Reader Poll - Would you be a Christian if there was no afterlife?

[Lambano]

So, the sinner's love for God begins, often, when the person is about to become a Chiristan.........about to trust in Christ and they realize that God loves them so much, as a sinner........that Jesus died for them.
Often this causes the sinner to want to love God, and this plays into their wanting to be saved.

I agree. That God would send His own Son to die for me bloody well ought to inspire at the very least gratitude, if not a love that would willingly return the favor.

However, the premise of this thread is what if there is no afterlife, so there is no salvation from Death and no Hell to save us from. The Old Testament says very little about the prospect of life after death, so the premise is pretty much the worldview of God's people until sometime between the return from the Babylon exile around 500-400 BC and the NT period.

The premise is interesting to me because the first home Bible Study I ever attended was hosted by a man who testified that he had encountered Jesus in some mystical kind of way in some Christian youth camp. To him, he didn't need an afterlife; knowing Jesus in this life was enough. Well, engineers with a systematic theological bent don't get along well with mystics; I thought he was nuts and quoted 1 Corinthians 15:9 at him. (See post #30.) Twenty years later, though, I have a greater appreciation for his position.