What Happens When We Die?

[This is part 2 of a three-part write-up of a vision of martyrs and Heaven.]

The worship continued and I entered into it again, feeling less encumbered and less self-aware. My worship took the form of looking at Jesus and adoring Him. I could not see Him clearly in this vision, He was very bright, sort of like the shining sun, and I could not make out a lot of details. It should have hurt my eyes to look at Him, but it did not. Part of the time I would look at Him alone and adore Him for Who He was. Part of the time I would look at Him interacting with the lady who was worshipping Him. His hand was still on her head, gently caressing it. I could not see His face because of the radiance, but I knew He was smiling at her and I knew there was a love and a tenderness in His eyes towards her. It made me think about wonderful He is to His own, and that made me adore Him all the more.

Then something happened as I worshipped and adored Him. I knew He was interacting with that lady, the one who had just so courageously laid down her life for Him. But it felt like His attention was also on me and I felt His great love towards me as well. I found myself getting lost in His goodness, it was so overwhelming. The more I worshipped Him, the closer I felt to Him and the greater awareness I had of His attention and His pleasure on me.

Then I made a mistake. I began thinking about and analyzing what I was experiencing instead of keeping my focus on Him. I "knew" that He could not possibly be focusing His attention on me because He was focusing it on the lady who had just been martyred. This was her moment and it was fitting and right for the Lord to focus His undivided attention on her.

"Teresa." The Lord spoke directly into my mind and not audibly, but it was clearly and definitely His voice. "What makes you think that I am not big enough to focus My undivided attention on her and on you and on all who are here before My throne worshipping Me?"

"Lord," I whispered, "the definition of undivided is that it is fully on one one thing. How can you put your attention fully on her and on something else at the same time?"

"That is one of the advantages of being God. I am not limited the way you are. I can give her such attention that it feels to her like she has My undivided attention and at the same time do the same thing for everyone else here, including you." All of the sudden I had this sense of God's vastness and it was incredibly overwhelming. He was so big and so great. I felt scared by what I was sensing. Then Jesus whispered, "Don't be afraid. I did not bring you here to be afraid." As He said that, all of the fear left me and I was back to adoring Him.

I don't know how long it went on, but I do know that He talked to me several times as I worshipped Him in this manner. I don't remember everything He said, but I do remember one thing. At one point He said, "All of My angels and all of My perfected saints are always looking for any excuse to worship Me. The excuse at this moment is My martyred daughter worshipping Me unencumbered for the first time."

At one point I remember thinking that He was getting the short end of our worship because He was blessing me more than I could possibly be blessing Him. He seemed to be giving out more in blessing than He was receiving in worship. He told me that He is a big God, much bigger than all of His creation, and it will always be uneven like this. I got the impression that part of the reason Heaven likes to worship so much is because there is such a sense of glee and delight and joy when He interacts back to us as we worship. In the past I had always seen worship as one-sided; I thought of it as us blessing Him. But as I experienced this corporate Heavenly worship, I realized that worshipping God is a very relational thing with Him. Worship is not one-sided, it can't be.

Worship is coming into God's presence and interacting with Him. When we interact with Him and see His goodness and feel His nearness...WOW! Being there with Him like that was the most wonderful experience I ever had, it felt so great to have His loving attention focused on me and to feel His pleasure. That is what it must feel like for people in heaven all of the time. It is relational and He is a very good and a very giving God. No wonder Heaven is always looking for excuses to worship Him!

I have no idea how much time passed. But now Jesus was standing up and He was lifting the recently martyred lady to her feet. She appeared to be as overwhelmed and undone by Him (in a good way) as I had felt during the worship. He wrapped His arm around her and led her away to be alone with Him. As they walked away, everyone gathered before His throne began to break out into applause. I found myself clapping and cheering as well. I was not sure if I was clapping and cheering for her and for how valiantly she had laid down her life for the Lord, or if I was clapping and cheering for Him. The angel leaned over and whispered, "It is for both of them. No Saint can do anything without Him, but they must choose to cooperate with Him when He asks something of them."

You would think that by now I would be getting used to angels leaning over and answering unspoken questions, but it still caught me by surprise. Then I was filled with delight and found myself laughing as I continued to applaud and cheer.

It did not seem like they were gone very long. It seemed like only a few minutes had passed when the Lord came back with this lady. She was different, she had been transformed. For one thing, she glowed like the others and I had to squint to look at her. For another thing, she walked beside her Lord with a confidence, and all tentativeness was gone from her. The angel whispered to her, "She is secure in His love for her and she has been transformed." I remember thinking "Wow, that was fast." Then the angel reminded me that time in Heaven is different than time on earth, and many years' worth of things can happen for one person in what seems like just a few minutes to another.

Everyone was still cheering when they returned, and the cheers got louder. There was something celebratory about them, as if all of Heaven was celebrating her arrival. Jesus kissed her on the forehead, gave her a big hug (she hugged back with this huge smile on her face) and then He released her. He went back to His throne and sat down. The people (angels and transformed saints) around her began to hug her and to greet her. It reminded me a lot of warm/loving fellowship at church.

I knew that I was different than everyone there--that I still had my carnal, sinful nature and no one else there did. I did not approach her because I felt a bit unclean compared to the holiness and purity that everyone else had. I did not want to dirty or contaminate her moment. But to my surprise, she purposely made her way over to me.

"I wanted to thank you." she said.

"You wanted to thank me??" That did not make any sense to me at all. She was the one who had heroically and bravely laid down her life for the Lord. All I had done was watch, and throw up a few prayers for God to strengthen her in that.

"God told me that He brought you here to be my intercessor in this and that you were with me when I died."

"Well, yes, but..." I stopped. I did not know what to say to her. I did not really have any part in what she had done, I was mostly an observer. I was obviously in some type of vision and it began to dawn on me that what might be a vision for me might have been real to her. I really did not understand what was going on or how to act. So I just stood there and let her talk.

Then she explained things to me. The Lord had told her that morning when she woke up that He was going to ask something hard of her that day, but she should not worry because He would help her. She had no idea what He was talking about, but since God said it would be "hard," she asked Him if He would please raise up intercessors for her. He told her that He'd not only raise some up, He'd actually send one from a foreign land to be physically there with her when she did the "hard thing."

She seemed to feel that I was the intercessor God sent in answer to her prayer. (That was a bit of a surprise to me, since I don't really think of myself as much of an "intercessor" any more.) But she was convinced that I was the answer to her prayer and she was excited that He had answered it. She was also thrilled that I had been able to worship with her the first time she worshipped free of her carnal nature. Actually that worship had been a highlight for me, and I did not see it as doing her any sort of favor or service. I saw it as just getting blessed by God.

"I want to tell you something," she continued.

"Ok."

"I want you to know that your prayer worked--I did not feel any pain when that man was cutting me with the machete. The Holy Spirit was on me so strongly and I felt this incredible joy and peace. The fear all left me just before they started to kill me. It wasn't really all that hard because the Holy Spirit was on me so strongly and He helped me so much. God was so good to me in how He helped me."

I said, "Wow!"

Then she said, "And it is going to be the same way for you when you die. The Holy Spirit will come on you and you won't feel any pain at all."

Her statement brought me to a mental flashback of the early days of the renewal, back in 1995. I had accidentally severed a tendon in my thumb, and I had surgery to reattach it. My left hand was in a surgical cast and was very sensitive to any bumping or jostling. When I got prayer at the renewal, I was slain in the spirit and ended up laying on a cement floor. The presence and power of God came on me and I began shaking like crazy. My hands were making chopping motions at my side and my cast kept clanking loudly on the cement floor. I remembered thinking that should hurt, but I felt no pain at all, because the Holy Spirit was on me so strongly. That was when God told me that when He asked me to lay down my life for Him, He would come on me just like that again, and it would not hurt! This lady was now telling me the same thing God had told me long ago. The memory flashed back as she made that statement. Then it felt like the Holy Spirit was laughing and telling me, "See, I told you so!"

I said, "Thank you." Then I silently wondered if God did that for everyone who He called to lay down their lives for Him. That angel who had been answering my unspoken questions leaned over to me, and said, "No, not for everyone, but for many of them."

[More of this vision to come next week.]