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Below is an article from Gald Tidings Magazine.  If you would like a copy of this FREE monthly magazine published by the Christadelphians then please please e-mail Cilla Palmer at cilla@gladtidings.fsnet.co.uk

"Gone Fishing"

Do you ever feel the need to get away from all the pressing problems, and all the pressures, and just go away?  To leave one of those notices on you office door, or on the front door of your house, which tells everyone that you're not available?

Too Accessible
Nowadays it's harder to get away.  Mobile phones, pagers, and laptop computers make people accessible even in previously remote places - like mountain tops, or deep ravines.  That can be a good thing, of course, but it can mean that we seldom, if ever, find uninterrupted time to think seriously.  And we all need time to do that.

Jesus was the Son of God and he was very much on his father's wavelength.  It was once said of him that he loved to do his Father's will and to keep His commandments.  In a remarkable prediction about the coming Servant of God, written more than 500 years before Jesus was born of Mary, Isaiah prophesied this about the attitude Jesus would adopt:

        "The Lord God....awakens me morning by morning, he awakens my ear to hear as the learned.
         The Lord God has opened my ear; and I was not rebellious, nor did I turn away.  I gave my
         back to those who struck me, and my cheeks to those who plucked out the beard; I did not
         hide my face from shame and spitting.  For the Lord God will help me."  Isaiah 50:4-7.

This Servant would always be accessible to God; always willing to listen; always keen to obey - even if it meant suffering and scorn; always trusting in his Father's loving care and help.  Jesus gave us the perfect example, in this as in everything in life, of how to keep in touch with God in prayer.

Gone Fishing
We need to get away, to think things through, but we musn't stay away.  Some young men once left rural Galilee for Jerusalem, where they had been deeply impressed.  The time came for them to return home, back to work with their fathers in the fishing business which supported them and their families.  They must have reflected, back in their home villages, on the remarkable teaching they had heard and the huge claims that were made by, and about, the thirty year old Rabbi called 'Jesus' whom they had encountered.

Then, one day, he turned up on the shore of the lake where they worked (some of them were fishing, and others were mending their nets at the time), and issued an invitation that must have challenged them enormously.

        "Now Jesus, walking by the Sea of Galilee, saw two brothers, Simon called Peter, and Andrew
         his brother, casting a net into the sea; for they were fishermen.  And he said to them 'Follow
         Me, and I will make you fishers of men.'"

Follow Me
It was one of those life-changing moments, and it is evident from what happened next that they had spent their times of reflection profitably.  Their minds were already made up, for their instant response is carefully recorded:

        "They immediately left their nets and followed him."  (Matthew 4:18-20)

Again, it has to be the same for us.  We must take time out to think important things through, but you can't think forever.  There is a time for decision and for decisive action.  These are exciting days in which we are now living, on the brink of the coming of Jesus to earth, days which challenge all his would-be followers.  For he still issues the age-old invitation:  "Follow me".

Owen Tecwyn Morgan
(Editor of Glad Tidings)

Heaven, Hell or Somewhere else?

In this article Mark Sawyer examines our prospects of living prospects of living forever and begins by enquiring whether we are mortal or immortal by nature.  If you want to know what your prospects are for surviving death and ending up in a better place, this is an article you need to tread.  But be prepared to be surprised.

Are you immortal?

Does the Bible teach of the soul?  It may surprise you to know that it certainly doesn't and that this has been frankly admitted by numerous theologians.  It's not just the opinion of the Christadelphians, although we have been completely unable to find that teaching in the Bible.

Here are a few quotes from religious writers and thinkers, none of them Christadelphian, before we see what the Bible teaches about what happens to us when we die and what the true hope of life after death really is.

Dr F S M Bennett former Dean of Chester wrote:

            'It was (Augustine) who took Plato's doctrine of the inherent immortality of the soul, disengaged it from ideas of reincarnation
            and gained for it the general credence which it has held to his day..... No doctrine of the natural or unconditional immortality
            of a part or nucleus of the human organism, called 'soul', has any right of place within the precinct of revealed Christian truth.'

The late Bishop Gore in his work, The Epistle to the Romans, wrote:

            '...the doctrine of the necessary immortality or indestructibility of each human soul, as stated for instance by Augustine or
            Aquinas....was no part the original Christian message... It was rather a speculation of Platonism taking possession of the
            Church.'

A report commissioned by the Archbishops of Canterbury and York was published in 1945 entitled 'Towards the Conversion of England' concluded:

            'The idea of the inherent indestructibility of the human soul (or consciousness) owes its origin to Greek, not to Bible sources.
            The central theme of the New Testament is eternal life, not for anybody and everybody, but for believers in Christ as risen
            from the dead.'

And a more recent admission reported by The Times newspaper, in Oct 2003, in a book review of 'Far All the Saints', by Dr Tom Wright, currently the Bishop of Durham, reads;

            'Dr Wright says the Anglicans have drifted into a 'muddle and a mess' over what happens to people after they die.  They have
            put together 'bits and pieces' of traditions, ideas and practises and created a 'fudge' around the eschatological concepts of
            death, judgement, heaven and hell....The concept of the soul as a pre-existent and immortal entity has little basis in the
            New Testament and is instead derived from the teachings of Plato.  Dr Wright argues that, in the modern age, a loss of
            confidence in Biblical promises along with the development of liberal theologies has led to a belief on a sort of universal
            salvation for all, with everyone ending up at a final destination, although few seem to be clear what that destination is.'

What startling admissions these are!  The Bible, they admit, does not teach the immortality of the human soul or universal salvation.  Nor does it allow for a class of people who are born wicked or immortal.  So, what does the Bible teach about the state of Death?

What is Death?

The Bible teaches that death is a state of unconscious oblivion.  In Genesis we read that the sentence of death passed upon Adam and Eve meant returning to the dust of the ground.

            Gen 3.19; 'In the sweat of your face you will eat bread until you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for dust
            you are, and to dust you shall return.'

This was a punishment because of wrong doing in the Garden of Eden.  It was not a reward which would enable them to start a new life in Heaven, as some people think death to be.  The 'breath of life' from God, which had energized their bodies, was to be withdrawn.

Let's be clear about this. The 'breath of life' belongs to God, not to man.  With it, mankind lives.  When God withdraws it we die.  Without that life-force, a living soul or being becomes a dead soul or being.  The Bible account of Creation does not say that God breathed into man a living soul, let alone an ever-living soul.  Man became a soul or being.  Equally clearly, the 'breath of life' without the body is certainly not a 'soul'.  Man was not created an ever-living being nor did he have an immortal element implanted within him.
so, death was not to be the gateway to further life, but a punishment for disobedience.

What about us?

Where do we stand in relation to this law of God by which death follows as a consequence of sin?  Paul's letter to the Romans shows that we inherit Adam and Eve's mortality and their tendency to sin, though not their guilt (Romans 3:23, 5:12 and 6:23).  We all die, not only because we are all mortal, but because we all sin. Sin, like an employer, pays it's wages.  As Paul puts it : 'The wages of Sin is death.'  Romans 6:23.

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