The Afterlife – Part 1

Automated transcript, lightly edited for readability. Scripture appears as spoken; the video is the authoritative teaching.

Do you guys keep up with Facebook and you saw the little message of what I'm going to be talking about today? How many of you guys know what I'm talking about today? Everyone who didn't raise their hand, I'm sorry. It's not a simple subject. There are Hebrew Roots teachers and Messianic teachers and pastors and teachers and priests and so on and so forth that talk about this subject and they present it in such a very simplistic, very... common way. It's easy to digest. It's easy to swallow. Perfect. But when you actually go back and look at scripture about what the scripture says about the afterlife, and I'm not talking about like the resurrection.

We're going to talk about resurrection a lot today. I'm speaking about when you die, what happens? When you die, what does scripture say happens? So, Barely read it. The Afterlife, Myths, Fairy Tales, and Biblical Realities. This is going to be the first out of a three-part series. And yeah, it probably will upset you, especially next week's part. It will be controversial, some of the things that I'm going to quote from Scripture. And it will cause you to have an emotional conflict within you. August 5th, this coming year, will be two years since my father passed away. And my father passed away very suddenly.

We weren't expecting it. Even when he was in the hospital, it was naive about the whole situation that he might not make it until it was after surgery and the doctor came and woke us up and said, I'm sorry, he's not going to wake up. And so... The next day, we spent time with him. He was not waking up, he was unconscious. And then we had to make a decision. Long story short, we had to basically take him off life support. And I got to hold my father's hand as he passed away. This was the most horrifying thing I have ever experienced in my entire life. I cannot imagine anything more horrifying than looking death in the face. and experiencing what I experienced, what my family experienced on that day.

It caused me to wonder, where did my dad go? What just happened? How could this happen? When we were originally designed as human beings, we weren't designed by God to experience what I experienced. This horrifying reality called death, especially of a parent or a family member. I don't ever want anyone to experience that pain, that loss. I still have nightmares and day terrors frequently about it because it impacted me on that level. And the reality is, the irony within all this is, every one of you will most likely feel that pain sometime in your life. A greater irony is everybody in here will experience death sometime in their life.

The day you were born was the day that you were destined to die. Do you guys understand the weight of this topic now? This isn't going to be a fun topic per se. That is going to be super encouraging to you. But I feel like it's a topic that needs to be discussed because it's in a lot of different areas in Scripture. You know, when my father passed away, right when it happened, My personality type, I'm very logical. I don't do emotions very well. When someone's going through a hard time in their life, I have a problem sometimes showing sympathy, even if I am, right? And so I'm very logically minded and this brick lays on top of this brick and this gear turns and these are how things work.

And when my father passed away, I'm still holding his hand. My world came tumbling down because this didn't make any sense. I just spoke to him two days ago and told him I loved him. Emotion took completely over because of the weight and the pain that I had experienced. And at that moment, I didn't really care so much about where my father went as much as I cared about how I perceived him being right now in the afterlife, per se. In other words, I had studied scripture and I had come to the conclusion at that point in my life that I didn't really think people went to heaven. We're going to discuss that a little bit later today and probably on next week and so on and so forth.

But I didn't really think people went to heaven per se, just like we were taught, I was taught growing up in church. And at that moment, when my father passed away, something inside me clicked. And I didn't think he went to heaven, but I told myself, no, I want him to be in heaven. I want him to be with Jesus. I want him to be with his brother who had passed away before him. I want him to be with his father and his family. I want him to be with the generations of our family and angels around him floating on the clouds. I want my father there right now. I just saw him suffer and die while holding his hand.

I want him to be in heaven, dag nabbit. Even though I didn't truly believe that, I forced myself to believe that he went to heaven right then and there. Even though I'd studied it, I didn't think that, I didn't believe it, I didn't see any scripture that supported that, I convinced myself that my father was now in heaven. And I told myself, Matt, you know that's not the case necessarily based on scripture. But I said, you know what, I don't care. I want my dad to go to heaven because this is a very emotional moment and I would rather for me to believe something that I don't think is true just to make myself feel better.

That's what we do as people. We believe things that make us feel better, right? Now, it's interesting because That was about the time that I started studying, very hardcore studying about the afterlife per se in scripture. In church, I grew up thinking that when you die, you go to heaven or hell, right? Yeah, most of us. Probably still do. Maybe some of us. That's fine. And then studying scripture, I ran across one little theory that said, okay, maybe we just sleep in the dust of the earth called soul sleep. And that's more of a newer theological concept, but it is based in scripture. And then I started studying archaeology.

And archaeology is a hard topic to study. I mean, you can read the books, but the stuff that we find in the ground sometimes gives us a huge scope around what the scriptures talk about. Right? Right? And so I started digging around and I started studying, okay, what did ancient Israel believe about the afterlife? And for the last almost two years now, I've been too scared to share what I've found in the scriptures. I've been hesitant. I talked about it with Jason and, you know, other people that are close to me. And I'd spit little things out that I'd find. Yeah, what about this verse or that verse?

Whoa, I've never seen that verse before about the afterlife. Yeah, can't share that with anybody. Yeah. where it came to a point where I felt like I was confident enough in a way I could present this that would hopefully be edifying for some. It would take a lot of the questions out. And if you ever ran across the scriptures on the afterlife, specifically in Job, Isaiah, and Psalms, then at least you would have a general idea of what's going on. Some of the things that Yeshua said make a little more sense now. Some of the things that Paul said make less sense, and then while others make more sense.

You see, it's interesting because... The afterlife, according to the scriptures, and I'm going to say this pretty bluntly, was an evolutionary thought process. If you read from Genesis all the way to Revelations, the concept, the view of where you go when you die shifts. little bit throughout scriptures. We're talking about 1700 years of literature here guys in the Bible. Every generation had different exposures to different things, right? And so they added on kind of what they knew all the way up to the point where we were in the first century. The first century still had the basic foundation of what was most likely believed in ancient Israel in Genesis when the Torah was written, but it had a lot of stuff added to it.

Decorations, if you will, added to it. Most likely from Persian influence on the Romans, and the Romans influenced the Pharisees, first century Pharisees. Sadducees were very interesting because they completely rejected the idea of a resurrection. Mostly because they were made up of the priests and it was kind of a corrupt political party if you will and if if you put your faith in a resurrection that it took power and authority away from them right and the mandates they had in your life and so they completely rejected it Dead Sea Scrolls is very interesting because we would expect to see the resurrection in the afterlife just different elements written all over the Essenes the very strict Jewish community that lived out in the desert There's two verses, I think, in all the Dead Sea Scrolls that vaguely point to a belief in a resurrection. Most scholars believe that the Essenes, very strict, what John the Baptist was assumed to be, most scholars believe that they believed heaven was on earth now if you believed in God.

So if you believed in God, then you would experience heavenly blessings on earth now, not after you died. They weren't really interested in post-death. These things were a big awakening for me. I thought everybody believed in a resurrection. I do believe in a resurrection. I think the Tanakh gives us enough information about the resurrection to back up what Yeshua talks about, about the resurrection. The Torah is very interesting because if you look at the Torah, Torah is all about life. It truly is. It's all about now. This is how you follow God now in God's kingdom. You don't see a whole lot in the Torah about what's going to happen after you die.

You don't see on the first level, like right up front, in your face, anything that really suggests a resurrection in Torah. Now we can look at thematic themes and study scripture and we can dig around a little bit in scripture and find the evidence in the Torah that there's going to be a resurrection. But it really wasn't focused on that. It was focused on, listen, right now in the time that you have left in this earth, you need to establish the kingdom of God so that the next generation will grow in the knowledge and love of God and the next generation, the next generation, so that a covenant kingdom will exist on earth that reflects God. Do you guys realize that the idea of a resurrection is the most important point of Scripture?

It is the most important topic in Scripture. The resurrection. One of my mentors actually said this when I'm fixing to say, and it offended me. It offended me because I'm like, whoa, whoa, whoa. That's a pretty big thing to say. And what he told me was the resurrection is more important than Yeshua. And he was right. He was right because if the resurrection doesn't exist, that means Yeshua didn't raise from the dead. And if Yeshua didn't raise from the dead, then that means you're not going to raise from the dead. And if you're not going to raise from the dead, then why are you here? No hope. This is what Paul talks about.

He speaks in his letter to Corinth, chapter 15, verse 32. It's true. Essentially what Paul's saying is, listen guys, if I'm going to go through all this mess to establish the governing body of Yeshua, Ecclesia, if there is no resurrection, there is no hope in the future, there is nothing I'm going to get in the future, then listen guys, YOLO! Let's eat, drink, marry, dance, and have a good time, for tomorrow we're going to die. Come on, party it up. Where's the disco ball? Woo! But if the dead are raised... If those in Yeshua do inherit the earth, like the Tanakh and Matthew says, if your dependency on a seal of the covenant through Yeshua grants you eternal life and inheritance in the future kingdom after the resurrection, then that's really important.

That's why Yeshua came, right? That was an aspect of salvation, right? And so I looked at my mentor and I realized that he was right. The resurrection is the biggest thing in scripture. That's what everything revolves around. Whenever I attend funerals or memorial services, I see someone who's sad. I can relate to that. But I always love to mention, listen, you're going to see him again. Believers, you're going to see him again. That's exciting. Romans 10. It's going to hurt my neck looking back up at this. Romans 10. We all know this. This is the Roman road to salvation and so on and so forth. And we read it a lot.

And some of you may say, Matt, you repeat this chapter once a month at least. Can you give it a break? And I will tell you, no, I cannot give it a break because this is our salvation that we're speaking about. And so we're going to read it again. Romans 10, starting in verse 6, "But the righteous, that is by faith, says, 'Do not say in your heart, 'Who will ascend into heaven?'" Paul's speaking to the Romans. And look at the language he's using. "Who will ascend into heaven, that is to bring the Messiah down? Who will descend into the deep?" Into the what? This is the abyssos in Greek, the abyss. We'll talk about that a little bit later.

"Who will go into the deep, that is to bring Messiah up to the dead, from the dead?" But what does it say? The word is near to you. It is in your mouth, in your heart. That is the word of faith we are proclaiming. That if you confess, if you do what? With your mouth, Yeshua is kurios. It's a Greek word that means to be master, to be your owner, to be your leader, to be your king. If he is your king and you believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. In other words, proclaiming that Yeshua is your king is not enough. You have to believe that the Father raised him from the dead.

You have to believe in the resurrection. For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you confess you are saved. Interesting how in order to be saved, you have to use your mouth because that's the very same thing that got you damned on earth from the beginning, Adam and Eve, through the mouth, right? This word, to confess with your mouth, is a Greek word, homologeo, And it means more than confess. We always speak about confessing as in, okay, brother, I confess that in my sin, right? Or maybe you go to the Catholic church and you sit in the booth and priest, father, I sin, so on and so forth.

It's not what the word really indicates. The word indicates making a vow, making a covenant. If you're going to make a marriage covenant, what do you say? You say your vows. That's what seals the deal in a marriage. And then you kiss after the vows, right? If you make a vow with your mouth that Yeshua is your king and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. It's gospel, guys. Summed up, that's the gospel. I love this because how many of you guys know that Paul was quoting Torah? Several of you know, right? We're going to go over to Deuteronomy 30 real quick because this gets exciting because there's a discrepancy in the wording that Paul uses versus the Torah.

So remember what Paul said? You're going to go up to heaven and get Messiah? You're going to go down to the deep, right? The place of the dead and bring him up? For if you obey the Lord your God and keep his commands and decrees that are written in this book of the law... I don't know. That's the word of God anyway. That's what he said. Some people, a lot of people nowadays say the Torah is too hard to keep. Don't commit adultery. Is that really that difficult? Don't murder. Sometimes that's a difficult one, but we managed to make through, you know. It is not up in heaven that you should ask, who will ascend into heaven to get it and proclaim it to us so that we may obey it?

That's what Paul said about Messiah. nor beyond the sea, the ocean, so that you have to ask who will go through the sea to get it and proclaim it to us so we may obey it. Know the word is near to you. It is in your mouth, in your heart, so you may obey it. Paul was quoting Deuteronomy 30, speaking about the salvation of Yeshua. And he's making a parallel between the reign of God and the one who has all authority to reign with God, Yeshua, and the Torah. I love it. Do you guys notice the discrepancy between what Paul said and what Torah states? I tried to look. Even in Septuagint, it's not the same.

Romans 10 says, who will descend to the deep? This is the place of the dead, if you will. The abyss that you should bring up Messiah from the dead. But notice what Moshe says, nor is it beyond the sea. So you would have to ask who will go beyond the sea and get it and proclaim it. The abyss and the ocean? How could Paul get that mixed up? Long story short, the sea, chaotic waters, the great waters you'll see in ancient Near Eastern cosmology, which we'll discuss next week, is kind of a synonym for the place of the dead. If you go into the sea, if the sea overtakes you, as David says in his Psalms, he's speaking about being dead and his soul sinking into the abyss.

This is why Paul uses the Greek word for abyss in place of sea because they were the same thing. You see, the place of death was a place of chaos. It was not a place of order. It was not a place that God necessarily governed. Even though he was within it and he was all around it and he could be there, it was not his preferred place to govern. It was the place of chaos. He preferred to govern the place of peace. Right? God of the living. To drive this home, we turn to Job, possibly the oldest book in all of the Bible. The dead are in deep anguish, those beneath the waters and all that live in them. Death is naked before God, destruction lies uncovered.

If you're dead, then Job's using a phrase that indicates that you go through the waters into the abyss. This is why the Torah speaks about who's going to go through the sea and bring it up. You're going to go to heaven and bring the Torah down? Are you going to go dive down into the abyss where the dead are and bring it up? No, it's close to you. It's near your mouth. It is near your soul, this Torah of God. Psalm 69, 14, rescue me from the mire. Do not let me sink. Deliver me from those who hate me from the deep waters. David is describing the place of death where you go after you die. And, um, I'm going to leave a bunch of question marks here that we're going to answer next week, so just put up with me for a little while longer.

Dave is describing this place as a muddy place. I'm sinking in the mire, the clay. I'm sinking down. The waters are overtaking me. Most scholars believe, of course, David is speaking about post-death. People didn't want to die in the Tanakh, guys. The culture didn't want to die. Paul's all excited about it. He's like, "I'm gonna go be with the Lord!" Everybody else in the Bible is like, I don't want to die. Men of faith, Job, Isaiah, David, rescue me, God, don't let death take me. You're after God's own heart, man. David, do you have any idea how famous you're going to be? Don't let me die. Keep me here for a little while longer.

That general attitude towards death was one of the things that caused me to dig deeper. What are we missing in Scripture? What are the teachers missing? in the Messianic Hebrew roots or mostly churches hiding in scripture maybe they don't know so there's a story and like I said with the all the waters any talk of waters being chaotic and water splashing is synonymous with drowning and also synonymous in in near eastern culture with their cosmology how they viewed the place of the dead the place of the dead was beneath the great water surrounded by it you had to go through the waters in order to Go to the next life after this one. Mark 4, 35 through 41 is a great story that illustrates this point. You've read it a thousand times, but probably never like this.

So Yeshua's with his disciples in a boat and the waters are starting to get a little rough and the winds are blowing and Yeshua's telling his disciples, guys, we got to get out of the boat. The water's crashing all around us, guys. Yeshua takes a nap and Yeshua goes in the bottom of the boat, fluffs up a pillow, and lays down to go to sleep. How many of you guys know sleeping in Scripture is also a synonymous way of saying you're dead? Daniel 12, those who sleep in the dust of the earth will arise, some to everlasting life, some to eternal condemnation. So Yeshua's in a boat, and his disciples are surrounded by crashing water.

The great floodwaters, I would say. And what happened to Yeshua? He's asleep. Now what's interesting is the disciples run downstairs and they wake Yeshua up. Get up! Get up! Master, get up! Yeshua raises from his sleep. Right after he raises from his sleep, he goes in the front of the boat. Stop it! He yells out the side of the boat and the waters calm. In other words, Yeshua calmed the waters. Maybe I didn't say that with enough enthusiasm. Yeshua calmed the waters, which represent death according to Job, Isaiah, and Psalms. Yeshua fell asleep, got back up, waters, boom, calm. It's amazing because when the disciples are on the boat alone, you know, that other time, they just need to stop going out in the Galilee, right?

They need to become crab fishermen or something. You can do that from the dock. Don't go out on the boat anymore. They're in the boat and the winds are rushing. Same situation. Waves are crashing. They're scared to death. And they look out and they see a guy walking on the water, right? So, When you come to me with Israel, we're gonna go to the Bible Lands Museum and we're gonna see thousands of year old statue of Pharaoh with his feet on nine lines and the nine lines represent his enemies because anything you put your feet on top of represents something that you conquer, right? So here's Yeshua with his feet on top of the waters and he's walking on the boat.

Now the disciples say, "Oh look, there's our Messiah, there's our king," right? They freak out, "It's a ghost!" Why'd they think he was a ghost? I don't know. If the waters are the gateway to the afterlife, I don't know. That's a theory. Yeshua calls Peter out. Peter's like, hey, hey, can I come? Peter gets out in the boat with the authority of Yeshua. Peter's feet are on top of the waters. Of course, Peter doubts. He sees a wave come. Goes under. What's Yeshua do? Ah, no, come here. Pulls Peter out of the chaotic waters and sets him back up. You have little faith. Come on. I love that because that's a testimony ofwhat our King does.

That's a testimony of what our King will do. That's a testimony. We're going to look in scripture about how Yeshua will over has already overcome death and the weight of that. We're going to talk a lot about different things over the next three parts. And if you were unprepared for me to speak about this subject today, I apologize. I truly do. Um, I'm still nervous about the things I'm going to be speaking about over the next couple of weeks. Um, Some of my mentors have advised me, don't even go there, Matthew. But it's in the scriptures. And I don't feel like we can just ignore certain things in the scriptures.

Especially as big as death. We're going to be speaking a lot about history. And when I say that, a lot of people look at the Bible and they say, okay... Everything in this Bible is the word of truth. I agree. Everything is accurate. I agree. Everything is from the Lord. I agree. So with this book alone, I can understand everything about the Bible itself. I disagree. The Bible was written not to us, but for us. But it did not come with the commentary of all of the prophets, of the ancient Israelites, of the disciples, and of all the cultures of Israel in between. That understood the culture, the language, and the context of the things that were being written.

And so you guys know what I do. I analyze the surrounding kingdoms of Israel. And I see if I can find any comparison notes. Any types of things that compare from the Babylonians, Mesopotamians, Egyptians to ancient Israel or what scripture says. Okay? Sometimes I find a lot of cool stuff and it ends up being a key that unlocks something. Things that were a mystery to me. A great example, Yom Kippur, the day of atonement. It's the day when all of our sins are forgiven and washed away, right? No, none to do with that, right? Yom Kippur is the day that the filth that your sin caused on God's tabernacle was washed away.

The evidence against you was washed away so that you were clean before God. How do we know this? Well, we look at the Babylonians. Babylonians had a Yom Kippur service. It was almost identical to Israel's. Now, they did it for a different God. There's a bunch of heathens. They're going to hell, yada, yada. But they understood how things worked in a temple setting, right? Everyone had a little piece of the puzzle because in the beginning, everybody had the puzzle, right? So everyone started going their own ways. The Hittites had a Yom Kippur service, very similar to Israel's. Theirs is a little bit more graphic with the blood.

They didn't just sprinkle a little bit. They get the whole goat. But regardless, they did it for the same reason that Israel did in Leviticus, to cleanse the tabernacle. the sins by the priests and the sins of the people, that it would be purged out and sent into exile. Now do I think that their gods are legitimate? Absolutely not. But I can find second and third witnesses to Scripture and understand the surrounding kingdoms of Israel. People understood how stuff worked, even if they were pagans. Necromancy. Talking to the dead? We might get into that in the next two weeks. Maybe. I haven't decided if I'm going to go there yet.

Believers weren't allowed to talk to the dead. Unbelievers obviously knew how. The pagans knew how stuff worked. And so sometimes if we look at the pagan nations, we can try to figure out why God banned certain things. What were the mechanics of Israel? What were they doing that was so wrong in God's eyes? So on and so forth, right? And so all that being said, over during the duration of the series, we will be speaking about the afterlife concepts of other nations and contrasting with what Scripture says. Some of them may be similar. Some of them most aren't. Which is very rare because if you look at ancient Canaan, Egypt, the Hittites, Mesopotamia, Babylon, you would expect at least one of them to have the same ideas in afterlife that ancient Israel did.

These are all really far out there from what Israel seemed to believe in the Tanakh and the Old Testament. Maybe we'll have to look further out at other cultures more west to see something like that. And so the Greeks, anybody ever heard of the myth of Ur? Everybody say Ur. That's when you get mad at your spouse. That's what you say. Mithiver is found written in the writings of Plato, a great Greek philosopher who built one of the major western schools in Athens that affected all of western society with the spear tip of cutting edge philosophy. Plato was a smart guy. One of his main students, you may know him, was Aristotle.

So in his writings of the Republic, part one, section 614 to 621, he He's writing a story, he's recounting a story of his mentor, Socrates. You ever heard of Socrates? That guy was cool. Socrates? Socrates. Socrates. That guy was cool. Okay? And he's talking to a guy, Glaucon, about the idea of an immortal soul in Greece. Now, the Greeks, they believed in lots of gods, all kinds of stuff, yadda yadda. But he tells him about a story of a guy named Ur. Now, Ur was a famous warrior. He was a brave warrior, and he was fighting in battle with hundreds of other guys. And guess what? He went to go block someone, and he missed, and he got stabbed, and he died.

The end, right? And so he's laying out in the fields of battle for like 10 days, you know, because it's not like nowadays you just send an ambulance out and pick up the soldiers. You got to get the camels out there. We got to go pick up the dead. And it takes a little while. And so they go out there and ten days later they're loading all the bodies from battle up and they get Er's body and they throw him on the back of the truck and they notice his body is not really decomposing like the rest of the soldiers. Pulse? Nope. Give him a little pinch? Nope. Tickle feet? Nothing. He's dead? He's dead. A couple days later they have him on his funerary pyre.

They're going to burn him basically. Fixing to light the fire to burn him away and he wakes up. He turns over and says, "Guys, don't burn me bro, right? Guys, let me tell you about what I just experienced in the afterlife." Right? And so Ur begins to recount what he experienced. And he says that he went to a place where there were many judges. And there were two chasms, two if you will, portals that go up to heaven. And there were two chasms or portals that go down into the depths of the earth. And there were judges that sit there. And they told him to come and to stand there and just wait. And the people are coming down from heaven, and they're walking out, and they're talking about how wonderful this heavenly realm is.

We got these great feelings. We're so happy. It was just beautiful. And then you got these other guys coming up from the depths of the earth, dirty, scratched up, miserable, talking about the horrors of what they found. And the guys from heaven and the guys from the depths of the earth were discussing all the things they saw. Now, it goes over to... Goes over to the judges and is like listen. What's going on here? What are these guys? I hadn't read about this in the books well These are the fates of those who are good people in the world and that die if you're a good person in the world You're a moral person you treat those who are poor with good and kind to others merciful so on and so forth You get to go to heaven for a thousand years and you get to hang out for a thousand years in this beautiful place but if you're a murderer and adulterer main criminal then you need to pay back ten times your lifespan of the things that you did to everyone on earth.

So you get sent down to the depths of the earth, right? So go to hell, go to heaven, but only for a thousand years. And then after a thousand years, you've paid back your debt or you've received your reward and you sink back up and then you start walking. For days you start walking next to the river of Lethe, the river of forgetfulness. We'll get to that in a minute. And so Plato's recording all this big story. And Ur finally says, after days of walking in this beautiful field with all these souls that had just paid back, you know, gotten their reward and everything, they go to this place and they're handed out lottery tickets.

Powerball, right? They're handed out lottery tokens. And with each lottery token, you're called. Number three, come up to the judges. So you come up to the judges. Number four, come up. And when your token is called, you go up to the front and and you get these little sample packs. You ever had like a demo of like perfume or something? Just a little sample pack you could spray on. If you want to commit to it, then you get the whole bottle. You get these sample packs of lives on the earth. And you can pick, sniff them, taste them a little bit. This is going to be a great ruler. This is going to be a farmer.

This is going to be a king. This is going to be a humble guy. Or you could be an animal. This is going to be an animal. You want to be a camel? Here's a camel. Here's a dog. And so you get to choose the life that you're going to be sent back into earth to fulfill. So there was a man from heaven who had never tasted the destruction of hell before. And he walked up, as this is around like 400 BCE. This is really like complex what they believed. So he got up and he saw a life of a mighty dictator. I've been a good gal these years. I deserve a little bit of power. Having no recollection of what might happen if he is an immoral person.

I choose this one. Boom! You have chosen. So he rips the packet open, starts looking a little bit closer, realizes that he's going to be a mighty ruler in the next world, but he's destined to eat his own children and suffer near the end of his life greatly. No refunds. Come on! Those people who came up, the souls who came up, who lived very complicated lives, maybe like event coordinators and such, They just wanted a peaceful life and the next life. So they might choose the lowly life of a cow, a horse, something nice, just kind of graze all day. Silkworm, that'd be pretty cool, just hang upside down and poop silk all day.

That'd be awesome. Animals were there too, the souls of animals. They would choose to be humans. And this huge cycle would begin again with people being reincarnated Either they're leaving a good life or a bad life. Before you're sent back to the body, you have to turn and you have to go back to this river of forgetfulness and you got to take a big old cup of this water. All right, fixing to go back as a horse or as a dictator. You drink the water and you forget everything of your past life. You forget who you are. You forget all emotions. You forget everything. And you were sent back into the womb of your next life.

I think all that's a load of crock. Do I have the quote? I think I have the quote. Did I put it in here? Oh wow, I didn't, did I? There's a quote of this story in Plato's Republic and it says, "This tale, if you believe it, will save you." In other words, this tale, if you believe it, you'll live a good life and you'll be happy in the afterlife. What he's saying is that if you believe something about the afterlife, it will help you be a better person in this world. It will be used to control certain people, but it'll help you be an all-around more person. So that's why he was pushing this story. Because if you're bad, you're going to spend a thousand years in hell.

It's going to suck. If you're good, you get to go to heaven for a thousand years and then hopefully repeat goodness, right? It's amazing what we like to make up just to make ourselves feel better about the decisions that we have in our life. Greeks, very knowledge-oriented. You could appease the gods, but you also want a reward after you die, right? So you go to heaven if you're a good person. serving the gods the way that they want you to serve them in Greece isn't enough. It's you don't want to be punished, you want reward, so you're going to live a good life. And this is what the Greeks believed.

Socrates, he was a pretty cool guy. So near the end of his life, he was accused by 400 of his peers and the judges of Athens for promoting a monotheism, if you will, a greater power, rejecting the gods of Athens and therefore corrupting the culture of Athens. Everybody still with me? Is this at least kind of interesting? Oh, yeah. And so he had four hours to state his case, and then his witnesses against him had four hours to state their case, right? Can you imagine? Ancient Greece, man, very legalistic. So he stated his case, and then the witnesses came up, and they stated their case, and the votes against him were 280 versus 220 to let him free.

He was guilty. Punishable by death. They left it up to him. "Alright, man. You're a great asset to our society. We will let you choose your punishment. How do you want to die?" "Beheading. Want to get stabbed. Fire in squad. What?" He could have asked for exile and lived. He could have, but he said, "Give me some of that hemlock. Poison. Drink the poison."

"Alright. It's done. Nice knowing you." "One of the greatest minds in all of the history of the earth. Google this guy." By his own people. "Go drink poison. Go on. Get out of our faces." So he went back to his jail cell. He had a few of his peers with him. And he's talking to the guard, and he's all slick. He's like, so I'm going to drink this, right? Yes, sir. That's what you got to do. How do I know if it's working, this poison? Well, your legs will begin to get a little stiff, and then you just lay down, and the end will come. All right. Alright, he's like, "How long do I have to drink it?" "We give ample time for you to sip on it if you don't want to, you know."

"I mean, you gotta drink it within like the next, you know, six hours, but if you want to sip on the cup, you know." He takes it. Boom! Like a shot. Smiles. "Alright then, well..." Before he takes it actually, he looks at the jailer, he's like, "Should we toast anybody with this?" "Can I offer, can I, can I put this drink in honor of somebody?" "Old man, big beard!" to the blessings of the gods and the rewards that I shall receive in heaven. At least I hope that is what it will be, so may it be. And he spends the next several hours of his life teaching his students, his pupils, about the idea of an immortal soul.

While he's walking, his legs start to get a little heavy. I've got to lay down, guys. Hold on. So he lays down. And as the jailer comes in, he's feeling his legs. Do you feel this? Kind of. He starts talking. Do you feel this? No, I don't feel that. Calves. Do you feel this? No. No. Do you feel this? Hey! Hey! Hey! And he was gone. Wow. This is an amazing story about the agenda of the afterlife and what Greeks believe. Anybody ever seen this before? Ancient Egypt? So this is the mural that depicts the afterlife, at least in one of the kingdom generations in ancient Egypt. I believe it's on display in the British Museum in London.

But this depicts a story starting right here, and it goes from there, and then it goes from here to here. And it depicts the story, I don't remember if it was a pharaoh named Hunifer, Just a regular guy. Anyway, this guy right here in white is named Juniper and he dies. And he's in the courtroom of Osiris, this guy over here. Osiris is the god of the dead. Notice that he's green? This is what happens when you die. You turn a little green, so he's green. Right? And so, Juniper has to sit in front of the, on here it's 14 or 15, but manuscripts say 42, judges of the afterlife. And they have to recount all the things that you did wrong in your life and the righteous things that you did in your life, right?

Right? And then if you got past them, you would go down here. Now, Anubis, the protector of the dead here, is leading Hanifer to this big old scale. Now, this is where things get freaky. Okay? So there's this big old scale here, and you'll notice this little head up here. That's Maat. She is the god of justice. She has a feather on her head, right? Her feather from her head is taken out, and it's placed on... I can't see it. Which is it? This side right here, I believe. On one side of the scale. Okay? And Huneper's heart is taken and placed on the other side. Now, if the scale tips and his heart weighs more than the feather of justice and righteousness from Maat, then Amit, this little freak of nature right here, he's a crocodile, hippopotamus, wolf, hybrid creature, right?

He's going to eat his heart. Nom, nom, nom. Okay? You don't want that to happen. But... If the feather is the same weight or heavier than his heart, then it's put away. Go on. No food for you today. And he's led by Animus over and introduced to Osiris and Hathor and Isis over here behind him. And he gets to go on basically into the heavenly place. Now this really, in the older kingdoms of Egypt, was only available for the pharaohs. Right? Only pharaohs got to go through this. If you was a lay person... You just die. I don't know. And then as the newer kingdoms of Egypt came around, they started to adjust.

The theory goes that Osiris, the great god of the dead, allowed it for even the common folks to come to him in the afterlife. I love this. You want to see the funniest thing about this? It's this guy, Thoth. Do you know what Thoth is doing? He's a scribe. Scribes are pretty common in the Near East. Why is that funny? Because the gods are illiterate and they need to hire a scribe to write down everything for them. I think that's funny. Our God wrote in the tablets. He was literate, you know what I mean? God's Egypt can't even read and write. They gotta have this little bird guy to write it for them.

That's just funny. This is what Egypt believed happened when you die. More left. It shifted. It shifted throughout the old, middle, and new kingdoms of Egypt. Just like I'll present to you Israel's did. Just a little bit. Slightly. But look at what we do. Look at what kingdoms do because of the topic of afterlife. Sometimes we didn't make junk up, make ourselves feel better. Sometimes the governing leaders make stuff up so that they can control the people, right? Don't rob graves. If you rob graves, you'll be sent into the deepest, darkest places of hell in Egyptian mythology. Because the rich didn't want their graves robbed, so they made it like a capital punishment in hell for you to rob graves.

I'm just going to eat you up. Afterlife is a very... Very, very heavy subject. Remember when I was talking about how Israel may have been influenced. Now, not changed their beliefs, but influenced based on the culture they were in. Israel got around in a lot of different nations. They were in Egypt for a couple hundred years. They were in Babylon for over 70 years. Northern tribes went out to Assyria, yada yada. They were introduced to Roman culture and they're from the Greeks for a long time, Greek and Roman culture. Israel was engulfed with every other culture on earth at all times. 10% of the Roman Empire was Jewish.

Not necessarily by blood, but by converts as well. Some Roman ideas stuck to first century Judaism. Some of Plato's ideas are written in Jewish literature. It happens. The idea of weighing your heart is also in the Tanakh, in Proverbs 13. 16.2, all the person's ways seem pure to them, but motives are weighed by Yahweh. That's a bad translation. What was there is heart. The heart is weighed by Yahweh. The heart is weighed by the Lord. It's true. Scripture tells us you'll be judged, right, from all the things and said and did in this world. Over time, people altered their perception of the afterlife to endure their fears of death and further post-death.

What's going to happen to us after we die? This is where the modern concept of heaven comes into play. You guys ready to be upset? Maybe. Heaven, right? It's a wonderful place when you die. You get to go up in space, past our clouds into space into another set of clouds, and you get your own real estate on a cloud. It's really cool. And you get your own, like, mariachi angel playing his harp or whatnot. And it's blissful. It's absolutely wonderful. It's peaceful. And you get to remain here with God for all of eternity, right? And some of the attributes about heaven are what it has a pearly gates, right?

St. Peter's sitting up there ready to let you in, buddy, right? Pearly gates. The streets are made of gold so much so like glass. And anyone whose name is written in the Lamb's book of life, they get to get into heaven, right? This is what scripture says. In Revelations, that's where we get it. Oh, well, I'm going to talk about this guy, Alex Malarkey. You guys know who he is? He was a kid in 2004 that got in a car accident, and he was in a coma, I think, for six months. And when he woke from his coma, he was, I can't wait to tell you guys what I experienced, just like the myth of Ur. And actually, the word myth is the account of Ur, because it wasn't viewed as a myth.

It was viewed as reality. And so this kid Alex, young Alex, talked about how he went to heaven, and he met Jesus, and he got to hang out with the angels, and it was so beautiful. But Jesus sent him back to earth so that he could tell others about heaven. In 2014, by that time they made TV shows about him, they had made books, the kid who went to heaven recounting his story even though it was very embellished apart from the family's wishes and what he actually gave his testimony about. Finally in 2014, Alex wrote the book publishing company and said, "Listen guys, I'm sorry, I never went to heaven. I just made it up because I thought I would get some attention about going to heaven.

If people want to know what heaven's like, they need to read the Bible. They don't need to come to me, they don't need to listen to me, I'm just a kid that wanted attention." Everything you need to know is in the Bible. That's what you should be focusing on. Not someone who allegedly came, woke up and went to heaven. Courageous kid. When I was taught about streets of gold... It was based in scripture in Revelations 21, right? Starting at verse 21 and 27. The 12 gates were 12 pearls, pearly gates. Each gate was made out of a single pearl. It's a big old pearl. The great street of the city was pure gold like transparent glass, right?

We're going for heaven. Nothing impure will ever enter it, nor will anyone who does not does what is shameful or deceitful, but only those whose names are written in the Lamb's book of life. Amen. We're going to heaven. But if we go back to the beginning of the chapter... Notice that this is speaking about the world to come when new heavens, new worlds. Look what is eliminated from the new earth. The sea. Right? Right? And they had 12 gates around it, and the 12 gates were made as pearls, and nothing impure would be able to enter it, and they had streets of gold. Whoa, that's the New Jerusalem. That's not heaven.

That's the New Jerusalem that comes out of the sky from heaven. Well, what does heaven look like? Oh, man, they're basically the same thing. No, they're not the same thing. New Jerusalem's a big city that comes out of heaven, comes to earth. After the new earth and new heaven is made, John 3, 13, no one has ever gone into heaven except the one who came from heaven, the Son of Man. Hate to break it to you guys. We don't go to heaven. As much as I wanted my dad to be in heaven, it did not take me long to come back to reality and be like, ah, that's nowhere in scripture. There's a few verses that may allude to it that we can build a dogma out of, but all of the Tanakh, no one ever goes to heaven.

Oh, Enoch and Elijah, two isolated incidents. Regardless, everyone else, King David, can go to heaven. Yeshua says, no one's ever been to heaven except for me. John 14, 6, Yeshua answered, I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one gets to heaven except through me. I've heard that verse spoken like that before. No man gets to the Father. No man comes in a covenant with the Father. No man knows about the Father and the love of the Father, the mercy of the Father, the graciousness of the Father, except through me. Nothing to do with heaven. But heaven's the point. No, the point is for you to be a servant of the King.

John 5, 28. Do not be amazed at this, for the time is coming when all who are in their graves, where are they? Graves, will hear his voice and come out. Living dead. Those who have done good will rise to live, and those who have done evil will rise to be condemned. That's what Daniel 12, 2 says. Those who sleep in the dust of the earth will rise. She was speaking about people who are dead and they're in the ground. They're not in heaven. Matthew 5, 5, blessed are the meek for they will inherit heaven. They're going to inherit the earth. It's all about the earth. It's all about this place. That's where Adam was.

Eve was. That's where God's plan for us was. And originally it's going to remake the earth, right? Psalms 37, 29, the righteous will inherit the land and dwell in it forever. Guys, we don't go to heaven. Eventually after the resurrection, most important thing in scripture, we're going to come back here and there's not going to be a sea that makes us tremble anymore. It's going to be taken away. And the earth will be remade as the glory of God's abode, just like it was in the beginning. And it will be our inheritance as believers. 2 Peter 3.13, But in keeping with this promise, we are looking forward to a new heaven, or a renewed, kynos, renewed heaven and a renewed earth where the righteous dwell.

Everything's going to be remade. 1st, 2nd, 3rd heavens, allegedly, at least the 1st. We're going to talk a lot about cosmology next week, and it will probably be a controversial subject, but that's okay. But Yeshua went to heaven when he died, right? He had to have. Remember when he got up, Miriam came, she saw him, looked like a gardener, so she rushed to him. Master! Rabbi! Right? He's in his renewed body, and he just rose from the dead. The girl wants to hug him. Don't touch me, woman! Yeshua said, for I have not yet ascended to my father. But go, find my brothers and tell them that I am ascending to my father and your father, to my God and your God soon.

Yeshua was dead for three days. He didn't go to heaven. Where did he go?He's going to heaven. Okay. Pretty cool. Matthew 12, 40. The Pharisees are asking for a sign that he's the Mashiach. What's going to happen? Tell us. And then what's Yeshua refer back to? He refers back to Jonah. Of all He refers back to Jonah. Why? Because Jonah was swallowed by a whale and spit up on the seashore, right? To go to Nineveh. Do we ever actually think about all of the elements that play into that? He was on a boat and the waters got rough and the wind started blowing. The chaos was abounding. So they tossed Jonah into the water and he was swallowed by a whale and taken to the depths of the sea in the belly of the whale.

And three days later, he came out of the water. This is afterlife. This is what it's speaking about. And so Yeshua tells the Pharisees, he says, for as Jonah was in the belly of the great fish for three days and three nights, so I, the son of man, will be in the heart of the earth for three days and three nights. The heart of the earth. Yeshua wasn't buried, guys. Do you realize that? He didn't stick him in a hole and put dirt on top of him. Put him in a cave and rolled a stone over him. What does it mean, the heart of the earth? We're going to be speaking about that next week. The abyss below the waters.

What is this place called Sheol that scripture talks so much about? Are we conscious? Are we not? How about the prophecies? All the prophets in the Tanakh didn't go to heaven, right? Remember Samuel? Samuel? You have Saul going to the witch of Endor? Conjure up Samuel. So she pulled Samuel out of heaven. No. She says, I see Elohim. I see mighty ones coming up and here's Samuel among them. Up from where? From the heart of the earth. about, oh yeah, Isaiah 26, 19, Isaiah speaking, your dead men shall live together with my dead body. They shall arise, awake and seeing that you will dwell in the dust for your due is as the due of herbs and the earth shall cast out its dead.

The earth will cast out its dead. I would impress on you that when it's speaking about the earth casting out its dead, it's speaking more about body. It's not, it's speaking about more than just your body. It's not talking about six feet under, it's talking about in the abyss of the earth. About King David. Man after God's own heart, right? Had to have went to heaven. Acts chapter 2. I intentionally did not go into a lot of the topics on this part one of this series. because I wanted to lay a foundation before I start talking about things that at least seemed hard for me to digest. Maybe not for you when we look at scripture, but I wanted to lay a foundation that next week we can go straight in and we can dive deep into the scriptures.

We can talk about what happens after we die according to the scriptures. Don't go to heaven. Where do we go to hell? I could argue both ways technically, but you'll learn about that next week. I want you guys to be prepared if you're going to come to the message next week and then part three, which will be two weeks after that. that we will be discussing some things that will be hard to swallow. I'm going to use Scripture to back everything up that I'm going to be saying. And I'm going to be looking at cultures outside of the Near East. I'm going to be looking over in Africa, of all places, near the Late Bronze Age and Early Iron Age.

People don't look over in Africa. They had a lot of parallels to Israel to help us kind of unlock maybe what the mindset was to early Israelites in the afterlife. And we're going to look at Scripture. And we're going to see just what Scripture says. What hope do we have in the afterlife, if any? It may just suck. I mean, I'm just being straightforward with you. But you guys know me better than that. So, where is Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob right now? Where are the prophets? Where are the saints? Where are the disciples? Where do we go when we die? What is it like there? Mowry clay sinking into waters?

What does Molech have to do with it? The god Molech that people would sacrifice their children to? Yeah, he's a prototype of Santa Claus. No, he's not. I'm sorry if I ever taught anything remotely close to that. He is not. We can use scripture and define what the rabbis didn't tell us about Molech, what they made up about Molech.

Who was Molech and what does he have to do with the afterlife? And what is the significance of being cut off from your people when Torah states that? If you do certain things, especially in the code of holiness in Leviticus, God says, and you will be cut off from amongst your people. Some people just be stoned, burned at the stake. Other people will just be cut off. Could that be an afterlife indicator? We'll find out next week. The one thing that we do know for sure, based on this part one of this study, is that there will be a resurrection and only those who believe in Messiah, Yeshua, as the Son of God, the only ones who proclaim that he is our King, the only ones that believe in their heart and confess with their mouth that God raised him from the dead, they will be the ones that are resurrected to inherit the earth under God's reign.

If you have never said that vow in your life in Romans 10, if you have never confessed Yeshua as your master, as your king to serve him, if you've never confessed that you believe God raised him from the dead, if you want to be part of this family, if you want to be part of this vow, if you want to be part of the inheritance of earth, please see me afterwards. I'd love to be a part of the rest of your life. Amen?