All About Heaven - What Happens When We Die?Sample

What if death was the beginning, not the end? What if the question was not about life after death, but this moment? This deep and painful distressing experience can help us understand that where and how we live now is the shadow, not the reality; where and how we live now is pre-life and that real life, real living, real adventure is waiting for us closer than any of us had dared to think, hope or believe.

The famous theologian D.L. Moody caught a glimpse of the glory awaiting him. Waking from a sleep, he said: 

‘Earth recedes, heaven opens before me. If this is death, it is sweet! There is no valley here. God is calling me, and I must go.’ 

His son, who was standing by his bedside said, ‘No, no, father, you are dreaming.’

‘No,’ said Mr. Moody, ‘I am not dreaming: I have been within the gates: I have seen the children’s faces.’ A short time elapsed and then, following what seemed to the family to be the death struggle he spoke again: ‘This is my triumph; this my coronation day! It is glorious!’

At the moment of death, certain physical processes stop – breathing stops, the heart stops, circulation stops, though hair can carry on growing for a while! Then the process of decay comes. If man is only a body then, by definition, that must be the end. 

But the Bible has another view. Ecclesiastes says, ‘Dust returns to the ground it came from, and the spirit returns to God who gave it.’ Death is the moment of separation between body and spirit. Two things intimately entwined, which we have not seen separated before, becoming separated. When Jesus famously turned to the dying thief, his statement laid a clear foundation for us: ‘Today you will be with me in Paradise.’ The master was making it clear: the last breath here, the next breath somewhere else. 

As the apostle Paul put it in 2 Corinthians 5:8, ‘Away from the body and at home with the Lord.’