Tag: Death

Spiritual Life & Death

Can the dead be in two places?

As a child raised in the Catholic church, I served for many years as an altar boy, an assistant to the priest during the mass. As an altar boy, I attended many funerals, and it was those funerals that started me in an entirely new direction in life.

During funeral services held in our local church, the priest would invariably say something such as, “We can rejoice today because our beloved friend is now in the presence of God in heaven.” Such words are calculated to encourage, and they often do. But those same words also create a lot of confusion.

A little later as the body of the deceased was slowly lowered into a grave at the local cemetery, the same priest would say something very much like, “And now we commit our loved one to the grave, where he/she will rest peacefully until the day our Lord returns, and the dead in Christ shall rise.”

I may only have been a young child, but I was old enough to smell a rat. Minutes before, the deceased was in the presence of God in heaven. But now, that same individual was resting in a grave awaiting the resurrection. How could the same dead person be in two places at once?

The answer is, of course, that such a thing is not possible. While only a child who had read little of the Bible, I wasn’t exactly sure of the answer to my question. But I knew one thing for sure. The dead couldn’t possibly die and go directly to heaven. What, exactly, would go to heaven? And if my suspicions were accurate, praying to dead saints was therefore unreasonable, as the saints themselves were dead and not able to hear or answer the prayers of a single soul.

When I finally learned that the dead sleep until the return of Jesus, it was less of an “Aha!” moment, and more of a “Well, of course” moment. Some things are obvious. Sleep in death was one of them. And if death was a sleep, purgatory couldn’t possibly exist, no one could possibly be in hell at the present time, and the church I had been part of my entire life had sold me a bill of goods.

But faith in God is not simply a matter of being right. Numerous people have been right—or close to right—theologically and have been on the wrong side of the leading of the Holy Spirit. It’s important to know that the dead sleep. When you do, myriad errors and lies are avoided: the dead do not visit the living; Halloween is a ghastly celebration of spiritualism; houses are not “haunted” by departed spirits; seances are invitations for demons to trouble and misdirect lives; the Virgin Mary has not appeared to anyone, ever, anywhere…and so on. 

But there’s a greater truth than any I’ve yet mentioned.

When Jesus visited the home of Mary and Martha following the death of their brother, Lazarus, Martha gave evidence of several things that she, to her credit, knew. She knew that Jesus had the power to save Lazarus from death. She knew there would be a resurrection, believing Lazarus would “rise again in the resurrection at the last day” (John 11:24). But there was something she, or maybe others nearby, needed to know.

“Jesus said to her, ‘I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in Me, though he may die, he shall live’” (John 11:25). This is the greatest truth in the constellation of truths clustered around the subject of death and the resurrection. Jesus is the resurrection and the life. Possessing Jesus is the difference between eternal life and eternal death. As John wrote, “He who has the Son has life; he who does not have the Son of God does not have life” (1 John 5:12). 

Faith in Jesus is simply that. Faith in Jesus. The key factor in the plan of salvation is not the possession of an idea, but the possession of a Person, that Person being Jesus. The weakest saint may, by faith, have Jesus, and the Savior that called Lazarus from his dusty bed is able to bring spiritual life out of spiritual death.

We possess the truth about Jesus, and we should. But possessing Jesus Himself is the real difference. He is the resurrection and the life. The dead will be resurrected because they lived in faith in Him. The living have the assurance of everlasting life for the same reason.

Let Jesus be the resurrection and the life for you.

An Enemy Has Done This

It’s a question I’ve often been asked. And it’s a tough one every time.

A woman I’ll call April wrote to me recently.

“When my daughter passed away at three months old, I was so angry with God. How does God give you something so precious just to take it away? I still love God, but I feel lost, almost like a pinwheel blowing in the wind.”

What would you say in response? It’s a question so many people have. I wanted to share the answer with you that I shared with April.

Dear April,

Thank you for writing. First, I want to say how sorry I am for your loss. I’m sure I can’t even imagine your pain, which has to be immense. I’m so sorry.

You’ve asked a question that ALL of us struggle with. The answer is simple, but it isn’t always satisfactory. At least, not in the heat of pain and loss.

God doesn’t take our loved ones away. In the parable of the wheat and tares, a man discovers his field has been pretty much destroyed, and he says, “An enemy has done this” (Matthew 13:28). It’s the enemy who has done this. There’s a horrible, angry devil who has spread sin and with it, sickness and loss and death.

Because we’ve been in a sinful world for 6,000 years, people suffer disease and loss. Elderly people deal with Alzheimers. People battle Parkinson’s. It’s awful. But it’s because of sin. Your precious baby girl somehow was afflicted with an illness or suffered an accident because the human family has been degenerating for millennia thanks to the devil’s rebellion. God weeps with you, and He hurts with you.

Could God have prevented this? Truthfully, yes, He could have. God has prevented much, much evil. So why did He not? Why did God not preserve the life of your baby girl?

For the same reason as He didn’t prevent the drunk driver running a red light and killing a pedestrian. For the same reason a passenger was killed in a bus crash. For the same reason my friend’s two-year-old died of cancer. And what is that reason? We don’t know. But God does know.

What is important for us is to trust. To have faith. To believe that God is love (1 John 4:8), and to believe that our circumstances–as tragic as they often are–do not represent a lack of faithfulness on God’s part. April, God will see you through this. I know that might sound easy or trite or hollow, but He will. His strength will be there for you. He told the apostle Paul, “My grace is sufficient for you” (2 Corinthians 12:9).

And one day there will be a resurrection. You will see your baby girl again. You will hold her in your arms again. And you’ll have the privilege of raising her in heaven, where there will be no more sin or sickness or suffering or pain.

April, hold on tight to God. He is the “God of all comfort” (2 Corinthians 1:3), and He will comfort you. When Paul wrote about the resurrection in 1 Thessalonians 4, he said, “Comfort one another with these words” (1 Thessalonians 4:18). He didn’t suggest the words will take away our pain, but He did say the promise of the resurrection offers hope and comfort.

One more thought: there’s one person who knows more about this than anyone, and that’s God. God lost a child. His Son–who He had been with since eternity past–was cruelly killed by the people He came to save. His own people, in fact. God suffered the greatest loss we could imagine. A resurrection reunited the Father and the Son. One soon day, a resurrection will reunite a mother and her precious daughter. I know you’re looking forward to that day.

“Even so, come Lord Jesus” (Revelation 22:20).

May God bless and keep you.

Pastor John Bradshaw
It Is Written