While my book Heaven centers on the New Earth, the eternal Heaven, we often receive questions about what it’s like for believers who die now and go to the present Heaven (what theologians call the “intermediate state,” a transitional period between life on Earth and the future resurrection to life on the New Earth). A reader asked me, “In your book you state that when a Christian dies part goes to the grave and part goes to the feet of Jesus Christ. Where can I find that in the Bible?”
Jesus told the dying thief on the cross, “Today you will be with me in paradise” (Luke 23:43). The apostle Paul said that to die was to be with Christ (Philippians 1:23), and to be absent from the body was to be present with the Lord (2 Corinthians 5:8). After their deaths, martyrs are pictured in Heaven, crying out to God to bring justice on Earth (Revelation 6:9-11).
I share more in this video:
I mentioned the analogy of someone stepping outside a room, and how they’ve simply changed locations, not ceased to exist. In my book Heaven, I included a story about five-year-old Emily Kimball, which over the years, readers have told me has helped them and their loved ones:
When Emily was hospitalized and heard she was going to die, she started to cry. Even though she loved Jesus and wanted to be with him, she didn’t want to leave her family behind. Then her mother had an inspired idea. She asked Emily to step through a doorway into another room, and she closed the door behind her. One at a time, the entire family started coming through the door to join her. Her mother explained that this was how it would be. Emily would go ahead to Heaven and then the rest of the family would follow. Emily understood. She would be the first to go through death’s door. Eventually, the rest of the family would follow, probably one by one, joining her on the other side.
The analogy would have been even more complete if the room that Emily entered had had someone representing Jesus to greet her—along with departed loved ones and Bible characters and angels. Also, it would’ve helped if the room she walked into was breathtakingly beautiful, and contained pictures of a New Earth, vast and unexplored, where Emily and her family and friends would one day go to live with Jesus forever.
As painful as death is, and as right as it is to grieve it (Jesus did), we on this dying earth can rejoice for our loved ones who are already in the presence of Christ. When they die, those covered by Christ’s blood are experiencing the joy of His presence. (Scripture clearly teaches that there is no such thing as “soul sleep,” or a long period of unconsciousness between life on Earth and life in Heaven. The phrase “fallen asleep” in 1 Thessalonians 4:13 and similar passages describes the body’s outward appearance at death.)
As Paul tells us, though we naturally grieve at losing loved ones, we are not to “grieve like people who have no hope” (1 Thessalonians 4:13). Our parting is not the end of our relationship, only an interruption. We have not “lost” them, because we know where they are.
And one day, we’re told, in a magnificent reunion, they and we “will be with the Lord forever. So encourage each other with these words” (1 Thessalonians 4:17-18).
