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life and death: only the spiritually alive are qualified to
enjoy immortality or the fruits of the resurrection.
For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is
eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord (Romans 6.23).
Christianity
Assemblies of God:
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millennial reign will bring the salvation of national
Israel, and the establishment of universal peace. There
will be a final judgment in which the wicked dead will be
raised and judged according to their works. Whosoever is
not found written in the Book of Life, together with the
devil and his angels, the beast and the false prophet, will
be consigned to the everlasting punishment in the lake
which burns with fire and brimstone, which is the second
death. We, according to His promise, look for new heavens
and a new earth wherein dwells righteousness.
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We believe that the punishment of the wicked and the
blessedness of the righteousness shall be everlasting,
according to the declaration of our compassionate Redeemer,
to whom the judgment is committed, "These shall go away
into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal
life." (RV, Matt 25:46)
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souls, and eternal rewards and punishments are handed out.
As the Scots Confession notes, final judgment is also “the
time of refreshing and restitution of all things.” And it
is clearly the case that both the Scots Confession and the
Westminster Confession of Faith want to orient the present-
day life of believers around this future. But the Bible
spends more time focusing on new life here than on life
after death. So do all our more recent confessions.
Although the Confession of 1967 mentions life after death,
it does so only briefly. Its focus is on new life now and
on the church's ministry of reconciliation.
God, in His own time and in His own way, will bring the
world to its appropriate end. According to His promise,
Jesus Christ will return personally and visibly in glory to
the earth; the dead will be raised; and Christ will judge
all men in righteousness. The unrighteous will be consigned
to Hell, the place of everlasting punishment. The righteous
in their resurrected and glorified bodies will receive
their reward and will dwell forever in Heaven with the Lord.
Judaism
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death. This may seem surprising to non-Jews, since the
sacred texts of Christianity and Islam (both of which have
their foundations in Judaism) elaborate rather fully about
the afterlife.
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The Afterlife in the TorahFor the most part, the Torah
describes the afterlife in vague terms, many of which may
simply be figurative ways of speaking about death as it is
observed by the living.
I am a helpless man
(Psalm 88:4-7)
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Taken together, these early biblical descriptions of death
seem to indicate that the soul continues to exist in some
way after death, but not consciously. Later in the Torah,
the concept of conscious life after death begins to
develop. Daniel 12:2 declares, "And many of them that sleep
in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting
life and some to reproaches and everlasting abhorrence."
Neh. 9:5.
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restoration be any more remarkable than their original
creation.
Judgment:
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General Jewish belief is that one need not be Jewish to
enjoy Heaven. "Moses Maimonides, echoing the Tosefta to
Sanhedrin, maintained that the pious of all the nations of
the world have a portion in the world-to-come [Mishneh
Torah, Repentance 3:5]."
Gehinnom: Hell.
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punished for up to 12 months. After the appropriate period
of purification, the righteous continue on to Gan Eden
(Rabbi Akiba and Babylonian Talmud, tractate Eduyot 2:10).
The wicked endure the full year of punishment then are
either annihilated ("After 12 months, their body is
consumed and their soul is burned and the wind scatters
them under the soles of the feet of the righteous (Rosh
Hashanah 17a)") or continue to be punished.
Jainism
Karma
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Bad actions related to physical life accumulate aghati
karma, which result in negative consequences for physical
life (in the present life and/or the next). There are four
kinds of aghati karma:
1.Happiness-determining (vedniya)
2.Body-determining (nam)
3.Status-determining (gotra)
4.Longevity-determining (ayushya)
Hinduism
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Karma is a Sanskrit word whose literal meaning is 'action'.
It refers to the law that every action has an equal
reaction either immediately or at some point in the future.
Good or virtuous actions, actions in harmony with dharma,
will have good reactions or responses and bad actions,
actions against dharma, will have the opposite effect.
Sikhism
Islam
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Muslims believe there will be a day of judgment when all
humans will be divided between the eternal destinations of
Paradise and Hell.
The Last Day is also called the Day of Standing Up, Day of
Separation, Day of Reckoning, Day of Awakening, Day of
Judgment, The Encompassing Day or The Hour.
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Paradise
Hell
Being a Muslim does not keep one out of Hell, but it is not
clear whether Muslims remain in Hell forever. Non-Muslims
(kafir), however, will be punished eternally. A Muslim
author on IslamOnline.net explains it this way:
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bad deeds, and so make them fit for further advancement.
Its punishment is, therefore, not everlasting."
Jehovah's witnesses
Buddhism
Life is a journey.
Death is a return to earth.
The universe is like an inn.
The passing years are like dust.
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Reincarnation (Transmigration)
Nirvana
Chinese Religion
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The Chinese conception of the afterlife is based on a
combination of Chinese folk religions, Taoism and Mahayana
Buddhism.
Hades
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With the rare exceptions mentioned above, Hades was the
universal destination of the dead in Greek religion until
the latter half of the 5th century BCE. Hades was a cold,
damp and dark realm that was guarded by the god of the same
name. The "gates of Hades" were guaded by the fearsome
hound Cerberus, who wags his tail for new arrivals but does
not allow anyone to leave. Without proper burial, one
cannot enter the gates of Hades. The river Styx is the
boundary between earth and Hades, but Hades has other
rivers as well (e.g. Phlegethon, Acheron, Cocytus). A
similar concept is found in Japanese Buddhism in the Sanzu
River, which the dead must cross on the way to the
afterlife.
Tartarus
Elysium
Reincarnation
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The notion that the human soul enters another body upon
death, though unfamiliar in popular Greek religion, was
widespread in Greek philosophy. The doctrine of
transmigration is first associated with the Pythagoreans
and Orphics and was later taught by Plato (Phaedo,
Republic) and Pindar (Olympian). For the former groups, the
soul retained its identity throughout its reincarnations;
Plato indicated that souls do not remember their previous
experiences. Although Herodotus claims that the Greeks
learned this idea from Egypt, most scholars do not believe
it came either from Egypt or from India, but developed
independently.
Scientology
Scientology does not include an official belief about the
afterlife. However, it reports that during auditing, a
person often recalls memories of past lives and that
Scientology ascribes to the idea of being born again into
another body.
Zoroastrianism
The Zoroastrian afterlife is determined by the balance of
the good and evil deeds, words, and thoughts of the whole
life. For those whose good deeds outweight the bad, heaven
awaits. Those who did more evil than good go to hell (which
has several levels corresponding to degrees of wickedness).
There is an intermediate stage for those whose deeds weight
out equally.
Stoicism
The Stoics did not have a clear conception of an afterlife.
Some held that the soul survives until the next
conflagration; others taught that the soul is part of the
World Soul and would reappear in the new world. But a
personal immortality was not part of the Stoic worldview.
Mormonism
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Mormons believe that all humans who die will live
eternally. Their spirits will go to the spirit world, where
they will undergo instruction and preparation. Then, "after
a time," there will be the Resurrection, at which time the
spirits will be reunited with their bodies forever. [1]
Seventh-day Adventists
Seventh-day Adventists believe that death is a sleep during
which the "dead know nothing" (Ecclesiastes 9:5). This view
maintains that the person has no conscious form of
existence until the resurrection, either at the second
coming of Jesus (in the case of the righteous) or after the
millennium of Revelation 20 (in the case of the wicked).
Because of this view, Seventh-day Adventists do not believe
hell currently exists and believe further that the wicked
will be destroyed at the end of time.
Summary:
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Though Various religions has different beliefs, The
scriptures clearly state that eternal life comes from God
through his son Jesus Christ (John 3:16; 14:6; Heb. 5:9 ),
and is the "greatest of all the gifts of God". The phrase
"eternal life" refers not only to everlasting life but also
and more particularly to the quality of life God lives.
Eternal life is available to all people who have lived on
earth who accept this gift by their obedience to God's laws
and ordinances.
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prophecy and having one's calling and election made sure (2
Pet. 1:10).
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