Rod Thomson

After the emergency room physician told me several years ago that I was on the verge of dying, I lapsed back into unconsciousness. When I was revived a while later, I was a little surprised I was still alive. One of my first thoughts was, If I don’t make it through this ordeal, what happens to me next? Like most Christians, I knew I would continue to live, even after my physical body expired. But I was a little hazy on the exact sequence of events. I had never been particularly concerned about it until suddenly it became so very relevant. Surprisingly, the Bible offers few concrete details about what happens immediately after death. What seems apparent is that our soul separates from our body and enters the intermediate state, where our spirit is conscious and aware of our situation. Jesus’ parable of the rich man and Lazarus in Luke 16:19–31 indicates there will be two separate locations in this disembodied existence. One locale can be called paradise, where followers of Christ will enjoy God’s presence. As Jesus told the thief on the cross in Luke 23:43, "Today you will be with me in paradise." We can be confident that this will be a sublime and blissful experience, although we will have a sense of incompleteness because our souls will be separated from our bodies. The other location in the intermediate state is commonly referred to as Hades, a place of isolation and torment for nonbelievers where they will be separated from God. "It will be like waking up every day on death row, with no chance of a stay of execution," said pastor and author Randy Frazee. "In essence, Hades is banishment from the very presence of God and the life we were made to live while we await our final judgment." That final judgment marks the onset of the last stage of our existence—our forever life. Upon Jesus’ triumphant return to earth, followers of Christ in the intermediate state will receive their imperishable resurrected body and graduate into the new heaven and the new earth for eternity. The unrepentant will receive their resurrected body but will have their sentence to hell confirmed. These are irrevocable destinations where forever will be lived out. When we come to the realization that there’s actually someone on the receiving end of our prayers — an omnipotent someone who wants us to grow and mature and develop and learn and become more and more like Jesus — then prayer becomes a great adventure. Then we’re blazing new trails. Then our heart quivers. What will the final judgment be like? "The FJ [final judgment] is the great time of reckoning, at the end of history and before the eternal state, when God will judge all of his moral creatures, whether men or angels, demanding of them an account of everything they have thought, said, or done," said theologian Alan Gomes. Gomes said that at the judgment, God "will display his mercy in pardoning those who have repented of their sins and have received the forgiveness grounded in Christ’s atoning work, which satisfied divine justice through his death on the cross. Moreover, in punishing the finally unrepentant, he will reveal his righteousness, and 'by no means clear the guilty’ (Nah. 1:3)." Gomes is among the scholars who believe that at the final judgment Christians also will receive rewards based on "the quality and extent of service" for God. Said Gomes, "Our Lord himself ... exhorts his disciples to stand firm in persecution, in the knowledge that their reward in heaven will be great. He tells them not to invest their lives in the cares and pursuits of this world but to lay up for themselves imperishable treasure in heaven. The most seemingly minor and trivial acts of service will not escape his notice, and even for these he shall compensate his children richly." Other scholars, however, believe the incredible joys of heaven will be the great reward for all followers of Christ equally. "In the kingdom of God the principles of merit and ability may be set aside so that grace can prevail," said New Testament scholar Simon Kistemaker. Regardless, the simple answer to what happens after death is this: "We continue to live." The nature of our final abode will be based on who is paying for our sins. Have we received the gift of forgiveness that Jesus purchased for us on the cross? If so, we will spend forever in his presence in heaven. If not, we must pay for our sins ourselves as we spend eternity separated from him. What happens to us after death, then, depends entirely on how we respond to Christ before we die. This reading is from my book The Case for Heaven.