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Wonderful Heaven
There is no death for the believer. Jesus promised. "I tell you the truth, if anyone keeps my word, he will never see death." 1 Death means separation. Natural death is the separation of the spirit from the human body and spiritual death is the separation of the soul from God.
Death is robbed of its sting for the Christian. It is not a fearful but a blessed experience. Hebrews teaches that "by his death he might destroy the power of death - that is, the Devil - and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death." 2 Saint Paul, in teaching his apprentice Timothy writes, that our Savior Jesus Christ "has destroyed death and has brought life and immortality to light through the gospel." 3 God goes with us for he said, "Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you." 4
Where is Heaven?
In our technological age, many suggest that there is no such place as Heaven that it is just an idea in people's minds. This is no longer the case. Maybe it is a non-physical place, a kind of extra dimension which is not currently apparent to us. Scientists in a recent Television documentary talked about the mathematical probability that there are not just three or four dimensions but eleven or twelve, what they call "string theory." This says there are many levels of existence that as yet we know little about but can be proven mathematically to exist.
The Bible has some indicators to help qualify this. If you turn to the Old Testament, you discover that everyone who died, went "down." They went where Jesus went when he died, as we state in our Apostles' Creed "He descended into Hell." Everyone went "down" in Old Testament times.
Hell and Heaven
It is radically different in the New Testament era. St Paul says that he was caught up to Paradise. He did not go down to the underworld which Jesus describes, "For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of a huge fish, so the Son of Man will be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth." 5 Everyone went to this underworld before the resurrection of Christ, but they did not all go to the same place. There were clearly two compartments in the underworld as revealed in the story of the rich man and Lazarus.
Lazarus and the Rich Man
The story of Lazarus and the rich man is often thought to be a parable but it is not. Jesus said, "There was a rich man who was dressed in purple and fine linen and lived in luxury every day. At his gate was laid a beggar named Lazarus, covered with sores and longing to eat what fell from the rich man's table." 6 Jesus tells something about each of them and then relates the fact that they both had died. "The time came when the beggar died and the angels carried him to Abraham's side" 7 This place, sometimes called "Paradise," was where all Old Testament saints were, even Abraham.
When the rich man died he found himself "In Hell, where he was in torment, he looked up and saw Abraham far away, with Lazarus by his side."8 The two places were separated by a great gulf. Under the Old Testament everyone who died went down to his own place. He either went to the bad portion of "Sheol" (Hades or Hell) or he went to "Paradise," the other portion, but it was always down.
Question for Discussion
1. How do I feel personally about belonging to the one, universal, historical, Body of Christ?
Notes
1John 8.51 2Hebrews 2.14,15 32 Timothy 1.10 4Hebrews 13.5 5Matthew 12.40 6Luke 16.19,20 7Luke 16.22 8Luke 16.23
"I tell you the truth, if anyone keeps my word, he will never see death."
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