My father recently had a heart attack.  I've known for a long time that this might happen, because every man in my family has had a heart attack in his mid fifties.  But because of my father's healthy lifestyle I thought he might dodge that bullet.  Apparently, that is not the case.  And, being the oldest of his sons, I am the next in line to experience the family tradition of heart disease.  So, his experience has brought my own inevitable mortality to the forefront of my mind.

I am not afraid to die.  I am afraid of being mamed or disabled so that I live the rest of my life in pain.  I am afraid of others close to me dying because I know that will bring me heartache, but even that I know will pass because I have experienced that in my life.  I am afraid of poverty and I am afraid of a life without meaning, but I am not afraid of death.  I am not old but I have lived long enough to know that death is a part of life.  I have lost a child and I have lost grandparents to death and each took a little bit of me when they went, but I survived and I became happy again, and life goes on. 

My grandfather told me of the time he had a heart attack and was technically dead for a few seconds.  He said it was the most peaceful feeling he had ever experienced.  He didn't speak of a light or his life flashing before him, only of undescribable peace.  Then suddenly he was awakened by someone beating on his chest and another person ramming a needle into him.  He was back in the world of the living. I don't believe he was sorry to be back, but he didn't seem worried about going back to the other place either.

Some might find this strange, but the reason I am not afraid to die is because of my firm belief that there is no god.  I know religious people find that idea unbelievable, and I know this because I was raised in a very religious home.  God and Satan were very real in my childhood home.  And, though my parents claimed to believe in a compassionate god, everything I learned about God made me afraid.  I was afraid of God because he could see the dirty little thoughts in my head, and I was afraid of Satan and his demons because they were evil and looking for the chance to possess me.  So, knowing now that there is no god and that death is merely an indescribable peace, I am not afraid to die. It took a long while before I had the courage to say that outloud. 
The first time I did I was sure I would be struck by lightning.  ButI have said it many times now and I am no worse for it. 

I did not arrive at this conclusion without effort.  It took several years of living, studying, and contemplating.  It started when I discovered that my first wife was not at all who I thought she was. I discovered she had been lying and cheating for years, and I suddenly realized that the last eight years of my life had been a lie.  This did not fit into the narrow worldview I had acquired.  In that world my wife would be faithful and kind because I was a faithful and supportive husband.  And, if this could happen to me than the world was not what I believed it to be, and I needed to find out what it really was.

I divorced her and began a quest.  I needed to learn the facts about the world and the people in it.  I began taking classes at the community college with the idea of not necessarily finding myself, but rather finding the world and, subsequently, my place in it.  I inadvertently spent the next five years in college and, to my own surprise, graduated from college at age 33.  While there, I studied the earth, the sky, the universe, and the people.  I studied trees and flowers, rocks and stars, and culture.  After I graduated I read Carl Sagan, Albert Einstein, and Charles Darwin.  I read about the mind and the universe.  I read about evolutionary psychology.  I studied violence,  religion, hate and love.  I watched life, and I compared all these things for all these years with what I knew about God.  And He was the one thing that did not fit.  He did not make sense.  Everything else was logical, for everything else there was proof.  Evolution and biology could be proven by science.  People's behavior fit. Sex fit.  Love and hate fit.  But God did not fit.  The world made sense without him and became nonsense with him.

I am grateful for my religious upbringing.  It was part of the education that brought me to this point.  I do not fault my parents for causing me to fear God.  Without a clear understanding of God I could not have proven his nonexistance to myself.  And, because of that proof I do not fear death. I do not need to worry about whether or not I have been forgiven for my sins.  I do not need to worry about whether or not people who have gone before me place any blame on me for anything that happened to them in life.  I do not need to try to figure out why a good, all powerful god allows bad things to happen in the world.  And, I do not need to wonder what will happen to me after I die. I hope to live a long and happy life but when it is over, I know I will experience an indescribable peace, and the older I get the more precious peace becomes. 

Lance Nalley, November 21, 2002, Chico, CA.

A long time ago, I sat in a chapel and prayed for my mother-in-law to live. She had a massive heart attack only hours before. I was pregnant with my son and wanted her to be here to help raise him. I prayed with all my heart for God to let her live. I believe now, that I was praying for the wrong thing.

The resurrection of Jesus is the foundation of the Christian faith. In Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians, he declares: “And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith.” Two verses later he repeats himself: “And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile,” Paul says again.

The resurrection of Jesus is challenged today on evidentiary grounds. Therefore, to be fair, the evidence should be judged like any other historical event. Based on standard rules of evidence, consistent eyewitness testimony from multiple credible witnesses would be considered the strongest form of evidence available.

Therefore, if we find such testimony present in credible accounts of the historical record of Christ’s resurrection, we have satisfied a major evidentiary challenge under traditional rules.

In fact, we do have multiple eyewitness testimonies regarding the resurrection of Jesus.

Again, quoting from Paul: “For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Peter, and then to the Twelve. After that, he appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers at the same time, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles, and last of all he appeared to me also.”

Did you catch that? Hundreds of people saw the risen Christ.

Now, of course, skeptics have tried to avoid the testimony of these numerous post-resurrection appearances of Christ by pointing out various contradictions in some of them or else by charging the writers with fabricating the stories themselves. But the mere fact that there do appear on the surface to be some superficial discrepancies and omissions in the account is actually clear proof that the writers were not engaged in some kind of collusion.

If they were making up the tales, each one evidently was doing so independently of all others. This in itself would be quite a remarkable state of affairs; especially since these discrepancies all vanish when they are compared under close examination.

I’ve covered enough trials in my career as a reporter to attest to the well known rule of evidence that the testimonies of several different witnesses, each reporting from his own particular vantage point, provide the strongest possible evidence on matters of fact when the testimonies contain superficial contradictions which resolve themselves upon close and careful examination. This is exactly the situation with the various witnesses to the resurrection.

The risen Christ was seen over a period of 40 days by a large number of different individuals, in different groups, at different times, both indoors and outdoors, on a hilltop, along a roadway, by a lakeshore and other places. Furthermore, they were not looking for Jesus at all. Several times they didn't recognize Him at first, and at least once actually believed it was a ghost until He convinced them otherwise.

He invited them to touch Him and they recognized the wounds in His hands. They watched Him eat with them. And most of the more than five hundred different people who saw Him were still living at the time when that evidence was being circulated by the apostles.

As a reporter, those eyewitness accounts have been the most compelling to me. Those eyewitnesses so shook up their own world that the religious and political system of the day did everything humanly possible to attack their credibility. And when their credibility was undiminished, they attacked their bodies.

About the author: The author is publisher of the Online Christian Shopper, which specializes in lifestyle evangelism tools like Christian T-Shirts and Christian jewelry. He also publishes The Faithful Christian.

 have a very sincere and honest question for you: Will you die for me? Please, before you respond, take a moment to think about it. Most of us, being Christians will say yes without thinking about the ramifications of our words.