Where do you go when you die?

The state of the soul after death is a subject which deeply interests us all. The rejection of the coming again of Christ to receive the saints, and to judge the earth, before the end of the world, and the losing sight of the distinctive importance given to the resurrection in the New Testament, has given in the common evangelical faith, and that where sound in the main, an absolute character to the vague idea of going to heaven, exclusive of all other conception of happiness and glory. But Scripture spoke too plainly of the Lord's coming and the resurrection of the saints, to allow the thought of going to heaven when we die to maintain the absorbing place it held in the minds of the pious. Strange to say, going to heaven is not spoken of in Scripture, unless in the one case of the thief upon the cross going to be with Christ in paradise. Not that we do not go there; but the scriptural thought is always going to Christ. Since He is in heaven, of course we go there; but being with Christ, not being in heaven, is what Scripture puts forward, and this is important as to the state of the spiritual affections. Christ is the object before the soul, according to the word, not simply being happy in heaven, though we shall be happy and in heaven. I speak of it only as characterising our habits of thought. Poor human nature is apt to fall into Scylla to avoid Charybdis. It is apt, too, to follow its own thoughts, not simply to receive the word of God. There was a reaction, and the recovered truth of the Lord's coming and the first resurrection obtained an importance in some minds, which eclipsed the going to heaven when we die, too vague, and too little formally scriptural, to satisfy those awakened to search the word. It was stated that the soul sleeps, is unconscious, till the resurrection, even by some who, in the main, were sound in the faith; while with others this notion carried them on to deny not only the immediate bliss of the departed, with Christ, but that we ever went to heaven, and what constitutes distinctive Christian hope. Alas! soon very many were led to deny the fundamental doctrines of the gospel.

Another of Job’s hard questions is, “But man dies, and wastes away: yea, man gives up the ghost, and where is he?” (Job 14:10). Job had considered the tree that was felled, its root remaining in the soil, and that the presence of moisture caused fresh shoots to grow, but it was so different with man, and so the question arose in his mind as to where man went on departing this life. He knew the body wasted away, but where was the man who dwelt in the body? The answer to Job’s hard question was given by the Lord in Luke 16:19–31; and Luke 23:43; and by Paul through the Spirit in 2 Corinthians 5:1–8; and Philippians 1:23. For the believer, death means entry into Christ’s presence in the heavenly paradise, but for the unbeliever it is entry into hell with all its torments.

Now what is hades for the believer? Scripture tells us that whilst we are at home in the body, we are absent from the Lord, and when the believer is absent from the body he is at home with the Lord. The thief went the day he died into companionship with Jesus. There is no such thing as soul-sleep, but death is gain, and introduces the believer to the “far better” portion. The moment the breath leaves the body of the believer his spirit, conscious and happy, goes to be with His Saviour, there to await the resurrection day, which will end for his soul the condition of hades, as it will end the condition of death for his body.

Without going into every detail of this deeply informative parable of our Lord, a parable illustrative of great realities, it clearly presents three things: (1) The death of the body; (2) The survival of the soul after death; (3) That in the next world there are two conditions of existence, one of happiness, the other of torment. This picture of the next world unfolded by our Lord shows that both believer and unbeliever pass into the next world deathless souls, either bound for Heaven or Hell. May God graciously drive the deepest conviction of this fact into the soul of every reader of this pamphlet.

This truth is not confined to the present portion of our Gospel. We have similar teaching elsewhere. Does not the account of the rich man and Lazarus intimate the same thing? Yea, more; not only the existence of the soul separate from the body, after death, of course, but also blessedness and misery at once. They are not absolutely dependent on the resurrection. Besides, there is the final publicly adjudicated portion of misery for body and soul before the great white throne. But, in Luke 16, blessedness and misery at once are felt by the soul in the dissolution of the link with the body. The figures, no doubt, are taken, as they must be, from the body. Thus we find the desire for cooling of the tongue, which men of speculative mind use to prove that it was the time of being clothed with a real body. Nothing of the sort. The Spirit of God speaks to be understood, and (if He is to be understood by men) He must deign to use language adapted to our comprehension. He cannot give us the understanding of a state which we have never experienced, unless it be by figures taken from the present state. A similar truth appears also later on in the case of the converted thief. The point there is just the same — immediate blessedness, and not merely when the body is raised from the dead by and by. That is what he looked for when he sought to be remembered, when Jesus comes in His kingdom. But the Lord adds more — immediate blessedness now: "This day shalt thou be with me in paradise." Depend upon it, we cannot be too stringent in maintaining the importance both of the resurrection, and of the immediate blessedness or misery of the soul separate from the body before the resurrection. To give up the reality of the soul's existence in either misery or blessedness at once is only a stepping-stone to materialism; and materialism is but a prelude to giving up both the truth and the grace of God, and all the awful reality of man's sin and Satan's power. Materialism always is essentially infidel, though far from being, the only form of infidelity.

Is there a life beyond the grave? Often and anxiously the question is agitated amongst men. The Son of God answers it for us here. The beggar died, and was forthwith, not extinguished nor consigned to centuries of insensibility, but carried by the angels into Abraham's bosom. The position is described from the Jewish point of view. Conscious blessedness and that in the company of the father of the faithful, is plainly set forth. The rich man also died, and of him it is said, "he was buried." Why is this added in his case? Clearly because the Lord would carefully distinguish between body and soul. The man's body was buried, doubtless with all the pomp and circumstance that suited so wealthy a person; but immediately afterwards we read "in Hell (Hades) he lifted up his eyes, being in torments." Let me repeat, his body was laid in the tomb, but his soul went to Hades. Beyond all just controversy, this is the Saviour's meaning in the passage before us.

Nor is it true that between death and the resurrection the soul sleeps. The Lord, in the Gospel of Luke, has made the truth no less certain for both the wicked and the righteous. In Luke 16 He shows us the beggar dying and carried away by the angels into Abraham's bosom. This was certainly not the body but the soul; for the soul is the seat of personality. Whilst alive, soul and body are together. When death comes, the soul is the person till the resurrection, when they are together again for evermore; and therefore it is that only man rises from the grave; for he alone possesses a God-inbreathed soul — an immortal principle from God. As death is but an intermediate and incomplete state, resurrection (whether for just or unjust) will restore the full being, and in a condition for eternity. But, meanwhile, the beggar was, according to parabolic language, with the blessed beyond death. He was blessed with faithful Abraham, and not asleep. The rich man also died, and was buried. There was laid his body in the grave with whatever pomp. But in Hades he lifted up his eyes, being in torments. His soul, thus, was not asleep; he was in torments. It is perfectly certain that this is a picture, not of resurrection, but of the intermediate state; for he is represented as entreating for his five brethren, that some startling testimony might reach them, "lest they also come into this place of torment." When resurrection dawns, there will be no question of testimony to save. Besides, the Lord stands for the divine authority of Scripture. They had the inspired witnesses, and if these were not heard, neither would they be persuaded if one rose from the dead.

Again, in Luke 20, in answer to unbelieving Sadducees (who said there is no resurrection, neither angel, nor spirit), the Lord lays down that the God of the fathers is not God of dead but of living; "for all live unto Him" (Luke 20:38). It is not only that the saints rise for the first, holy, and blessed resurrection, but that meanwhile also they live for Him, if not for man; and that "all" so live, not the saints alone. With eternal life in Christ the believer is mortal; without that life the unbeliever's soul lives, save spiritually, after he dies. And spiritually dead the natural man is while he is alive.

Naturally the story of the rich man and Lazarus is hotly assailed by those who insist upon the sleep of the soul (Luke 16:19-31). It is regarded as the citadel of the position against which they revolt, and therefore it must be reduced by any means possible. But the waves of unbelief may lash themselves against it ever so furiously; it stands nevertheless. Call the story a parable if you please (though the Saviour does not), there you have men in the world of spirits the reverse of unconscious — fully alive to the sensations of bliss and woe. Moreover, this is not the only Scripture passage which represents men in conversation in the spirit world; Isa. 14:9-11; Ezek. 32:21 are as explicit, if not as graphic, as Luke 16:19- 31. The rich man "died and was buried"; that is, his body. Next we are told: "In hell (Hades) he lifted up his eyes, being in torments"; that is, his soul. The body was in the tomb; but his soul was in Hades. Let us not seek to evade the plain force of this; it is wiser far to take home to our souls the lesson divinely intended. The conclusion of the matter is this, that when the border-line is crossed, the disembodied soul passes forthwith into conscious bliss or woe; though it is admitted that neither saved nor lost reach their final consummation until the resurrection day is over. Let us not fail to remember that that which marks the line of demarcation between saved and lost is faith in our Lord Jesus Christ and in His precious atoning blood.

We may pass over the misuse of 1 Peter 3:18-20 as fully exposed in dealing with others, only noticing the inexcusable misconception which applies "the dead" in John 5:25 to the departed; whereas it expresses the common condition of fallen mankind, dead in trespasses and sins (Eph. 2:1, 5). "The hour coming, and now is" tells us what the Son of GOD is doing, ever since He came, by the gospel which quickens those that hear His voice. The blinding effect of preoccupation leads into the ditch. No Christian doubts the separate state, or what he calls "intermediate life"; none ought to doubt that the lost soul is at once tormented before the judgment, and that one saved when absent from the body is present with the Lord, which is assuredly in heaven, and not hades. Yet the resurrection of the righteous is not come, still less that of the unjust.

— Then follows the fitting conclusion to this grand declaration of combined divine and human glory: “And have the keys of death and of hades.” In our English Bibles the order is reversed, hades preceding death. But clearly this is a mistake, and contrary to the general order in which the words are found in other parts of the book (Rev. 6:8; Rev. 20:13-14). Death demands the body; hades claims the soul. The Lord became subject to the one, and entered the other. Our English word “hell” should be discarded, and “hades,” signifying the unseen, substituted. Efforts have been made to fix the locality of hades. It is impossible to do so. It is rather a state than a place, and refers to that condition in which all, good and bad, are found after death and previous to the resurrection. For believers, hades is to be with Christ; for unbelievers, hades is to be in torment. Thus both the Lord and the rich man went to hades (Acts 2:27; Luke 16:23). Christ has come out of it; the rich man will do so when raised for eternal judgment. Hades as a state exists between death and resurrection. The word does not in itself signify either blessing or misery. The state is one of conscious blessedness for believers, and one of conscious misery for unbelievers.