Lesson video

Hi, everyone and welcome to today's lesson on Christian beliefs.

My name is Ms. Day, and you're so welcome in today's lesson.

Today, we are looking at the Afterlife.

This is potentially a bit of a sensitive topic so if you would like to please do sit near a parent or a carer while you do this lesson, so you can speak to them about anything you find difficult.

The first thing I need you to do, is to make sure that you have all the equipment that we will need.

So you need a pen or a pencil, a piece of paper and a different coloured pen.

If you don't have any of these things right now, please feel free to pause this here and go to get them.

So today we are going to think about the afterlife.

So what happens after we die? This is the Christian viewpoint that we're thinking about today.

And we are going to think about what Christians say about where people go after they die.

So today we are thinking about heaven, hell and purgatory.

So these three different locations that they believe you could go after you die.

First thing that we need to do is focus on some key terms. During this lesson, I'm going to use a lot of these phrases over and over again.

So let us read through them together.

So the afterlife is what Christians believe follows life on earth.

The day of judgement is the time when the world will end and every soul will be judged by God and rewarded or punished.

Heaven is a state of happiness in the presence of God.

Hell the place of eternal suffering or state of being without God.

And purgatory is the Catholic belief in an intermediate state where souls are cleansed and ready for heaven.

Take a minute or two to read through these you can pause the video if you like, and you can cover the screen and say them again and again until you're confident that you know what they mean.

I'm going to test you on these words in two minutes.

Great, now you are ready to see if you can remember each of these phrases.

I don't mind if you don't remember the definition word for word, but please pause the video here and try to write out a definition for each of the following terms. Number one, afterlife, number two, day of judgement , number three, heaven, number four, hell and number five purgatory.

When you're finished you compress resume.

Well done on that now it's time for us to check your answers.

So again, the afterlife is what Christians believe follows life on earth.

Again, you don't need to have every word exactly as it is on the screen as long as you have the main idea.

The day of judgement is the time when the world will end and every soul will be judged by God rewarded or punished.

Heaven is a state of happiness in the presence of God.

Hell is the place of eternal suffering or state of being without God and purgatory is a Catholic belief in an intermediate state where souls are cleansed and ready for heaven.

What I would encourage you to do is to pause the video here, and get out your different coloured pen and go through your definitions and just add in words that you think are useful and make sure that you feel really confident with this section before we move on.

Now it's time to consider what Christians believe about heaven and hell.

We hear a lot about heaven and hell.

You see ideas about heaven and hell in different movies that you might watch.

So, you probably have some ideas about what they are, but today we need to examine what the Bible says about what they are, not what our society says.

So the first thing I would like you to do is to pause the video here, and to create two mindmaps with your ideas of what heaven and hell are like.

So you can use any ideas that you have these could be from cartoons, from movies, from religions.

I don't mind, but I want you to spend about five minutes, build a point in any idea you have about heaven or hell around your mindmaps and press resume when you are finished.

Really well done, really well done on that.

I'm not sure what you came up with, but if you look at the images on this screen, you will notice that they are normally what people think of when they think of heaven and hell.

They think of heaven as in the sky, angels, clouds, blue sky, these pearly gates in front of heaven and they think of hell as this idea of fire and darkness.

When I've taught this before, a lot of the times these are the images that people have came up with.

But it's interesting because sometimes these are from things that we've watched on TV and not actually from what the Bible has said.

So know it's time to examine what the Bible has said about heaven and hell.

We're going to read through this passage on heaven together.

So you can follow along on the screen.

"I heard a loud voice from the throne say, 'God lives with humans.

God will make his home with them, and they will be his people.

God himself will be with them and be their God.

He will wipe every tear from their eyes.

There won't be any more death.

There won't be any grief, crying or pain, because the first things have disappeared.

'" This is from Revelation 21:3-4 in the Good News Bible.

So pause the video here, and you can have a look in more detail at this and see what exactly does it say about heaven.

When you've done that you can press resume and we'll go through this together.

Hopefully you got three or four things there.

Some of the key things that I get from this passage is that God will live with humans, there'll be no more crying, no more death, no more pain and the things of this world will have passed away these first things.

So this is a key passage on heaven in the Bible.

Now we are going to look at two passages on hell, so you can follow through the screen with me.

"It will be like this at the end of the age, the angels will go out and gather up the evil people from among the good and will throw them into the fiery furnace, where they will cry and gnash their teeth." This is from Matthew 13:49-50 in the Good News Bible.

And secondly, the second passage says, "The place for them is the lake burning with fire and sulphur, which is the second death." Revelation 21:8 in the Good News Bible.

Again, you can pause this here and just go through the passage and think, what can I spot about what the Bible says about to hell and press resume when you're ready to continue.

Hopefully you got a few ideas there, as you can see, this is not a very uplifting scene.

So firstly, we see this idea of the angel gathering up the evil people to throw them in hell it says there's quite aggressive language here, throw them into the fiery furnace, this idea of fire, where they will cry and gnash their teeth.

And then secondly, we see this lake burning with fire again, and this idea of death.

So again, this is not an uplifting picture.

What I would like you to do now, is to create a table to show what you've learnt from the Bible about heaven and hell.

So you can pause the video here and press resume when you are finished.

Great, good job.

Hopefully you've got some ideas on heaven and someone hell from what we have discussed.

We are going to talk about these together now.

So you can get your different coloured pen and get ready to go over your answers.

So heaven, in heaven we see humans and God live together in relationship.

There's no more crying, and there's no more death or pain.

Then hell, we have evil people will go there, there'll be a fiery furnace, gnashing of teeth and it's described as the second death.

You might have got some other things from the passages that's totally fine.

But if I was you, I would get your pen now your different coloured pen and mark these answers with what you had because when you're doing RE it's really important that when you describe heaven and hell, you describe it as it says in the Bible and not from what you might watch on TV or not what you might see in society.

So make sure these answers are what it says in the Bible.

So now we have covered heaven and hell we are going to look at another Christian belief about where people go in the afterlife and this place is called purgatory.

You might have heard of purgatory before.

It's not as common as heaven and hell, but it is a really key belief in the Roman Catholic Church.

So lots of people when they think of purgatory, think waiting room.

They imagine it as this type of waiting place where souls just go and rest for a while until they go somewhere else.

But that's not actually that helpful because a waiting room implies that nothing really happens.

If you imagine going into a doctor's surgery and sitting in the waiting room, you don't get cured in the waiting room, nothing happens in the waiting room.

It's when you actually go in and see the doctor that you might get cured.

So it's purgatory is not really a waiting room because it is a place where something happens.

What happens there, so purgatory comes from the words purify and some Christians believe that when they're in purgatory, their soul will be purified so that they can go to heaven.

This means that it will be cleansed or cleaned so that they are Holy enough to go to heaven.

As we said earlier, this is a Roman Catholic belief.

A lot of Protestant Christians don't believe in purgatory, but most Roman Catholics do.

Another key belief is that people can help those in purgatory.

So if you are on earth and you believe that someone you know he has died as in purgatory, you can do things on earth to help them.

That could be praying for them, it could be giving money to charity, it could be good acts so you can help them to get to heaven.

And the last interesting point is that from purgatory souls only go to heaven.

So souls don't go to purgatory to be cleansed and then go to hell.

If the souls go to purgatory, they will be cleansed and then will go on to heaven.

This is a verse that sometimes Christians will refer to when they're talking about purgatory.

So let me read it to you.

"All of these promises are made to us, my dear friends.

So then, let us purify ourselves from everything that makes body or soul unclean, and let us be completely holy by living in awe of God." So here, some Christians believe that this is saying that there will be a time when they are purified so that they can live in the presence of God.

But I want you to challenge yourself, okay? Let's see how far you can push your brain today.

How might some other Christians interpret this verse differently? So some Christians don't believe in purgatory.

If you didn't believe in purgatory, how might you interpret this verse differently? I'll give you two minutes, pause the video and you can write down your answer and press resume when you're ready to move on.

Good effort.

So I wonder what you came up with but some Christians won't interpret this as purgatory.

Some Christians will think that this means that Christians should purify themselves while they are on earth.

That they should try to live a more holy life, that they should get rid of what makes their body or soul on unclean.

So that might mean avoiding sin.

You remember we talked about sin in our last lesson.

So they might think they should avoid sin on earth.

Now we're going to do some true and false questions to test what you have learned so far.

Purgatory means waiting room.

Is this true or false? Five, four, three, two and one.

This is of course false.

Remember we said a waiting room gives the idea that nothing really happens but things do happen in purgatory souls are cleansed.

Number two, people are purified in purgatory, true or false? Five, four, three, two, and one.

This is of course true, people are purified in purgatory.

This is where their soul is cleansed to go to heaven.

Number three, purgatory is mostly a Roman Catholic belief.

Five, four, three, two, and one.

This is true.

It's mostly Roman Catholics that have this belief in purgatory.

Some other Christians do as well, but mainly Roman Catholics.

Number four, from purgatory souls can go to heaven or hell true or false? Five, four, three, two and one.

This is of course false.

From purgatory your soul can only go to heaven.

Number five, people on earth can of help those in purgatory, true or false? Five, four, three, two and one.

The answer is true.

People on earth can help those who are in purgatory.

Well done on everything that we have done so far.

What I would like you to do now is to pause the video and to write down everything you can remember about purgatory.

So what is it? What happens there? What doesn't happen there, et cetera, et cetera.

And when you're finished, press resume and we will continue.

Really well done.

So some key things you should have got are it's somewhere where the soul is purified means that people go to heaven you can't go to hell from purgatory.

It is a Roman Catholic belief.

So those ideas are the key things you need to have.

So now we are going to consider how these beliefs influence Christians today.

So how do the beliefs in heaven, hell and purgatory influence Christians and their life today? What does the word influence actually mean though.

So something influences me, it causes me to live my life differently because it has happened.

So for example, if let's say I support a football team, let's choose, let's say I support Chelsea.

That will influence me to watch Chelsea matches to talk about Chelsea to my friends, to sing Chelsea songs, to learn the names of the footballers, et cetera.

So your beliefs influence how you live.

And if you get confused, here is a helpful way to remember this.

You can use the acronym CAB.

So is there a celebration that they do because of the belief? Is there an action that they do because of the belief? Or do they have another belief because of it? So I would like you to write down how you think these beliefs would influence Christians today.

So you can press pause here and simply write down for heaven, hell and purgatory how you would expect Christians to live because of these three beliefs.

You can resume the video once you have finished Really well done.

Let's go through some of these answers together.

So how would believing in heaven influence Christians today.

Firstly, they would be hopeful for the future as they believe they can go to heaven.

Secondly, they would do good works on the earth so remember we said some Christians believe they're saved through works so they might do good works.

And thirdly, they wouldn't be scared of death.

What about hell? How does hell influence Christians today? Firstly, they would want to live good lives to avoid hell they'd want to do good acts.

Secondly, they would obey all the commands in the Bible.

Remember if they believe that they are saved through works, then they will want to live in a certain way.

And finally, they might tell others about Christianity so that they could avoid hell as well.

And finally purgatory.

So how might this influence Christians today? Christians would pray for others when they have died.

And they would perform good acts on behalf of others.

So they might give to charity for them, they might be kind to their family, et cetera when they have died.

If you need to flick back in the video, please do and write down all of the notes that you need from there.

Well done.

If you do want to share any of the work that you've done today, please ask a parent or a your carer to share your work on Instagram, Facebook or Twitter and tag @OakNational or #LearnwithOak.

Thank you so much for joining in with today's lesson it's been great to have you here.

As I said at the beginning, some of the content today is slightly sensitive so if you do want to discuss this with a parent or a carer please do that after you finish this lesson.

Now it is your time to attempt the summary quiz to see what you have learnt.