Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 60058. The question of animal death sounds like a gardening problem and turns out to be a theology problem. Somebody points out that a woodland floor lives off what has died on it, that leaf mould feeds the next generation of trees, that the whole system seems to run on decay, and then asks…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 12013 Cremation and burial is one of those questions that arrives at the worst possible moment. A family is grieving, a decision is needed within days, and somebody asks whether God minds. I have sat in those front rooms more times than I can count, and the last thing anyone needs is a lecture….
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 11043. Praying for the dead is a practice most evangelicals have never considered and many bereaved believers have quietly done anyway, usually in the first raw weeks after a funeral when the instinct to keep speaking to God about someone is overwhelming. So this deserves a gentle answer as well as a clear one….
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 8056. When people ask about ghosts and demons they are usually asking two questions at once. Do the spirits of the dead come back, and if not, what did I actually experience? Both deserve an answer, and the answers are different. My position is that Scripture rules out the return of the departed, that…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 8055. The question of whether a haunted house is a real thing comes up more often than you might expect, and rarely from people looking for entertainment. It usually comes from someone who has experienced something in a building they cannot account for, and who is not at all sure they want to talk…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 07058 Deathbed conversions are genuine when the faith behind them is genuine, and the New Testament gives us no reason whatever to treat a late turning as second class. God is not running a loyalty scheme in which long service earns a better standing. That said, the question usually carries more than one concern…
Reading Time: 9 minutesQuestion 10200. The intermediate state is the condition of a human being between the moment of death and the morning of resurrection, and it is one of the questions people ask me most often at a graveside. Is my mother with Jesus now, or asleep, or waiting somewhere? Does she know anything? Does she have…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 10197. There will be unbelievers who die during the thousand year reign of Jesus, and Scripture is not silent about them. That surprises people, because we tend to imagine the kingdom as a place where nobody dies and nobody rebels, but the prophets describe something more textured than that. Two passages carry most of…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 10169. The location of heaven has been a live question ever since Yuri Gagarin came back from orbit and reported that he had not seen God up there. It was meant as a joke against believers, and it landed only because a great many people, Christians included, had a vague idea that heaven was…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 10167. Can those in heaven see what is happening down here? It is one of the most frequently asked questions in any pastoral ministry, and it is almost never asked out of curiosity. It is asked by a widow, or by parents at a graveside, and behind it lies a longing to know whether…