Our physical, natural world is simply one dimension of a greater, more diverse reality that secular society is not willing to acknowledge. Naturalistic minds deny the existence of anything outside their immediate, observable sphere of existence and are unwilling to believe that God exists or that He created all things. Naturalism denies anything outside of our material universe and the potential for any existence beyond our physical human lives. Not only is this a short-sighted and narrow perception, it is dangerous, since it fails to address the consequences of missing the salvation offered through Jesus Christ, promised to those who believe.
During the sermon on the mount Jesus taught profound truths. Matthew 7:13-14 records His famous words regarding the narrow and wide gates, “Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.”
Jesus wasn’t speaking about an exit, but an entrance. He wasn’t talking about an end. He was speaking about a beginning. This teaching is synchronized with the message of salvation and His promise of eternal life. The apostle Paul wrote in his second letter to the church at Corinth, “So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.” (2 Corinthians 4:18.
Eternity is a concept that is difficult to understand since our comprehension is based on our mortal perspective. According to Wikipedia, “Eternity in common parlance is an infinitely long period of time. In classical philosophy, however, eternity is defined as what exists outside of time while sempiternity is the concept that corresponds to the colloquial definition of eternity.”
In Aristotle’s Metaphysics, eternity is the unmoved mover (God), understood as the gradient of total synergy (produces motion by being loved). The Roman philosopher Boethius, of the early sixth century, defined eternity as “simultaneously full and perfect possession of interminable life.” Eternity has no beginning and no end.
Naturalistic logic denies the existence of life after death and therefore eternal life is an impossibility to even contemplate. There is no doubt that evolutionary theory has undermined the notion of an afterlife based on the premise that we are simply animals that have climbed out of the primordial soup. In essence, secular philosophy has argued away the prospect of life after death through science and naturalism.
Out Of Body Experiences
However, recently there has been an increase in the percentage of people who believe in an afterlife regardless of whether they are considered religious or not. There has been a growing wave of near-death experiences, (NDE’s), as improvements in medical science save more people through emergency surgeries and better resuscitation techniques. Survivors have written countless books and report out of body experiences and visits to heaven and hell.
Recent developments in neuroscience have precipitated new ideas of consciousness and its continuation after physical death. Although reluctant to change, the scientific community is beginning to accept that some of the things described by people who have had out of body experiences simply could not have been conjured up in their minds.
This phenomenon is referred to as veridical perception and should be impossible based on our understanding of how the brain works. However, in hundreds of instances, the testimonies of those who have shared their out of body experiences have shown to be accurate.
In one out of body experience a migrant worker named Maria suffered a cardiac arrest, was subsequently resuscitated, and later told her critical care worker, Kimberly Clark, “how she had been able to look down from the ceiling and left the OR. She found herself outside the hospital and spotted a tennis shoe on the ledge of the north side of the building’s third floor. She described it in detail. Maria, not surprisingly, wanted to know whether she had ‘really’ seen the shoe, and asked Clark to go look.
Quite skeptical, Clark went where Maria sent her, and found the tennis shoe, just as she’d described it. ‘The only way she could have had such a perspective,’ said Clark, ‘was if she had been floating right outside and at very close range to the tennis shoe.’”
In another case, a Dutch patient’s dentures were removed during cardiac arrest, and the nurses couldn’t find them later. The patient reminded them where they had placed them after witnessing their actions while out of his body.
While the medical community struggles to understand these inexplicable events, they should come as no surprise. Autopsies have never recovered emotions, feelings or ideas either. The soul is separate and apart from the body and cannot be physically explained. Our bodies are simply the house our souls inhabit while on earth.
Paranormal Phenomenon
When our physical world intersects the spiritual realms, naturalistic minds attempt to explain the paranormal phenomenon as alien encounters or hallucinations and in the case of clairvoyants and extra sensory perception, cases are embraced by secular society as people rush to have their fortune told or learn the right numbers to win at the lottery.
Temporal logic has often credited these occurrences to personal ability or giftedness and shamanism, medicine men and women are even given celebrity status. Ultimately the world prefers witchcraft to seeking God. It is considered admissible in society to be “spiritual,” yet proclaiming closeness to God through Jesus Christ is unpopular and often results in persecution because there is responsibility associated with it. This undiscerning acceptance of the spirit world opens doors that are simply not understood by most.
The Bible says we are to test all spirits we encounter, since Satan often masquerades as an angel of light.(2 Corinthians 11:13-14). 1 John 4:1-6 warns us, “Dear friends, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world. This is how you can recognize the Spirit of God: Every spirit that acknowledges that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, but every spirit that does not acknowledge Jesus is not from God. This is the Spirit of the antichrist, which you have heard is coming and even now is already in the world.”
The spiritual world is not to be taken lightly. Witchcraft, black magic, voodoo, fortune telling and palm reading, or even seeking enlightenment through yoga facilitate a spiritual connectedness that is not of God and are therefore satanic in nature. Paul wrote in Ephesians 6:12, “For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.”
Spatial And Temporal Comprehension
Just as our finite minds cannot fathom an infinite God, our physical perspective cannot grasp the reality of spiritual realms. A person’s perception is their personal reality and results in presuppositions that limit our receptiveness to the truth of God. C.S. Lewis wrote in his book Miracles: “All possible knowledge, then, depends on the validity of reasoning. If the feeling of certainty which we express by words like must be and therefore and since is a real perception of how things outside our own minds really “must” be, well and good.
But if this certainty is merely a feeling in our minds and not a genuine insight into realities beyond them – if it merely represents the way our minds happen to work – then we have no knowledge. Unless human reasoning is valid no science can be true.”
All About Philosophy’s website makes this statement: “To know for certain that God exists, you don’t have to know everything but you do have to know something – you must either know God personally or you must be aware of some evidence establishing his existence. To be unsure whether or not God exists, you don’t have to know everything. In fact, by your own admission you don’t know everything. However, to claim to know for certain that God doesn’t exist – to assert a universal negative – you would have to know everything. To be absolutely certain that God doesn’t exist outside of your knowledge, you would have to possess all knowledge.”
Truth does not change from individual to individual and from generation to generation as our culture likes to imagine. Truth is not relative and it is not negotiable. Truth transcends time, our physical environment and our consciousness. Truth is eternal. Jesus said, “I am the way and the truth and the life.” (John 14:6). Not only did Jesus claim to be truth, He backed up His words with action. He proved He was who He said He was by resurrecting from the dead.
As Christians, we profess belief in God as he has revealed Himself in the pages of the Bible. We accept the scriptures as truth and believe in the resurrection of Jesus Christ. As intangible as this may seem to nonbelievers, the Bible says the righteous will live by faith (Romans 1:17; Galatians 3:11; Hebrews 10:38; Habakkuk 2:4). The apostle Paul concisely sums up the Christian perspective in 2 Corinthians 5:7, “We live by faith, not by sight.”
