The Rabbis argued in Bet Hamidrash
About the generation of the wilderness
Do they have a share in the World to Come?

"במדבר הזה יתמו ושם ימותו"
Hashem said in His Holy Torah:
In this wilderness they will perish
And there they shall die!
"They shall perish" refers to our own world
"And there they shall die" refers to the world to come
This is what Rabbi Akiva said;
Said Rabbi Eliezer
They enter the world to come!

It is thus stated:
Gather unto me
My pious ones
Who had made a covenant with me over a sacrifice.
The generation who suffered for Hashem
In Egypt and in all travails
Through heat and cold, hunger and thirst
Is not that the greatest sacrifice?

Said Rabbah, the grandson of Channa, in the name of Rabbi
Yochanan:
שבקיה רבי עקיבא לחסידותיה?!
Oh, Rabbi Akiva!
How could you
Abandon your piety!
This is what Hashem said to His prophet, Jeremiah:
Go and call out
In the ears of Jerusalem
And say: "I remember for thee
The piety of your youth
The love of your nuptials
Your following after me
Through a wilderness that cannot be sown."
Now, argued Rabbi Yochanan:
If others enter through their merit -
They, themselves, all the more so!

(TB Sanh. 110b)