WHAT THE BIBLE SAYS ABOUT THE NEAR HEREAFTER
We are now to enquire about that life
into which our departed ones have gone from us.
“I” has gone on his mysterious journey
into the strange, new land. We are standing
in the darkened death chamber, where the dead body
lies, with close shut eyes, like an empty house whence
the tenant has gone out, closing the windows after
him, and the sobbing friends are feeling the inevitable
pressure of the questions, “Where is he?
What is he doing? What is he seeing? Can
we know anything at all about his condition now?”
Many of them say, “No, we cannot
know anything; all is vague, shadowy, unreal.
It is vain to torment our hearts by thinking.”
So they lock away his photographs and letters, and
they gradually, reluctantly let him drop out of their
conversation and their prayers, and, as far as possible,
out of their thoughts, trusting sadly in the healing
influence of time and forgetfulness to quiet the aching
questions in their hearts. Ah! it is a poor
comfort!
Some of them even think that there
is something presumptuous in intruding into mysteries
which they say God has not revealed. “Do
not the secret things belong unto the Lord our God?”
What a pity they do not complete that text, “But
the things that are revealed belong to us;”
and then go on to find out whether, after all, God
has not revealed a great deal more than they think
about that mysterious journey on which the beloved
one has gone. A reverent curiosity concerning
the life of our departed is surely not displeasing
to God. “I would not have you to be ignorant,
brethren,” says St. Paul, “concerning
them that are asleep.”
I wish I could comfort those sorrowing
questioners, as I have comforted myself, by thus searching
for what God has revealed. I do not want to
offer mere sentimental guesses. I want to find
for them the “things that God has revealed,”
and if I draw some conclusions which I cannot definitely
prove from Scripture, they are only such as seem to
me reasonable and probable from a fair consideration
of the evidence, and I shall draw a clear distinction
between the authoritative teaching of Scripture, which
you are bound to accept, and any conclusions which
I draw from Scripture, which you are free to reject.
Let me first put your questionings
into clear, definite shape, as you look upon the face
of your dead. Is it a life of sleep and unconsciousness
into which he has gone, or is he as fully alive and
conscious as he was an hour ago? Is there further
probation in that life? Is there growth and
progress? Does he still remember? Does
he still love? Does he still know or care anything
about the old home and about us who are left behind?
Can he help us? Can we help him? Are
we to think of him as one gone absolutely into the
unknown, or may we think of him as we do of our other
absent one who went to India last year, only with
the difference that one writes home and the other does
not?
II
As in all our troubles, we had best
go first to our Lord. As He is the only one
who really knows all the questions of our hearts, so
He is the only one who really knows the secrets of
the invisible world. He is the only one on earth
who has ever gone away into that strange land and
then came back to tell us anything about it.
In all things He is our great forerunner. He,
the Son of Man, has gone before us poor sons of man
in all the experiences of life, childhood,
youth, manhood, temptation, struggle, sorrow, disappointment,
victory, joy. And He has gone before us, too,
into the Unseen Land, as if to lead us and say to
us “Be not afraid.”
He does not speak much about it.
As I have already shown you, this was to be expected.
In the first place, in our present imperfect, limited
condition, with senses fitted only for this poor earthly
life, it would probably be impossible to teach us
anything definitely about the higher life of the spirit
world. How can you teach a blind, deaf man about
this world of beautiful sights and sounds in which
you are living? How could God teach us definite
details about a life which no experience of ours can
help us to imagine? And, besides that, Scripture
is intended to guide our conduct in this world, not
to gratify our speculations about another world.
At any rate, there is a marked reticence and reserve
all through the Bible in speaking of the Hereafter,
which reticence and reserve we shall do well to imitate.
Section 1
First, watch our Lord draw the curtain
a little in His story of the Rich Man and Lazarus.
The “story” I say, not the “parable.”
It is no parable. A parable is the statement
of an analogy between visible things and invisible.
This is a direct statement about the invisible things
themselves. Jesus is telling what happens after
death. Indeed, many in the early Church thought,
and many to-day think, that this is a direct historical
account by Christ of the life of a certain selfish
rich man in Jerusalem whom He knew and of a certain
beggar that lay at his gate. They died and were
buried, and those who followed them to the grave could
see no further. But the Lord is watching them
still as they pass into the land which He knew so
well. Whether this was the story of a certain
man, or only a general statement about all such men,
does not matter. Christ was telling of what happens
just after death, when the “I,” the self,
has laid aside the body and gone out into the Unseen.
I do not mean that this story is intended
as a revelation of that life. If it were it would
doubtless have been more complete. It is simply
a passing reference to it in warning against the danger
of a selfish life. But it lifts the curtain
a little bit.
Section 2
Be quite clear about this that
our Lord is not speaking of the FAR Hereafter of
the final stage of human life at the end of the world,
in which after the Final Judgment come Heaven and
Hell. He is speaking of the near Hereafter,
the life immediately after death. We have seen
that there are three stages in our history: 1st.
This Earth life, where the “I,” the self,
has a body woven around it. 2nd. The Intermediate
Life before the Judgment, into which I go at death
without my body into my second stage of being. 3rd.
The final stage at the end of the age in which come
the Final Judgment and Heaven and Hell, which stage
is still in the future for all humanity.
Clearly our Lord is speaking of the
Intermediate Life, of the unseen life existing to-day,
running on side by side with the earthly life.
For you see the men He speaks of are not long dead.
Dives’ brothers are still living here.
Dives is quite conscious that the ordinary life of
men is still going on on earth side by side with that
other life. Clearly Jesus is telling of the present
stage in the life of the departed that
life in which all our dear departed ones are living
at this moment.
Section 3
Next I notice that that life in its
inmost experiences seems very like this life, and
follows from it quite naturally. He depicts it
as a clear, conscious life. They are not dead
nor asleep nor unconscious. They are very much
alive. He represents them as thinking and speaking
and feeling. Lazarus is feeling “comforted.”
Dives is feeling “tormented,” and thinking
keenly of his own misery and of his brothers’
danger on earth at that moment. So actively alive
are they all to him that he wants one of them to go
back to earth to tell his brothers about it.
Be quite clear about this. Challenge
every statement as I go on. Is this a mere speculation
of mine or have we Christ’s authority for saying
that in the new environment men are living a life as
clear and vivid and conscious as on this earth that
death makes no break?
Section 4
Next I learn that each feels himself
the same continuous “I” that he was on
earth. Lazarus feels himself the same Lazarus,
Dives feels himself the same Dives, the brother of
those five boys. I shall still keep on saying
“I.” I am not somebody else over
there. That is what Jesus said from the other
side of the grave “Handle Me and see it
is I, Myself.”
Section 5
Next I read on His authority that
there is no break in memory. Of course there
could not be if I am still “I.” But
our Lord confirms this. Lazarus remembers Dives.
Dives remembers Lazarus so well that he wants him
to go back to convert his brothers. Aye, he remembers
the brothers in the old Jerusalem home, the five boys
that grew up beside him. He remembers sorrowfully
that they have grown to be selfish men like himself,
perhaps through his fault. He is thinking about
them and troubling about them. And Abraham assumes
this memory as a matter of course. “My
son, remember that thou in thy lifetime, etc.”
Does not all this confirm our statement
in Chapter I, that memory is something more than impressions
on the gray matter of the brain; that memory is in
the man himself who is behind the brain and, therefore,
must go on with him.
Section 6
I read on, “Now he is comforted
and thou art tormented.” That again is
just what I should expect. It is all quite natural.
If “I” am still the same “I”
in full vivid conscious life, in full memory of the
past if I have passed out of the mists of
earth into the full light of the Eternal, where everything
is seen at its full value, where money counts for
nothing and love counts for everything, it is of course
natural that the good man should feel comforted and
the bad man should feel tormented.
Only more so. Only more so.
That is the difference. The poor humble follower
of Christ, even on earth, is in the main happy at
his best moments. But he is not always very
happy. He has the inner comfort of the peace
of God. But there is much worry and distraction,
about his business and his sickness and his troubles
of many kinds to spoil his peace. All these
earthly troubles are gone now. He sees Christ.
He knows of the boundless joy before him by and by.
He is comforted.
And I read that Dives “is tormented.”
Here again all is natural and as we should expect.
The godless man is in some degree tormented in this
life at his best moments, when he stops
to think, when he lies awake in the lonely night and
conscience speaks to him. But there are many
distractions to ease his pain the pleasures
and amusements of life, the company of friends, the
pursuit of business, the excitements of ambition.
So he can manage a good deal to forget God, to acquire
a distaste for God, and yet to dull the still small
voice that hurts him. But these distractions
are gone now. He has gone out into the new life,
naked, alone. All the money and business excitement
are gone. All the things of sense and appetite
are gone. That poor soul of his, dwarfed and
degraded, stands in the dread loneliness before God,
full of the sense of loss and misery of
shame for the past of dread of what is
to come of wretched discord between himself
and all that is good. In Hades, says Christ,
not in Hell (the Revised Version puts that right),
in that life just after death, he lifted up his eyes,
being in torment. The Judgment has not come yet.
He is not in Hell. Hell has not yet come.
Those things are in the final stage of being.
But already, just after death, Christ says, he is in
torment of soul.
Section 7
I do not think we should pass over
the expression “carried by the angels into Abraham’s
bosom.” Notice that our Lord makes it simple
and intelligible for the Jews by using their own phrase,
“Abraham’s Bosom,” their name for
the state of the faithful departed immediately after
death. And He says, Lazarus “was carried
by the angels.” If anybody else but Jesus
had said it, we might pass this over as a piece of
poetic imagery. But it was Jesus who said it.
He says so much about the angels. He says that
there are guardian angels of the children. He
says that the angels rejoice over one sinner that repenteth.
He would not say this about Lazarus carried by the
angels unless it meant something real. If so
I think we have here our Lord’s authority for
the ministry of angels at death, an indication that
the poor soul does not go out solitary into a great
lone land that there are loving watchers
around the death-bed “sent forth to minister
to the heirs of salvation.”
I do not know how much weight we should
attach to the suggestion that Dives seems the better
for the discipline of the new life. His selfishness
on earth bulks largely in the story. Now in all
his trouble he is thinking of his five brothers “lest
they also come to this place of torment.”
Section 9
The next words suggest a very serious
and awful question. Is the destiny and the condition
of every soul fixed forever at death? What is
the meaning of the phrase: “Between us and
you there is a great gulf fixed”? That
is too large a question to deal with here. I
postpone it to a later chapter. I have already
reminded you of the tremendous importance of this
life in its bearing on our final destiny.
III
We get another hint of the Unseen
Life in the story of the Transfiguration, when Moses
and Elijah, two of the greatest souls of the old world
days in the wondrous Waiting Life, come out from that
life to meet the Lord and to speak with Him “of
His decease, which He should accomplish at Jerusalem”
(Luke i. Does it not suggest at once the
deep interest which they and their comrades, the great
souls within the Veil, were taking in the mighty scheme
of Redemption that was being worked out on earth?
Does it not suggest that in the spirit land they
are watching our doings here? Does it not help
us to anticipate the joy in that wondrous life when,
straight from the Cross, Christ the triumphant victor
“descended into Hades” (Apostles’
Creed) to proclaim the glad news to the dead (1 Peter
i; to unfurl His banner and set up His Cross
in the great world of the departed?
IV
Our next hint comes when the Lord
is dying on the Cross. The penitent thief is
hanging beside Him. Death is drawing near.
The poor sinner is about to take the leap off into
the dark. He does not know what is before him:
Darkness unconsciousness nothingness what?
He does not know. The only one on earth who
does know is on a cross beside him. “LORD,
REMEMBER ME WHEN THOU COMEST IN THY KINGDOM.”
And Jesus said: “TO-DAY THOU SHALT BE
WITH ME IN PARADISE.” Not in Heaven, but
in Paradise the Jews’ word for the
resting place of good men after death. Now, when
one man says to another at such a tune, “To-day
you shall be with me,” surely it suggests, “You
and I will be living a full, conscious life, and you
will remember our acquaintance here upon the earth;
we shall know each other as the two who hung together
this morning on calvary.” Does it not,
at least suggest, recognition in the Unseen Land?