According to atheist and member of the Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF), Wayne Hensler, there is no God or afterlife and, as a legacy for his grandchildren, he has sponsored a billboard stating his point of view in Wisconsin.
The billboard reads “Enjoy life now: There is no afterlife,” and the FFRF said that they are very pleased with Hensler’s efforts to show the people exactly how it is.
However, this is not the first time that Hensler has sponsored a billboard such as this. He also did so in 2010, but his efforts to educate the public to his way of thinking were thwarted when the billboard was vandalized, according to reports.
In 2010, Hensler stated that he had sponsored the billboard in an effort to get people to enjoy their time in life a little more and to make them think about the meaning of life, instead of wasting their time on things like God and Jesus.
Co-President of the FFRF, Dan Barker said that the idea of most Christians that we are just travelers on this earth and are passing our time here before we go on to somewhere else, is totally false.
Barker went on to say that when the poet from Amherst, Massachusetts, Emily Dickinson, said that we would not pass this way again and that is what made life so sweet, she was dead right. Before leaving Christianity in 1984 and becoming an atheist, Barker served as a Christian preacher and musician for more than 19 years.
Co-founder of FFRF, Annie Laurie Gaylor, said that “One of the greatest disservices of religion is that it misdirects human energies from this world—our only life—to some un-provable, highly improbable imaginary afterlife.” She continued “We should enjoy life now, but also realize that the only afterlife that ought to concern us is leaving our descendants a secure and pleasant future.”
However, Jeffrey Smith, Pastor of Emmanuel Baptist Church, Coconut Creek, Florida, said that just because some people don’t believe in an afterlife it does not mean that it is not real.
Smith went on to say that we cannot escape from the coming day of judgment that is part of the future of everyone, whether they believe in it or not. He added that the bible states in Hebrews 9:27 that “it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment” and nobody can escape that.
