Imagine there's no heaven. It's easy if you try. No hell below us, above us, only sky.

Imagine all the people living for today. I would sing it for you, but there's copyright to consider,

and also your ears. It's John Lennon's Imagine, of course, and you can see why it's the best-selling record of his solo career.

Imagine a peaceful, carefree life without any worries about death or what might come after.

But as popular as it is, John Lennon's song Imagine is, appropriately enough, a work of pure imagination.

We could live for today, as he suggests we should, but that would be to ignore the warning

provided by scripture. This life is not all there is. Death is not the end.

As it says in Hebrews chapter 9, we are destined to die once and after that to face judgment.

This is what theologians call the final judgment.

It's the moment when, to use the words of 1 Corinthians chapter 4,

everything hidden in darkness will be finally brought to light and the motives of every

heart will finally be laid bare. Jesus himself, the most loving man who ever lived, talked repeatedly

of this final day of judgment and the reality of heaven and hell beyond it.

Now, I get it.

The thought of a day of judgment is extremely distressing,

especially if, like me, you fear for loved ones.

But actually, when we stop to consider it,

the final judgment is a very, very good thing indeed,

because the alternative to judgment is

absolutely appalling. There's a celebrated novel called Schindler's Ark by Thomas Caneely.

You may remember Stephen Spielberg adapted it for the movie Schindler's List. One episode of the story

is set in and around Krakow in Poland during the Second World War.

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