What Happens When We Die?

What happens to a believer when he or she dies? In one sense, we all know the answer to that, don't we? The believer goes to Heaven to be with the Lord Jesus Christ.

Most of us are a bit hazy about the specific details, but the gist of it seems to be that our sinful nature is carried in our physical bodies. When our bodies die, we are separated from this sinful nature and our spirits are caught up to Heaven to be with Jesus (Eph. 2:6). Apparently we get to stay there with Him until Jesus physically comes back to the earth in the Second Coming. At that time, according to 1 Thessalonians 4:16, our old bodies are somehow raised from the dead and given back to us. But, according to Romans 8:17 and Romans 8:30, these bodies have been sanctified and glorified and they no longer carry our old carnal sinful nature.

The Bible refers to this process as a mystery (1 Corinthians 15:51), so we are not expected to fully understand it. As a result, there are different theologies on this process; not everyone agrees on what all the specific details are. If the theology you hold on this is a bit different than the one I described, that is ok. Even if a few of the details are different, we will pretty much agree on certain basics: when a person dies they go to be with the Lord and they will live forever because that is "the hope of the gospel"--eternal life in Him.

We all know this and look forward to the hope of eternal life and Heaven. But the actual process of dying remains a bit "scary" for many believers. Why? I think that is because they have never done that before (e.g., they have never died before), and they don't know precisely what to expect. Along the same lines, a lot of us have lost loved ones. It is always hard when a loved one dies. Yes, we know they are "in Heaven" and that their "joy is full." A part of us wants to rejoice for them, because we know they are in a better place. But another part of us really misses them and we are filled with huge sense of loss and grief because our loved ones are no longer a part of our day-to-day lives. So, the more we know about what Heaven is like, the easier it becomes to deal with the topic of death and dying.

That is what I want to talk about in this teaching series: what Heaven is like. [By the way, Heaven is a very nice place (smile).]

You might wonder what prompted me to write a teaching series on this topic. It came from God putting two different things together in my own life. The first was a series of visions He has been giving me about Heaven and about what it is like for His servants to die. The second was that several of my friends recently lost loved ones and some of them asked me if I knew what their loved one experienced when s/he died. I did know a bit of what it was like from my visions, so I was able to answer their question, and my answer seemed to bring them a lot of comfort.

That is background for what happened next (just in the last 48 hours of my writing this first lesson). I realized that the current prophetic-school teaching series is almost over and I did not have a new teaching series ready to follow it. So I began to ask God for suggestions about what topic to teach next. Each time I asked Him what topic I should write about, He either reminded me of my visions of Heaven, or He reminded me of how a friend asked me what it was like for their loved one to die. I began to think that maybe God was telling me to write on that topic, but I wasn't sure. After all, it a bit of an unusual subject. So I asked the Lord for more clarification and confirmation.

In response, the next morning the Lord gave me another vision about what happens to a believer just after they die. A little later in the day, I received an email from a friend, sharing how both his mother and his wife's mother had died in the last couple of months. I mentioned how hard it has been on them to go through both losses so close together. Of course, my heart went out to them an I wanted to comfort them by telling them about my vision and about how wonderful Heaven is. It was at that moment that the Lord spoke to me and said, "Teresa, many of My children have lost a loved one and need that same comfort."

That is how I knew that I was supposed to write on this topic. This series will be a bit different than most of the series I write. It will not have as much teaching and Bible references and it will have more sharing of visions and experiences. If you are the academic type who is uncomfortable with this type of sharing, then I apologize in advance and ask for your patience. The teaching series after this one should be back to normal in terms of teaching and Scripture. However, this one is going to be mostly me sharing my visions and experiences about Heaven.

Let me give you a bit of background about those visions. The Lord did not just give them to me unexpectedly out of a clear blue sky. The reason He gave them to me was because I was asking Him a lot of questions about what it is like to die, about what Heaven is like, etc. It all started after I was in a life-threatening situation on one of my overseas trips. I found that I was a bit afraid to die when I was in that dangerous situation. After I was safe again, I started to be ashamed that I had been afraid. I knew (in my head) that when we die, we go to Heaven to be with Him, so what is there to fear? But my heart was not as fully convinced as my head was, and the net result was that it was a very scary experience for me. So I spent a lot of prayer time apologizing to God about that fear and asking Him to help me get over it. That was when I had my first vision, where God showed me what it was like to die and go to Heaven with Him.

I will be sharing that vision and a few others with you in subsequent lessons. But first I would like to share some Scripture with you to establish a Biblical basis for this topic.

Eph. 1:15-22

15 Therefore I also, after I heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love for all the saints, 16 do not cease to give thanks for you, making mention of you in my prayers: 17 that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give to you the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him, 18 the eyes of your understanding being enlightened; that you may know what is the hope of His calling, what are the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints, 19 and what is the exceeding greatness of His power toward us who believe, according to the working of His mighty power 20 which He worked in Christ when He raised Him from the dead and seated Him at His right hand in the heavenly places, 21 far above all principality and power and might and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this age but also in that which is to come. 22 And He put all things under His feet, and gave Him to be head over all things to the church, 23 which is His body, the fullness of Him who fills all in all.

Col. 1:5-6

5...Because of the hope which is laid up for you in heaven, of which you heard before in the word of the truth of the gospel, 6 which has come to you, as it has also in all the world, and is bringing forth fruit, as it is also among you since the day you heard and knew the grace of God in truth.

1 Thes 4:13-18

13 But I do not want you to be ignorant, brethren, concerning those who have fallen asleep, lest you sorrow as others who have no hope. 14 For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so God will bring with Him those who sleep in Jesus. 15 For we say to you by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive and remain until the coming of the Lord will by no means precede those who are asleep. 16 For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of an archangel, and with the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first. 17 Then we who are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And thus we shall always be with the Lord. 18 Therefore comfort one another with these words.

Titus 1:2

In hope of eternal life which God, who cannot lie, promised before time began...

2 Corinthians 5:1

For we know that if our earthly house, this tent, is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.

Eph 2:5-7

5 Even when we were dead in trespasses, He made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), 6 and raised us up together, and made us sit together in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, 7 that in the ages to come He might show the exceeding riches of His grace in His kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.

In short, because Jesus conquered sin and death on Calvary, we now have eternal life. When we die, we go to be with God, Who is in Heaven. God has great things for us in this life, but He has even better things for us on the other side of eternity. Each of us will get to see Him face-to-face and each of us will live forever because of Jesus.