What The Bible Says About HeavenSample

Present Heaven is a Stopover, Not the Final Destination

When I touched my dead son’s body for the very last time, I placed my cheek against his still slightly warm, bearded cheek and allowed myself to feel the gentle warmth. In the yawning chasm of loss that was abruptly opening up before me, a question was already forming. Where is Joel now then? Is he unconscious or is he truly in heaven? Why did God take him now? Surely the answer to those questions and more must be found in, where he has gone and what he is doing there? 

We know that life after death, i.e. what happens immediately after we die, is not all that there is. We could describe it by saying, there is a final destination and a stopover. I have travelled a good deal, often with Gill and one or more family members. On long-haul trips, we often intentionally build in a stopover. The stopover often gets nearly as much attention – and there really are some great places to stopover – but you never forget that while this might be the best place you have visited so far, there is even better to come. 

Imagine if on a planned vacation you got the stopover and final destination confused. Confused about where exactly you’d be staying, confused about the culture, confused about what there is to do, confused about who would be there and confused about the sights and sounds, and even the precise location of where you were supposed to be. It’s a limited metaphor, I know, but instead of talking with joy, anticipation and thrill about both places, your conversations would be uncertain, muted, confused and lacklustre. It’s another one of those reasons why Christians talk little and think little about heaven.

So if, as we have suggested, the last breath here, the next breath is somewhere else. Where exactly is that? There’s no better starting point than the description of Jesus. On the cross, Jesus turned to one of the two thieves dying with him and said to him, ‘Today you will be with me in Paradise.’