Everlasting Life

Jam tomorrow.

I have a very dear friend whom I've known over 30years. She is a JW and truly believes that all those who join the 'truth' or get to know Jehovah will come back and there will be no sickness, no disabilities, no war etc. She believes so passionately that she cries when talking to me about it. It must be wonderful to have a faith that you truly believe in. Personally I'm not sure what I believe 🤔

Years ago , my family had an appointment to have some injections for a trip .

Our doctor was very nice and a friend .

As we sat in his small waiting room -well stocked with toys ,books and magazines a guy joined us .
He sat at the upright piano and played softly.
I recall that he had longish , red slightly curly hair and wore dark trousers with a rather old fashioned white shirt .
At one point , he turned and smiled at us .
His face was young and fresh .

When we left , I asked my husband , "do you think that it was Dr David's boyfriend?"
"Who ?"
"The guy playing the piano."
"What guy ?"
My children chimed in .
They didn't see anyone .
But I did and it's not the first nor the last time .

If you’d ever seen a ghost you would know there is something else. I’ve seen 2. The first one was someone that I knew of. I’d never seen a photo of him but I knew who it was.
The other one was a cat. That was a bit embarrassing.
I was visiting a friend. I walked into the sitting room and her cat was on the sofa. I knew her cat had been very unwell but there she was, on the sofa.
I went out to my friend and said i see tiddles is ok my friend looked at me and said she died a few weeks ago

MadeInYorkshire

It would be a comfort to know that I would see my daughter again, if I believed, but I don't.

In my view what sort of God would give me the life I have led, and the abuse of children and animals ...

Many people have this question - if there is a God, why is there so much suffering?

Here's Tim Keller's take,
youtu.be/dkn5lfutSrY?si=cCS4WAbCKuMEbiXq

and some comments by Josh McDowell.
www.bethinking.org/would-a-good-god-allow-suffering/q-why-does-god-allow-evil-to-exist

There's a lot more material on this online, for example William Lane Craig's article 'The Problem of Evil'.
www.reasonablefaith.org/writings/popular-writings/existence-nature-of-god/the-problem-of-evil/.

There are so many things here on Earth that we can't explain so who knows what is to follow. I have an open mind and would love to think I would be reunited with those I have loved and lost. I am a deep thinker and very intuitive but I lost someone very close many years ago and I long for some sort of sign that she is watching over me but I have never felt it and that makes me sad because she would show herself to me if she could. The grief I felt has never diminished and I know she would not want me to be sad. If I could only feel her presence once more it would be enough.

Given six months to live an elderly friend of mine with a very strong faith said “Isn’t it exciting ?” In fact she died peacefully within less than four months.

MadeInYorkshire

It would be a comfort to know that I would see my daughter again, if I believed, but I don't.

In my view what sort of God would give me the life I have led, and the abuse of children and animals ...

As I said before, there is 96% of all knowledge we as humans know nothing of. That makes us realise how little we know, especially when it comes to God and the afterlife. We'll just have to wait and see, because one day we will enter another dimension and see things we cannot see now. Once we're in the spirit world we will understand so much more.

Like so many, I believe in ‘something’ and like to have spiritual works to hand, like Thomas A Kempis and Sister Wendy.

I’m always bemused by relatives or friends saying “Mum will now be sitting with her sisters up there having a fine old time” or likewise. It sounds so trite, yet we hear these type of expressions over and over again. And yet the dead are to us together in their own company. Anyhow it’s all a great mystery to me.
When my late DH comes to me in dreams, it’s so real, it’s as if he never went away, so there may be a spirit world divided by a veil, I just keep an open mind.

I remember thinking, when my two DC were tiny and asleep going into their room and watching them, that they had been here before. It was a very strong feeling. Their being here they took for granted and it seemed to have nothing to do with me.
Their presence was a mystery to me. (A miraculous mystery)
And mystery is the only word to explain my beliefs.

I’m also not longing to go to heaven. This world is heaven enough for me, so I don’t see it as a better place and if there is a God, the great architect, why would I despise his creation?

I am not religious but I think there is an energy left when people die. Whether it is your brains way of coping with the loss, I have no idea

It would be a comfort to know that I would see my daughter again, if I believed, but I don't.

In my view what sort of God would give me the life I have led, and the abuse of children and animals ...

I was put off religion by the evil nuns in the catholic school I went to - among other things telling 7 year old me my mother could never go to heaven as she was not a catholic.
I believe we continue in the things we influence and the people we support as well of course in our family continuation (even if you don't have direct descendants.)
Last year I was dead on the operating table except for the amazing machines and cardiac surgeons who brought me back to life during emergency open heart surgery.
It left me feeling quite content with what death would be like

chimes22

My husband died in January we had been married 63yrs.I hoped I would be aware of him in spirit now and again and wonder why im not.

After my lovely MiL died, too young, for a few days I had a strong sense of her presence in our house, where she’d always been happy. (FiL could be very difficult.)
I could almost ‘see’ her sitting on the sofa.

I put it down entirely to my imagination, so when my father died only 6 months later, I fully expected to ‘sense’ the same, either in our house or my mother’s.
But there was nothing. Zilch. And like you, my mother would have loved some sort of sign, but there was nothing until a few years later, when she had a bad accident which wrote her car off.
She swore that she saw him shortly afterwards when she was virtually unhurt but in a terrible state - she said he came and sat beside her.
Who knows?

It is really wonderful to be given the gift of faith. That’s what it is, a gift. We can wish and hope for it and if we wish hard enough it is frequently given but sadly, not always. The Lord knows and I am sure has his reasons which we will never know.

I'm really fortunate that my Christian faith has sustained me through life .

I'm grateful to my grandmother for bringing me up and instilling it in me in her gentle loving way .

Germanshepherdsmum

Apparently you don’t have to - the very worldly wise vicar who buried my Mum said he believed he might meet Hitler in the life hereafter! He had also been a prison and hospital chaplain and had performed exorcisms - not your average vicar but a wonderful man nevertheless.

Maybe that vicar thought Hitler might have repented at the last moment, admitted to God that he had sinned and asked Jesus to be his Saviour and Lord.

“… if you declare with your mouth, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.”
‭‭Romans‬ ‭10‬:‭9‬ ‭NIVUK‬‬

I never rule out meeting Hitler in the next life for that reason.

I just came across this passage, which reminded me of this thread.

“And this is the testimony: God has given us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. Whoever has the Son has life; whoever does not have the Son of God does not have life.”
‭‭1 John‬ ‭5‬:‭11‬-‭12‬ ‭NIVUK‬‬

Apparently you don’t have to - the very worldly wise vicar who buried my Mum said he believed he might meet Hitler in the life hereafter! He had also been a prison and hospital chaplain and had performed exorcisms - not your average vicar but a wonderful man nevertheless.

Well that's OK then! Not that I believe in it.

It isn’t supposed to be a repeat of this life Kate. Nothing to fear.

I hope there isn't an afterlife. I'm not going through this again.

There is so much we don't know and I believe our Creator God sees it and knows it. We only experience a tiny part. I have never been able to explain a ghost I saw in terms of either Christian belief or any other. It was a young man who had suicided and was just him, walking up our passageway about a week after he had died. The most weird thing and just made me think we don't know as much as we think we know about life, death and what is to come. I put it down to grief at the time but one of my daughters told me she had seen it, too, a few weeks later ( I hadn't told her about what I saw). I never told his parents because I thought it would upset them.

I believe in everlasting life. I was taught that Jesus will come again and those who believe in God and Jesus will then go to heaven. That seems rather mean because many of us do not believe and I cannot think they will not have eternal life. I am a traditional Anglican and always attended St Giles in London because they used the old Prayer Book which I know by heart in parts. The choir was so wonderful that going to church was an uplifting experience. I always rattle on ….I am ancient and don’t know when to shut up!

Madmeg, we also had lots of seances as teenagers and as you say they were quite strange. We used a glass and letters in a circle, and you could feel something coming from that glass by the way it moved. At first it moved very slowly, stopping even, as if making a real effort, and then suddenly it found strength from somewhere and started moving much more quickly. Then the glass would shoot back and forth across the table so fast we could hardly keep up. Or maybe we would feel it slowly circling around the table in a creepy sort of way, but then getting faster. That was the time to take our fingers off and let go, because you could feel it was working itself up into a sort of frenzy. One time we didn't let go and it became really angry and the glass suddenly shot across the room, smashed against the wall and broke. Another time a pretty oil lamp sitting nearby just smashed for no reason. It was not for the faint hearted. One thing I would say is that the spirits we encountered were not very nice and seemed rather malevolent. We never got a relative or anyone nice, just these mischief making liars. So I don't recommend it.

I was brought up Catholic and went to Catholic schools till age 16. I never felt brainwashed and met some lovely priests, nuns and teachers (and the odd not-so-nice one). My mother was from a staunch Catholic family of several generations, my dad wasn't sure about it all. My children were baptised Catholic but neither they nor I go to church nowadays. Even so, I can say I am simply not sure about the afterlife and I don't think anyone can be - religious or not. There is lots of scientific evidence to the contrary and yet there are unexplained gaps. The bible could be a simply work of fiction, full of lovely (and not so lovely) stories, anecdotes, parables and so on.

If there is a God, and an afterlife, I believe it will encompass all religions as well as the non-religious, so long as they have lived decent lives. My mother declared she would not meet my dad in heaven cos he wasn't a Catholic!!!

In my teens a bunch of us used to have seances and believe me they were quite an eye-opener for me as whatever "spirit" we called up seemed to know things about each of us that none of the rest of us knew. In my case it was the name of my first dog, and I am 100% positive I had never mentioned it to anyone in the group. It was an unusual name and she had died when I was 4 years old, before I had moved to the town I lived in at the time of the seances.

So I have an open mind on it all. I can't see any other option.