All About Heaven - What Happens When We Die?Sample

The Bible gives at least five metaphors to explain what happens at death.

A Shepherd’s Tent or a Weaver’s Loom

Isaiah 38:12 tells us:

I said, In the middle of my days 

I must depart . . . 

 My dwelling is plucked up and removed from me 

like a shepherd’s tent; 

like a weaver I have rolled up my life; 

he cuts me off from the loom.

It’s a great metaphor from everyday life, originally written as a poem of thanksgiving by King Hezekiah, who was facing imminent death, as God grants him fifteen years more life. This body I inhabit is taken down and packed away like a camper’s tent. Like a weaver, I’ve rolled up the beautifully woven fabric of my life as God cuts me free of the loom, and at day’s end sweeps up the scraps and pieces. As a camper, my tent is a temporary dwelling, not my home. The weaver’s fabric on the loom is never the end itself – the fabric is designed for another place and another function; it is meant to be set somewhere else, doing something else.

A Collapsing Tent

Our bodies are described by the apostle Paul as a tent in which we live. He says, ‘The tent that is our earthly home is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.’ Tents deteriorate with the ageing process of life, the weather and storms that they face, and when we die, the tent of our body dismantles or disintegrates. It’s as if our body is just a suit of clothes worn by the real person. The Bible talks about the outward man decaying and the inner man getting stronger. As someone once remarked: a cemetery is no more than a cloakroom where we put aside the old clothes we have worn.

In Philippians and 2 Timothy, Paul enlarges the picture by suggesting all the delights of a long-delayed homecoming. This is the last of his letters, written when he sensed his time of death was close. He describes it beautifully as ‘the time of my departure’, using a specific word meaning either time for me to ‘strike camp’ or to ‘weigh anchor’. You’ll recall his occupation as a tent maker, and his travelling, often by sea, on his missionary journeys. Either way, this established tent manufacturer, this seasoned ocean sailor, is using a picture drawn from his trade, or a common but memorable moment from one of his many sailing trips.