On June 22, 2022, I published an article on this blog entitled “What Happens to People When They Die?” in which I discussed the subject from a doctrinal and theological perspective. If you have not read that article, I would certainly recommend it.
But since that article, I have been asked more specifically about the experience of death itself for Christians. This article is my effort to look at Scripture to understand this experience better. I will use the express language of Scripture and make necessary inferences that I believe are consistent with biblical truth.
We will not address how a person dies or deal with pain and suffering, etc., before death. We focus on what Christians can expect to experience in their transition from life on earth to life in heaven. I submit the following as my best understanding of what a Christian might experience at death.
Regarding the nature of physical death, “it may be said that, according to Scripture, physical death is a termination of physical life by the separation of body and soul. It is never an annihilation… Death is not a cessation of existence, but a severance of the natural relations of life. Life and death are not opposed to each other as existence and nonexistence, but are opposites only as different modes of existence.”[1]
For believers, death is not the end, but the beginning of a perfect life in heaven. As Jesus said, “I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die” (John 11:25). For Christians, death is merely the transition from one phase of life to another, from the terrestrial phase to the heavenly phase; it is not the end of life. Death for Christians on earth ends the physical component of their earthly existence and transitions the disembodied soul to heaven, where life continues.
The soul is not immortal in the absolute sense as God is, but is eternal in that it has a continuous or endless existence contingent on God’s divine will. Thus, though the believer’s body sees corruption and is dissolved at death, the soul does not dissolve and retains its personal identity as an individual being and lives as such in heaven in the intermediate state until the general resurrection.[2] Of course, after the general resurrection at the second coming of Christ, the wicked will be judged, and the believers will be ushered into the New Heaven and New Earth in their glorified state to remain for eternity.
But most people want to know what they will experience transitioning from one phase of life to another. We can infer what the Christian will experience at death from the express statement of Jesus in John 13:36 and 14:1-3 when “Simon Peter said to him, ‘Lord, where are you going?’ Jesus answered him, ‘Where I am going you cannot follow me now, but you will follow afterward’… ‘Let not your hearts be troubled. Believe in God; believe also in me. In my Father’s house are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am, you may be also.”’
Here is my brief interpretation of these verses. In this passage of Scripture, Jesus tells Simon Peter that he is going to heaven (my Father’s house) and that there are many places for the inhabitants of heaven to live. Jesus tells Peter he cannot go with him now, but when Peter dies, He (Jesus) will return for him. And Jesus tells Peter that he is going to prepare a place for Peter and that since he is going to prepare a place for Peter, he will undoubtedly come back personally to receive Peter to Himself and take Peter back to heaven to live with him.
What Jesus says to Peter in this passage goes for all Christians. When a Christian dies, they will fall asleep in this life and will awaken to Jesus coming again to take them to Himself. We can infer that the first thing we will see after we fall asleep in death will be awakening to what Jesus promised “I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also.” Christians will not die and awake in some dark place. They will die and awake to Jesus receiving them in a place radiant with the divine light of God (Cf. Rev.21:11, 23; Hab. 3:4).
[1] Louis Berkhof, Systematic Theology (The Banner of Truth Trust, 2012), 698.
[2] Berkhof, 702.
