|
Hoyte Nelson's Poems/ Reflections & Biblical Essays
|
| Home |
Essay The “After-Life” for the Saints of God “For if we believe that Jesus
died and rose again, even so them also which sleep in Jesus will God bring with
him” (1 Thessalonians 4: 14, KJV). As we believers study the
scriptures relative to the future life, there are two basic biblical truths that
are essential to our understanding:” One is, our pre-resurrection state of
existence where it is said, (“…to be absent from the body is to be present
with the Lord” (2 Corinthians 5:8), and secondly, our post resurrection state
of existence that will take place when Jesus comes again at the resurrection; as
it is said, “so also is the
resurrection of the dead…” (1 Corinthians15: 42a). In my studies, I have come to believe that we sometimes confuse the “pre and post” resurrection references of the scriptures: We often attribute that which will be a reality in our resurrected glorified bodies with our pre-resurrection state of existence as before the second coming of Jesus. For example: The Apostle Paul
says, “to be absent from the body is to be presence with the Lord,” and then
says, “Death is swallowed up in victory.” In these two passages of
scripture, he is speaking of two different states
of being in our after-life experience, we are not given a great deal of
information about our “state of being” i.e., when the spirit leaves the body
in death: “Sleep in Jesus,” and, “Rest from labors,” but there are many
references to the eternal blessings that will be ours in the “resurrected
bodies” following the Second Coming of Christ when we are “caught up
together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air” (1 Thessalonians
4:17). I have come to believe that the
two scriptural references: “Rest” and “Sleep,” are the most comforting
truths found in the scriptures when a loved on goes to be with the Lord;
nevertheless, it must be remembered that the “hope of the resurrection” is
the central truth in the story because we are waiting for the day when the
living and the dead will be caught up “together” to meat the Lord “in the
air;” then, according to the scriptures, we will ever be with the Lord in what
is called, “the new heaven and the new earth” (2 Peter 3: 13; Isaiah 65: 17;
Revelation 21:1-5, etc.). I have often used this
illustration in a funeral message of a personal experience in my youth: My
father ran a small grocery store that was attached to our “front porch”
(gallery) as it was called in those days. The men of the community would gather
there in the evening to purchase needed supplies. They would share what news
they might have heard. (No TV’s, radios; in those days, only a weekly county
newspaper. and few were able to purchase it) --- but a lot of old repeated
stories were told, and I loved it! I would prepare for bed (washed my feet), and
listened to the stories. Then, in the morning I would hear my father saying,
"Hoyte, wake up; its morning.” (He, no doubt, had put me to bed in the
early evening after I had fallen to sleep out on the old front porch).
This is my picture of death and the resurrection morning: It is as though
all believers who have fallen asleep in Jesus and will be awakened to the
“trumpet call,” and the eternal morning when He come again at the
resurrection: “And I heard a voice from
heaven saying unto me, Write, Blessed are
the dead which die in the Lord from henceforth: Yea, saith the Spirit, that they
may rest from their labors; and their works do follow them” (Revelation 14:
13. KJV). The Apostle Paul sums it all up
in the passage from which we taken our text: “But I would not have you to be
ignorant, brethren, concerning them which are asleep, that ye sorrow not, even
as others which have no hope. For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again,
even so them also which sleep in Jesus will God bring with him. For this we say
unto you by the word of the Lord, that we which are alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord shall not prevent (proceed)
them which are asleep. For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a
shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God, and the dead
in Christ shall rise first: Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to
meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord” (1
Thessalonians 4:13-17, KJV). It has now been thousands of
years by our time since our OT forefathers died; yet, it will be a yesterday
when they welcome home the fruit of their heritage. This is not to say that
heaven is not a blissful blessing in the Lord. It is, however, to say that the
day of the resurrection is the hope of the Christian faith.
For those that “sleep in Jesus, will God bring with Him” (1
Thessalonians 4:14). |