English theoretical physicist and cosmologist and noted author Stephen Hawking has made many negative comments about life after death. His most recent statement came in a May 15 Manchester Guardian interview in which Hawking remarked, "I regard the brain as a computer which will stop working when its components fail. There is no heaven or afterlife for broken down computers; that is a fairy story for people afraid of the dark,"

Stephen Hawking denies the concept of life after death and refers to the belief in heaven as a “fairy story” or fairy tale. The online Merriam Webster dictionary defines a fairy tale as “a story in which improbable events leadto a happy ending” and “a made-up story usually designed to mislead.”

Hawking’s personal belief, though widely publicized, means nothing. What matters is what does the Bible say on the subject. Due to the importance of this subject relating to the purpose and destiny of mankind, you owe it to yourself to go to the source of all truth to find the answer to this most important question. You might be surprised to find that there is in fact some truth to Hawking’s statement.

The Bible most certainly offers the hope of life after death. The Apostle Paul concludes, “…if our hope in Christ is only for this life, we are more to be pitied than anyone in the world” (1 Corinthians 15:19, New Living Translation). The remainder of this chapter explains in great detail the resurrection from the dead as the means by which God offers life after death.

The Bible nowhere says that man has or is an immortal soul that wafts off to heaven after death. These doctrines came from Greek philosophy and pagan religions.

“Platonism “sees the origin of man's truest self (his soul) in the invisible world, whence his soul has fallen into the visible world of matter. Like Gnosticism, it sees the physical body as a hindrance, a burden, sometimes even as the tomb of the soul. Like Gnosticism, it conceives of salvation as the freeing of the soul from its entanglement in the physical world that it may wing its way back to the heavenly world.…

Salvation is achieved not by a flight from the world but by God's coming to man in his earthly, historical experience. Salvation never means flight from the world to God; it means, in effect, God's descent from heaven to bring man in historical experience into fellowship with himself. Therefore the consummation of salvation is eschatological. It does not mean the gathering of the souls of the righteous in heaven, but the gathering of a redeemed people on a redeemed earth in perfected fellowship with God” (George Eldon Ladd, The Pattern of New Testament Truth, pp. 13-40).

The true gospel of the Kingdom of God that Jesus preached offers the opportunity to rule with Him for a thousand years on this earth (Mark 1:14-15, Revelation 1:4-6, 5:9-10). Sadly, this vital truth is absent from the gospel message preached in mainstream Christianity. What is billed as “the gospel” is a mixture of the truth about the death of Jesus Christ for our sins, blended with the false doctrines of the immortality of the soul and heaven as the reward of the saved.

Who is to blame for this travesty? The Bible clearly identifies Satan the Devil as the one who “deceives  the whole world” (Revelation  12:9), resulting in well-meaning but misled believers, “whose minds the god of this age has blinded, who do not believe, lest the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine on them (2 Corinthians 4:4).

The prevailing Christian view of going to heaven is indeed a fairy tale—“a made-up story … designed to mislead” by the master deceiver, Satan the Devil.

So Stephen Hawking’s assessment is true with regard to heaven but very sadly untrue in regard to the allegation that there is no life after death.