All About Heaven - What Happens When We Die?Esimerkki

Paul talks of death possibly in the context of the sailing of a ship. In a familiar passage, Philippians 1:23, he says, ‘My desire is to depart and be with Christ.’ The word depart was used for ships that were weighing anchor and putting out to sea.

When we catch a plane, we go into the departure lounge until the plane takes off, taking us into a different dimension until we reach our final destination. Our bodies are like the departure lounge, left behind when we take off.

In either case, the meaning is the same. All the discomforts and deprivations of the camping life and the homesickness resulting from living in a foreign land are now past, with the joy of going home implicit.

Falling Asleep

This description has caused some confusion over the years and it is important for us to understand it. The Bible uses the phrase ‘fallen asleep’, referring quite clearly to those who have died. Because of that, some believe that when we die, we stay in limbo – an unconscious state – until the return of Jesus. Some preachers have taught ‘soul sleep’. In other words, when we die, we enter a kind of spiritual coma, asleep in a non-physical body until we wake up to the sound of the last trumpet. There are many problems with this view, not least as it causes unnecessary distress to some, confusion or uncertainty to others, and can rob us of any desire to leave this earth. Interestingly, both Jesus and Paul used the term. Both of them in different ways made it clear that it referred to the body, not the spirit. In other words, it is the body that has gone to sleep until resurrection day. 

Falling asleep makes the point that death in the body is temporary, not permanent, and equally makes the point that we need be no more worried about death than we would be about falling asleep. Most people love the thought of falling asleep at night. We wake up different, refreshed, ready to go. A key passage here is 1 Thessalonians 4, in that it shows us that sleep refers to our observation of the moment of death, not the subsequent state of those who have died.