Afterlife: The Other Side of Dying

From Introduction: "How we view death determines to a large extent how we live our lives. And paradoxically how we live determines how we view death. Death and life seem to be two poles of the same reality. The purpose of this book is to examine the Christian hope of an afterlife and to trace how this belief springs out of an inadequate view of the world and rests upon a pre-modern view of science. I shall reaffirm the reasonableness of this central idea of historical Christianity, and then present the evidence that has been accumulating about life after death. This recent data has not been integrated into theological thought. In conclusion I shall try to portray as clearly as possible what human beings can expect on the other side of death. Someone has stated that theology deals with three questions: From what? To What? And how? In the following pages we shall examine these questions in depth and come up with some answers to these ultimate questions. " ***** Contents Include: I. The Problem of Our Beliefs * Whatever Happened to Heaven and Hell * Varieties of Afterlife: Visions of Final Things * A Personal Odyssey 2. Our View of the World * All Dressed Up and No Place To Go The Vision of Heaven and How It Was Lost * Is There a Soul to Go Anywhere? The Dogma of Materialism and Beyond 3. Opening the Doors into Eternal Life * The Evidence for Survival After Death * Other Evidence for Another Life * Survival: Persistence and Transformation * What Is Heaven Like? * Entering the Kingdom 4. Death and Eternal Life: Some Unresolved Questions and Problems * Ministering to the Dying * What About Reincarnation? * The Problem of Hell * A Conclusion of Hope