What Happens When You Die?

 

What happens when you die?  I have written on this subject before, with the help of a lecture by David Bercot, former Jehovah’s Witness, now Anabaptist international speaker and author.   But since the subject is both controversial and important, I am trying again. This time I am getting the help of David Pawson, an international Bible teacher, also a former chaplain (from the Royal Air Force). Though he died at age 90, one of his lecture tapes still lives on in this discussion.  (Bercot is 72; I like the wisdom of the elders).  So I would hope you would open your mind, possibly to agree with his beautiful logic and wonderful allegory based on Scripture—as we prove that there definitely is an Intervening State between death and resurrection. 

Let’s begins with Luke 16:19-31.  I follow it with my paragraph note:

“There was a certain rich man who was clothed in purple and fine linen and fared sumptuously every day. ²⁰ But there was a certain beggar named Lazarus, full who of sores, who was laid at his gate, ²¹ desiring to be fed with the crumbs which fell from the rich man’s table. Moreover the dogs came and licked his sores. ²² So it was that the beggar died, and was carried by the angels to Abraham’s bosom. The rich man also died and was buried. ²³ And being in torments in Hades, he lifted up his eyes and saw Abraham afar off, and Lazarus in his bosom. ²⁴ “Then he cried and said, ‘Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus that he may dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue; for I am tormented in this flame.’ ²⁵ But Abraham said, ‘Son, remember that in your lifetime you received your good things, and likewise Lazarus evil things; but now he is comforted and you are tormented. ²⁶ And besides all this, between us and you there is a great gulf fixed, so that those who want to pass from here to you cannot, nor can those from there pass to us.’ ²⁷ “Then he said, ‘I beg you therefore, father, that you would send him to my father’s house, ²⁸ for I have five brothers, that he may testify to them, lest they also come to this place of torment.’ ²⁹ Abraham said to him, ‘They have Moses and the prophets; let them hear them.’ ³⁰ And he said, ‘No, father Abraham; but if one goes to them from the dead, they will repent.’ ³¹ But he said to him, ‘If they do not hear Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded though one rise from the dead.’ ”

As can be seen, there are two different areas in that place, one good and one bad.  For Lazarus, who has just died, he is comforted by Abraham, so he is on the good side; yet it is clear that he is not in heaven.  Since Lazarus did not go to heaven upon death, these verses are speaking of another place, between death and his heaven-resurrection. This means the resurrection evidently comes later, after this environment.  I’m suggesting that this place is an intervening state.  There are commentators that dispute this theory; they say the verses are a parable, which by definition is not to be taken as real-life.  They say that under the rules of parables, it’s OK to just get the main point, and ignore the details.  But it might not be a parable, since it names a person, which happens in no parable.  My more relevant question, though, is, since so little is known about the after-life, why would Jesus give us a false account of it?  This is a passage where Jesus tells more about what’s after death than all His teaching—so, due to the speech’s importance, why would He present an incorrect picture?  Something to think about.

Now to my “Cliff’s notes” on Pawson’s lecture.  He begins by posing this question:  What exactly happens to a person when they die? While alive, he has had two parts:  body and spirit.  Man (or woman), unlike the animal, is a unique combination of the physical and the spiritual. At death the body decays, but the spirit is loosed from the body; there is a separation between them. When we say “spirit,” we are not speaking of things secular, like “personality.”  Our spirit is us, and has a supernatural side. The body is really secondary; it is just an outer garment of flesh, etc. It lasts maybe 80 years, on average, before the “warranty expires.”  The spirit goes on much, much longer--into eternity.  The body can be described as a tabernacle—holding the most important part inside; or an “overcoat,” making the cemetery a “cloakroom.”  The outward man, as we grow old, is losing strength, but the inward man can be renewed every morning, thank God.  Because of the time involved, if nothing else, our focus while we live should be on the destiny of the spirit. Scripture is also abundantly clear that death does not mean any spirits are annihilated. As you will see below.

What happens to a man or woman when they die, besides the separation of body and spirit?  Because of the sin of Adam and Eve, the body has a cursed fate, namely death (Genesis 3:19): “For dust you are, and to dust you shall return.” The first thing in the after-life is, we (the real “we”) will leave the body and have conscious life solely in our spirit.  But this separation of the two parts of us is only temporary.  There is still coming a day, later, in which body and spirit join again.  For all of us Christians, this is the definition of the word “resurrection.” Resurrection is the gathering of flesh back together, joining the spirit again. Then the body and spirit, alive again, will be directed on a path that will lead to its final eternal place.  That reality, and a heaven with glorious things, makes Christianity unique among religions of the world.

Thinking further on the resurrection, we must remember that we follow Jesus. He resurrected as a body; so will we. He emphasized in Luke 24:39, and to Thomas, that He was not a ghost, not just a spirit; He was back in the body as well. Since we are to be like Christ, His death and later resurrection become His followers’ deaths and later resurrections.  This resurrection is the heart of our faith; yet some ‘Christian denominations,’ even some seminaries, teach by implication that a resurrection of Jesus could not have happened.  For that matter, all the other major religions besides Christianity teach that if a person goes beyond death, any conscious life is only as a spirit, with no body.  But Jesus was resurrected as a spirit and a body. Thinking of how we can in that day, walk about, and know each other, makes heaven more real, and more desirable.  Heaven is referred to as a place—it is not a ‘state of soul.’ 

But what about this intervening state that I only mentioned?  It’s between death and resurrection.  The apostles and church fathers closest to Jesus believed it, and that is what they taught for several centuries.  But the church became large, and directed by an administration that distorted the intervening state with lies.  This led to Protestant denominations rejecting the intervening state totally, which was also bad, throwing out the baby with the bath water.  They tried so hard to just separate from Catholics.  So why do I want you to change your doctrine?  Because we expect to follow Jesus. He demonstrated the interval Himself with the time between His own death and resurrection

Let me give details to prove that there is an interval, from the time when our earthly life ends, to the later time of bodily resurrection.  There is a background point that I would like to give you first:  Resurrection happens to all of us Christians at once at His Second Coming.  We don’t appear in heaven in straggles, each showing up right after each of us dies, each asking, “Where do I live, do I get into a wedding feast?”

I’ve suggested that, in the interval between death and group resurrection, we exist solely as disembodied spirits.  Before and after that interval, we are in two parts—body and spirit. Let’s prove that “spirit-only” idea--by starting off with Jesus Himself.  There were only 3 days between His death and His resurrection.  Fact is, He did not spend His 3-day interval in heaven.  We don’t know all that He did, but I Peter 3:18b-20 puts Him in this status:

….being put to death in the flesh but made alive in the spirit, ¹⁹ in which he went and proclaimed to the spirits in prison, ²⁰ because they formerly did not obey, when God's patience waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was being prepared, in which a few, that is, eight persons, were brought safely through water.

Jesus’ spirit, in the 3 days, preached to those spirits in prison, evidently some of those wiped out by Noah’s Flood (Genesis 7).  (Since Greek did not distinguish capital or small letters, I took the liberty of smalling the word “spirit” for Jesus, to demonstrate that He was a spirit speaking to spirits.  If the Holy Spirit was involved, it would read “made alive by the Spirit.”)  I have no idea why He preached to those in prison; it was a unique case (this does not give you the opportunity to think, “see, we all get a second chance”), but my point is, Jesus’ spirit and the spirits of those “in prison” were the only things going on in that 3 days.  Jesus was in a spirit state for those days, without a body.  He could communicate as a spirit, and He was conscious as a spirit. 

We can learn more from the Apostle’s Creed:

I believe in Jesus Christ, God's only Son, our Lord, who was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried; he descended into “hell" (or "hades" depending on the translation). On the third day he rose again; he ascended into heaven, he is seated at the right hand of the Father, and he will come again to judge the living and the dead.

There is confusion about the word hell, or hades, in different editions of the Bible. By mistake, Tyndale combined two completely different Greek words as one English word, “hell.”  One of those Greek words is correctly translated “hell.” But the other Greek word is totally different; it should be translated into “hades.”  Because of this error, hades has a bad rap; people think it also means hell.  But it is not anywhere like hell. Hades is defined as “the realm of all departed spirits,” and temporarily housed good Lazarus, as well as the bad rich man—and Jesus too.  Jesus was there, as the Apostles Creed says, for those 3 days between death and His resurrection, as a spirit. Before and after, He had a body.  As it was with Jesus, hades is the correct name of the location of all Christians between death and resurrection as well—namely, as a spirit only.  Let me repeat this:  Hades has all departed spirits—Christian and those who rejected Christ. So it has two completely different subsections, one good, the other bad. Read the verses at the top and you’ll get that scene. Fix it in your brain, because most Protestants don’t follow this doctrine now.  In any event, after the 3 days, He was resurrected, His spirit returned back into His body, making it alive, and shortly after that, as the Apostles’ Creed says “…He ascended into heaven.”  Note: He went to heaven with a body.  Also please note that we will follow this example, too:  We will spend time, as Jesus did, in a conscious state as a spirit, hopefully in the “good’ side of hades.  Then, at a future date, the day of the Second Coming, Christ calls us from the clouds to be with Him in heaven. It may be centuries after our death, or it may be hours, depending on when we died—anyway, those who are Christians are resurrected, all at once, rejoining body and spirit, and we ascend to heaven for the wedding feast (I have another book that suggests it will be a Passover feast, based on Luke 22:15-16).  Heaven, to stress it again, is for bodied beings.  That’s how Jesus went; that’s how we all will go.

I also want to stress that hades, on the good side, is not near the earth’s core, nor it is a dark place.  There could be, in fact, two completely different locations for the good side and the bad side.  All we know for sure on that, is “there is a great gulf fixed” (Luke 16:26) between the two, and no spirit can cross from one to the other. In our Luke passage of Lazarus, they could see each other on opposite sides.  But they were in the supernatural realm, so, as a spirit, anything’s possible; maybe we could see the other side thousands of miles away.

For further proof on an intervening state, what did Jesus say to the dying thief next to Him on the cross?  The thief had a request: "…remember me, when you come into your kingdom." (Luke 23:42).  Jesus replied: “Assuredly, I say to you, today you will be with Me in paradise.”  Is paradise heaven?  Actually, no.  As I will prove, paradise is the good side of hades; it’s just a second name for the good side of hades.  The Greek word translated “paradise” is used 4 times in Scripture; none of them imply heaven, though one seems close.  The Greek word translated “heaven,” on the other hand, is used 531 times, and everywhere implies what we think of heaven (except the higher atmosphere, for instance, in Genesis creation).  Different words, ‘way different meanings—again.  The thief was thinking the kingdom of heaven.  But that, as Jesus knew, was far in the future, upon resurrection.  Jesus promised him something of great comfort now, as soon as he dies; namely, he will go to paradise.

Where, and what is, paradise?  One argument that most hold, but I don’t, assumes paradise is heaven.  They quote II Corinthians 12:2-4:

I know a man in Christ who fourteen years ago—whether in the body I do not know, or whether out of the body I do not know, God knows—such a one was caught up to the third heaven. ³ And I know such a man—whether in the body or out of the body I do not know, God knows— ⁴ how he was caught up into Paradise and heard inexpressible words…

They argue that paradise must be heaven, since it refers to the “third heaven,” and has what sounds like a favorite rapture phrase, “caught up.”  Well, the Second Book of Enoch says (yes, non-canonical, but I’ve spoken in other blogs on how Enoch is quoted in Scripture, so it’s reliable) that the Third Heaven is not “heaven” as we know it (despite how it is translated). It is described as a location "between corruptibility and incorruptibility" containing the Tree of Life, "whereon the Lord rests, when he goes up into paradise." The phrase “between corruptibility (ie, life on earth) and incorruptibility” (which we have in heaven), suggests an in-between interval, does it not?  It’s also noteworthy that a very good Interlinear New Testament (In Greek, with English subtitles, the best resources of all resources for proper translation), uses the phrase “caught away” to paradise, not “caught up.”  So, their “proof” for “paradise=heaven” is weak. (I can’t help it that most translations and commentaries that use “heaven” have a doctrine they’re trying to push on us here.) The Tree also appears in Revelation 2:7, where it is associated with paradise there too. This buttresses the reliability of the Enoch argument against “paradise=heaven.”

The other 3 times the word “paradise” is used are, in Luke, to the thief, which we’ve already discussed; and, from Hebrew, for the Garden of Eden in Genesis.  The fourth use of it is in Revelation 2:7, in the phrase the “Garden City of God,” so translated by Messianic Jews.  The word “paradise” actually originated in Persia; it actually means a garden, especially a king’s garden. (The Tree of Life would be ideal there, as well as Enoch’s statement that it is where Jesus rests—a garden would fulfill that function). We have thus dismissed, or reduced, the argument that paradise=hell.  My one last remark to poke holes in the “paradise=hell” argument, is to ask; is paradise a garden, or is it heaven?  A garden is not heaven.  Does it make sense that the word “paradise” has totally different meanings in different Scriptures, a garden in one place, heaven in another? No, it doesn’t. While a garden is not heaven, it’s close to it, as we’ll see below.

I would like to argue that paradise must be the location of the “good” side of hades. That’s what Jesus meant to the thief. Now let’s talk about the true meaning of the word, garden.  We can learn much from Pawson’s allegory, which I quote most of what’s below.

If you think of that garden around Buckingham Palace, with that high landscaped wall around, you may have only gotten a glimpse of the garden from the top of a double-deck bus in your tour through London.  Anyone can go into it, but only upon invitation by the Queen. The garden is not the Palace; it is not the father’s house; it is close by it.  It is not a place of rooms.  So when Jesus talked about us being in His Father’s house in the future, with many rooms, He is not talking about paradise, the garden, but He is talking about entering into the Father’s house, which happens at our glorious Resurrection, which, as we’ve seen, is later.  Note that He said, “I will come again” (John 14:2-3) to receive us, and then we will live with Him in the father’s house.  That’s when we go to heaven.

So what Jesus was telling the thief was, “If I can’t take you now into the Father’s house, I can take you now into the King’s garden.”  So, death puts us in the garden, which we’ve also called paradise, and placed in the intervening state--which is actually a step up—the garden is much nearer to the king’s house than we can be while alive. So, you could say there are three stages:  stage #1 is at the top of the bus, and catching a glimpse of Buckingham Palace in the distance; that represents the life we enjoy here.  Stage 2 is right after death, to get inside the Garden, nearer to the palace (this represents the interval, where we, as a spirit only, are in the good part of hades, also called paradise, the garden—which you can enter, if you are a real Christian).  Stage 3 is to get right inside the Palace itself, and to live in the room reserved for you as a follower of Christ (heaven, the ultimate destination). Thinking of it like that, you’ll see that death means we’re in the garden, or paradise, which will be much better than anything we have here—especially since we might be actually meeting, perhaps daily, in close fellowship with our loving Lord, as the King takes His daily walks into the Garden for rest.  Fellowshipping like He did at first in Eden (Genesis 3:8). 

In days of old, it’s also true that near to the king’s palace was a dungeon.  Continuing the interval metaphor, the prison, like the garden, was not inside the palace.  So there is, in the interval, a distinguishing of people between two conditions, one good, one bad.  Both were in hades.  Which part we live in, the garden or dungeon, reflect choices we made while alive about Jesus Christ. True, we cannot begin to imagine what the ‘dungeon’ or the ‘garden’ are like in detail or in fact—but think of a prison, think of a garden, you get the right feel of the two sides in the interval.  Take the prison first:  It will be a place of segregation—from most of civilization and from God. Judas will be there, since Scripture says that when he hanged himself, he went to “his own place.”  That, of course, doesn’t mean his house. Some of the angels will be there, the ones who followed Lucifer (Isaiah 14:12ff), and we’re told twice in the New Testament that God has already put those angels in custody—the prison we’re talking about.  The other thief will be there.  While there is segregation from some, there will be plenty of people, but no God.  Some people in this world are perfectly happy to get on without God, and to get away as far as possible from God’s people.  They don’t like Christians, or the Christ whom we worship.  Well, they’ll get their dearest wish.  There will also be suffering there, some due to persistent heat; but what the rest is, or if heat is for everyone, we do not know. (Scripture suggests some sins are worse, or less bad, than others.)  Based on Luke’s Lazarus, spirits will remember their own identities and the past, so for Christ-rejectors there will be a burdensome regret.  Regret in knowing that your life is over, that death has sealed your decisions, that your future course is set, and there is really no altering now.  Three things can be said about prison, which we know definitely.   First, the occupants cannot go back from that prison to life itself—our Lord clearly said this.  Second, they cannot go forward to the garden; they are in custody, awaiting appearance in court—and there is no bail.  No second chance; so I urge you to make your decision for Christ now, you don’t have a clue about when you die.  Many good people are in prison (see other blogs on that); and many good people die young. Young people think they are invincible. Hopefully I touched you with a fear of God, which Scripture says we all need to be saved.

For either the garden or the prison, our spirits need not have to worry about “where is it?”  Being spirits, spatial dimensions don’t apply. I did mention before about the third heaven for Christians, which is not the actual heaven yet, but we’re getting close.  But to the more relevant question, “are we awake or asleep?” I need to address a false doctrine, soul sleep. 

Actually, there are a number of passages in the New Testament that say the dead are asleep (such as Acts 7:60 or I Corinthians 15:51). Physically, a person seems asleep when they are dead; so when the apostles use the word “asleep” in this context, everyone understands he means simply death—so the phrase is an idiom. I’m maintaining that our spirits are still alive.  But if we die and then soul sleep, the next thing we know after death is waking up for the resurrection.   But we would be missing out on something great; namely, fellowship with Christ in between.  Now I’d like to mention another proof of the interval. Please don’t misinterpret this, as most Protestants do; Paul said, “I would rather be away from the body and at home with the Lord.”  He wasn’t talking about heaven because he said, “away from the body.” (Remember, heaven is for bodied beings).  The only other condition after death is the interval, so he had to have been talking about that.  So, he was looking forward to fellowship with Christ in the interval state. 

Getting back to soul sleep, if I’m unconscious, I can’t fellowship with Him.  Unconscious fellowship is an oxymoron.  That doesn’t attract me one bit.  Instead of sleep, I’m better off alive—because, as alive, I am conscious and can be talking with Christ, even as a spirit. Finally, we are on thin ice if we apply the word “sleep” to spirits. I suggest spirits cannot sleep—sleep is a physical function; only bodies can sleep.

 In the spirit, we can also look forward to conscious fellowship with any of His people, too.  Did you know that Abraham was a Christian?  Jesus said “Abraham rejoiced to see My day.”  But for me to talk with Abraham?…hmm.  The lineup of people waiting to do that is probably already longer than at Disneyworld.  And how does he feel, repeating the same stories?  Well, we have an eternity, so he will, I guess, enjoy it as much as I to hear it. Maybe he’ll do it in groups, like conducting seminars every so often.  We’ll be with David, and Joseph, and Moses…it’s the king’s garden party!   

We will believe in angels, for sure.  Actually, they will be at either place; Lucifer’s angels in prison, and God’s angels to guide the recently deceased to their new destination in hades.  (Maybe they would uses “temporary help” angels for doing that in wartime.) So, if you’re a believer, right after death, you look up—and the first thing you see is an angel!  The angel will carry your spirit to new places. Even if you die alone, with nobody who cares, nobody to help you…even if an unwanted baby or child dies—God has angels waiting on the other side to care for you, and make you smile.  I assume Christ will be there. Though He spends time with His Father in heaven, He is omnipresent —He has the capacity to be present in more than one place.  No clones, no mirrors, no doppelgangers.  Our God is supernatural in every way.  Praise Him for His unmatched love in this wonderful future.