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Tackling the Big Elephant in the Room - The Afterlife

Beliefs about the afterlife -- “salvation” -- are the biggest barriers keeping many Christians from straying away from their long held beliefs. This is completely understandable when so much is at stake in their minds – spending eternity in Heaven or Hell!

Of course, there isn’t just one Christian Belief System in existence today. According to World Christian Trends AD 30 – AD 2200 by David B. Barrett & Todd M. Johnson (© 2001 by David B. Barrett; William Carey Library, Pasadena, CA; p. 33):

In 1970 global Christianity had 18,630 denominations/paradenominations.

In 2000 global Christianity had 33,820 denominations/paradenominations.

Estimates in 2017 indicate there are now probably 40,000 or more. Paradenominations are groups with religious agendas that specialize in specific areas, i.e., families, abortion, etc. What this means is that when someone asks questions about Christian beliefs, creeds, doctrines, etc., they may get a lot of answers that do not agree.

Y Team members learn skills for dealing with situations like these. However, for people considering becoming a member of the Y Team, we won’t make you wait for Yeshua’s position on the afterlife. Below is a brief overview. If you decide to join the team, you will learn how we discovered this information later. This is Yeshua’s answer (from an English translation):

The righteous shall enter into eternal life.”

According to Yeshua-- the righteous will enter into the afterlife. The English word “righteous”, however, is a loaded theological word. One skill you will quickly learn to use in your Bible studies is this – keep things in context. In other words, the first place we look for the definitions of words, especially Yeshua’s words, is in the context in which they appear.

In this context, the righteous are the people that did righteous acts.

The context in which they appear is Matthew 25:31-46. Below is the section that defines what righteous acts are:

Come, you blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; for I was hungry and you gave me food; I was thirsty and you gave me drink; I was a stranger and you took me in; I was naked and you clothed me; I was sick and you visited me; I was in prison and you came to me.” 34-36

Now let’s take another look at what the righteous did:

(1) gave food to hungry people

(2) gave drink to thirsty people

(3) gave strangers a place to stay

(4) gave people in need of clothing clothes

(5) visited people who were sick

(6) went to visit people in prison

As you will learn later, Yeshua taught a revolutionary message in ancient Israel about the Kingdom of God:

(1) It was a radical interpretation of the commandment of mutual love – the only way to love God is by loving yourself and loving those you encounter in life like you love yourself.

(2) He called for a new morality based on the words of Isaiah and doing acts of love to all people, a movement that spreads beyond Israel to all nations.

(3) The Kingdom of God has arrived already and it consist those doing acts of love like Yeshua taught.

So, let’s take one more look at Yeshua’s teaching about who will be blessed and enter the afterlife:

(1) They loved hungry people by feeding them.

(2) The loved thirsty people by giving them drink.

(3) They loved strangers by giving them a place to stay.

(4) They loved people in need of clothing by giving them clothes.

(5) They loved sick people by visiting people.

(6) They loved people in prison by visiting them.


The bottom line is that they loved others by doing things for them they would have wanted others to do for them if they had been in their sandals!

If you are a Christian and you have been taught something other than what Yeshua taught about the afterlife, you may want to join with the Y Team and tackle that elephant in the room – or figure out why you believe something that disagrees with Yeshua’s position on salvation. If you want to learn how to tackle the other elephants in the room, we have a place on the Y Team for you!

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