On a return flight from a recent overseas trip I was sitting to the left of a chatty eleven-year-old who had just entered secondary school. His more self-conscious older brother sat quietly to his right while his parents were in adjacent seats across the aisle. We conversed about the sights and sounds we had seen and heard on our travels. Soon the conversation turned to religion and he suddenly blurted out his confession of faith. It was short and to the point: ‘I believe in God and reincarnation’. It took me aback for a moment but then I had the privilege of telling him about God’s Son, Jesus and of His sacrificial death and resurrection which makes reincarnation quite an impossible idea to accept.

As we think in this issue of those who went out with the gospel from Wales to places like India where belief in reincarnation is so strong, it is sad to think that this false notion has gained such a foothold in Britain. As early as 1990, opinion polls were claiming that 27% of British adults believed in reincarnation. There are books galore on the subject and actors, entertainers, football and pop stars, have all helped to make the subject a ‘cool’ thing to believe. Reincarnation is the belief that human souls do not die at physical death but are reborn into different bodies many times over according to their behaviour in a previous life. The ancient Greeks developed the idea and from the seventh-century BC it became a fundamental tenet of Hinduism. Buddhism, Jainism and Sikhism have also embraced the idea in various ways.

No objective evidence for reincarnation can be presented. Support very largely depends on supposed recollections of past lives and close encounters with death. It is often argued that reincarnation provides a more satisfying way of explaining undeserved suffering, especially in babies, and if it is possible to be reborn as an animal or even a plant it is said to encourage greater respect for all life.

We cannot enumerate all the objections to this teaching but the fundamental biblical truth concerning the resurrection of the body puts paid to any form of reincarnation whether in its Hindu or Buddhist form.

The Bible indicates that human beings have been created in God’s image. We are created persons with bodies. Each human is a distinct person – body and spirit – and each is responsible before God the Judge for his or her own actions done in the body. Death is God’s judgement on sin. It is certainly not natural in humans for it involves the separation of what belongs together: body and spirit. In addition, the separation of the spirit or soul from the body in physical death is symbolic of that spiritual death where humans are cut off from God, dead in sin. The second death is that eternal separation from God of humans (body and spirit) in hell for all eternity.

Salvation from our present spiritually dead state and the future doom does not depend on humanity’s ability to rescue itself. God knows we cannot save ourselves. The gloomy prospect for those millions in our world who believe in reincarnation is an endless cycle of rebirths into this sad, suffering world hoping against hope they can escape from the vicious circle by their own efforts and so attain the perfect state.

The Christian gospel offers real hope. It is good news. Our creator God has provided for our salvation. This salvation is not by human effort in millions of lives but as a result of one unique life and death. Jesus Christ is truly God who also became a real human being that He might live the perfect life in our world and die as a human, experiencing the second death that all who trust Him as Saviour might have a sure and certain hope of eternal joy with God and never suffer eternal separation from Him.

This future hope is not wishful thinking. It is not based on the uncertain experiences of individuals but on the bodily resurrection of Jesus. At this time of the year in particular we remember this real event in the history of our world which cannot be lightly dismissed. Without the bodily resurrection of Jesus, as even non-Christians have admitted, there would be no Christianity.

Jesus’ resurrection is the vindication of all that He claimed to be and had come to do. He is the true Messiah; He is the unique Son of God, one with the Father and the Holy Spirit; He is the Saviour of the world; He is the guarantee of a new world order. Those who come to Him for forgiveness and release from the burden of their sins find peace with God, a new outlook on life that seeks to honour the God who made them, an assurance that when they die they are with Christ in heaven, and that there is a future new creation with bodies like that of Christ’s risen, glorified body.

Resurrection and reincarnation cannot co-exist. We only have one body and one life in this world. As the Bible reveals: ‘it is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes judgement’ (Heb. 9:27).

We do not become other things or bodies in the next life. Let us make every effort to make full use of the lives we have now, to the glory of God, for there are no second chances after death. The atoning death and bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ is the living evidence for the resurrection of our bodies, of God’s judgement on sin and of all that the Bible reveals concerning the future hope.

It is because of this wonderful hope that Christians have been eager to spread the gospel far and wide and to urge people to repent and to trust Christ to save them. Along with this message of hope has come concern for the poor, the sick and the dying, and a respect for all life.

Philip H. Eveson is a consulting editor of The Evangelical Magazine.