MARK MEYNELL is best known for Cross-Examined, his 1999 book on the cross of Jesus and the meanings of atonement, which has run to several reprints. A director of Langham Preaching, with close links to the Keswick Convention and All Souls’, Langham Place, he writes at a popular level — for a mainly Evangelical readership.

His new book is a companion volume, looking at the resurrection of Jesus and its implications for believers today. It is structured in three sections: Past, Present, and Future. The Past section explores the theme of death and new life in the Hebrew Scriptures. Meynell’s dominant image here is of jigsaw pieces. No full or consistent picture of resurrection emerges in the Old Testament, he says, but there are tantalising glimpses to be found on individual jigsaw pieces: Elisha raising a boy from death; Job confident of meeting God in the flesh after death; the Psalmist trusting that God will redeem him from Sheol, place of the dead.

The Present section looks at ways the resurrection of Jesus affects the life of Christians today, while the Future section explores the Revelation of St John and the believer’s ultimate hope of life after life. A final appendix summarises classic “evidences” for the resurrection of Jesus. Each chapter ends with questions for discussion.

Meynell takes biblical narratives about Satan at face value. Similarly, he sees the Fall as a literal, space-time event, and assumes that the earth before the Fall was a pristine paradise. He does not linger on hard questions that this may raise for some readers. (I, for one, would be genuinely interested to know what Meynell makes of 70-million-year-old dinosaur bones showing evidence of arthritis.)

Occasionally, the author’s desire to use relevant contemporary images wobbles. He writes that in Revelation “all the TV dials” are “turned up to eleven” — an odd image, given that our TVs haven’t had dials for half a century. More creative is his opening focus on Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. Meynell begins his examination of life after life by asking deep questions about what life actually is — in all its mystery, beauty and wonder.


The Revd Mike Starkey is a London-based writer, and former Head of Church Growth for Manchester diocese.

Life After Life: Why Jesus means death isn’t the end
Mark Meynell
IVP £12.99
(978-1-78974-500-9)
Church Times Bookshop £11.69