The world is full of conflicting ideas about what becomes of us when we die. Some claim we’re just an accident of nature with no personal future beyond death; others that we will somehow progress to a less corrupt, more ‘enlightened’ consciousness; and others that we are formed and even now being observed and guided by an intelligence far greater than our own, who will ultimately hold us accountable for our actions. It is this last perspective, as presented by Jesus Christ, that is being unashamedly advanced by this book.

この資料は次の大まかな見出しの下に配置されています。:

ここをクリックして、勝つには地獄、または支払うには天国に戻ります, または以下のサブトピックのいずれかについて:

• 神は何と言っているか, または私たちはどう思いますか?

  We need to start by admitting that our human perspectives are almost certainly heavily biased by our own self-interest; and that we’re not as smart as God. 一方で, the Bible is a record of God’s revelations and dealings with humanity; which have been recorded by men using human language and concepts. Both of these have been subject to change over time; so when citing Scripture we must be careful to consider the context in which they were originally spoken and recorded.

  But if Jesus was indeed who He claimed to be, then in any apparent conflict of opinion, his words should take precedence.

• 歴史的背景

  最初は, man lived in fellowship with God; with permanent access to ‘The Tree of Life.’ Death was irrelevant. しかし, on accepting the Serpent’s lies, man soon began to experience the bitterness of evil and the frightening inability to discover what would happen when he died.

  But God had told the Serpent that one day man’s offspring would ‘bruise your head, and you will bruise his heel.” And, over the centuries that followed, God gradually revealed more about his ultimate intentions: but always concealing his master plan to defeat the Serpent, サタン. それで, when Jesus came, some concepts were already established in Jewish thought, たとえその本質が議論され続けたとしても.

• イエスの語彙

  By the time Jesus came the following concepts concerning the afterlife were well established in Jewish thought: but their true nature and even their existence, 深刻な論争が続いた:

  • ‘Sheol’ – 死者の場所.
  • ‘Abraham’s Bosom’ – a place where righteous Jews could await their eventual resurrection.
  • ‘Gehenna’ – 神の報復の場所, 最終的な復活のいずれかが続く, または
  • ‘The Second Death’ – destruction or a state of permanent death.

  これらの用語はイエスと使徒の教えで使用されました; though some English versions translate both ‘Sheol‘ and ‘Gehenna‘ as ‘Hell’. But Jesus explicitly redefined these terms to bring them into closer alignment with the original Hebrew texts.

読む …