, it was a church building. A focus on the future prevents a church from becoming a resting place for dusty relics.

God will not suffer man to have a knowledge of things to come; for if he had prescience of his prosperity, he would be careless; and if understanding of his adversity, he would be desparing and senseless.