After Life: A Glimpse Of Eternity Beyond Death's Door

by Smith, F. Lagard

• ISBN13: 9780966006049
• ISBN10: 0966006046
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2004-03-01
• Publisher: 21st Century Christian

Summary

Despite the prospect of certain death, few of us spend much time probing God's Word to discover what can be known about our existence beyond the grave. Or even asking the hard questions... If, as we are told at funerals, our loved ones are already in heaven with Jesus, what is the purpose of Christ's Coming and the Resurrection? But if we don't go directly to heaven when we die, where are we in the meantime, and what, if anything, will we be doing? If Jesus meant to describe a tormenting hell in the story of the rich man and Lazarus, why does he speak elsewhere of body and soul being destroyed in hell? If flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, is it reasonable to expect that, like Jesus' resurrected body, our own bodies in heaven will be much the same as what we see in the mirror? If Christians are to be raptured before Christ reigns on earth for a thousand years, as popular end-times books would have us believe, is heaven only a fast-lane pit stop before we are suddenly brought back down to earth? Book jacket.

Author Biography

F. LaGard Smith, Scholar-in-Residence for Christian Studies at Lipscomb University

Table of Contents

Introduction	p. 7
Preface	p. 11
Peering Over the Edge of Eternity
Frail Children Of Dust, Made For Eternity	p. 15
That Great Gettin'-up Morning	p. 43
A Most Mysterious Metamorphosis	p. 57
It's All In the Timing	p. 79
Falling Asleep In the Waiting Room	p. 93
The Day To End All Days	p. 119
Give Me Heaven; You Can Have the Streets of Gold	p. 145
The Tormenting Conundrum of Hell	p. 165
Living In the Eternal Present	p. 199
Bedlam On the Brink of Eternity
Purgatory-Slapping Grace In the Face	p. 219
Limbo-A Theology In Search Of Coherence	p. 235
Rapture, and Other Best-Selling Fiction	p. 245
Appendices
Three Enigma Variations	p. 279
Seventh-day Adventists	p. 281
Jehovah's Witnesses	p. 288
Mormons	p. 294
Charts	p. 307
Index of Scriptures	p. 317
Discussion Questions	p. 323
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