What Happens When We Die

He was the oldest child in his family, and when he woke to a fire in his house, he woke two of his siblings and got them to flee the house.  But his mom and another sibling were in a part of the house cut off by the fire.  He tried getting to them but only got pushed back by the fire.  He escaped the house but with severe burns.  In pain as he rode in the ambulance for the hospital, he kept asking God to take him, to let him die the pain was so great.  And then, suddenly, it seems God did.  His pain ceased and he felt himself floating in a warm and loving light.  He felt the presence of his mother and brother who had died in the fire and a grandfather who had died when he was just a little kid.  He felt tremendous peace but also a sense that it wasn’t his time to stay here.  When he awoke the pain was back, but he had a sense that this is what was supposed to be.  After many surgeries, much depression, and the help of understanding medical people, he recovered and later became a doctor himself so he could help others as he had been helped.

We’ve all heard the stories of people who were temporarily dead but who came back to life.  They reported traveling to heaven, being welcomed in by family, feeling indescribable joy.  Are these experiences real?  Are what the people experienced truth?  What about the unbiblical beliefs they develop about life, or the unbiblical messages they get?  Are they just misinterpreting what was going on?  Why would God give them these experiences?  Is there a kernel of truth to them?  Many have studied this phenomenon.

Common elements have been reported, although the person’s interpretation of these events often corresponds with the cultural, philosophical, or religious beliefs of the person experiencing it. For example, in the US, where 46% of the population believes in guardian angels, they will often be identified as angels or deceased loved ones (or will be unidentified), while Hindus will often identify them as messengers of the god of death.

Someone has identified a consistent set of value and belief changes associated with people who have had a near-death experience. Among these changes, he found a greater appreciation for life, higher self-esteem, greater compassion for others, less concern for acquiring material wealth, a heightened sense of purpose and self-understanding, desire to learn, elevated spirituality, greater ecological sensitivity and planetary concern, and a feeling of being more intuitive.   Some, however, have experienced changes in attitudes and behavior that lead to social and spiritual problems.

Three distinct theories have been proposed to explain Near Death Expriences: spiritual theories, psychological theories, and physiological theories.  I don’t know for sure which is true.  There is a well-known defender of the Christian faith, Gary Habermas, who has researched near death experiences and believes there is evidentiary value in what people report.  He has made it part of his defense of the faith. As I said, I don’t know what the truth is.  But I do know what the Bible teaches about death for the believer and the unbeliever.  It tells us what death is, what the two stages of our victory over death are, and what God does in us through those stages.

 

What Death Is

James 2:26 tells us, “For as the body apart from the spirit is dead, so also faith apart from works is dead.”  Here is a biblical explanation of death.  We’re made up of the physical and the spiritual.  We have a body and a soul.  When our physical bodies stop functioning our souls separate from our bodies.  What does the Bible tell us happens when death occurs?  And specifically, what happens for those who are followers of Jesus?

 

What the First Stage of Death Is

Did you know that Jesus gave us an explanation of this that is found in Luke’s Gospel, chapter 16?

Luke 16:19–31

The Rich Man and Lazarus

[19] “There was a rich man who was clothed in purple and fine linen and who feasted sumptuously every day. [20] And at his gate was laid a poor man named Lazarus, covered with sores, [21] who desired to be fed with what fell from the rich man’s table. Moreover, even the dogs came and licked his sores. [22] The poor man died and was carried by the angels to Abraham’s side. The rich man also died and was buried, [23] and in Hades, being in torment, he lifted up his eyes and saw Abraham far off and Lazarus at his side. [24] And he called out, ‘Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus to dip the end of his finger in water and cool my tongue, for I am in anguish in this flame.’ [25] But Abraham said, ‘Child, remember that you in your lifetime received your good things, and Lazarus in like manner bad things; but now he is comforted here, and you are in anguish. [26] And besides all this, between us and you a great chasm has been fixed, in order that those who would pass from here to you may not be able, and none may cross from there to us.’ [27] And he said, ‘Then I beg you, father, to send him to my father’s house—[28] for I have five brothers—so that he may warn them, lest they also come into this place of torment.’ [29] But Abraham said, ‘They have Moses and the Prophets; let them hear them.’ [30] And he said, ‘No, father Abraham, but if someone goes to them from the dead, they will repent.’ [31] He said to him, ‘If they do not hear Moses and the Prophets, neither will they be convinced if someone should rise from the dead.’” (ESV)

Is this a parable or an actual account of the death experience of these two men?  I believe it is an actual account.  The clue is that Jesus mentions the name of one of the men, Lazarus.  In his parables, Jesus never mentions personal names.  People in his parables are intentionally left unnamed and general, because they are meant to represent general principles.  But here is someone with a name, Lazarus, whose life before death was horrible, but who enjoyed God’s comfort after death.

And I want us to notice a few things about Jesus’ account.  When Lazarus’ spirit left his body it needed some transport to get to Abraham’s side.  The agents of transport, Jesus tells us, were angels.  Lazarus’ spirit was carried by these angels.  Don’t you find that fascinating?  We need assistance to get to heaven.  Can you imagine how unsettling it would be to die?  We are experiencing reality one way, through our bodies, and then all of a sudden we are body-less and experiencing reality through our souls only.  It appears that God’s servants, His angels, are serving us by being there with us, helping us process what has taken place, and assisting us to reach heaven.  Thank you Lord.

Now notice also that heaven here is described as Abraham’s side.  Prior to Jesus’ ascension to heaven it appears that Paradise, as the apostle Paul calls it in 2 Corinthians 12, was an experience of comfort with Israel’s patriarch, Abraham.  Since Jesus’ ascension, however, Paradise has been moved to what Paul calls the “third heaven.”  There is the “heaven” of the sky, there is the heaven beyond the sky where the moon and sun and all the stars are, and there’s the third heaven, the heaven of God’s abode.

But at this time Paradise was either a part of a larger place called Hades, or a separate area next to Hades.  I think the former is probably correct.  Hades seems to correspond to the Sheol of the Old Testament, which is described as the place where the souls of the dead go.  For example, Jacob, when he hears that his son Joseph has been killed, so he is told, by a wild animal, it says,

Genesis 37:35, All his sons and all his daughters rose up to comfort him, but he refused to be comforted and said, “No, I shall go down to Sheol [KJV, “grave”] to my son, mourning.” Thus his father wept for him.

When Isaiah describes the fate of the king of Babylon and his coming death, he says this in Isaiah 14:9,

Sheol [KJV, “hell”] beneath is stirred up to meet you when you come; it rouses the shades to greet you, all who were leaders of the earth; it raises from their thrones all who were kings of the nations. (Isaiah 14:9)

In Sheol, which in Greek, the language of the New Testament, is called Hades, there is a compartment of torment that the rich man finds himself in, and a place of bliss, where Lazarus finds himself.  So we see that upon death there is a judgment that takes place.  If we are believers we go to reward, but if not, we go to punishment.

The punishment is described by the rich man as flames.  He feels as if he is on fire.  And strangely or maybe not so strangely, he acts as if he still has a body.  “Send Lazarus,” he asks Abraham, “to put some water on my tongue.”  But neither he nor Lazarus have a body.  Their bodies have ceased to function and have been buried.  It is each one’s soul that is in this place.  We’re not told how the rich man’s soul was borne to Hades.  We’re only told that Lazarus was borne there by angels.

Abraham makes it clear that there is no way to bridge the divide between the place of torment in Hades and the place of comfort or Paradise.  There are no second chances after death.  The rich man cannot repent and make a transfer to heaven.  But equally true is that Lazarus cannot be expelled from Paradise.  It is his reward forever.

I was recently hospitalized with a very unhealthy gallbladder that desperately needed to come out.  I went into the emergency room in great pain.  As you are probably aware, you can’t just get in through emergency without them getting some information from you.  So I’m in there, suffering, having been in this pain for some six hours, and they ask me if I’m suicidal.  They asked it less directly than that, but I got the drift.  And I told them no.  I didn’t want a psych eval, I just wanted relief.  But I was thinking, I’d rather just die than continue hurting this way.  Because I knew that when my soul left my body I would go to heaven.

Look at how Paul speaks about this:

Philippians 1:21 For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain. 22 If I am to live in the flesh, that means fruitful labor for me. Yet which I shall choose I cannot tell. 23 I am hard pressed between the two. My desire is to depart and be with Christ, for that is far better. 24 But to remain in the flesh is more necessary on your account.

Departure of the soul from the body for the believer means to be with Christ.  Paradise is now in heaven, where Christ lives.  And that is far better than staying in the flesh or body from the standpoint of ceasing suffering, as Paul was doing, awaiting a trial in Rome.  I wanted to quit hurting and be with Christ, which would be far better.  My fear of dying, my fear of the process and pain of dying, was overcome by the promise of being with Christ in glory.

Of course, God was not through with Paul and apparently not through with me, so he remained in the flesh and so do I.  It was not our time for the angels to carry our souls to heaven.

How quickly does this happen, by the way?  Well, I don’t know any passage that tells us to the second or minute or hour how long it takes.  Here is how Paul expresses it in 2 Corinthians 5:

6 So we are always of good courage. We know that while we are at home in the body we are away from the Lord, 7 for we walk by faith, not by sight. 8 Yes, we are of good courage, and we would rather be away from the body and at home with the Lord.

While we’re “at home” in the body, that is, our soul is still residing in our body, we’re away from the immediate and personal presence of the Lord Jesus.  But we would rather be away from the body, and our souls to be at home with the Lord.  It sounds pretty instantaneous, doesn’t it.

Now let me just throw something in here.  Is there any human who is exempt from this scenario?  Does everyone who dies, whose spirits leave their bodies, find their spirits roaming around without going either to Hades or Heaven?  I don’t believe so.  There is an immediate judgment that is made and you end up one place or the other.  As the author of Hebrews says, “it is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes judgment.” (9:27)  So there cannot be any such thing as a human’s ghost that haunts a house.  There is no such thing as the spirit of a person with unfinished business hanging around and interacting with living people.  This is not to say that there is not some kind of spiritual phenomena occurring in so called haunted places.  But it cannot be the souls of dead people causing that.  The most logical explanation is demonic activity, unclean spirits pretending to be the souls of departed people.

So we’ve discussed what happens when we die (what death is, the separation of our souls from our bodies) and where our spirits go (stage one, the arrival of our souls in Paradise), and that now that Paradise is heaven, where Jesus is.  But what happens when we get there?  We see that Lazarus was comforted.  And we certainly will be also.  But there is something else that takes place and I want to focus our attention on 1 John 3 to explain this.

3:1 See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are. The reason why the world does not know us is that it did not know him. 2 Beloved, we are God’s children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is. 3 And everyone who thus hopes in him purifies himself as he is pure.

While we are alive in this body we are in the process of purifying ourselves, something that everyone who hopes in Christ is doing.  But our ability to purify ourselves, to meet up to all the requirements of righteousness, i.e., perfect love and perfect obedience, is insufficient to attain total purity.  However, when our souls depart our bodies and we are transported by angels to heaven where we see Jesus, see him as he is, we will become like him in purity.  Our hearts will be cleansed of all sinfulness and we will walk in absolute purity.

This seeing Jesus as he is is sometimes called “the beatific vision.”

One church leader has explained it:  It is called “vision” to distinguish it from the mediate knowledge of God which the human mind may attain in the present life. And since in beholding God face to face the created intelligence finds perfect happiness, the vision is termed “beatific.”

In Charles Wesley’s hymn, “Maker in Whom We Live,” he wrote, “Spirit of Holiness, let all thy saints adore / thy sacred energy, and bless thine heart-renewing power. / No angel tongues can tell thy love’s ecstatic height, / the glorious joy unspeakable, the beatific sight.”

Because God is beatitude and holiness itself, the beatific vision entails ultimate beatitude and holiness.  We will be absolutely happy to experience absolute holiness.

 

What the Second Stage of Death Is

But this is not our final state.  Note what Paul says in 2 Corinthians 5:

5:1 For we know that if the tent that is our earthly home is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. 2 For in this tent we groan, longing to put on our heavenly dwelling, 3 if indeed by putting it on we may not be found naked. 4 For while we are still in this tent, we groan, being burdened—not that we would be unclothed, but that we would be further clothed, so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life. 5 He who has prepared us for this very thing is God, who has given us the Spirit as a guarantee.

Even though we are in this total happiness of absolute holiness in the presence of Christ, there is an incompleteness to it that must be made up for.  In Paul’s terms, we are naked without our bodies.  God made us to be physical/spiritual beings.  Embodiment is essential to who we are.  So even though we are in heaven in perfect bliss, we long for our bodies, and God has a plan to restore our bodies.  It is called resurrection.

Paul writes about this in 1 Thessalonians 4:

13 But we do not want you to be uninformed, brothers, about those who are asleep, that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope. 14 For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus, God will bring with him those who have fallen asleep. 15 For this we declare to you by a word from the Lord, that we who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will not precede those who have fallen asleep. 16 For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command, with the voice of an archangel, and with the sound of the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first. 17 Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we will always be with the Lord. 18 Therefore encourage one another with these words.

John had said that when Jesus appears, we will be like him, for we shall see him as he is.  Paul is talking about Jesus’ “appearance” or second coming to earth.  When he comes, Paul says, he will bring with him those who have fallen asleep.  Falling asleep is Christian-speak for dying.  It is as if our bodies have fallen asleep, only to be awakened later.  What is Christ bringing with him then?  Our souls.  Our bodies have died and disintegrated, not being able to maintain their physical cohesion without the animation of the soul.  But Jesus is bringing our souls to be reunited with our bodies, our resurrected bodies.

First, those who have died before Jesus comes back, have their bodies resurrected.  As Paul says, “the dead in Christ will rise first.”  Those of us who have already died, who have been “naked” so to speak, existing in heaven without our bodies, will now be clothed with that eternal house, our resurrected bodies.  Then those who are alive when Christ returns will be caught up, body and soul, and transformed, body and soul, without having to die.  Both their bodies and their souls will be completely changed and made absolutely pure.  This is the goal God has predestined us for.  He predestined us, Paul says, to be conformed to the image of Christ (Romans 8:29).  Through two stages of victory over death, God will have fully redeemed us.

“Jamie’s Last Testament” – Before his death in February 1992, author and pastor Jamie Buckingham wrote an addendum to his will. His loved ones shared it.  In part it read:  “Children, remember when you were little, you would often get afraid at night and climb into bed with your mother and me? We would snuggle you in between us, laugh with you, sometimes pray with you and let you go off to sleep.  Then, during the night, I would pick you up, still sleeping, and take you to your own room where I would gently tuck you in your bed.  “Death is like that. No matter what fear may accompany the actual process of dying, the Father’s loving arms are always around you. And during the time when we fall asleep, he gently moves us from this body to our mansion that’s been prepared through the death of Jesus Christ. Others who do not know our Father may fear that process, but I welcome it and I want you to welcome it also.

People and societies who cannot see any purpose in their existence beyond the material and the tangible must live chartlessly, and must live in spiritual misery, because they cannot overcome the greatest fact and mystery of human life, next to birth, which is death.  (Dorothy Thompson, The Courage to be Happy, 1957)

We know, because God has told us so through Scripture, what happens when we die.  We know that death will be the separation of our spirits from our bodies and the transport of our souls to heaven, to be with Jesus, where we will dwell, naked in a sense, until God resurrects our bodies, and in this process, God makes us absolutely pure and holy.  As John the apostle says, “everyone who thus hopes in him purifies himself as he is pure.”  This is the hope that comforts us at the death of those we love who die in the Lord.  This is the hope that makes us confident to face our own deaths.  Thank you, Lord Jesus, for this blessed hope.