Jeremiah Knight, Oct 5, 2026
A reader asked me a question, and it came on the eve of my father’s death anniversary. Today is the day itself. So, death was already close to my mind when I read it, and honestly, it hit me harder than it would have on any other day. He said, “Jeremiah, I believe in Christ my Saviour. But just for the sake of it, say that after we die there is nothing. No heaven, no God, nothing the Bible promised. We could have lived as we wanted, without regret. What would you do once you find out there is nothing?”
Honestly, it shook me. For a moment I let myself imagine it. I pictured closing my eyes for the last time and finding that everything I believed, wrote and taught was empty. It was a dark thought, and I did not enjoy it. But before it could settle, the Holy Spirit brought a verse to my mind: “Who will separate us from the love of Christ?” (Romans 8:35). Paul answers his own question a few lines later. “For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, will be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 8:38-39). Death is the first thing on his list. That verse steadied me, and I want to share with you where it took me.
First, I am not the only believer who has felt this. Asaph wrote, “my feet came close to stumbling, my steps had almost slipped,” and he even said, “Surely in vain I have kept my heart pure” (Psalm 73:2, 13). That is the reader’s question in a psalm. John the Baptist sat in prison and sent word to Jesus, “Are You the Expected One, or shall we look for someone else?” (Matthew 11:3). Jesus did not shame him. So if this question has ever crossed your mind, you are in honest company.
Now let me take the question as it is. I was not at the cross. I did not see the empty tomb. It happened 2,000 years ago, and I am trusting what men wrote down. So IF there is nothing after death, then I was wrong and I have lost. Paul says so himself. “If Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is vain, your faith also is vain” (1 Corinthians 15:14). “If we have hoped in Christ in this life only, we are of all men most to be pitied” (1 Corinthians 15:19). The Bible does not tell me to say “it was a nice life anyway.” Paul even agrees with the reader about how to live in that case: “If the dead are not raised, let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die” (1 Corinthians 15:32).
And if I did wake up and find nothing, I would be broken. Everything I wrote would have been a lie. “We are even found to be false witnesses of God” (1 Corinthians 15:15). I would have nothing to say for myself. That is one side of it
But look at the question again. If there is NOTHING after death, I will never find out. There will be no me to find out, and no me to regret anything. A man can only find out something after he dies if something is there. And if I wake up at all, somebody woke me, because a dead man does not wake himself. So the day of “finding out” can only come if the Bible is right. And on that day the man who lived as he wanted will be standing there too. “It is appointed for men to die once and after this comes judgment” (Hebrews 9:27).
So everything rests on one thing. Did Christ rise or not? Paul answers, “But now Christ has been raised from the dead” (1 Corinthians 15:20). Why do I believe men I never met? We all do this. None of us saw the kings who ruled a thousand years ago, yet we believe they lived, because people who were there wrote it down. These men said, “we were eyewitnesses of His majesty” (2 Peter 1:16). Paul wrote that more than five hundred people saw the risen Christ, “most of whom remain until now” (1 Corinthians 15:6). He was telling his readers to go and ask them. And what did they gain? They were beaten, put in prison and killed. A man may lie to get something, but nobody dies for a story he knows he made up.
Yes, men held the pen. But “men moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God” (2 Peter 1:21). And I have more than words on a page. I was born in a Hindu home, and I was not looking for Christ. He found me and changed me, and I cannot explain that away. “The Spirit Himself testifies with our spirit that we are children of God” (Romans 8:16).
As for living as we wanted, Paul asks, “what benefit were you then deriving from the things of which you are now ashamed?” (Romans 6:21). I have lost nothing worth keeping.
Jesus once stood at a grave and said, “I am the resurrection and the life; he who believes in Me will live even if he dies.” Then He asked, “Do you believe this?” (John 11:25-26). On a day like today, that question comes to me. And my answer is the one Job gave in his grief: “As for me, I know that my Redeemer lives” (Job 19:25).
So, to the brother who asked me, here is my answer. If I woke up and found nothing, I would be broken, and I have told you so. But I do not believe that day will come. Christ is risen, and He said, “because I live, you will live also” (John 14:19). The thought of nothing shook me for a moment, and then the verse came back to me. Nothing can separate me from the love of Christ. Death cannot do it either. I am holding on to that today, and more than that, He is holding on to me.
If this question troubles you, do not bury it and do not be ashamed of it. Bring it to God and to His word, as Asaph did when he “came into the sanctuary of God”(Psalm 73:17). And when the fear of death comes, answer it the way Paul did. “O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?… thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Corinthians 15:55, 57).
To God alone be the glory.
He who has ears to hear, let him hear.