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Afterlife - Afterlife as reward or punishment

Afterlife - Afterlife as reward or punishment: Encyclopedia II - Afterlife - Afterlife as reward or punishment

One notion of afterlife which is common to Judaism (see the afterlife and olam haba ["world to come"] ), most sects of Christianity, and Islam is that human souls go on for eternity to a place of happiness or torment, such as heaven, hell, or purgatory or limbo. Many religions hold that after death people get reward or punishment based on their deeds or faith. The Christian Bible, for example, contains the words of Jesus: "The measure you give will be the measure you get." (Mark 4:24). For many, belief in an afterlife is ...

Afterlife: Encyclopedia II - Afterlife - Afterlife as reward or punishment

Afterlife - Afterlife as reward or punishment

One notion of afterlife which is common to Judaism (see the afterlife and olam haba ["world to come"] ), most sects of Christianity, and Islam is that human souls go on for eternity to a place of happiness or torment, such as heaven, hell, or purgatory or limbo.

Many religions hold that after death people get reward or punishment based on their deeds or faith.

The Christian Bible, for example, contains the words of Jesus: "The measure you give will be the measure you get." (Mark 4:24). For many, belief in an afterlife is a consolation in connection with death of a beloved one or the prospect of one's own death. On the other hand, fear of hell etc. may make death worse.

In the informal folk beliefs of many Christians, the souls of virtuous people ascend to Heaven and are converted into angels upon their deaths. However, a more literal reading of scripture suggests that the dead wait until the Last Judgment, which is followed by resurrection for the faithful. More formal Christian theology makes a sharp distinction between angels, who were created by God before the creation of humanity, and saints, who are virtuous people who have received immortality from the grace of God.

In view of the eternity of afterlife, some consider regular life as relatively unimportant, except for determining whether afterlife follows, and/or what kind. It is just a provisional situation, and the metaphor of a tent as provisional housing facility is used as quoted below:

For we know that if our earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved, we have a building of God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.(Bible, 2 Corinthians 5:1)

In what we know of Egyptian religion, afterlife is very important. The believer had to act well and know the rituals explained in the Egyptian Book of the Dead. If the corpse was properly embalmed and entombed in a mastaba, the defunct would relive in the Fields of Yalu and accompany the Sun god on its daily ride. If, during the psychomachia, the souls of the defunct were found faulty, the Devourer monster would eat them.

Others, including some Universalists, believe in universalism which holds that all will eventually be rewarded regardless of what they have done or believed.

Life after death, however, is in no way a universal belief; for example, Jehovah's Witnesses interpret Ecclesiastes 9:5 as precluding an afterlife:

For the living know that they shall die: but the dead know not any thing, neither have they any more a reward;for the memory of them is forgotten.

They believe that a resurrection in the flesh at some future date will be a reward and that death (non-existence) is a punishment.

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After Life, Afterlife (television), Akhirah, Animism, Atheism, Buddhists, Christian Bible, Christianity, Death, Devourer, Doomsday, Egyptian Book of the Dead, Egyptian religion, Electronic voice phenomenon, Elysium, Emanuel Swedenborg, Enlightenment, Eschatology, Eternity, Ghosts, God, Heaven, Hell, Hindus, Immortality, Islam, Jewish eschatology, Judaism, Last Judgment, Life, Mark, Mind-body problem, Near-death experience, Neopagans, Nigerian scams, Occam's Razor, Out-of-body experience, Pre-Birth communication, Reincarnation, Salvation, Soul, Undead, Underworld, Valhalla, Wiccans, agnostics, angels, animals, atheists, belief, brain, building, decompose, dimension, electronic voice phenomena, embalmed, esoteric knowledge, eternity, existence, fear, ghosts, happiness, heaven, hell, house, information age, limbo, mastaba, materialism, meaningless, metaphor, metaphysics, mind, near-death experiences, out-of-body experiences, positivism (philosophy), psychomachia, purgatory, rebirth, reincarnation, religion, religions, resurrection, soul, souls, spiritual, tabernacle, tent, the afterlife and olam haba ["world to come"], the mind-body problem, torment, undead, unfalsifiable, universalism, wishful thinking

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Afterlife as reward or punishment", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki

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