What Happens When You Die
What Happens After We Die
Today’s scripture is found in Revelation chapter 21 and we will be reading through chapter 22 verse five. While you are finding that in your Bible, I want to encourage you to continue blessing others and relate your stories to us on the forms that were in your bulletins last week. If you need a form, you can get one at the welcome center. If you would like to share a story digitally, you can E-mail your story to any staff member. Also, if you have any questions from any of the messages during the Taking Jesus to the Streets series you can write them on the back of your communication card, or any bit of paper you have, and we’ll do our best to address them for you.
Okay, let’s stand and honor God as we read his word, starting in Revelation chapter 21 and verse 1 follow along as I read:
Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea. 2 I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband. 3 And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Now the dwelling of God is with men, and he will live with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. 4 He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.”
5 He who was seated on the throne said, “I am making everything new!” Then he said, “Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true.”
6 He said to me: “It is done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End. To him who is thirsty I will give to drink without cost from the spring of the water of life. 7 He who overcomes will inherit all this, and I will be his God and he will be my son. 8 But the cowardly, the unbelieving, the vile, the murderers, the sexually immoral, those who practice magic arts, the idolaters and all liars—their place will be in the fiery lake of burning sulfur. This is the second death.”
9 One of the seven angels who had the seven bowls full of the seven last plagues came and said to me, “Come, I will show you the bride, the wife of the Lamb.” 10 And he carried me away in the Spirit to a mountain great and high, and showed me the Holy City, Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God. 11 It shone with the glory of God, and its brilliance was like that of a very precious jewel, like a jasper, clear as crystal. 12 It had a great, high wall with twelve gates, and with twelve angels at the gates. On the gates were written the names of the twelve tribes of Israel. 13 There were three gates on the east, three on the north, three on the south and three on the west. 14 The wall of the city had twelve foundations, and on them were the names of the twelve apostles of the Lamb.
15 The angel who talked with me had a measuring rod of gold to measure the city, its gates and its walls. 16 The city was laid out like a square, as long as it was wide. He measured the city with the rod and found it to be 12,000 stadia in length, and as wide and high as it is long. 17 He measured its wall and it was 144 cubits thick, by man’s measurement, which the angel was using. 18 The wall was made of jasper, and the city of pure gold, as pure as glass. 19 The foundations of the city walls were decorated with every kind of precious stone. The first foundation was jasper, the second sapphire, the third chalcedony, the fourth emerald, 20 the fifth sardonyx, the sixth carnelian, the seventh chrysolite, the eighth beryl, the ninth topaz, the tenth chrysoprase, the eleventh jacinth, and the twelfth amethyst. 21 The twelve gates were twelve pearls, each gate made of a single pearl. The great street of the city was of pure gold, like transparent glass.
22 I did not see a temple in the city, because the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are its temple. 23 The city does not need the sun or the moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light, and the Lamb is its lamp. 24 The nations will walk by its light, and the kings of the earth will bring their splendor into it. 25 On no day will its gates ever be shut, for there will be no night there. 26 The glory and honor of the nations will be brought into it. 27 Nothing impure will ever enter it, nor will anyone who does what is shameful or deceitful, but only those whose names are written in the Lamb’s book of life.
22 Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, as clear as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb 2 down the middle of the great street of the city. On each side of the river stood the tree of life, bearing twelve crops of fruit, yielding its fruit every month. And the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations. 3 No longer will there be any curse. The throne of God and of the Lamb will be in the city, and his servants will serve him. 4 They will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads. 5 There will be no more night. They will not need the light of a lamp or the light of the sun, for the Lord God will give them light. And they will reign for ever and ever.
Thank you for standing. You may be seated.
This passage of scripture gives us a glimpse of the eternal destination for mankind, after the second coming of Jesus, the new heaven, and the New Jerusalem. This description of heaven gives us just a peek at what our final destination will look like. But what happens between now and then when someone dies?
At some point in each of our lives, we become aware of our mortality. I remember when I was about nine or ten years old, on a bright sunny summer day in Illinois. I was out in the yard playing with the 1960’s version of a gameboy; sticks and mud. For some reason my mind wandered to thoughts of my life on earth coming to an end someday. I realized at that point that there was an end and I didn’t know what was beyond that end. My chest tightened, I felt emptiness in my stomach. I’m sure I had a “deer in the headlights look.” I responded by standing up, and running towards the house in a panic. By the time I reached the front porch, the panic had subsided and I was able to change my attention to a different activity and abandon those scary thoughts. I’ll bet that some of you can tell a similar story. We all become aware of our mortality at some point. How we reconcile those fears in a large measure depends upon the worldview we hold.
Christians, from all generations, have a view of heaven and hell after this life on earth, and the life-long struggle with the devil while we are living this pre-heaven life.
The mindset from my generation can be summed in the slogan: “If you prove it to me by objective reason, I will believe it and live it.” Since the devil, heaven, and hell cannot be proved scientifically, this mindset finds it difficult to believe in the devil, heaven, or hell. Non-Christians from my generation struggle with the reality of the devil, heaven, and hell because they can’t prove their existence scientifically.
Throughout our life on earth, we are tempted from three sources: the world, the flesh, and the devil. It is relatively easy for us to identify temptations from the world; things like advertising, money, and possessions, and temptations from the flesh; things like overeating, sexual desires, and excess physical comforts.
But there are temptations that we know come from neither the world nor the flesh, like temptations that come to us in our moments of deepest devotion and quiet. You know when your thoughts wander to thinking about what other people are, or are not doing, and those thoughts that have jealousy or pride at their root. Reason tells us that those temptations can only be attributed to the devil. That ability to reason through temptations gives the modern thinker a way to grab a hold of the notion of the devil.
The next generation’s mindset views truth as that which best fits the facts as I know them here and now. Those truths are realized through relationships and experiences. If through relating to others, or personal experience they encounter the devil, and then it can become a truth.
In the early 2000’s, George Barna noted that an “overwhelming majority of Americans believe that there is life after death and that heaven and hell exist. And that their views of heaven and hell are cut and pasted from a variety of sources such as television, movies, and conversations with friends.
Do you believe in the devil, heaven, and hell? Does our society believe in the devil heaven and hell? Watch this clip and see what people on the street are saying.
Now I’m sure that those interviews were not conducted in a manner to infer any statistical certainty, but if they are at least somewhat representative of our society, the beliefs of Americans have changed drastically in the last few years.
Is there a devil? If there is, who is he? What does he do? Clearly if you hold the Bible as the word of God, you must believe in the devil. The New Testament records Jesus’ encounters with the devil and his temptations.
Scripture calls the devil the adversary, the devil, the slanderer, the false accuser, Satan, the opposer, the prince of the fallen angels, the evil one, the malevolent one, the dragon, the old serpent, the prince of this world, the prince of the power of the air, the god of this world, and Beelzebub, among other names
The late theologian Stanley Grenz provides this description of the devil:
“In the Old Testament, Satan appears as a member of the heavenly court with the task of the accuser. He acts much like a prosecuting attorney does in our court system, acting in the interest of justice. In Job, the Satan assumed his classical pose of charging a good man with evil.
Somewhere in the story, the accuser in the court of God develops a hostile intent. Satan the accuser falls from the heavenly court and becomes Satan the accuser of the saints, the one who is hostile toward humans. It is a small step from accuser of the saints to Satan’s final position as God’s archenemy.
As God’s archenemy banned from heaven, Satan carries out a two-pronged attack on earth. One against unbelievers blinding their eyes to the Gospel and one against the church. His attack against the Bride of Jesus includes both external persecution and internal temptation, deceit, and seduction. Satan’s work within the church points to the heart of evil, a violation of community.”
From scripture, we learn that Satan is a spiritual being, banned from heaven, destined to eternity in the fiery lake of burning sulfur that we read about in our text for today, and that he is powerless for those who call on Jesus’ name.
We give Satan too much credit and we give him all of his power, since he has none over us. Some of you might remember the Flip Wilson Show; the variety show from the 70’s hosted by the comedian Flip Wilson. Do you remember his character Geraldine who would explain her circumstance with the line “the devil made me do it”? We are too quick on the trigger to blame Satan when he has no power, unless we give him power. When we allow Satan to direct our thoughts in ways we know they shouldn’t go, or when we let him direct our eyes to things we shouldn’t look at, we give him power. When we succumb to the “internal temptation, deceit, and seduction” that Grenz talks about we give Satan power.
Jesus defeated Satan, Jesus defeated death. Satan is powerless in the life of a Jesus follower unless you give him power.
So if the devil exists and he will end-up in the fiery lake of burning sulfur, is there a hell for unbelievers who die? Our text today tells us that the unbelievers end-up in the same place:
“But the cowardly, the unbelieving, the vile, the murderers, the sexually immoral, those who practice magic arts, the idolaters and all liars—their place will be in the fiery lake of burning sulfur. This is the second death.”
Jesus speaks of hell during his earthly ministry, referencing the final hell. Jesus used the Greek word Gehenna to refer to hell to provide his Jewish audience with a word picture of a fiery place of eternal punishment for the ungodly dead.
Gehenna was the name of a ravine south of Jerusalem where fires were kept burning to consume the dead bodies of animals, criminals, and refuse,
But what about between the first death, death of the earthly body and the second death, condemnation to the lake of fire? The Old Testament describes this as a part of Sheol, which was translated to the Greek Hades in the New Testament. This is a reference to the place where the ungodly dead are tormented before the second death.
We tend to have a view of hell as this place of flames where unrepentant souls are sitting around fanning themselves while Satan holds court. That really is a false picture. Have you ever heard anyone say “at least I won’t be alone in hell”? That statement comes from that false view. Guess what? Those that end up in hell will be alone!
Hell will be a place of torture and torment, outer darkness, weeping and gnashing of teeth, eternal fire. The fire isn’t literal; it represents the anguish that comes from the awareness that you wasted your life on earth in the perishable and temporal.
Hell isn’t something controlled by Satan. It isn’t populated by the souls he won. Scripture tells us that Satan has already lost, he’s a punk, a loser, and he gets no spoils. Hell is isolation, estrangement and loneliness and Satan will be just as isolated, estranged, and lonely as the rest of the souls there. Hell is eternal separation from God and the community that he desires for his people.
Okay, enough of the bad. Let’s talk about heaven. Our text for today describes a new heaven and a new earth, a place that is beautiful beyond what we can imagine. That is the final destination for repentant believers, after the return of Jesus, and after God makes a new heaven on earth. Did you catch that? The new heaven will be on earth, not up in the sky somewhere. But what happens when our time on earth ends and what about all those who have gone before us? Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, our friends and our family members? Clearly, the scriptures teach that we do not go to the new heaven, the final heaven until the end of this earth.
Steve mentioned Randy Alcorn last week and his book titled “Heaven.” In that book he teaches about the intermediate heaven. When Christians die before the second coming of Jesus, their souls go to the intermediate heaven. Alcorn calls this intermediate heaven “a transitional period between our past lives on earth and our future resurrection to life on the New Earth.”
When we talk about heaven, in the context of saying someone who is no longer with us is in heaven, we are talking about this intermediate heaven.
We read a lot in the Bible about people ascending into heaven, or being taken-up. Where exactly is this intermediate heaven? It is in the angelic realm. We can’t see that realm but it is real none-the-less. The Bible also speaks of people being asleep, or being in a state of soul sleep, when they depart this earth. This description comes from the appearance of the body at death. It looks like the person is sleeping and we talk of laying them to rest.
These depictions are far from reality. Recall Jesus’ telling us about Lazarus and the rich man in Luke 16:19-31;
This is the story of Lazarus and the rich man dying. Lazarus goes to the intermediate heaven and the rich man goes to the intermediate hell. The rich man sees Abraham and Lazarus a ways off and calls out to Abraham to send Lazarus to dip his finger in water to cool the rich man’s tongue.
No one had to wake-up Abraham, or Lazarus, or the rich man for this encounter. They were conscious and so are all who depart the earth, conscious in the intermediate heaven or conscious in the intermediate hell.
What makes all of this so difficult for us to comprehend is our finite nature as human beings. We can identify a beginning and an end to our existence on this earth, it is the infinite part with which we struggle. God is an infinite being, he neither began nor ends, and finite creations of that infinite God struggle with that concept. Let’s be honest, if the Bible didn’t start out “In the beginning” we would probably struggle with our biblical history.
I was sitting through a physics lecture on Einstein’s principles and theories during my second year of college, when I was struck by something that has really helped me come to grip with our condition after the death of our earthly bodies. Now I need to remind you that I am a modern thinker, I like logical reasoning, and I was weaned on the scientific method. Also, there is a reason that I have never made a living as a scientist. So that being said, the professor was introducing us to Einstein’s theory of relativity and the equation on the screen:
As the professor worked through the equation, he added that as objects approach the speed of light, their "rate of time" approaches zero, and distances traveled by the object approach zero.
Now follow my reasoning, if you, and by you I mean your soul when it escapes this earthly body, are accelerated to a speed greater than the speed of light, humans can’t see you because you are moving faster than the light spectrum that human eyes can interpret, time is less than zero so there is no time (i.e. eternity or at least closer than to eternity than on earth), and distance traveled is less than zero so hanging out, spiritually in this building, can be almost simultaneous with hanging out at some spot on the other side of the earth, in the spiritual realm.
Okay, I know that scientists, particularly those of the quantum and strand theory age can pick this thinking apart, but it has helped me find comfort in knowing that heaven, hell, and the spiritual realm can be logically reasoned.
Back to the intermediate heaven, where we know we will be conscious. Will we be in the presence of others? Absolutely! Remember the passage in Luke? Lazarus and Abraham were hanging out together! This is the second stage of the restoration of community with God and his children. The first stage is happening right now as we build biblical community with each other through the power of God’s Spirit.
In the second stage of community, we will be in the presence of Jesus. Paul proclaims this fact when he states that he prefers to be absent from the body and at home with Jesus. And Jesus stated the same when he told the thief on the cross to his right that he would be with him in paradise today.
I want to share with you an imaginative reading of our text from Revelation by John Ortberg- This is what heaven will be like: In the heavenly kingdom, all marriages will be healthy and all children will be safe. Those who have too much will give to those who have too little. In the heavenly community, Israeli and Palestinian children will play together on the West Bank. Their parents will build homes for one another. In offices and corporate boardrooms executives will secretly scheme how to make their colleagues succeed. They will compliment each other behind their backs. Tabloids will be filled with accounts of courage and moral beauty. Talk shows will share stories of men who secretly enjoy dressing like men. Disagreements will be settled with grace and civility. There will still be lawyers perhaps, but they will have really useful jobs like delivering pizza, which will be non-fat and low in cholesterol. Doors will have no locks, cars will have no alarms, schools will no longer need police. Students and teachers and janitors will value and honor one another. At recess every kid will get picked for a team. Churches will never split. People will never be bored or hurried. No father will ever say to a disappointed child, “I’m too busy.” We will all have enough sleep. Divorce courts and shelters for battered women will be turned into community centers. Every time one human being touches another, it will be to express encouragement and affection and delight. No one will be lonely, no one will be afraid. People of different races will join hands and they will be honored and will be enriched by each other. And in the center of this entire community will be its magnificent architect and its most glorious resident, God himself.
Heaven is what we were made for. That homesickness; that ache in our bones. Heaven is our deepest instinct. It is what we have always wanted.
We could go on for hours, if not days examining the subjects of heaven, hell, and the devil. We’ve only grazed the surface of the new heaven and what we will be doing in heaven. But let’s summarize some key points:
The devil is powerless in our lives because of what Jesus accomplished on the cross and through the resurrection. He only has the power you give him, so don’t give him any.
Hell is a nasty place. It is worse than the worst thing we can imagine. Hell is eternal separation from God. The total absence of community.
Heaven is way beyond what we can ever imagine and in the intermediate heaven; we will be in the presence of Jesus. The new heaven is the restoration of perfect community with God.
I want to close today by leaving you with this thought: There is a saying in life that I have found to be true most of the time. “It’s not what you know, it’s who you know.” It isn’t so much what you know about heaven, hell, and the devil, its whether or not you now Jesus. And when you know Jesus there is no panic, no fear about what happens when we die.
Let’s all stand. Go this week and bless someone. Bless each other as you leave this place.