It seems to us utterly clear, from a mass of Bible verses in both Testaments, that no one receives a judgment and a reward until after the resurrection. And the resurrection has not yet occurred. It will occur only when Jesus returns (I Thessalonians 4:13ff; I Corinthians 15:23; Revelation 11:15-18; Luke 20:35; Luke 14:14; Daniel 12:2, etc.). It follows, then, that no human being, apart from Jesus, has gained immortality. No one has been destroyed in the fires of hell, since hellfire is part of future judgment.
Popular stories about “after death” experiences should not be permitted to contradict the Bible — which they certainly do when claims are made that certain specially favored individuals have been conducted by “Jesus” either to heaven to see the saved enjoying bliss, or to hell to see the wicked writhing in agony. Such legends are now presented with considerable frequency to a public eager to know the secrets of the “afterlife,” but not so willing to study the issue in the pages of the Bible.
It is a sad fact that a number of verses are still called upon to support the traditional idea that Christians really do not die: they just “move home” to a heavenly dwelling the very instant they “breathe their last.” A massive propaganda, reaching the hearts of the bereaved when they are most vulnerable, continues to convince multitudes that the dead are very much alive and conscious. This concept could not have arisen, much less gained popularity, had the sober words of Ecclesiastes been heeded: “The dead do not know anything at all.” There is no need to multiply confirming texts, since, as the celebrated commentary by Keil and Delitzsch notes, the thought expressed by Ecclesiastes 9:5 is typical of the entire Old Testament teaching about the present condition of the dead. Moreover, Daniel 12:2 tells us that the dead emerge from their sleep of death in the dust of the ground, when the time comes for the resurrection.
On that solid base the New Testament’s teaching about life after death is built. All our present doctrinal confusions stem from our failure to base our theology on the Hebrew Bible and to read the New Testament in its light. We are unconsciously anti-Semitic in our approach to religious Truth. We are Gentiles at heart — prone to religious tendencies which can only be checked by a whole-hearted return to Jewish-Christian roots. (But this does not mean saddling ourselves with the Law of Moses from which Jesus has freed us, Galatians Chapters 3 and 4.)
Of course, it is possible to contradict the mass of biblical evidence about the present state of the dead by appealing to the story of Lazarus and the rich man (Luke 16:19ff.). Here at last one may find a post-mortem description of fully conscious individuals, who far from “knowing nothing” are already enjoying the bliss of “Abraham’s bosom” or suffering torment.
Luke was not confused. He had already reported Jesus’ teaching in 14:14: “you will be rewarded at the resurrection of the just.” No resurrection, no reward. What then is Abraham doing enjoying his reward in Hades, before the resurrection? Luke 20:35, consistent with Luke 14:14, announces that the faithful will be counted worthy “to attain to that [future] age and the resurrection of the dead.” Obviously that is their goal, and as long as they have not been resurrected, they cannot have been rewarded. Are we supposed to believe then that Abraham and Lazarus have been granted the reward of paradise before the resurrection? Have they “jumped the gun”? Such an understanding would stand the rest of the biblical teaching about our future on its head.
Wise commentary on Luke 16:19ff. has noticed that Jesus here uses the language of the Jews. He follows a well-known popular story. In the story the “dead” are not disembodied spirits in heaven and hell, but fully bodied persons holding a conversation in Hades. If one is to take the story as a literal account of what happens when we die, then one must believe that the righteous dead are all in Hades, in a compartment called Abraham’s bosom.
One must believe that they have received an immortal body. One must believe also that the wicked are close enough to the righteous to allow a conversation, one with the other. This literal picture will not fit the traditional teaching that the righteous have gone disembodied, not to Hades but to heaven.
It remains for us to understand that Jesus is borrowing a Pharisaic story from his enemies and using it for effect. In an earlier story, in the same context (Luke 16:9), Jesus, jibing at the Pharisees’ love of sharp practice, says, “Make friends using unrighteous money so that when it fails, they may bring you into the habitations of the coming age.” In other words, Jesus, almost certainly using sarcasm (“Go ahead! Try making friends with money!”), mocks the Pharisees by telling them to rely on their money to gain the ultimate reward of life in the coming Kingdom.
“The Pharisees,” Luke notes, “who were also greedy, heard all these things and mocked Jesus” (16:14). The story of Lazarus and the Rich Man pokes fun in return at a traditional, imaginary tale, whose setting is the underworld. It is as though Jesus is saying: Imagine a conversation between Abraham and the rich man in the afterlife. To press the details of the story as a scientific account of where the dead are and exactly what they are doing misses the point of Jesus’ vivid and stinging rebuke of Pharisaism.
In II Corinthians Chapter 5 Paul goes to great lengths to contrast our present condition with the new body to be received at the resurrection. To extract and misquote one third of one verse of Paul’s extended teaching (“absent from the body, present with the Lord”) and make it the buttress for the notion of immediate consciousness after death, apart from resurrection, is a failure to grasp the overall biblical teaching about life after death. Context is always important. In II Corinthians 4:14 Paul introduces his topic: “He who resurrected the Lord Jesus will also resurrect you through Jesus and will present us with you.”
It is the goal of the Christian life to be resurrected when Jesus returns. Paul sets his sights firmly on that goal. The present treasure enjoyed by the Christian, the treasure of the Gospel of the Kingdom as Jesus described it (Matthew 13:44-46), is now contained in us as earthen vessels. The power of that Kingdom Gospel — the dynamic, vitalizing activity of God in us — comes from God and it is invested in frail human persons (II Corinthians 4:7).
Paul develops his theme (5:1ff): “We know that if our present earthly house is dissolved [by death] we have a [new] building of God, a house not made with human hands, fit for the coming age” (poorly rendered as “eternal” in many versions). That new body is now “reserved in heaven” (cp. I Peter 1:4). Paul continues by referring to our present sufferings, while we wait to receive the bodies which will confer on us immortality. While we are at home in our present bodies, we are absent from the Lord Jesus. While we wait for the coming of Jesus we must continue to walk by faith, not by sight. Our desire and hope is to be absent from our frail bodies in order to be present with the Lord in our new bodies, “for we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ.” The obvious contrast is between our present existence as mortals and the future resurrection to occur at Jesus’ return.
Paul has nothing to say about the interval between death and resurrection. This has no meaning for him, since it is a time of unconsciousness (“The dead know nothing at all…There is no activity in the grave…the dead are sleeping in the dust of the ground,” Ecclesiastes 9:5, 10; Daniel 12:2). Only a year earlier he had written to the same Corinthians (I Corinthians Chapter 15) to inform them that the Christian dead will achieve immortality only at the coming of Christ (I Corinthians 15:23) and when the last trumpet summons all the faithful dead not from heaven but from the grave (I Corinthians 15:50-57). It is only at that future collective resurrection that Hades (i.e. death) is overcome (I Corinthians 15:55, KJV). (The popular current teaching that Jesus removed the faithful dead from Hades at the time of his own resurrection has no basis at all in the Bible. It merely confuses the biblical scheme.)
A confirmation of Paul’s teaching is found in I Thessalonians 4:16 where the Apostle tells us again that it is only by resurrection at the Second Coming of Christ that a Christian can be present with the Lord: “Thus [via resurrection] we shall be forever present with the Lord.” This verse would be obviously contradicted by any theory that Christians can be present, face to face, with the Lord now, before the resurrection has occurred.
The above post was taken from here.
