Important puzzle in Bible account

FAITH

No record of what’s beyond grave

By FRANK SENGE KOLMA
TWO obvious stories have been left out in Gospel accounts that, had they been told, would have provided incontrovertible proof of an afterlife and made life so much easier for men in their practice of faith.
A man called Lazarus was summoned by Jesus back from the dead after several days in the tomb (John 11:38-44). Lazarus had been dead and buried four days.
Christ was himself in the region of the dead for the whole of Friday night and Saturday and arose back to life in the early hours of Sunday following his crucifixion on Calvary.
A soldier’s child is said to have undergone the same miracle on a word from Jesus but the story is sketchy.
The details of these miraculous events are very well known and Jesus’ own death is central to the New Testament accounts.
What is less known is the obvious missing bits. Most gripping would have been Lazarus and Jesus’ separate accounts of their experiences in that region where our dear departed make their entrance and their existence forever ever after. Call it what you want, the world of the dead, hades, the nether world, heaven, hell, whatever?!
What was the trip there like? What does the other side look like? Is it another world or this same world we live in? Did they meet dead relatives? Do the dead walk around in bodies? Do they eat and drink? Are the sun, moon and stars there? Is there water and are there flowers? What is the mode of transportation? Are there houses and roads and bridges? Do the spirits speak?
Was it Heaven or Hell they visited? What are they like? What is the Heavenly palace made of? Angels and demons – what are their physical or spectral appearances like?
Innumerable questions about the very simple facts of life that would have, with the answers supplied by Jesus and Lazarus, proved beyond a shadow of a doubt the existence of the world beyond our own.
The accounts by Jesus and Lazarus would have made redundant all the church councils, the numerous debates and controversies and the proliferation of different churches and denominations around the world from then to now.
The absence of these accounts make everything so much more difficult and casts doubt upon the resurrection stories themselves.
There is a troubling aspect if one is to carry Lazarus’ story further. Jesus, the author of life and death, the beginning and the end, the Son of the most high God, had ordered Lazarus back to life. He broke the chains of death in the process.
Lazarus cannot die a second death unless Jesus ordered so. He ought still to be around till the end of time. Christ broke the chains of death for himself and he rose bodily to Heaven after 40 days. He did not die a second time. That too is an important piece of information that has gone missing.

Only human to know heaven
Come to think of it, Christ himself never gave humans a real glimpse of Heaven because he is the only human who can be said to have a memory of it by virtue of his divinity. He was God incarnate, a principle part of the godhead who took human form temporarily for the salvation of mankind. He, more than anyone else, would know what Heaven looked like or where it is located and such like.
These are central planks missing from our belief that would have anchored our faith. With these accounts intact the history and development of church and state would have been different. There would have been much more certainty and clarity.
The gospel of John mentions at one point that if all accounts of what Jesus said and did were to be written down there would be no volume large enough to hold them all. That is true but these particular missing accounts give rise to today’s confusion, guess work, schisms and myths.
Our faith is entirely premised on preparing ourselves in this physical life for a blissful forever afterlife.

None returned to tell
Yet no person living has returned from the other side to tell us what it is like on the other side. Those who have, like Jesus and Lazarus, have kept their own counsel.
It would have been useful if Christ had informed his disciples about how beautiful Heaven is and how horrid Hell is. He had 40 precious days after his resurrection with his disciples, precious time that he could have regaled them with what it is like on the other side.
This he did not do and that is very serious negligence that condemned mankind to conjecture forever and casts in some quarters doubt upon His word.
If mankind’s conjecture is far from the actual situation on the ether side, it would not be unfair to blame Jesus for humanity’s ignorance.
Or perhaps he did relate his experience but none of his disciplines thought it important enough to preach it or write it down. I doubt such an important piece of information would have been missed or forgotten.
And so there is this obvious neglect on the part of preparation of the Gospels that discerning reading of the Bible would give rise to fair questions of this kind.
But ours has been a very difficult task where everything conveyed in the Bible is to be taken as God given truth and any omission likewise forbidden human inquiry.
And here, in obedience to that principle, my own inquiry ends.