I was thinking recently about death. I was curious to see what the Bible had to say about this and found some amazing things.
Death, it turns out, is the direct result of man’s disobedience to God. God created the first man and woman to live forever, but because of man’s fallen, sinful nature, death entered into the world. “Just as sin came into the world through one man [Adam], and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned” (Romans 5:12).
The good news is that Jesus Christ conquered death through His resurrection. The Bible calls Jesus’ resurrection the “living hope” (1 Peter 1:3). Because Jesus was raised from the dead, there is the promise that others will be raised, too. This will occur at Jesus’ second coming, when everyone alive who has Jesus in their hearts will receive new, supernatural bodies, like Jesus’ at His resurrection (1 Corinthians 15:51–52).
To believers who have passed on before this event, Jesus promised that death would not be the end, but rather the threshold to a new life in the spirit. He said, “Because I live, you also will live” (John 14:19). For Christians, death is like passing from one room into another. We are set free from the limitations of our physical bodies and liberated into the boundless world of the spirit.
Authors have documented thousands of cases of what are termed near-death experiences (NDE). These are experiences of people who died or were near death, perhaps following an accident or during a medical procedure, but then were revived, and later recalled that during the time when they were clinically dead or very close to death, they had a spiritual experience of heaven. They felt that they had entered another dimension where they were overwhelmed with the feeling of being loved by a being of light, which they identified as Jesus or God, and many also saw angels and departed loved ones. It was the most wonderful thing they had ever experienced and many of these near-death survivors recounted that they no longer feared death.
If we trust in Jesus, we have the assurance of entering into God’s eternal realm. There we will enjoy the splendors of heaven for all eternity, without any of the pain or problems we have now. “He will wipe away every tear from [our] eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away” (Revelation 21:4).