Everlasting Life

I believe that everlasting life is through our children, grandchildren and so on.
I would like to think I would see some people again but don't believe that will happen.

Of course we go on after death. There are plenty of people who sense the presence of the 'departed' very clearly. I've certainly sensed my sister and I know people who have much stronger experiences. We do not have to give way to material 'scientism' - consciousness has not been proved to originate in the physical brain. Conventional 'religion' is not the same as spirituality, goddess and god are love, the earth is sacred and there are more things in heaven and earth than we dream about, take heart.

I hope and trust that the Resurrection and Eternal Life are realities and that I shall meet all the people I have loved, liked, or respected again.

Most of the world's religions both those that still exist and those that are things of the past believe in a life after this one, and surely they cannot all be wrong?

And if they are, we won't presumably ever find out, as if there is no life after this one we will just stop, won't we?

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.

I am not religious in any way as I too feel it's brain washing but I believe we have a foot in another world. I often get white feathers left for me inside buildings so it's not a bird flying in! I get very vivid dreams sometimes psychic dreams so I do believe there is another life and people who have passed on are watching over us.

My mum died 9 years ago today and it feels like yesterday ! I would like to believe we will meet again but as I am atheist in my views I cannot see it happening! I just remember her infectious laugh and last for life !

I felt and heard my son after he died. I felt someone in the hospital room come and take him soon after his death, either an angel or Christ himself , who said “suffer the children to come into me”

I have been a Christian since I was a teenager I am now 70. My parents weren’t religious it was my own choice and I believe in Jesus Christ and Heaven absolutely. My faith is a huge comfort to me and an essential part of my life. I go to church and feel peace there. I would not have survived my sons death as a child if I did not know I would see him again.

To explain faith, Malcolm Muggeridge once said when asked about his faith “ I don’t believe, I know” That is faith at its simplest , you don’t need proof. Also non believers ( who are entitled to their opinion) have never proved I am wrong!

I do not believe in life after death.
Often I hear people say "I know my mother will be looking down on me today" or "Your father will be looking down proudly".
Honest question - do people actually believe this, and if so do they believe their dead relatives are watching them all the time, or just at certain key events? I know it is supposed to be comforting, but I find it very unsettling!

I simply can't believe in any life after death, as I'm sure it's just to do with the way human minds work - although I know it's a great comfort to many. There are family members I would dread ever seeing again, so it wouldn't be any comfort to me.

DollyD, don't be confused by your non-believing family's comments. People say all sorts of things when somebody dies - all in an effort to communicate, to respect your religion - or just to comfort those around them.

For people asking which husband or partner you will be with after death. This is not something our little minds can understand because we only see the world we live in. Relationships will not be the same in the after life, you can love more than one person.

For people who don't feel their loved one around them, I think some of us can see through our third eye and others can't. The third eye gives you access to the mystical. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_eye

Some people really are psychic, but at varying levels which means that what they see and hear may not always be accurate.

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.

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 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!

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

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

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

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.

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

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'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 .

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.

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?

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

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 ...