Jimmy, I have handouts in the back there. Can you help us with that? We begin a new series this evening on the subject of death and afterwards. I don’t think it should be too terribly long of a series, but afterwards—after death—that can be a long time.
All right, while he’s finishing up, you can turn to Hebrews chapter 9. If you still need one, would you raise your hand? Jim, up front here, there’s still some. Keep your hand up so they can see if you need one. Anyone else? All right.
I want to take the time right now to read just one verse that sort of sets up our theme for this evening. Keep in mind we’re looking at this broader subject of death and afterwards over these next weeks. Hebrews 9:27 says, “Just as it is appointed for man to die once and after that comes judgment, so Christ having been offered once to bear the sins of many will appear the second time not to deal with sin but to save those who are eagerly waiting for him.”
Now, verse 27, I think, tells us in a brief sentence really what we are looking at this evening, and that is that there is death and then there is after. Whatever else is going on in these verses—and we’ll probably see more of that in the weeks to come—this shows us that death, physical death, does not mark the end of our existence. There is afterwards. After that, the judgment, and we’ll explore some of that as well.
Let’s bow together for prayer. Our Father, this is an immensely important subject. We pray that you’ll give us a good understanding of it, and by it, prepare our hearts. We each take our turn. We don’t like to think of it, but we each take our turn. The day will come when each of us will die, unless our Lord returns first. Help us, Lord, to be prepared. Part of that preparation is to explore what your Word has to teach us of what that will be like. So help us in our understanding, we pray, in Jesus’ name, amen.
Rick Phillips, who’s a pastor in South Carolina, has a little booklet, What Happens After Death. And he starts out in a wonderful way, and I’m going to read it to you. I think it’s a helpful way to set up our subject. In 1899, two prominent men died. The first was Colonel Robert G. Ingersoll, after whom the Harvard University Ingersoll Lectures on Human Immortality are named, and who gave his brilliant mind to the refutation of Christianity. Ingersoll died suddenly that year, leaving his unprepared family utterly devastated. So grief-stricken was his wife that she would not allow his body to be taken from the house until the health of the family required its removal. His remains were cremated, and his funeral service was such a scene of dismay and despair that even the newspapers of the day commented on it.
The other man who died that year was Dwight L. Moody, the great Christian evangelist. He had been declining for some time. His family had gathered around his bed. On his last morning, his son heard him exclaim, “Earth is receding. Heaven is opening. God is calling.” “You’re dreaming, father,” said his son. But Moody replied, “No, Will, this is no dream. I have been within the gates. I have seen the children’s faces.” Moody seemed to revive, but then started to slip away again. “Is this death?” he asked. “This is not bad. There is no valley. This is bliss. This is glorious.” His daughter began to pray for him to recover. “No, no, Emma,” he said. “Don’t pray for that. God is calling. This is my coronation day. I’ve been looking forward to it.” After Moody died, his funeral was a scene of triumph and joy. Those in attendance sang hymns of praise to God. “Oh, death, where is your victory?” they exclaimed through faith in Christ. “Oh, death, where is your sting?”
And then he makes the observation: The contrast between the deaths of Ingersoll and Moody not only shows the value of the Christian faith, but also proves how important it is for Christians to know the Bible’s teaching about death and life after death.
Well, I think we can all relate to that. I think we sometimes in Christian circles can romanticize death in a way that the Bible does not, but still there is a certain confidence that the Bible does give us in the face of death. And then, of course, there’s the dark side of death for those who don’t know Christ. And those are the themes that we’ll be exploring in the coming weeks. Tonight what I hope to do is just briefly set everything up and we’ll try to finish out some introductory matters as you have on the handout in front of you.
The Constitution Of Man
To speak of life after death, then we first of all have to speak of the constitution of man. What is humanity? What are women and men made of? And of course, the Bible just everywhere affirms that we are two-part beings: body and soul. There is a material and an immaterial part of what we are. The Bible everywhere recognizes that.
Of course, philosophical materialism, evolutionary materialism—today, the new atheists want to say that that is not the case, that we are to be explained only in terms of so much gray matter, that our brains are our minds, and that’s that. And the decisions we make are simply the function of brains and not a mind or a soul that is independent of the brain. And of course, that’s what they want. But of course, there are difficulties with that. I’m not going to spend a lot of time with that this evening. But just to say the problem that that presents, that’s one of the, I think, the big hurdles of the evolutionary theory: to explain how, first of all, how non-life gave rise to life, and then how brute life gave rise to animal life, and how animal life gave rise to human life, and then how human life gave rise to conscious existence, so that now we have self-awareness, self-determination.
We’re able to make calculations and prognosticate to the future, make decisions accordingly. Whether good or bad, we have things like conscience. All of this speaks of something that’s independent of just the body and just so many chemical reactions in the brain. There’s something about us that recognizes that if I lose my hand, I’m still me. It may be part of my body that is gone, but there’s still a me. There’s still this conscious existence and this ability and awareness of who I am as opposed to who you are that identifies us as human persons. And we’re able to act according to purpose, and we’re able to plan according to the future and so on. And we’re able to set up retirement accounts and plan as to how much we will have when. And these kinds of things differentiate us from the animal world.
And they are evidence, I think, of this immaterial part of man that the Bible affirms throughout. We call it the soul or the spirit. That’s the terminology that’s used in the scriptures. The soul or the spirit—those two terms are used interchangeably. There are some teachings that I’m sure some of you have heard at least, that we are three-part beings: body, soul, and spirit. I’m not going to get into that. That’s for another study, just briefly to say that the Bible uses these terms of soul and spirit interchangeably, and to say the one is to refer to the other. They have different technical meanings. The spirit refers to that immaterial part of us as to its essence. It is spirit; it is not body. The word soul refers to that same essence, but it refers to it as an embodied spirit, and that’s the distinction we make. English has a third word: ghost, that’s a disembodied spirit. The Greek and the Hebrew doesn’t have a word for that, but they do use the word spirit and soul in that way a couple of times in the scriptures. But these words, soul and spirit, refer to the immaterial part of who we are. This is what determines our appetites, our likes, our ambitions, our ideals. This is referred to in the scriptures as the seat of our personality. Sometimes, by extension, the word soul is simply used for the person himself because the soul is the seat of the appetites and the ideals and the ambitions and so on.
So that’s the terminology then. We are created body and soul. We have a material and an immaterial part of who we are.
The Nature Of Death
All right, next, the nature then of death. What is death? One day, the guy walks up the stairs on his own, all 200 pounds of him. The next day, he has to be carried out on a stretcher by two other men, and he’s gone. What’s the difference? What’s happened? On one level, his organs have ceased to function. But there is this two-partness to us, body and soul. And the Bible gives us this distinction at least one time in the book of James chapter 2 and verse 26, where it tells us that just as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is dead. But the body without the spirit is dead.
So we have to say then from a biblical standpoint, death is the separation of spirit and body. So the body ceases to function, of course. It’s buried, it decomposes, sees corruption, but the soul continues to live on. We have a custom often, particularly at funerals, of looking in the casket and saying, “He’s not there,” encouraging ourselves in the thought that he is with God. And that’s right, because personality is tied to the soul, not to the body. And so it’s very right, and it’s very right to encourage ourselves with a reminder he’s not there. But we should also remember that that’s not quite entirely exact, because we are created body and soul. We are two-part beings and God’s purpose for us in the end is holistic. It’s not just to rescue our souls out of this body or out of this earth and take us to heaven. God’s purpose for us ultimately is to save us body and soul.
Now recall also then the reason for death. Death is not a natural thing in this world. Well, it is natural because that’s the way it is with everybody. But in terms of the big picture, it’s not natural. It’s not normal. It’s an altered state. Death has come as a direct result of God’s judgment against sin. We live in a fallen world, a cursed world. And because of that, death has come in and death is then viewed in the scriptures as an enemy. 1 Corinthians 15 calls it that. Of course, it’s viewed that way throughout. It’s an evil that has been imposed upon humanity as a result of Adam’s sin, and death comes, in that sense, in an unnatural way.
Jesus views it that way in John chapter 11. You remember when Lazarus had died. There’s some expressions there that are used that show not only Jesus’ sympathy for those who had died, but his anger. Some of the terminology used in John chapter 11 shows his anger at the situation as though he’s viewing the death of Lazarus and behind it the cause of death of Satan and sin and seeing this as an intrusion and an enemy against humanity, and he’s angry with it.
So death has come then as a result of sin. I suppose we should mention also that death is used in different senses in the scripture. That’s physical death that we’re talking about. There’s also spiritual death, which is separation from God, the condition of all the lost. There’s the second death or eternal death that’s spoken of in the book of Revelation, where it is not only separation from God, but it’s separation from God for eternity under his punishment.
The Continued Existence Of The Soul
All right, so much for that. Now we come third: the question of the continued existence of the soul after death. Now in a sense, we’re going to be talking about this the rest of the series. But here I’m going to make just some general references to it to show how the Bible refers to it—that there is a continuation of conscious existence of the soul after physical death.
Curious verse, if you would like to look, well we saw it here in Hebrews chapter 9 verse 27, that affirms it. There are so many others, but look over at Proverbs chapter 2. There’s an interesting statement here. Here the sage is warning his son about all the ways of wisdom as opposed to the way of folly, and he speaks of it in terms then of the immoral woman and the adulteress, warns him of the consequences of that, and he says in verse 18, “Her house sinks down to death and her paths to the departed.” Now some of you might have other translations there: “the departed dead” or “the departed spirits” or something like that. The Hebrew term here means something like the spirits of the dead. In fact, I have it on your outline as well: Isaiah chapter 14 and verse 9. I’ll just read that for you. “Sheol beneath,” or the realm of the dead beneath, “is stirred up to meet you when you come. It rouses the shades to greet you.” The shades—that’s the way this version renders that. It rouses the shades, or the dead spirits, to meet you. But there, in both of these verses, it speaks of the realm of the dead as a place of the continued existence of the soul, conscious existence of men and women who have died.
And then in Genesis, and then other places in the Old Testament, you have this expression: “He was gathered to his people.” Or sometimes it’s we have, “He was gathered to his fathers.” Let’s look at that in Genesis chapter 25. It’s an interesting expression. Genesis 25 verses 8 and 9, it’s speaking here of the death of Abraham. Verse 7: “These are the days of the years of Abraham’s life, 175 years. Abraham breathed his last and died in a good old age, an old man and full of years, and was gathered to his people.”
Now, what does that mean, gathered to his people? Well, you might think, well, it means burial. But in fact, in his burial, he isn’t gathered to anybody. He has his own tomb. And verse 9, in fact, after his death, records his burial. Isaac and Ishmael, his sons, buried him in the cave of Machpelah in the field of Ephron. “Gathered to his people,” “gathered to his father,” seems to be—I think I’ve given you several references to that in the Old Testament—seems to be an expression of the conscious existence of the soul after death, that he’s joined the realm of the dead where they are.
And there’s another one, and I decided we’re going to have to look at this one because it’s such a clear example of it, but it’s going to take time. Let’s look at 1 Samuel chapter 28. It’s not a terribly familiar passage. It’s really a strange event in the life of King Saul. Now I’ll just begin reading with verse 1. 1 Samuel 28:
“In those days, the Philistines gathered their forces for war, to fight against Israel. And Achish said to David, ‘Understand that you and your men are to go out with me in the army.’ David said to Achish, ‘Very well, you shall know what your servant can do.’ And Achish said to David, ‘Very well, I will make you my bodyguard for life.’ Now Samuel had died.”
Keep that in mind. Samuel had died and all Israel had mourned for him and buried him in Ramah, his own city. And Saul had put the mediums or the witches and the necromancers out of the land.
“The Philistines assembled and came and encamped at Shunem. Saul gathered all of Israel. They camped at Gilboa. When Saul saw the army of the Philistines, he was afraid and his heart was trembled greatly. And Saul inquired of the Lord. The Lord did not answer him, either by dreams or by Urim or the prophets. Then Saul said to his servants, ‘Seek out for me a woman who is a medium, that I may go to her and inquire of her.'”
So if it doesn’t work talking to God, I’ll talk to somebody who can contact the dead.
“His servants said to him, ‘Behold, there is a medium at Endor.’ So Saul disguised himself, put on other garments, not his kingly robes, and he went and two men with him. And they came to the woman by night and he said, ‘Divine for me by a spirit and bring up for me whomever I shall name to you.’ The woman said to him, ‘Surely you know what Saul has done, how he has cut off the mediums and the necromancers from the land. Why then are you laying a trap for my life to bring about my death?’ But Saul swore to her by the Lord, ‘As the Lord lives, no punishment shall come upon you for this thing.’ Then the woman said, ‘Whom shall I bring up for you?’ And he said, ‘Bring up Samuel for me.’ When the woman saw Samuel, she cried out with a loud voice. And the woman said to Saul, ‘Why have you deceived me? You are Saul.’ And the king said to her, ‘Do not be afraid. What do you see?’ The woman said to Saul, ‘I see a God coming up out of the earth.’ He said to her, ‘What is his appearance?’ And she said, ‘An old man is coming up and he’s wrapped in a robe.’ And Saul knew that it was Samuel. And he bowed with his face to the ground and paid homage. And then Samuel said to Saul, ‘Why have you disturbed me by bringing me up?’ Saul answered, ‘I am in great distress, for the Philistines are warring against me and God has turned away from me and answers me no more, either by prophets or by dreams. Therefore I have summoned you to tell me what I shall do.’ Samuel said, ‘Why then do you ask me, since the Lord has turned from you and become your enemy? The Lord has done to you as he spoke by me, for the Lord has torn the kingdom out of your hand and given it to your neighbor. Because you did not obey the voice of the Lord and did not carry out his fierce wrath against Amalek, therefore the Lord has done this thing to you this day. Moreover, the Lord will give Israel also with you into the hand of the Philistines, and tomorrow you and your sons shall be with me. The Lord will give the army of Israel also into the hand of the Philistines.'”
And Saul fell at once, full length on the ground, filled with fear because of the words of Samuel.
Well, there’s an event you don’t read every page of the Bible. Was this really Samuel that showed up? Well, the text seems to treat it like it was. This was Samuel reappearing. Nothing in the narrative seems to suggest that it was a demon impersonating Saul or anything like that. Both the medium and Saul both understood this to be Samuel that they were talking to. The prophecy that Samuel gives in this encounter comes true. And well, one question that might leave doubt is how in the world can a witch have this power to call up the dead? Can this really happen? And I think the answer to that is, just notice, she was just as surprised at all of this as Saul was. God intervened, made an exception, something. I don’t know all the answers. The Bible doesn’t give them all. My reason for looking at this is just to reinforce the point that we’re making of the continued conscious existence of the soul after death. And there’s one example of it.
When we come to the New Testament, we have a vivid example of that in Matthew 17, the Mount of Transfiguration. We have the appearance of Moses and Elijah. And there are some others, most famous of which is Luke chapter 16, with the rich man and Lazarus. The point of the story is to tell of the conditions, the contrasting conditions of the rich man and Lazarus after death, for both of whom it was conscious existence. And we’ll look into that more later in the series. So here the point then is just to show that the Bible everywhere affirms not only that man is made of two parts, body and soul, but that at physical death, the soul continues to exist with conscious existence after physical death.
Related Terminology
Now then, some related terminology, hurrying along. This first set of terms is not in the Bible; it’s terms that are used in the theological tradition of the church, theological writings and so on, and that is the intermediate state and the final state or the eternal state.
Well, the eternal state or the final state, that’s easy enough to understand, and that is salvation consummated, complete, never ending. This is the state of body and soul in the resurrection. Of course, for the lost, it will be the state of body and soul in eternal punishment. We’ll get to that later in the series. For the redeemed, it is the resurrected state, body and soul with God forever in the new heavens and new earth. Keep in mind, as I said earlier, God has a holistic purpose in salvation. Unlike the Greek religions and philosophies of the day in the New Testament era, God’s purpose is not simply to rescue our souls away from the prison house of our bodies and to take us back to heaven with him. Our ultimate destiny is not just heaven. Our ultimate destiny is the new heavens and new earth. Body and soul to be restored into God’s image entirely, body and soul. Well, that’s the eternal state or the final state.
The intermediate state then is the state between death and the final state or between death and the resurrection. It’s salvation not yet consummated. It’s the state of the soul after death but before the resurrection. We’ll be looking at that a little bit later with regard to the intermediate state of the redeemed, and then the intermediate state of the lost, but now just to establish the fact of it. So it is that period—it is in heaven, but the problem here is that it’s limited to heaven. So it’s not the perfect state. It’s not the new heavens and new earth. It is bereft of a body. It’s a bodiless existence. Paul calls it being naked in 2 Corinthians chapter 5. And it’s a time in which the soul is morally perfected, but although morally perfected, it is still a time of hope and prayer, Revelation chapter 6. So that is the intermediate state, the state of the soul after death, but before the resurrection—the intermediate state and the final state.
And this next one I’ve thrown in just for clarity on how you use terminology. Because this is brought up very often in discussion, I think there’s a lot of confusion just because the terminology itself is used in different ways. And that’s this word: immortality. This is a case of confusion of terminology. The way the Bible uses the word immortality or immortal is not the same way we use the word immortal and immortality often in our common speech. In popular usage, immortal means the continued existence of the soul after death. That is something the Bible affirms. But that’s not the term the Bible uses to describe it.
The Bible affirms—before I move any further, let me say it again. The Bible affirms the continued existence of the soul after death. It just doesn’t use this word immortal to say it. So how does the Bible use this word immortal or immortality? Well, there’s one sense in which immortality belongs only to God. In 1 Timothy chapter 6 and verse 16, Paul says, “I charge you in the presence of God, who gives life to all things, and of Christ Jesus, who in his testimony before Pontius Pilate made the good confession, to keep the commandment unstained and free from reproach until the appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ, which he will display at the proper time, he who is the blessed and only sovereign, the king of kings and lord of lords, who alone has immortality, who dwells in unapproachable light, whom no one has ever seen or can see, to him be honor and eternal dominion. Amen.”
So he alone has immortality, and I think the idea there is that he alone has life-in-himself-ness, something like that. He alone has life-in-himself-ness, and Jesus talks about that in John chapter 5. The Father has life in himself, and he’s given the Son to have life in himself. In one sense, immortality is something God alone has.
But the Bible does use, in the New Testament, the Bible does use this term immortal or immortality with regard to humans as well, but it uses it in a bit different way. First of all, it’s given, it’s used with regard to the body, never the soul. It doesn’t speak of an immortal soul. It speaks of being raised in immortality. We’ll find that in 1 Corinthians chapter 15. We’ll look at this in detail later on in the series, but here 1 Corinthians 15 verses 51 and following: “For this perishable body must put on the imperishable.” That’s some of the language of immortality. “This mortal body must put on immortality. When the perishable puts on imperishable, the mortal puts on immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written, ‘Death is swallowed up in victory.'” Notice it’s used with regard to the body, the resurrection state, not the soul.
And notice also it’s a term that’s used with regard to the redeemed and not the lost. This is a redemptive term. We gain immortality in Christ. So, for instance, 2 Timothy chapter 1 and verse 10: “who saved us and called us to a holy calling, not because of our works, but because of his own purpose and grace, which he gave us in Christ Jesus before ages began, and which now has been manifested through the appearing of our Savior Jesus Christ, who abolished death and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel.” There it is again. The word immortality is a redemptive term speaking of the resurrection state of the redeemed. It’s not something that’s used with respect to the lost.
Notice also then the word immortal in the scriptures and the way it’s used does not refer to something we have. It is something we will have in the resurrection, raised to immortality. Now if I have not totally confused you at this point, let me back up and say the Bible affirms the continued existence of the soul. It just doesn’t use this word to talk about it. So you’ll find some people saying the Bible denies immortality. It never uses it with regard to men and it’s used of God. Well, technically that’s true, but that’s a side of the question. Does the Bible affirm the continued existence of the soul? Yes, it does. It just doesn’t use that word to say it. So none of this is to say that the continued existence of the soul after death is conditional. It’s just a question of the terminology that’s used in talking about it. Our language of immortal is influenced more, believe it or not, from Platonic thought—the endless existence of the soul that stretches way back in the evolution of the language. But the lost in the scriptures are not spoken of as immortal. The scriptures do affirm, though, the continued existence of the soul, both of the lost and of the redeemed.
So put in brief, then, all human beings survive death, but immortality is gained redemptively in Christ. That’s a term that speaks of the immortality gained in the resurrection in Christ. And I would assume then, from all of that, that Adam was created neither mortal nor immortal, but with the potential for either. And as it played out, of course, he became mortal.
Biblical Terminology Of The Afterlife
All right. One more point before we finish up, and then I’ll ask for some questions. And that’s the biblical terminology of the afterlife. Common language that is used in the Old Testament for the realm of the dead is the word Sheol. The King James, I don’t think, ever uses that word, Sheol. It translates it as death or the grave or hell. It translates it different ways. I think the NIV may translate that most often to the realm of the dead, which is what Sheol is. It’s the realm of the dead. The Greek equivalent to that is the word you’ve probably heard, Hades—the realm of the dead. Usually, usually it has to do with the wicked, and so it is sometimes translated hell. There’s another word, Gehenna, which means hell, the place of punishment. It is a word, as we’ll see later, means really the Valley of Hinnom. The Valley of Hinnom was a garbage dump outside the city where they burned the trash. It was an apt metaphor for the coming punishment of the wicked.
There are other terminology for the afterlife, of course. Heaven—that’s the abode of God, the abode of the spirits of the redeemed. There’s the new heaven and the new earth—that is the renewed heaven and earth in the final state. There’s paradise, which seems to be another word for heaven. It’s a loan word from the Persians, but it means, it refers to the dwelling place of God and the abode of the spirits of the redeemed as well.
Another question then: if there is the continued existence of the soul, what about this metaphor that’s used in the New Testament of death as sleep? Does that mean if they’ve fallen asleep, does that mean they’re not conscious? When we fall asleep, we’re not really conscious. We may dream, but we don’t have a consciousness as such. And so the question has been raised against the doctrine of the continued existence of the soul on this ground that they are fallen asleep and no longer conscious.
The beginnings of that expression, by the way, are in Daniel chapter 12, which is probably the clearest statement of the Old Testament of the resurrection of the dead, and it speaks of those who sleep in the dust of the earth. Jesus picks that up when he speaks of Lazarus, who has just fallen asleep. Paul then picks it up, speaks of those who are dead as those who sleep or those who have fallen asleep.
But a few observations, I think, help us in this regard. Number one, that terminology is always used with regard to earthly existence—that we’re no longer active in this earth. We have rest from our earthly toil. We’re still very aware of our surroundings, like Luke chapter 16 will tell us when we get there with both the rich man and Lazarus. So the metaphor of sleep has to do with our earthly existence only. It has specific reference only to the body, not the soul. Those who are sleeping are awaiting the resurrection and consciously awake. And also then, I think most obviously with this objection that’s brought up, we have to understand that metaphor within the context of the teaching of the rest of the Bible, which is very clear with regard to the continued existence of the soul.
Well, next time we will look at the intermediate state of the redeemed and then the intermediate state of the lost, then we’ll move on to the resurrection and the final state and so on. But all of this already, you can see, just has very solemn implications that this life is not the whole of your existence. And this is exactly what is in mind. This is the context of the thought when Jesus says, “Don’t fear those who are able to destroy your body, but fear him who’s able to destroy both body and soul in hell.” That there is a continued existence after this life. That’s the whole point of the rich fool and Lazarus in Luke chapter 16. He lived for today; he didn’t live for tomorrow. He forgot that this life is just a small, small speck of eternity, and he didn’t live accordingly. And that, of course, in turn then presses us to the urgency of the gospel. This life is not all you have. There is an afterlife, and there is a hell to be feared. A hell to be shunned and a heaven to seek.
All right, any questions before we continue? Yes?
Yeah, that certainly seems to indicate the continued existence of the soul as well. “Today you will be with me in paradise.” I’m sorry? Yes. Yeah, that’s right. Very good. So conscious existence is very clear there. Very helpful, thank you. I thought you were gonna help me on—Dr. J here is our Old Testament expert—I thought you were gonna help me on Sheol. All right, no more questions? All right, next time we’ll explore further the intermediate state of the redeemed. Let’s stand and be dismissed in prayer. Pastor Greg, would you pray for us, please?
Sober truths, such as the penalty of death. And we have heard this during the days of our lives. So that we can better prepare, we can face death and its terms in a way that gives us confidence in Christ. We pray that everyone here tonight would believe, thinking about their own status before God is considered guilty. We thank you for that promise that is available to all who have come to this meeting today.