People all over the world look to an afterlife Randy Alcorn in his book Heaven writes: Australian aborigines pictured heaven as a distant island beyond the western horizon. The early Finns thought heaven was a distant island in the faraway East. Mexicans, Peruvians, and Polynesians believed they went to the sun or the moon after death. Native Americans believed that in the afterlife their spirits would hunt the spirits of buffalo. The Gilgamesh Epic, an ancient Babylonian legend, refers to a resting place of heroes and hints at a tree of life. In the pyramids of Egypt, the embalmed bodies had maps placed beside them as guides to the future world. The Romans believed that the righteous would picnic in the Elysian fields while their horses grazed nearby. Seneca, the Roman philosopher, said, “The day thou fearest as the last is the birthday of eternity.” Although these depictions of the afterlife differ, the unifying testimony of the human heart throughout history is belief in life after death. Anthropological evidence suggests that every culture has a God-given, innate sense of the eternal—that this world is not all there is. In Mere Christianity C. S. Lewis argues that such longings are an internal argument supporting the expectation of an afterlife as a reasonable outcome after death. Creatures are not born with desires unless satisfaction for those desires exists. A baby feels hunger; well, there is such a thing as food. A duckling wants to swim; well, there is such a thing as water.… If I find in myself a desire that no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world. If none of my earthly pleasures satisfy it, that does not prove that the universe is a fraud. Probably, earthly pleasures were never meant to satisfy it, but only to arouse it, to suggest the real thing. The question that concerns most people is not so much whether there is an afterlife, but how to enter into the blessing that is anticipated, as opposed to go to a place of suffering instead. Jesus is the way, the truth and the life Having introduced the subject of his departure from this earth, Jesus told his disciples that they would join him too, in time: ‘“Don’t let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God, and trust also in me. There is more than enough room in my Father’s home. If this were not so, would I have told you that I am going to prepare a place for you? When everything is ready, I will come and get you, so that you will always be with me where I am.’ (John 14:1–3, NLT) Thomas was confused, and Jesus answered his concern: ‘And you know the way to where I am going.” “No, we don’t know, Lord,” Thomas said. “We have no idea where you are going, so how can we know the way?” Jesus told him, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one can come to the Father except through me.’ (John 14:4–6, NLT) Jesus clarified that he is the way to the Father, the way to eternal life, the way to heaven. But more than that, he is the truth, or the true reality. He is also the life, the one who we need to empower us, by his Spirit, with the resurrection life that he has obtained for humanity. Jesus tells us that there is no other way, no other religion that offers us resurrection life, no other philosophy that presents such truth, true reality, as that which can be found in him. To receive this eternal life, and be guaranteed a place in heaven as Jesus promises, consider praying this prayer.