What Will Happen To You After You Die?

Introduction

What do you believe will happen to you after you die? The atheist believes in annihilation after death. Buddhists and Hindus say the soul of the dead is reincarnated many times before reaching nirvana. Greeks believe that the soul must be ferried across the River Styx into Hades, so they place coins over the eyes of the dead to pay the ferryman. Roman Catholics believe that the spirits of believers must first pass through the purifying fires of the purgatorium before they pass into glory. Mormons insist that men and women will live together as husband and wives, populating their own planets as gods. The Quran promises Muslim men an erotic bonanza after life.

 

When Bad Questions Are Really Bad

In his sparring with the Sadducees in Mark 12:18-27, Jesus grants a periscopic glimpse into the life after death and teaches us to live in the light of resurrection.

Who are these Sadducees? Like twin weeds, the Pharisees and Sadducees sprung up during the intertestamental period some 200 years before Christ. The Sadducees were wealthy elites who, like the deists or liberal protestants of our day, rejected the supernatural. Luke tells us in Acts 23:8 that they denied the resurrection, the existence of angels, even the human soul. The Jewish historian, Josephus, said that of the entire Old Testament, the Sadducees recognized only the five books of Moses, and only the ethical teachings of those books.

It’s been said that there are no bad questions. Really? I can think of a few: “Have you ever thought about getting braces?” “Are you really going to wear that?” “Why aren’t you married yet?” These are bad questions. You see, good questions come with an open hand and listening ear but bad questions take the form of a clenched fist, seeking to inflict a wound.

The Sadducees’ question is bad because it is born of a malicious, unbelieving heart. Mark makes this explicit, “And Sadducees came to him, who say that there is no resurrection. And they asked him a question…” (Mark 12:18). Their animus is further revealed in the absurdity of their inquiry in Mark 12:20-23:

“There were seven brothers; the first took a wife, and when he died left no offspring. And the second took her, and died, leaving no offspring. And the third likewise. And the seven left no offspring. Last of all the woman also died. In the resurrection, when they rise again, whose wife will she be? For the seven had her as wife.”

Two brothers would have sufficed. But seven? Seven is ridiculous. We can see these seven hypothetical men squeezing out of their poke-a-dot clown car and fighting over the same girl with cartoon mallets in heaven. The Sadducees didn’t come to learn from Jesus, they came to mock him in unbelief.

How did Jesus respond? Like a spiritual cardiologist Jesus diagnoses the heart and exposes the Sadducees malicious motives, “Is this not the reason you are wrong, because you know neither the Scriptures nor the power of God” (Mark 12:24)? He repeats them in verse 27, “You are quite wrong.”

 

Not The God Who Was, But The God Who Is

My older brother John is a doctor. One day a patient came to him with an elevated heart rate, tremors, a high fever, shallow breathing and slurred speech. As he examined her and asked about her lifestyle, he discovered that she had been drinking a liter of Listerine mouthwash every day for years. “Well,” I asked, “what did you tell her?” John said, “I told her the simple truth, ‘If you don’t stop, you’ll die.’”  Sometimes we have to say hard things. In our dealings with unbelieving coworkers, classmates, friends, and family we must be careful not to add offense to an already offensive gospel. But let us never mistake a refusal to say hard truth as love. We must pray for the boldness and love to speak hard truths with a soft heart, like Jesus who, in the next instant transported the Sadducees through human history to the Day of Resurrection. Jesus does this to reveal a bit of the mystery of the glorified nature of the resurrected redeemed, “For when they rise from the dead, they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven” (Mark 12:25).

That might make romantics sad. Sadly, it might also be a relief to some. “I do’s,” aren’t forever. Marriage isn’t eternal. Rather, it is a temporary blessing bestowed by God for the provision, pleasure, protection, and propagation of man. While the institution of marriage has an expiration date, love does not. As Abraham, Isaac and Jacob were gathered to their people, Scripture gives us reason to expect that the relationships forged between believers on earth will be translated into eternity. This is what we sing, “From sorrow, toil, and pain, and sin we shall be free; and perfect love and friendship reign through all eternity.” The imperfect love of our marriages and other relationships will be perfected in eternity.

Jesus makes his final appeal from Exodus 3–a portion of Scripture that the Sadducees claimed to accept. He draws from one of the most well-known episodes of the Old Testament, the calling of Moses at the burning bush. Jesus highlights a most interesting feature from this passage you might not have ever noticed before; namely, the use of the present tense in Exodus 3:6. Jesus points out that the Scripture does not say, “I was” but rather, “I am the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob.” Though these patriarchs were long dead, God was still their God. Though they’re bodies were withering in a cave in Machpelah, their glorified souls were blossoming in the radiance of God’s glory. Just as the Psalmist sang in Psalm 116, their souls had been delivered from death and they were walking before the Lord in the land of the living. For ours is not the God of the dead, but of the living!

 

What Are You Living For?

I learned a song in Sunday School: “I don’t want to be a Sadducee, because they’re so sad, you see.” There’s profound truth in these simple lines. I suspect the Sadducee’s were deeply sad, whether they knew it or not. What you believe about tomorrow will shape the way you live today.  If you believe in oblivion after death you’ll live for oblivion now. Paul explained, “If in Christ we have hope in this life only, we are of all people most to be pitied…If the dead are not raised, “Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die” (1 Corinthians 15:19 & 32).

There’s another song, a pop song, from a few years ago that describes the sorrow and the self-torturing cycle of living in the darkness of oblivion instead of the light of endless life:

“Sun is up, I’m a mess
Gotta get out now, gotta run from this
Here comes the shame, here comes the shame

One, two, three, one, two, three, drink
One, two, three, one, two, three, drink
One, two, three, one, two, three, drink
Throw ‘em back ’til I lose count

I’m gonna swing from the chandelier
From the chandelier
I’m gonna live like tomorrow doesn’t exist
Like it doesn’t exist
I’m gonna fly like a bird through the night
Feel my tears as they dry…”

So sad, you see.

But there is something much sadder than nothingness after death.

 

What Is More Sad Than Nothingness?

When we lived in Hattiesburg, MS we occasionally attended memorial services at the funeral home downtown. It was an old, Victorian-looking house, that was in a state of disrepair with cracked plaster on the walls and cobwebs in the chandeliers. I dubbed it, “The Haunted Mansion.”

At one funeral, my dear friend Dr. David Jussely, was preaching over the casket of a church member when suddenly, a deafening trumpet sounded that made my heart slam into my ribcage and caused the room to shake. The funeral home was situated just 50 yards or so from the train tracks that ran through the heart of downtown. At one point, one of those trains blew its steam whistle. David stopped preaching and smiled. He’d pastored here for decades and was used to the trains. Once the horn died down and the room was silent again, David said, “That’s what it’ll be like when Jesus returns. But when his trumpet sounds, the dead will be raised and face the judgment. Will you be ready for that day? You can only be ready that day, by naming Christ as your savior, this day.”

What is sadder than believing in oblivion after death? To die expecting oblivion only then to awaken and find yourself standing before the judgment seat of the living God to “receive what is due for what he has done in the body, whether good or evil” (2 Corinthians 5:10). The Polish philosopher, Czesław Miłosz was right when, in refuting Marx, he said, “The true opiate of the masses is a belief in nothingness after death – the huge solace of thinking that for our betrayals, greed, cowardice, murders we are not going to be judged.” How very sad that anyone would face that day unprepared, when “Jesus ready, stands to save them, full of pity, love and power” today. This salvation Christ secured through is sinless life and sin canceling death on the cross. What you believe about tomorrow will shape the way you live today.

 

What You Believe About Tomorrow Shapes How You Live Today

Back in seminary, Dr. C.N. Wilborn led us through a cemetery in Columbia, SC until we came to a wrought iron fence around the Thornwell family plots. James Henley Thornwell was one of the pastors of First Presbyterian Churchand a leader in the Southern church. Standing in front of the tombstone of Thornwell’s daughter, Nannie, Dr. Willborn told us the story of how she’d become suddenly ill, and how on the eve of her wedding, she died and was buried in her wedding dress. Then, stepping aside, he told us to read her stone. And etched into the marble beneath her name were these faded words, “Her death was triumphant and glorious. She descended to the grave adorned as a bride to meet her bridegroom.”

Knowing that life does not end in death changes everything. When viewed through the prism of eternity, life’s triumphs are humbly dimmed and life’s sorrows wondrously irradiated with heaven’s light. It was the hope of life after death that enabled Abraham to walk in obedience when God’s called him to sacrifice Isaac for, “He considered that God was able even to raise him from the dead,” (Hebrews 11:19) It was this certainty of a bodily resurrection, that buoyed Job’s soul in sorrow, “For I know that my Redeemer lives and at the last he will stand upon the earth. And after my skin has been thus destroyed, yet in my flesh I shall see God” (Job 19:25-27). “For the joy that was set before him” Jesus was able to endure the cross, despising its shame to save us from our sins (Hebrews 12:2). You see, what you believe about tomorrow will shape the way you live today. So, let us live in the light of resurrection to the glory of the God of the living. “To die expecting oblivion… only then to awaken…”