Despite the fact that death daily confronts us in the news, and from time to time in our personal lives, most people do not like to think about death, especially their own.  Thinking about the death of someone reported in the newspapers is very different from thinking about one's own death.  Thoughts of one's own death produce questions that demand answers.  What is death?  How will I face death?  Will I live again after I die?  The confusion and fear created by these questions make death a topic that people would rather not discuss.

Man's age-old struggle to respond to the specter of death has given rise to myriad beliefs concerning the reality and nature of life after death.  To the rational mind, those beliefs that lack reason and evidence, and are based upon speculative imagination, are far from satisfying.  Even people who are irreligious, and have no convictions about a Supreme Being, sometimes acknowledge a belief in life after death.  But the haunting question that they would rather ignore is, how do they know that there is life after death?  Only a view of life after death grounded on rational evidence can truly alleviate man's confusion and doubts.  What do we really know about life after death?

In 1 Corinthians 15, Paul explains that this is the very question that Christianity is able to answer rationally.  The gospel (good news) of Jesus, in simplest terms, is that Jesus died, he was buried in a tomb, and on the third day he rose from the dead.  For centuries the resurrection of Jesus has dramatically affected thinking about life after death must consider the evidence for the resurrection of Jesus.

In this passage from the Corinthian letter, Paul, like the other New Testament biographers of Christ's life, wrote to offer historical testimony to support the reality of Christ's resurrection.  From this perspective, their writings present the accounts of those who witnessed Christ's resurrection, and were written shortly after the event took place.  Therefore, their reports are subject to the same scrutiny given to any historical document.  For instance, Paul refers to a group of five-hundred people who met together with Christ after the resurrection (1 Cor. 15:6).  Paul is in effect saying to the Corinthians, "To verify my report, you may ask these people what they saw, because most of them are still alive and can tell you what they saw."  So the New Testament writers must be regarded as historians.

However, from our vantage point in time centuries later, we cannot cross-examine these witnesses.  We must consider instead the logical possibility that these historians reported an event that actually happened.  In other words, although these writers claim to be historians, we must ask whether it is reasonable to think that they reported an actual historical event when they reported the resurrection of Jesus.  Either these witnesses actually saw Christ resurrected, or they were deceived into thinking he had been resurrected, or they were deceivers themselves and saw nothing.  To think intelligently about the possibility of life after death, one must deal with this primary question: which of these three explanations corresponds to the evidence?

The character of the testimony concerning the resurrection of Jesus reveals a conscious effort on behalf of the writers to defend themselves against the accusation that they might have been deceived.  To this end, their record of Jesus' death and resurrection pays attention to precise and significant details.  That Jesus had actually died was evident because of the spear slash in his side, the preparations for his burial, and his actual burial in the tomb for three days (Jn. 19:34-42).  The mouth of the tomb was covered by a huge stone and sealed with a Roman seal by a contingent of Roman guards.  These guards had the express task of making certain that no one stole the body of Jesus (Mt. 27:59-66).  Roman military law dictated the death penalty for soldiers who deserted their assigned responsibilities.

After three days, the disciples found the tomb empty.  If the disciples were deceived, the question is, who deceived them and stole the body?  Neither the Jews nor the Romans, who cooperated together in crucifying Christ, desired to lend credence to the faith of the Christians.  Perhaps a few of the disciples conspired to steal the body.  Yet this explanation is even more unlikely, given the insurmountable problem of explaining how a few disciples could overcome the Roman guards, break the seal, and remove the stone -- a very large stone by the way -- which had been rolled down an incline against the mouth of the tomb.  The fact is, after the crucifixion the disciples went into hiding for fear of their own lives (Jn. 20:19).

Furthermore, the New Testament writers explain in great detail the variety of people and circumstances surrounding their meetings with Jesus after his resurrection.  This was done to counter the argument that they had been deceived.  Jesus ate with them (Jn. 21:13).  They saw the marks from the nails and the slash of the spear (Jn. 20:26-29).  At one point he met with over five hundred people at once (1 Cor. 15:6).  To deceive the disciples, someone would have to have engineered some explicitly real appearances of Jesus in a time when "special effects" did not exist.  Who was this person who looked so much like the crucified Jesus that he could fool the disciples, who were the close companions of Jesus for over three years?

Given the logical improbability that the disciples were deceived, perhaps they themselves were the deceivers.  Someone who plans a deception has in mind something he hopes to gain by the deception.  What could have been the disciples' motive in creating such a hoax?  What did they hope to gain?  They actually had nothing to gain economically or politically.  Quite to the contrary, they had everything to lose.  Their leader had just been crucified, and they were placing themselves in imminent danger by teaching his doctrine and claiming that he was risen from the dead.  Their fears of reprisal were justified, too.  Once they began precahing the resurrection, some of their number lost their lives at the hands of the same persecutors who crucified Jesus.

The problem with thinking the disciples were deceivers lies in producing a motive for their deception.  It may be suggested that they were religious fanatics who believed so strongly in their message that they believed their deception was justified in order to win converts.  However, such deception would have been in direct contradiction to the high moral content of their teachings.  Actually, the moral character of the followers of Jesus counts against the explanation that they were deceivers.  It is also important to note that if they were deceiving, they constituted a very large conspiracy, but no one ever recanted his story.

Reason must lead us to reject the supposition that the disciples were deceived or deceivers.  The evidence demonstrates that the historians of the New Testament were truthfully reporting a historical event -- an event that changed the history of man's thinking about life after death.

What do we know about the possibility of life after death?  Of all the beliefs and claims of religious and non-religious peoples in history, there has never been any evidence of life after death comparable to the evidence provided by the resurrection of Jesus.  Without the resurrection of Jesus, man is left with no certainty whatsoever that he will live after death.  In 1 Corinthians 15, Paul draws the conclusion that if Christ did not rise from the dead, then we can only put our hope in this life.  There is absolutely no reason to hope for anything more.

Even some who do not believe that God exists, nonetheless believe that there is life after death,.  Based on some intuition, they believe with a fragile confidence that "there must be something more than this present life."  This intuition, however, only represents what every person hopes for.  It is only wishful thinking -- the aspiration to immortality of mortal man.  To know something is true means to have sufficient reason for accepting it as a fact.  By denying the resurrection of Jesus, belief in life after death is only an empty hope, a dream.

Others who deny the existence of God and the reality of Christ's resurrection are brave enough to accept the consequences of their position.  They claim there is no life after death.  Man can hope for nothing more than disintegration into nothingness -- his dust joining the debris of a universe on its way to extinction.  No intensity of thought, and no depth of confidence, can save man from the finality of the grave.  One must remember, however, certain reasons that such people offer for their dark pessimism.  They place their absolute confidence in the natural laws that they observe working in the universe.  Because a resurrection from the dead would contradict the observed natural laws, no amount of historical evidence could ever provide sufficient testimony to convince them that a resurrection had occurred.  They would always doubt the historicity of an event that contradicted natural laws as they observe them.  Pessimism is often the result of such a narrow view.

The religious nature of human beings has led many to consider the possibility of life after death in other terms than a resurrection.  Among Hindus and Buddhists, reincarnation is the expression of man's desire for some formm of existence after the grave.  Depending upon the quality of one's present life, his soul may be reincarnated in another form of existence in the next life.  Of course, the Hindu or Buddhist is not concerned with evidence or reason to support what he takes to be real.  The question of proof does not enter his mind.  Belief in reincarnation is only the product of this same aspiration he shares with all mankind, combined with his fertile imagination.  When the Western mind seeks to adopt reincarnation, as is the recurring fad in some circles of society, evidence for its reality becomes somewhat of an issue.  However, even though some believe their "memories" of past lives offer evidence, they cannot distinguish their "memories" from what is nothing more than subconsciously held knowledge actually learned in the present.

From primitive peoples who buried their dead with food and tools to prepare them for an after-life, to the modern man who expects to meet in another existence the loved ones whose death he mourns, life after death seems to be more than a hope.  Each time someone near to us dies and we are forced to think about death, the nearness of death has the tendency to call into question what we believe about an after-life.  What do we really know?  What we know about life after death is that Jesus rsoe from the dead.  We have historical reasons for believing the reality of his resurrection.  This confidence is the only surety there can be that man will rise from the dead.  Any hope for resurrection not founded upon Jesus' resurrection is clearly empty hope.

The resurrection of Jesus accomplished more than just providing grounds for believing in life after death.  The resurrection proved that Jesus was more than just a prophet or good teacher.  The resurrection authenticated his claim to be the Revelation of God.  Accepting the resurrection of Jesus as fact means accepting Jesus' word as the truth and compels one to follow him as Lord.  It is a contradiction to believe that Jesus rose from the dead, and at the same time reject him as the truth.  Sometimes the difficulty in accepting the reality of the resurrection of Christ is not in the exammination of the evidence.  The difficulty is in acknowledging what the resurrection implies -- Jesus is the truth.  People are more ready to hope in life after death than they are to conform their lives to the teachings of Jesus.  So they will continue looking elsewhere for the answer to death.  But they will always return to the same unavoidable question -- how do I know?