Advice for Growing old

 

We know that life is constantly changing and that nothing lasts forever. In many ways, this is a harsh and sad reality. Most of us find it hard to accept that we will grow old, that loved ones will pass on, and that children will grow up and leave home. You know the types of things that I am talking about. Sad but true!

Please read on, as I have good news for you. The Bible teaches that God made us with an eternal soul. The soul is the real person, the real you. Although the body ceases to live upon our physical death, the soul lives on. Many people don't believe this anymore. The late Stephen Hawking, a British Physicist and author, dismissed the notion of an afterlife in an interview in 2011 conducted by Ian Sample for The Guardian. In that interview, Hawking was discussing his views on consciousness, death, and the afterlife and said, 'I regard the brain as a computer which will stop working when its components fail. There is no heaven or afterlife for broken-down computers. That is a fairy story for people afraid of the dark'. 

This argument sounds very feasible, especially when proposed by such an intelligent man. However, it ignores that we are not just biological computers. It ignores man's consciousness, which the best of brains have grappled with but have to admit is beyond their explanation. Consciousness cannot be defined in purely physiological terms. Add to this the evidence for the supernatural and the spiritual, and you have many questions that we will struggle to answer unaided.

 

Let me remind you of the book, which has for generations provided answers that could not be found solely in the mind of a human being - the Bible. It is easy to dismiss the Bible as purely the writings of men, but that would not do justice to its information, origins, and the consistency of its message. The Bible has an inbuilt prediction-and-fulfilment testing system, which either stands or falls on the substantive evidence of archaeology, science, history, geography, and social development. There have been no developments to date in any of these disciplines which have produced evidence that undermines the truthfulness and integrity of the Bible.

If all of this is true, may I suggest we pay more attention to what the Bible teaches about life, death, the afterlife, God, etc.? For example, one of the books of the Bible (John's gospel) explicitly states that it was written 'that we might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God and that believing you might have life through his name'. 

I suggest that you read the Bible for yourself and discover the joy of 'eternal life' through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. Jesus is recorded as saying in John chapter 10 verse 28, 'I give unto them (those who choose to believe in Him) eternal life; and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand'.

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