Death and Hope and Hell

First draft of my sermon for North Hill, July 16, 2011. Critical comments welcome. I will be making changes and will replace this post before 9:00 a.m. Sabbath morning.

When I first met Jim, he hobbled around his apartment in Huntington, NY, with the aid of a crutch. Still, he exuded great confidence. In contrast to the billions of humans who had died over the ages of human existence, Jim was going to be one of the special ones who never experienced death. He was going to go straight from “life here” to “life there.” It was a sweet hope. Jesus was coming again. Jim was going to be one of the 144,000 who would actually see Jesus come in the clouds of heaven. He would never taste the night of death.

A couple of years later instead of a crutch, Jim needed a wheel chair to get around. He was frustrated with his decreasing mobility. Disappointed that his body was letting him down.

Another year or so and Jim was bed fast. He needed help just to get out of bed. With great embarrassment and disappointment he began to say out loud that he didn't think he was going to make it to the Second Coming. He didn't see how he could make it through the Time of Trouble. He realized he was going to die without seeing the Second Coming. This realization was a daunting challenge to his faith.

Turns out he was not the first person to experience this crisis of faith. He was not the first Christian who had thought the Second Coming was so close he didn't need to even think about death.

Almost two thousand years earlier, the Christians in the city of Thessalonika faced the same dilemma. They had become Christians through the preaching of the Apostle Paul. Paul had talked about the Second Coming of Jesus with such enthusiasm and conviction that the new believers figured they would all experience the Second Coming together. Death was something that happened to other people, not to Christians. They weren't going to have time to die. Jesus was coming too soon for that.

Then some people in their congregation died. It was a crisis. Death was not supposed to happen to Christians – not to people in the church! They were all going to welcome Jesus together at the Second Coming. Now their friends had died. Did that mean they were going to miss out?

Paul wrote them a letter to reassure them.

Brothers, we do not want you to be ignorant about those who fall asleep, or to grieve like the rest of men, who have no hope. We believe that Jesus died and rose again and so we believe that God will bring with Jesus those who have fallen asleep in him. According to the Lord's own word, we tell you that we who are still alive, who are left till the coming of the Lord, will certainly not precede those who have fallen asleep. Thessalonians 4:13-15

Don't worry about the believers who have died, Paul says. They are not going to miss out. Death has not foiled Jesus' plans for his friends. They will be ever bit as present and included in the Grand Climax as those who remain alive straight through until the Second Coming.

The Book of Hebrews addresses this same issue from the opposite direction. Some people imagined that all the good people of God who died through the ages have been rejoicing in the presence of God. They are the lucky ones. We are here, facing all the hardships of life on earth, struggling against the forces of evil – it hardly seems fair.

In answer, the author goes through a list of great heroes in Bible history – Moses, Abraham, Rahab, prophets, warriors, mothers, martyrs. Then referring to this list, he writes, “These were all commended for their faith, yet none of them received what had been promised. God had planned something better for us so that only together with us would they be made perfect.”

Paul writes that there was nothing to worry about for people who died before the Second Coming. The writer of Hebrews writes there is nothing to worry about if you are still involved in the struggles of this present life.

The Grand Heavenly Feast, the Great Holy Party, will surely happen. And it will happen when all of God's people – those who have died through the ages and those who live at the very end of time – are gathered in God's presence.

For believers, life and death point in the same direction: forward. Toward God. Toward the Second Coming.

Here's some further input from the Apostle Paul:

For the Lord himself will come down from haven, with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. After that, we how are still alive and are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. Thessalonians 4:16-17

Notice how Paul puts it. The very first “event” of the Second Coming is the resurrection of God's people who have died. Those who have already died experience the Second Coming along with those who never died.

Jim hasn't missed out. He is not going live through eternity wishing he had “made it” to the Second Coming. His death was an interruption of his plans. His death brought grief to his son. But his death did not interrupt God's plans.

Paul ends this section about the second coming this way:

And so we will be with the Lord forever. Therefore encourage each other with these words.” 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18

A few paragraphs later, Paul writes,

“Our Lord Jesus Christ . . . died for us so that, whether we are awake or asleep, we may live together with him. Therefore encourage one another and build each other up, just as in fact you are doing. 1 Thessalonians 5:10-11.


What does all this mean for us?

God has plans for us and death cannot cancel those plans. Our great hope is resurrection—the grand reunion that happens at the Second Coming.

One obvious implication of this hope in the resurrection is our belief about what happens when a person dies: When people die, they do not go to heaven or to hell. They go to sleep. No one goes to the heavenly party until everyone goes.

When a person dies, our grief – our pain at their absence – is a mirror of the very pain of God. The person who dies is not longer immediately present with God. God himself is eagerly awaiting the resurrection. The great hope of both believers and God himself is the resurrection. Death is an interruption of life. It interrupts earthly life. It interrupts heavenly life. The remedy for death is the resurrection which happens at the Second Coming.

The threat announced against those who reject God and practice evil is also future. People do not go to hell when they die. Even if you "bought a ticket to hell," you can't get there from here. The train does not go there, because there is no hell to go to.

Hell is the opposite of the Grand Party. And just as the Grand Party cannot get started until everyone is there. So Hell cannot happen until all the people who signed up have arrived. So it must be future. Hell cannot exist now. It cannot happen now.

For the person who dies, death is almost a non-event. It is like going to sleep. Twice I've received general anesthesia for something called cardioversion. My heart was not working properly. The procedure involved electrocuting me and stopping my heart and then restarting it.

Both times somebody came in and started explaining to me what was going to happen. As they were talking, they gave me an injection. An instant later, I opened my eyes. My heart was working properly. I was feeling great.

Death is like that. One instant someone is explaining to us what is going to happen, the next instant it has happened. A thousand years has passed. Or a day. We don't know. We close our eyes. We open them. Death has happened. Death is over. The Heavenly Party is beginning.

For those of us who do not die, the experience of death is like the experience of the cardiologist and nurses and anesthesiologist. They are busy. There may be some tension. If the heart doesn't snap back to the proper rhythm . . . if it doesn't restart . . . I suppose there are all sorts of complications that could arise, all sorts of tensions that might be experienced in the operating room.

For the living, death is long and drawn out. The pain of loss, the blasting of hope, the interruption of loving and sharing eats at our hearts. Death can be a crushing and prolonged misery. Because for us, the living, resurrection is a long way off. The procedure of death – for those who remain alive – is not instantaneous. We feel the slowness of the clock. But those who are asleep, for those who die, death is an instant, a moment between going to sleep and awaking.

Our grief does not come from the pain of dying. Rather, it is the pain of living fully aware of our loss.

God invites us to comfort one another with his promise that the separation of death is not eternal. Resurrection is coming. Life and the power of God will ultimately triumph over the darkness of death. God guarantees it.

Note on Hell: The notion of eternal hell is based on the idea that humans are inherently immortal, that we have “immortal souls.” According to this view, all people are immortal—believers and unbelievers, good people and bad people, saints and sinners. A person does not need faith to have eternal life, faith only changes the quality of eternal life from miserable to happy.
Adventists believe (based on the Bible) that humans are naturally mortal—that is, when our bodies die, we die. A human being is a living body. A dead body is not properly a human being, it's like a fossil—evidence of a life that was, not a life that is.
A dead person cannot experience hell (or anything else). In order to experience hell, a person would have to be resurrected. Adventists hold a variety of views on the exact nature of hell. Some focus on the nature of justice and thus teach hell as a punishment that God owes to the victims of evil. Others focus the coherence of moral and natural law and thus teach hell as the natural consequence of alienation from God and creation. A tiny minority focuses on the nature of God as father/mother/parent and imagine that hell is ultimately superseded by redemption. What all Adventist agree on is that it is inconceivable that God would resurrect people for the express purpose of torturing them for billions of years. Hell, as Adventists understand it, is an event that at worst is a punishment commensurate with the evil committed by the condemned. It is nothing like eternal. Even the eternal “effects” may be ultimately altered by the universe-suffusing grace of God.

Death does not have the last word. God does.
Death is not eternal. God is.
In grief, God and humans are united in painful separation from those we love.
In resurrection, God, the living and the dead will be reunited in a grand, holy, ecstatic festival of love.

Therefore, comfort one another with these words.