Is There Life After Death — David Gooding

I have an apology from one gentleman who wasn't able to make it, but I have a very nice letter from Gay Byrne, compere of the Late Late Show, apologizing for his absence. Gay unfortunately had a previous engagement and isn't able to be with us.

You see, we wrote inviting him and telling him about our program this evening, because part of the inspiration for this evening came from Gay Byrne's Late Late Shows on the subject of life after death.

His first show was so popular that he had to put on a second one. So many people were interested in the subject of death and what is beyond death. A rather morbid subject, you might say, and yet it's a subject that interests each one of us.

A young man called into my office some months ago on a Friday evening. He was quite a bit younger than I am. He was in great form because he was going off on his. That was a Friday. The following Wednesday, I was at his funeral.

He died very tragically. I was introduced to one of his school friends at the funeral, a chap I'd never met before. But he said to me, you know, Jim and I were in school together. We left school the same year and 150 of us left together.

And our last day in school, the dean was chatting to us. And he said, 150 of you are leaving school today. One of you will die every year. Strange thing to say. And yet, this chap, he told me that one of them had died every year in the space of nine years since they left school.

Jim was the ninth person to die. And Jim was only 27. So death does face us all, sometimes for some, sooner than later. And we've come along this evening, not to think of a morbid subject, but to hear something encouraging.

Dr. David Gooding, here on the platform with me, is a scholar in classics and in the Bible. He has something very interesting to tell us because he has a special gift in imparting something in a way that we can understand.

You know, so often we listen to people or things or programs and it's just all maybe above our heads or too deep to understand. But here this evening, we're very glad indeed to have Dr. David Gooding to speak on this subject because we know how very well qualified he is to lecture on this subject.

Somebody suggested to me that I ought to not only introduce Dr. Gooding but tell you who I am because quite a few of you are strangers to me as well as to Dr. Gooding. Well, one thing I should say about Dr. Gooding, first of all, is that he's an Englishman but he's a very sensible Englishman because he emigrated from England to Ireland quite a few years ago.

My home is in the west of, or was in the west of Ireland, where they say that you're not a true Irishman unless you're born west of Sir, I came to live in Bray 16 years ago and Bray is my home now. You see, I met a girl from Bray and fell in love with her and married her, so that's why I'm living in Bray.

But my business is a printer and as a printer, this is one of the jobs I did recently. Possibly a lot of you have seen this and when I was getting the type set up for this, the compositor who was setting it up said to me, certainty after death.

There's no such thing as certainty after death. Well, I was quite pleased with his reaction because as we handed these out and invited folk in Bray to come along, we were looking for a reaction, if you like.

It says certainty after death and a question mark. I'm going to hand over to Dr. Gooding just now and Dr. Gooding,.

The Question of Life After Death

Is there certainty after death? Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for your kindly remarks. It is flattering of you to say that I have some very good sense, though I see your point when you remark that I have emigrated and I have been here for 13 or 14 years and I do indeed very much.

I'm quite now, pardon? Very good. Well now, as you'll see, the subject that we have to talk about this evening is a topic that has been debated by men on this earth ever since there were men on the earth to debate it.

Very early, Perth, some thousands of years ago now, framed it this way round. He had been looking at nature. He observed, for instance, that if you cut down an old tree and just leave the stump of it in the ground, sometimes, though it looks dead, the old tree will begin to sprout again.

As a farmer, he had watched what happened to the seed he put in the ground. You put a bare grain of wheat or barley in the ground, and what looks dead presently begins to sprout and grows up another living plant.

And he asked himself the question, well, if you find that kind of thing happening in nature, is it possible that it happens also to human beings? When people die, do they live again? He put it like this, for there is hope of a man, of a tree, if it be cut down, that it will sprout again, and that the tender branch thereof will not cease, though the root thereof wax old in the earth and the stalk thereof die in the ground, yet through the scent of water it will bud and put forth boughs like a plant.

Justice, Conscience, and the Need for Judgment

But man dieth and wasteth away, yea, man giveth up the ghost, and where is he? Now, it is the fact that to that basic question that millions of men and women have asked themselves at some time or other, the vast majority of people have come to the conclusion and have firmly believed that, yes, there is life after death.

And the more thoughtful among them have come to their conclusion that there is life after death, not because they have come to believe in ghosts or anything spooky, but for far more weighty and serious reasons.

If I might give you one of the main reasons that multitudes of people, not just Christians, but all folks of different kinds throughout the world throughout the centuries, one of the reasons why they have come to believe that there is such a thing as a life after death, it would run like this.

One of the basic and fundamental reasons is man's own innate sense of right and wrong. There is not one of us but has in him, deeply seated, a sense that there ought to be fair play. There is such a thing as justice.

There is such a thing as right and wrong. The workman at his work believes it. The trade unions believe it. The capitalist believes it. Man is forever claiming his rights. He feels there is such a thing as rights that other people ought to acknowledge.

And when we think about these things, we shall observe, all of us, that that kind of feeling that we have in our hearts is not something that we ourselves invented. I dare say you have caught yourself like I have caught myself sometimes, proposing to do something that I know is a bit shady or wrong, only I want to do it because it is to my advantage.

And when I propose to myself doing this thing that I know is wrong, then I find my own conscience takes sides against me. And I feel ashamed of myself. And I feel an old cad for doing what I'm about to do.

And that kind of feeling is universal in mankind. Mankind as the whole has taken it, that this sense of right and wrong inside him is not something he invented, but like all else, comes from an almighty creator.

And having decided that, man has looked around his world and he's made another step forward in his thinking. He has observed that in this life, justice is not always done. In fact, in some sense, is rarely done.

There's Hitler, for instance, to take a glaring example of something we all know about. Hitler decides to get himself vast power. With his jack-booted stormtroopers, he oppresses millions of people, on the way gassing six million Jews, to speak nothing of the other millions that he slaughtered.

And for a while he enjoys his power and struts up and down the stage of history. And then when things get too hot for him, and he's had his fling, he just puts a bullet through his brain and disappears.

And men have said, look, if our sense of right and wrong is not something that we invented ourselves, but comes from God, and there is a God who cares for justice, then there must be a life after death, when that God who cares for justice, settles accounts with men.

And that's why you will find, I think universally, that all people who believe in a life after death, find, along with that belief, goes another belief, that after death, there will be some kind of judgment, when life's injustices are sorted out.

I don't know how that appeals to you. You may find that a very gloomy notion. The Bible, of course, repeats it. It is true. It is appointed unto men once to die, and after death, the judgment. In fact, though it is solemn, that is far from being very gloomy, if you will think about it for a moment.

The fact that after death, there comes a judgment, is the biggest compliment that God ever paid to humankind. God takes us men and women seriously. God holds the view that what we men and women do, really matters, and eternally matters.

And because what we do matters, we ourselves matter. And I want to put it to you right now, at the beginning of this lecture, that though that may seem to you a very gloomy view, the atheist who denies that there is a God, and denies that there is a world to come, the atheist it is, that is the fearful pessimist, and offers you the biggest insult he could possibly offer you.

For the atheist said, says, that when the day is done, and life is over, it will all be seen then, that what you have done never really mattered, for when you die, you're finished, and not only what you did didn't matter, but what you are doesn't matter.

And I for one, would take a lot of convincing, that that is the true estimate of humanity, that what people do doesn't matter in the end, and what they are doesn't matter in the end. If I have any wishful thinking in the matter at all, you can begin to see, can't you, that my wishful thinking would lead me in the direction of wanting to believe, that we humans are significant, that what we do matters, and that what we are matters.

Certainty Through Jesus Christ

Therefore there must be a life after death. But tonight I have not, I'm not proposing to myself, to discuss with you what people have thought, and the various kinds of philosophies that have argued for a life after death.

For as our chairman reminded us, our topic is, can there be certainty about life after death? And the answer to that question is, yes there can be certainty, but there is only absolute certainty from one source, and that source is Jesus Christ our Lord.

And the answer to my question, that I have set this lecture, certainty after death, is yes, that in Christ there is absolute certainty, and certainty on two counts. I would like us to get both these things.

Christ can give us certainty on the fact that there is an existence after death, but even more important than that, Christ can give to each one of us certainty as to his own personal destiny after death.

And I mention that second thing for this very real and practical reason. There are many people who hold with some certainty the view, yes there is life after death, who are not certain however of this second thing.

If you were to put to them the general proposition, do you think there's life after death, they would say, yes I suppose there is. If you were to say to them, and are you personally sure of where you will be after death, they would probably say, no, and some of them might even add, but then nobody can be sure where they're going to land up after death.

Therefore I want to make these two points, that Jesus Christ our Lord can give us certainty, both as to the fact, yes there is life after death, and secondly, the individual and personal assurance of what is going to happen to each one of us after death.

Christ’s Identity and His Knowledge of Eternity

How can Christ give us assurance of the fact? Well first of all let us remember exactly who Jesus Christ is. There are many people, it seems to me, who have not quite thought through who Jesus Christ is.

Presently we shall be celebrating Christmas and people will be talking of Jesus as the babe in the manger. They will talk a lot of sentimental things about being kind and loving and nice to children. But if we are going to understand what Jesus Christ says, we must first of all observe who he claimed to be.

And his basic claim was this, that he, to use his own language, he came from above. Talking to his contemporaries he said on one occasion, look gentlemen, you are from beneath. That is, you are born by the normal processes of birth.

You come of this earth. In that sense I am different. I came from above. On that same occasion he said to his contemporaries, he said, you remember your father, your forefather Abraham, and as they thought of him they looked back down centuries of time, right all down the mists of time into ancient history.

Yes Abraham, they had heard about him. But he said, let me tell you, before Abraham was, I am. That is, he was claiming to be the eternal God, come down from his heaven into our earth in order to link us up with his eternity.

That is why we can be certain of what he says about life on the other side of time, of what it means to be in eternity. He is not theorizing. Talking to a learned theologian one day and urging upon that theologian that that theologian needed to be born again if ever he were to enter the kingdom of God, he said, look here old chap, what I'm telling you is what I actually know.

I'm not spinning you a theory. I'm not philosophizing on the possibilities. We speak that which we do know. He speaks from first-hand experience as the son of God come down out of God's heaven, that there is that other world.

The Resurrection as Evidence of Life After Death

There is something beyond our time. If you ask, but then how can we be sure that Jesus Christ in making that claim was true? Then one answer to that question is simply this, that his own personal resurrection from the dead affords us abundant evidence that his claim was true.

I have not the time at my disposal this evening to discuss in detail with you the evidence that the resurrection of Jesus Christ was a historical fact. I wish I had, but there is so much evidence that it would take two or three sessions of this length, even sketchily, to survey it.

The resurrection of Christ, ladies and gentlemen, is not as something that you have to make up your mind to believe because you determined to believe it, taking a step of faith in the dark without any evidence.

There is overwhelming evidence that Jesus Christ rose from the dead, evidence material and psychological and historical. Let me simply mention one tiny strand of evidence among the many that could be mentioned.

The very fact that here in Bray, as throughout Europe, as throughout the five continents of the world, there is today a Christian church that worships on a Sunday, on the first day of the week, is, when you ponder it, a very powerful piece of evidence that Jesus rose from the dead.

For, you will remember, that the early disciples, Christian disciples, were in fact Jews. They never celebrated the first day of the week permanently, every week, every year. They were Jews. Their regular day of worship was a Sabbath.

When Jesus Christ was here on earth with them, they didn't observe the first day of the week. They were Jews. Their regular day of observation was a Sabbath, a Saturday, as we call it. Now, it is the fact that for nearly two thousand years, people in Europe and in the other continents have worshipped on a Sunday.

Why on earth do they do that? Why did these Jews change? You can trace it back right to those early Christians, that they suddenly changed and started to celebrate the first day of the week. Let me point out to you again, that when they started to celebrate that first day of the week, they did it in spite of tremendous persecution, that almost at once they drew to themselves, in part for this very custom.

Why did they do it then, if it brought such a furore of persecution on themselves? If you've got to account for it starting somehow, it would have been so much more convenient just to go on as they were before, as Jews, and escape all the persecution.

What made them change? And the answer to that great and colossal historic phenomenon is the great and powerful historic fact, they changed. Because one Sunday morning, Jesus Christ rose from the dead and began that movement that we call Christianity, that has flourished ever since.

Personal Assurance Through Christ’s Work

But as I say, to discuss in great detail all the many strands of evidence would take me far beyond my topic this evening. I want to come to another line by which we may attain to certainty. We may have certainty, as I say, as to the fact that there is an eternity, that there is an existence beyond death for every one of us.

We may be certain of the fact, because of the person of Christ, who he is that has told us, because of his resurrection that proves it. But now when it comes to the second bit of our question, how may I personally attain to certainty?

And certainty not merely that I shall survive the grave, but that I shall survive, to put it crudely, in the right place. We can begin to find that certainty if we will look at what the Bible says that Christ has done about this thing called death.

There are two prominent things that the Bible says Christ has done. It says first, that for the believer he has removed the sting of death. And secondly, he has made powerless him that had the power of death, that is the devil, and so he has delivered people who all their lifetime were subject to bondage because of fear of death.

That is Christ removes the sting of death, the Bible says, for those who trust him. And he removes the fear of death and the bondage that is associated with that fear. Now what is this thing that the Bible calls the sting of death?

Sting of death, says the Bible, is sin. Now let's get things clear in our minds. Dying is a slightly different thing from death. Dying can be a sudden thing. We can die in that sense without noticing it.

Or it can be a long protracted and nasty thing. But the sting about death is not the nasty process that leads up to physical death. The sting of death, says the Bible, is sin. Because there is no denying of the fact that when man faces the challenge of physical death, it rivets home upon his conscience the fact that he is a sinner.

And as we said at the beginning of this talk, there is an inseparable bond in the mind of man between an eternity out there beyond life and the fact that there is a judgment out there beyond life. To find a loved one who has struggled unsuccessfully against illness and at last has died, that is a very sorry thing.

But there is a terrible sting behind that, to be uncertain what God is going to say about that loved one's sin. And you'll see this is the reason why many people try to brush the whole topic of death under the carpet.

The reason why many people try and prove that there is no life after death. Because if there is a life after death, then there's a judgment after death. When people are uncertain how they stand vis-a-vis their judgment, then the thought of death appalls them and frightens them and makes their conscience uneasy.

There is a sting in death. The way we come to personal assurance on this matter is to allow Christ to take from death its sting. The sting of death is sin, says the Bible, and the strength of sin is the law.

That means simply this. When I've sinned and I think of its possible eternal consequence, then I naturally get afraid and I want to wriggle and I want to try and tell myself that it doesn't matter. When I try to do that, God's law witnesses to my conscience, but old chap, you can't get out of it that way.

Sin does matter. Let me take a lurid example. I'm a bit of a show-off of a fellow and I've got a new car and I love driving my car down the cul-de-sac at a hundred to see whether I can stop, you know, within an inch or two of the fence.

And you've warned me about the danger of this, about the toddlers that play in the cul-de-sac, but I'm such a show-off, I can't listen to you, and one of these days I come down the cul-de-sac at an extraordinary speed and I run over your child.

Now I sinned, grievously sinned. Are you going to listen to me when I try to tell you that it doesn't matter in the end? Oh no, you have the common sense to see that it matters. God's law is on your side.

God's law says it matters. The strength of sin is the law. How it is that sting that Christ removes for those that trust Him. Because when He died, the Bible says He bore our sins in His body. He died to atone for sin.

He died to pay the penalty of sin. And in a wonderful way, His death has made it possible for God to forgive and to wipe out as though they never existed, the sins that we have done. And with sin forgiven, and our heart and conscience put at rest, that God has been perfectly just in forgiving my sin.

Freedom from the Fear of Death

And God also says that Christ has delivered and does deliver people from the fear of death. You know, the fear of death is a very real thing. It will pervert people's personalities. It can make them very selfish.

It can make them very religious. Men will toil at all sorts of back-breaking works in the name of religion. Because at the back of what they do is a fear of death. And Christ has come that He might deliver us from that fear of death.

The Bible says He has done it by Himself dying. By dying, He has made powerless him that hath the power of death, that is the devil, so that He might deliver from bondage those who all their lifetime feared death.

You see, since Christ has died, death for the believer changes its very nature. The other afternoon I was walking down the road when I heard an air raid siren. It took my mind back to the days of the Second World War when there was an air raid siren about six houses down the road from the house I lived in.

I remember quite well what I felt like when I heard that first air raid siren, with its fearful old wail and grim warning that the Germans were coming with their bombers. Vividly remember the nights we spent in fear in the east of England when the air raid sirens went.

The other day, as I say, I heard an air raid siren, same sound, but no shivers went down my spine. There was no fear, no sweat. You say, why not? Was the sound itself any better? No, the sound was still the old waily, waily, waily of the siren.

But you see, it meant a different thing for me now than it did those years ago. And so Christ delivers those who trust Him from the fear of death, because for the man and woman who believes Christ, death is a different thing.

It has a different significance for the man who is not saved, for the woman whose sins are not forgiven, for the person that has no peace with God. Physical death is not only unpleasant in itself, but it is the fearful introduction to an eternity of misery.

But for the man and woman that have received Christ and been forgiven and are at peace with God, physical death is no such thing. It is but the gateway into the presence of God, into the presence of Christ, the very Savior who died for them.

I said, one of the early Christians to depart like that and to be with Christ, it is far better than anything you have ever known in life. So then Christ begins to give us personal certainty in our own hearts.

When we trust Him, by doing these two things for us, He removes the sting of death through His cross, through His forgiveness, through His redemption. He removes the fear of death because He thus transforms death into a very gateway into God's own heaven.

The Resurrection and the Eternal God

But there is another ground for certainty. And I want you to slowly hear, because it is a wonderful thing, but perhaps a little bit difficult to understand. How can I be certain that there is a life beyond a grave?

How can I be certain that when I leave this life, I shall be with God in God's heaven? Our Lord Himself was asked the question at one stage by some people called Sadducees. They complimented themselves, did Sadducees, on being rather intellectual.

And they posed a question to Christ about the resurrection, which they thought was going to prove that any resurrection to a life to come was utterly impossible. Among the things Christ said in His answer to their question was this.

Now gentlemen, said He, that there is a resurrection, that there is an eternity of life with God after this life is done. I will prove to you, said He, from what God said to Moses way back in Old Testament times in the book of Exodus.

When God came down to speak to Moses, God said to Moses like this. Moses, I am the God of your fathers. I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. So said Christ, you may deduce from that that there is a life beyond a grave.

You say, how on earth do you do that? How do you deduce that there is an eternal existence beyond a grave from the simple fact that God said, I am the God of Abraham? Think about that. God said, I am the God of Abraham.

He didn't just mean, did He, I am Abraham's creator, because He's everybody's creator. When God said, I am the God of Abraham, He meant that He was related to Abraham and Abraham personally related to Him.

Abraham was a man with whom God had had personal dealings. Abraham was a man who himself had had personal dealings with God. They knew one another. The Bible describes Abraham as the friend of God. He walked day by day with God in fellowship with God.

He knew God even in this life. There was a relationship between them. Now what are you going to think about that kind of relationship that God sets up with men? Why, said Christ, the only thing you possibly can think about it is that that relationship is an eternal relationship.

God doesn't pick up friends and then after some days ditch them. If God became Abraham's personal friend and there was a relationship between them, you may be utterly sure that that's a relationship that is eternal because God is eternal and the nature of His friendship is that it is eternal.

We don't think much of a friend who takes us up and is keenly friendly with us for three months and then suddenly ditches us if he did the same with men. That's a silly little advertisement. Well, it isn't so silly.

I mustn't say that because every one of you will contradict me. But there is an advertisement in some papers sometimes that presents a glowing young couple choosing their engagement ring or something or other and within the diamond is pictured all a sparkling, the caption underneath says diamonds are forever.

Of course it's a bit of sentiment aimed at increasing the jeweller's income. But for all that, for all his sentimentality, it is saying a something, isn't it? When a man and woman fall deeply in love, they feel they want to pledge themselves one to another.

They feel this relationship is a relationship that's got to be permanent. Not merely because they enjoy it, but they feel that the relationship itself is one of those things that to be a true relationship has got to be permanent.

Whilst this life doesn't always live up to that kind of feeling, but it may serve as an illustration of what this relationship is that God forms with men who come to Him through Jesus Christ. It is a personal relationship, it is a personal friendship, and it is a relationship that by its very nature is eternal.

Eternal Life as Knowing God

Ladies and gentlemen, the Bible calls that relationship eternal life. Let me therefore point out what is an exceedingly interesting and important thing. The Bible rarely talks of people going to heaven when they die, though it believes in it and people do go to heaven if they trust Christ when they die.

The Bible far more frequently talks about receiving eternal life here and now in this world. You say, what is eternal life? Well, let Jesus Christ define it for you. Eternal life is to know the only and true God, to know Him.

As a friend knows friend, as a man knows his wife, to know God personally and intimately, to know God. It is to enter a relationship with God, and that relationship, says Christ, is eternal life, already begun, and it is a relationship that having begun in this life is utterly unbreakable, glorious relationship that Christ offers every single one of us.

I am come, He says, that you might have life, and that you might have it more abundantly. I give unto my sheep, He says, eternal life, and they shall never perish, neither shall anyone pluck them out of my Father's hand.

It is the relationship of which Paul speaks when he says, I am persuaded that neither life nor death, principalities or powers, things present or to come, I am persuaded, he says, that nothing shall be able to separate me from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus.

Facing Death as the Meaning of This Life

So we find that death, that when we started seemed to be a gloomy subject, is in fact a subject to be welcomed. It focuses our mind very keenly, doesn't it? Not merely on what lies beyond the grave, but what this life is about.

I make bold to say that no man and no woman has ever understood fully what this life is about until they have faced the fact of death and the consequent eternity. For this life is a much bigger thing than just going to work and coming home, going to work and coming home, eating your carrots and your currants, getting married, setting up a home, being successful in business, and in the end falling into a grave.

This life itself is bigger, for it is in this life, says Christ, that we begin, if ever we are to begin, this relationship with God that is eternal life. Let me illustrate what I mean by a simple illustration.

This Christmas time, doubtless, you will go into some homes and you will see the rather pleasant sight of Father with his ten-year-old boy on the carpet in front of the fire playing with his Christmas present.

A Christmas present is a train, and the ten-year-old is enjoying it, and I fancy Father is enjoying it as well, as much if not more. They are playing with these trains, Father and Son. Of course it's a jolly interesting thing to play with trains on the floor.

As they play with those trains on the floor, something else is happening. There is a relationship now beginning to build up between that ten-year-old boy and his father. Boy is coming to understand his father, coming to love his father, coming to know his father, and the father is getting to know the boy.

And please God, if things go well, that relationship that is growing up is going to be a thing that will last through the whole of life, and it will last long after the old train set has been put in the bin, long after the boy wants to play with trains.

The relationship with his parent that was then formed will last. This is what Jesus Christ is saying to every one of us men and women. Let death focus your attention on what this life is about. Not enough to have some crude idea, oh well, heaven, I'll think of that, you know, when I come to die, because that is to miss the most significant thing even in this life.

When I say it reverently, God has come down to our earth to play trains with us on our very carpet, so that life's experience in the here and now should begin to be the basis upon which we may find God and enter into a personal relationship with God.

To receive now eternal life, to have it and to know it, so that when this life is done, the relationship remains eternally. And if I were to be asked where I would put the biggest emphasis on how a man and woman can be absolutely certain of eternal life after death, I would say without any hesitation, the greatest certainty comes through entering into this personal relationship with God through Christ here in this life.

Knowing God Through Christ

To ask you, sir, how you know your wife will be faithful to you as she promised until death? You wouldn't be able to prove it to me logically or by some arithmetical formula. You would reply, but I know my wife.

If you ask me, I can be sure of life after death in God's heaven with God, I would say, but my good man, I can't prove it to you, of course, by a mathematical formula. I know it because I know God through Jesus Christ.

I have received that relationship, that very life of God that Christ has brought into being. I know him. What then happens at death? I shall have to divide my answer into two bits, as perhaps now you will see.

Eternal life has been made possible because of what Jesus did at the cross. If eternal life is a something we receive now in this life through faith in Christ, then obviously, isn't it going to be, it's going to be very obvious, that what happens at death will be different according to whether you have or you have not, in this life, entered into personal relationship with God.

The Believer’s Death, Presence with Christ, and Resurrection

Let's take the man or woman that has received Christ personally in true repentance and faith. They have personally received the Savior and received this gift of eternal life and relationship with God.

What happens to them when they die? The Bible describes what happens to their body as a sleep. That's all. They fall asleep. Lovely word, isn't it? When children get too tired and they become fractious and difficult to deal with and full of tears at the slightest provocation, a wise parent sees they can't stand anymore and they just put the child to bed and it goes to sleep.