I understand how comforting it is to believe that our love ones who have passed away are alive and well in heaven right now. But is that what the scriptures teach and tell us?
After the brutal public assassination of Charlie Kirk last week, I saw several of his well-intentioned friends and colleagues on TV reassure their viewers that Charlie wasn’t really dead at all, but that he was watching over us from heaven.
But is that what the Bible teaches us about our assurance of everlasting life – that we don’t really die, but rather just immediately transition from this world to the next at the moment of death.
Recall the account in the Garden of Eden and the words of the serpent in Genesis after God’s warning about eating the forbidden fruit:
Genesis 2:17 (KJV):
“But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.”
The meaning here wasn’t just that Adam and Eve would die spiritually on that day, but that there was a judgement of actual death and that their lives would one day end rather than going on indefinitely.
Death was a curse then, and it is now. One of the first lies of the serpent was this:
Genesis 3:4-5 (KJV):
“And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die: For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.”
Is the truth “Ye shall not surely die…”, or is it that death is a curse and and enemy to be despised?
Is the Christian hope that each believer will gain immediate entrance into ‘heaven’ at the moment of death – or is it that we will all be resurrected from death and decay, or changed if still living at the time, together in God’s determined time, and enjoy eternal life as the family of God in a redeemed creation?
I believe that the scriptures plainly teach the latter, not the former, and that rightly dividing the Word of God on this important truth makes a difference in how we live today.
Stay tuned to Bible Rebel as we dig deeper (no pun intended). 🙂
Child of God, husband, father, grandfather, rabblerouser, songwriter, pot stirrer, waiting for the King.