Sunday Morning, Singapore

This morning, while visiting in Singapore, I went with Jim & Monica Davis to the Living Praise Presbyterian Church on the northeast side of the country.  We took the Red Line from the west side of the island north through Woodlands, not far from Malaysia, and then around to the northeast where we got off at the Bishan MRT.  We walked Bishan Street 13 for half a mile, finding the church in among the buildings of the Kuo Chuan Presbyterian Primary School.

We had been invited by friends David and Deb Walker, staff with One Challenge Singapore. There are two churches which meet within the Presbyterian school, so I was not sure I was in the right place until I was greeted by David Lin, one of the church elders.  Jan and I had met David before, and he greeted me warmly and quickly took our group to meet our hosts.

I was pleased to learn that this Sunday was a special joint Mandarin-English service.  The church was accepting new members and installing a new elder and deacon and so the Mandarin and English halves had come together in a single service to worship together.  I am aware of the importance of worshiping God in one's own tongue and I am grateful for a Mandarin-English church in The Woodlands in Texas that ministered to one of our university students back in Huntsville.  It was fun to sing in English, while listening to other sing in Mandarin and I am sure one has to carefully pick hymns that will allow both tongues to sing together!

After the service, we had a wonderful lunch with the church body.  Yes, ministry is facilitated by good food and conversation!

I attach (I hope) a short video of the church singing one of the hymns.

The Afterlife

In a related blog, I've been working my way through the New Testament, chapter by chapter. There we are just finishing I Corinthians.

The end of Paul's first letter to the Corinthians is a suitable place to explore Paul's description of the afterlife.  Paul insists that he saw Jesus after his crucifixion and resurrection and claims some 500 others did also.  Paul insists the belief in the resurrection is central to his faith in the Jewish Messiah, Jesus.

Paul then goes on to claim that there will be a final Resurrection of the dead and a "celestial body", a true physical body, but in many ways different from the current earthly one.  How this occurs is unknown and probably unknowable.  Christians have added layers to this interpretation since then.

Central to the theology of the afterlife, within Christianity, is a belief that there will be an afterlife and that one's part in the afterlife is linked to one's response to Jesus is this one.  After this, the viewpoints begin to diverge.  Do those who reject Jesus go on to a place of conscious torment, often called Hell?  Is Hell/Hades a place of annihilation, of a continuance of death and the end of existence?  Is there some type of "cleansing" place of Purgatory? (See here, here and here, as part of a book review on the Jesus Creed blog by Scot McKnight, of the book Four Views on Hell.)

Does one, after death, immediately move into a conscious state, with the soul separated but conscious and aware? Or does life require a body and so after death one "sleeps", unaware, until recreated in the final Resurrection?  The Jesus Creed blog has a brief discussion on that also.

Of course, there is a wide-ranging article on the afterlife at Wikipedia.

I have my own opinions on this ... but the only one I will share here is this: like Paul, I believe (and hope) there will be a Resurrection.  After that, it is OK to not be sure about any of the many views on how the afterlife will occur. One can have doubts.  One should ask questions about the form it takes and whether our existence, as Scot McKnight asks, is "separation of soul and body (dualism)" or "physicality."

We will all find out soon enough....

Next week, on that blog, we will begin studying my favorite gospel, The Gospel of Mark.