What happens when I die and go to the afterlife?

I am atheist, so do Christians think I will go straight to hell?

What if I realize upon seeing St. Peter and the Pearly Gates that Christianity was right and quickly pray for forgiveness and accept Jesus into my heart?

I mean, I am open minded. I want to survive my death, but there are so many contradictory ways to do so.

Do I absolutely HAVE to pick the right god in this life? Do you think if I just stayed open minded, the real deity will just give me a quick chance to convert? Seems only fair since manmade religion is so imperfect.

 

Basically, in this life, you need to surrender to Christ and believe in His work on the cross. Once you die, it will be too late. Even in this life, many repeat a prayer asking Jesus into their heart, but this is nowhere found in scripture. Many pastors everywhere are teaching false doctrines and heresies leading people astray. This includes teaching lacking in repentance. They will lead people to repeat a superstitious prayer about asking Jesus into their heart, declare them a new member of God's family and sent back into the world with no follow up or direction. They end up looking like the world and acting like the world because they still are of the world after a shallow false conversion. These teachers for leading people astray will be judged the harshest by God. Repent and believe the Gospel!

Acts 11:18 18 When they heard these things they fell silent. And they glorified God, saying, “Then to the Gentiles also God has granted repentance that leads to life.”

Jesus said, "Repent and believe in the gospel" (Mark 1:15). Repentance begins with a recognition and confession that what God says is true: He will not excuse the guilty, we are all sinners, & Christ has died for our sins. A genuine recognition of our sinfulness and guilt will also lead to genuine sorrow, shame and even hatred for what we have done. Apparent sincerity of confession alone is never definite evidence of genuine repentance. It must be accompanied by a turning away from sin. One must put their faith in Jesus alone for salvation. Jesus said, "My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me" (John 10:27). This is not just a one time prayer but a whole new lifestyle. Repent and believe the good news today, because the truth is - YOU MAY NOT HAVE TOMORROW!

We all have a sin nature, we sin, and sin is offensive, grievous, and detestable to God. The Bible says to justify evil is an abomination (Proverbs 17:5). To maintain His justice and holiness, He would be perfectly right and it would be perfectly acceptable to throw us all into Hell. However, God is love. Thus, He provided a way to maintain His holiness and forgive us of our sins. Jesus Christ lived the life we could not live, which was completely in keeping the will and laws of God. Being fully God and fully man, he hung on the cross and all our sin was imputed onto Him as the Father's wrath toward sin was poured out onto Christ. He absorbed God's wrath. It took someone fully man to justify man and it took someone fully God to be able to endure the wrath. Our sins were imputed onto Him and His righteousness was imputed onto those who repent and believe the Gospel. When you initially repent and surrender to God through Christ, this is your justification as Christ paid the penalty for those who repent and believe. Then, walk with God in a relationship with Him and there is daily repentance in living a life in this relationship. This is sanctification.

Again, the depravity of man and the wrath of God has shown the need for the Savior. God can not be just and excuse or ignore sin. Mankind is morally depraved and deserving of Hell. God is not obligated to save us and would be perfectly just in condemning all of mankind to Hell. A third of the angels were swept from Heaven, thus, they became demons and they have no chance at salvation. In the same way, if mankind had no chance, God would still be just and Holy. Yet, since God is love, He desires to save us.

To maintain His holiness and justice and to forgive us, God took His wrath out toward sin on Christ. Christ lived the life we cannot and died the death we deserve. He drank the full cup of God's wrath on the cross as this wrath was poured out on our sin and filth which was imputed onto the One who knew know sin. Thus, His righteousness was imputed onto believers who have faith and repentance. Our righteousness and right standing before God is Jesus Christ, the only Name in which one can be saved.

In our sanctification, we need to be examining ourselves to see if we are in the faith mentioned in 2 Corinthians 13:5-6. 5 Examine yourselves, to see whether you are in the faith. Test yourselves. Or do you not realize this about yourselves, that Jesus Christ is in you?—unless indeed you fail to meet the test! 6 I hope you will find out that we have not failed the test.

(I John 2:15-17)15 Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. 16 For all that is in the world—the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride of life—is not from the Father but is from the world. 17 And the world is passing away along with its desires, but whoever does the will of God abides forever. Also about how in 1 John, the scripture says we know we love God if we obey His commands and walk in godliness.

(1John 2:1-6) My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. 2 He is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world. 3 And by this we know that we have come to know him, if we keep his commandments. 4 Whoever says “I know him” but does not keep his commandments is a liar, and the truth is not in him, 5 but whoever keeps his word, in him truly the love of God is perfected. By this we may know that we are in him: 6 whoever says he abides in him ought to walk in the same way in which he walked.

This is not sinless perfection as the Greek word translated to walk means to walk in a style of life. The scripture also says if we say we have no sin we make God out to be a liar.

(1 John 1:8-10) 8 If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. 9 If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. 10 If we say we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us.

So, we are no longer in a state of sin, embracing sin and loving sin. We are in a style of life of walking with God, hating sin, knowing sin is wrong, and desiring to be with God. When we do sin, we feel the guilt and the pain as we have been convicted by the Holy Spirit and we are led to repentance.

 

Here is a good video...

[video=youtube;eIA5ks1pKho]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eIA5ks1pKho[/video]

 

Here is the whole sermon... Repent and Believe
http://www.heartcrymissionary.com/mediaPlayer/#sermonaudio/125

 

Your pet dog is waiting for you in ELYSIUM and will wag his tail and run to you when you go to him.

 

There are two schools of thought among christians about the afterlife.

The most popular is the grace argument which states that every person is undeserving of heaven and can only get there through Gods grace. This is the basic reason for the need of faith and repentance. If you don't believe in God how can you ask him to forgive and save you from your deserved fate?

The other argument is much less popular, the works argument. (Google Pelagius and St Augustine if you want a better description of the argument.) This argument states that Gods laws are innate within every person. People are neither good nor evil, but choose to follow gods path or not. So if, through your actions you have lived in adherence to Gods innate will, the simple revelation of the real God will save you from eternal torment.

The works argument is gaining steam again in Catholicism, but is still not openly accepted doctrine. Pelagius was convicted of heresy btw.

As far as what heaven is who knows? Personally I'm not so sure that dissolving into nothingness would be all that bad of a heaven.

 

Maytag wrote: I am atheist, so do Christians think I will go straight to hell?

Granny says tell `em not to bury ya in a suit...

... `cause den you'd be all dressed up...

... with no place to go."

 

Not all Christians believe the same thing. Some believe you will get a do-over in purgatory, and if you do not be all knees to chin, then you just stop existing.

 

IMO, you will be annihilated in the lake of fire at the second death. You can't be a Christian and believe there is salvation through anyone other than Jesus. I far as I know we have no difinitive proof of God or that Jesus is a savior, we are left to have faith.

I see no reason to have faith in sadistic beings such as satan or a mythical God that tortures non-believers for eternity. I have faith in a righteous god that offers heaven or destruction.

 

Here's how it started a long long time ago when thunder and lightening and other natural phenomenon were unexplained and feared.
A group of con artists got together and dressed up in costumes. They managed to convince some ordinary superstitious people that their crappy lives will get a lot better after death if only they will believe in, and financially contribute to their organization, which they called a church. The head man, he's the one with the special expensive bling costume and sometimes a ridiculous hat, leads them all in talking to someone/something that cannot be seen or heard. They got a few folk tales together and put them in a big book, after careful censorship of course, and constantly refer to this book, and assure the superstitious folk that every word is true. All they have to do for this better life is believe, give money, recruit new members and indoctrinate/brainwash their children into believing at the earliest opportunity.

Here's the clever part.
There is no way to prove or disprove the existence of this invisible man
No one has ever come back from the dead and complained that there was no afterlife and asked for their money back
They have a constant supply of young new recruits to the pyramid scheme

The perfect business model, take in money and only give promises in return.

 

What happens after you die? You get donuts, that's what.

 

God may show mercy upon you if you have not yet accepted Jesus as personal lord and savior. But you'll probably be cast into hell anyway. Certainly anyone who hears the word and rejects it is doomed. For anyone who has condemned the Holy Spirit----not even God himself could save you.

Turn or burn.

 

Right, but I have no reason to believe any of this. I could pretend to, but that wouldn't fool the all knowing God. My fear of facing death only confuses the issue more because what you have presented is but one mutually exclusive school of thought on the afterlife. Many others have me being tortured or annihilated for believing these exact ideas you espouse. So it is no relief to force myself to believe these things when it is just as likely that they are incorrect as it is likely that Hinduism or ancient Greek religions are incorrect about their way to survive death.

If I go with yours, a thousand other deities will condemn me to annihilation or torture. I feel like I have far better odds at surviving if I just stay open minded and admit that I don't know which one to pick. I mean, most of what you posted was invented by Romans writing things hundreds of years after the deity you claim even walked the earth. It just seems so shaky and I will hardly bet my eternity on it. You can if you want.

 

Wouldn't be that bad? Eternal oblivion not all that bad? And it's coming for all of us! No way to stop it! You won't even be there to tell yourself it's not all that bad!

This whole accepting Jesus deal doesn't make much sense to me when we get down to actually carrying out eternity. So, you are a bad person, we all are, and don't deserve and presumably won't fit in or enjoy Heaven because we are so evil. How does accepting Jesus change any of that? Like, I see how it gets you in, but is it even going to be YOU anymore? Wouldn't you have to change into something that would be acceptable to God's presence regardless? And then it simply would not be YOU, therefore, it is not YOU that survived your death.

It's basically like you are sacrificing your soul so that it can be reprogrammed into some other entity that has nothing to do with your earthly existence, essentially not you at all. What good is it to survive death in this manner if we lose our uniqueness in the process?

I want someone to explain how my unique self can survive death without changing anything about me. I am not interested in having to change so that I can fit in to an afterlife. If I change, then it isn't me, and I did not survive.

 

The reason would be so we get to survive our own deaths. My problem with the Christian philosophy now, is that they seem to insist that the soul be changed fundamentally before allowing it to go on in eternity... which defeats the whole purpose of surviving death because then it would not be me anymore.

That type of survival is the same as being eaten by another animal. Oh, sure, the proteins that made up my body will live on for some time as the body of the animal that ate me, but without my own unique cognition, it won't be me. That type of survival is useless to the psyche. All that we are still goes away under Christian salvation and eternity.

 

But still, maybe there is a way.

Maybe the quantum activities of our brain spawn parts of the multiverse that allow our consciousnesses to live on without the body in some form outside of space and time as we know it.

Maybe all that is and ever will be exists forever and once our bodies die, the universe can recall those expired consciousnesses and allow us to live on in some form.

No reason to believe any of that, and you don't have to send me any money. But it could still happen.

Better than looking forward to eternal oblivion! Screw that!

 

I'm not rejecting it, I am just trying to keep an open mind until I know everything for sure.

I will reject it, though, if it turns out that the thing that lives eternally is not even really me. I want it to be ME or it is pointless.

 

God has the last call on that.

 

I do not believe that our transformation to immortality means we change our soul/being. All we would do is move from a destructible body to an immortal body. I would imagine we retain our memories and personalities, less our sinful nature.

 

In Matthew 6: 9 - 15 there is a suggested prayer that gives instructions on one method of receiving 'forgiveness' of transgressions. To my understanding, that 'forgiveness' is a mandatory requirement.

 

Are you defining the "me" as the physical body or the spiritual body? It does make a difference in the way one would look at the situation of 'afterlife'.

 

The whatever it is. I believe that any spiritual experience would have to have some underlying physical cause, even if the physics is far beyond our understanding.

 

Well, I was merely attempting to determine if you were talking about a physical or spiritual body that will be a participating in the afterlife. But considering that you are not certain what it will be then I cannot offer anything that will assist you. However, I find it strange that you cannot identify whether or not you are talking about a physical body, or "whatever".

 

This is not very historically accurate.

Also, the concept of "salvation by grace" was the idea of Martin Luther, father of the Protestant Reformation. In fact, he almost removed the Book of James from the NT because he felt it contradicted his theories.

 

How should I know? I only know of this one physical body, the biology of which seems to produce the me inside my brain. But I would much rather not cease to exist when that biology stops! Perhaps there is some other underlying physical process that is a part of my body, though not necessarily biological, which truly represents the me, and that thing lives forever. So one might call that either a physical body or a spiritual body. If one were to insist that spirtual objects possessed no physical attributes, my argument would be to simply expand the definition of physics to include unknown spiritual forces.