What Happens to the Righteous When They Die? Phillipians 1:19-26

There is perhaps no more comforting subject for believers than to contemplate the glories and comfort of the life to come.  We have a hope that sustains even in life’s darkest hours, when facing an affliction that has been labeled terminal or hopeless.  This hope is bound up in the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ.  Because He rendered death powerless it assures all who believe in Him of eternal life lived out before the face of God.

But what happens when the righteous die?  Do they immediately go into the presence of God?  Or is there an intermediate state of some sort?  Our plan is to survey some answers to this question today without much comment, and then to consider in more detail two answers involving soul sleep and purgatory.

·        True naturalists would most commonly say this life is all there is.  After this: annihilation.  There is no after-life.  The Bible, of course, rejects this.

·        Near-death naturalists claim a scientific background and take their view from people who have been clinically dead.  The most common picture is of a bright light, rest and unlimited human potential.  This movement had its beginnings back in the 70’s with the book Life after Life by Raymond Moody.  Others like Betty Eadie (Embraced by the Light) and Elizabeth Kubler-Ross gained lots of popular interest in their stories.  The after-life experience was the same for all people, which of course the Bible denies.  In the end mush of this was discredited when it became apparent that the writers were not as purely scientific as claimed but were influenced by their religious connections (e.g. Kubler-Ross with a spiritualist friend, Eadie by her LDS background).

·        Plato saw a place where naked minds intellectually contemplate the eternal, unchanging ideas, again defining the after-life by one’s present existence.

·        For Eastern Religions it is, of course, reincarnation until perfection at which point the soul is absorbed back into the pantheistic god (Nirvana in Buddhism and Hinduism).  Heb. 9:27 is clear that man is appointed once for death and then judgment.  The Bible also teaches a personal God who desires fellowship with those He created; thus the absorption idea defies Scripture.

·        Spiritualists teach continued existence as spirit-creatures that can visit earth.  They point to Biblical illustrations such as Samuel’s appearance at the behest of the witch of Endor or the appearance of Moses and Elijah on the Mount of Transfiguration.  But in fact the Bible sees these as exceptional, not the norm.  The Old Testament regularly forbid this seeking for interaction with the dead, including in the story of the witch.  These were simply situations that served God’s purposes (Ex. 22:18; 1 Sam. 15:23; Gal. 5:22; Rev. 22:15).

To those who study Scripture these ideas should seem strange.  But they also indicate an interest in the subject by mankind.  All the more reason why we should be ready to give a reason for our hope (1 Peter 3:15; Titus 3:7).