The Question Everyone Should Ask

If a man dies, shall he live again? All the days of my hard service I will wait, till my change comes.
—Job 14:14
In one of the oldest books of the Bible, the book of Job, the question is asked, “If a man dies, shall he live again?” (14:14). That is a question everyone should ask in life. What will happen when we die? What is there beyond this place called Earth?

Before I was a Christian, I thought about this quite often. I was only a teenager. It was sort of a heavy subject to be contemplating, but I did find myself thinking about death on a semi-regular basis. My belief at the time was that once you stop living, you simply cease to exist. I wasn’t certain there was a place called Heaven. I definitely was hoping there wasn’t a place called Hell. My conclusion was that when you’re dead, you’re dead. And it really scared me to think that I could simply cease to exist.

This is something that many people are thinking about today, because numerous books have been published on the subject of spirituality and life beyond the grave. For my generation, the Baby Boomers, the inevitability of death is approaching. We are having to come face-to-face with our mortality. We used to sing that we were forever young, but that song doesn’t ring true like it once did. We are becoming forever old. The clock is ticking. Time is marching on. We are trying to pretend it isn’t happening and trying to turn back time, but we know that death is coming.

What happens beyond the grave? According to the Bible, there is life beyond the grave. And because of what Jesus Christ did on the cross, and His resurrection three days later, we as Christians have the hope that when we die, we will immediately go into the presence of God to a wonderful place called Heaven.