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The Chibi News Daily Reflection
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Hello, my name's Andrew Satch and I'm an Ankin Minister at Grace Church Greenwich
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I want to talk today about life after death, the Christian hope of resurrection
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The charity Christian Aid has a slogan, We Believe in Life Before Death
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and they do great work trying to alleviate poverty and deprivation in this world here and now
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but I think the slogan's meant to appeal because it seems more concrete, more practical
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than the traditional Christian hope of life after death. Maybe that just seems like pie in the sky
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No, I want to assert the wonder of life after death. One of my jobs as the Church of England
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vicar is to take funerals. I think of two friends my age who died of brain tumours recently
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and I cried at both their funerals but it gave us such hope to hear of Jesus' message of life
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after death. But isn't that just wishful thinking, you're wondering? Before I was a vicar, I did a
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doctorate in auditory neuroscience. I was into evidence and logic and science and experiments
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and some people think I had to abandon that to be a follower of Jesus. On the contrary. There's a
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verse in the New Testament that says this, we believe that Jesus died and rose again, and so
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we believe that God will bring with Jesus those who've fallen asleep in him. I love that verse
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because of the logic in it. If Jesus raised from the dead in history before eyewitnesses
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then it's reasonable to expect he can raise us from the dead too. I guess that's why his first followers were so willing to be martyrs
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They'd seen him alive after he was killed, so they reasoned that they too would live after they were killed
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I believe in life after death