The Healing Word

Pastor Jack Morris: Christ knows us fully now. We only know Him partially. There's no way in our finite mind that we can understand the fullness and the completeness of the Godhead. But at that time, we will be known and we will fully know. So we will know God, we will know Jesus, we will see the nail prints, we will see all the scars that He has taken. We will know Him; He who has been invisible will become visible.

And our friends and our loved ones, it just stands to reason if I have that kind of a relationship with Him and know Him, I will certainly know my loved ones and see them and be part of that family, that great, wonderful reunion that God has planned.

Guest (Male): What happens after death? Is there consciousness beyond the grave? Will we know our loved ones again? Today on the Healing Word, Pastor Jack Morris opens the scriptures to reveal the secret of the afterlife and the comfort believers can have in knowing what awaits those who die in the Lord.

Pastor Jack Morris: Man is destined to die. Now think about it. Man is destined to die. The King James says it is appointed unto man once to die. And then in the oldest book of the Bible, the book of Job, Job says to God, "Man's days are determined." Now think about it. Your time is determined already. It has been done. It's a closed matter. God knows exactly the very moment you were born, and He has already decided on His divine calendar the moment you're going to die.

It's determined by God. Listen to it: "Man's days are determined. You, O God, have decreed the number of his months and have set limits he cannot exceed." There's nothing you can do about it. You didn't say anything about your birth, and when it comes time to die, God's going to call for you and you'll go. I'll go. Now, a subject that is so relevant, so universal, because of its inevitable eventuality, something needs to be said about it, don't you think?

Some people say, "I don't want to talk about that." Hey, it's happening. There isn't a daily newspaper in the country but that newspaper has an obituary column. It's happening all the time. There's no subject that is more relevant than the subject that we're talking about this morning. Something so certain cannot be ignored. The Bible is the only book which speaks with certainty and clarity about this very important subject and what lies beyond death.

Only in recent years has behavioral scientists begun to look into this matter in a scholarly attempt to understand the subject. But for many years, philosophers and theologians have been concerned with it. The future life deserves our immediate and serious consideration. Our immediate. It's not something we can put off because we don't know just how close we are to that time when God's going to call for us. And so it deserves our immediate consideration.

So what we're going to do, we're going to turn to the very highest authority, the Bible, and hear what God has to say about this supremely important subject. The scripture tells us in Revelation chapter 14, "Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord." Now think about it with me. Blessed are the dead. Hey, I don't think death is something that is a blessing. I don't look at it as a blessing. But God looks at it as a blessing for those who know Him.

Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord. Not everyone's going to die in the Lord or die in the faith, and their death is not going to be a blessed thing. It's going to be something that is dreaded and feared and made an effort to avoid, although that effort will not work because death cannot be avoided. But those who know the Lord, who have given their hearts to Christ, when they die, their death is a blessing.

The word blessed means an ultimate state of well-being. Those who die in the Lord, then, have now entered into an ultimate state of well-being. It cannot be any better. It is now a state of supreme spiritual happiness. Isn't that what the scripture says? Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord. An ultimate state of well-being. Their life is blessed. The Apostle Paul said, "For me to live is Christ and to die is gain."

We look at death as coming and robbing and taking, but the scripture looks at death as that which gives something that only God can give, and you can only receive it if you are in Christ and in God. So the Christian's perspective of death is entirely different from that person who is a non-Christian. Death no longer has the sting that it once had. We read in the scripture, First Corinthians chapter 15, "Death has been swallowed up in victory."

"Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?" The sting of death is sin. But once sin has been dealt with and taken care of through Christ, and when we confess that sin to God, the sting of death is taken away. Death can't sting us anymore. Our sin, your sin, my sin, stung Christ at Calvary, and Christ took the sting of death for you and me. So death is still here. Death is still happening, and death is going to happen to you, but it can't sting you.

It can't hurt you anymore. Can you say praise the Lord? It cannot hurt you because Christ has taken the sting for us. This is the blessing that we have in the Lord. Dr. Donald Grey Barnhouse, who was the pastor of Tenth Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, for many, many years—and sometimes I have the opportunity to hear some of his old tapes, and I enjoy his great theology, he was a great preacher—well, his wife died, and he had this little boy in his house.

And they went to the cemetery and buried the wife, buried the mother. And Pastor Barnhouse and his son were going home to the parsonage, an empty parsonage. No mother there now, no wife there. And they were saddened. And they pulled up to a stop sign and stopped, and just as they stopped, a huge truck passed by and momentarily cast a huge shadow over the car, and then it was gone. And Pastor Barnhouse turned to his little boy and said, "Son, would you rather be hit with the shadow of that truck or hit with the truck itself?"

And the little boy looked at his dad and he said, "Why, the shadow, of course." And after a moment reflection, Dr. Barnhouse said to his son, "Son, when a Christian dies, a Christian is only hit with the shadow of death, but when a person who is not a Christian dies, they are hit with the full impact and force of death itself." You see, this is what happened. Death and all of the fury of hell came against Christ and hit Him until He cried, "My God, My God, why hast thou forsaken me?"

You see, He took our sting. He took the full impact. Today, when death comes to us, it does not have that bitter sting. It does not have its full impact. "Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death." For the Christian, it's different. It's completely different for the Christian. But there are many people today, and if you're here today and you don't know the Lord, you're going to be hit like with a Mack truck when death hits you. You're going to feel the full impact of it.

But you don't have to feel the impact of it because Christ already felt the impact. You need only turn your heart to Christ and invite Jesus to come in, and He'll forgive your sin. And when He forgives the sin, the sting is gone. And when death comes, you will be blessed and you will experience gain. You'll be no loser at that moment in Christ. The scripture says in Second Corinthians chapter five, the Apostle Paul says in verse one, "Now we know."

There is something you can know, and in Christ you can know that the sting of death is gone and that the impact of death is gone. Now we know. There are some people who don't know if they were to die today that they'd go to heaven because they've never given their hearts to Christ. But there are people who do know that if they die today, look at it, it says, "Now we know." Somebody says, "Oh, I hope I go to heaven when I die. I've been a good mother. I've been a good father."

"I've gone to church. I've been christened or baptized as a baby or as an adult." And they'll run through that whole litany and then in the end they'll say, "I think I will. I hope I will. Maybe I will." But Paul says we can know something. We can know that when this life is over and when we take our last breath, that we go to heaven. Isn't it wonderful to be able to know? God wants to take the guesswork and He does take the guesswork out.

There's a lot of people, so-called Christians, who are scared to death of death. They don't want to die. They worry about death. I don't think anybody here is actually wanting to die, but I can tell you one thing: there's something you can know about it when it comes, that you know that I have eternal life when this life is over. And notice it says, "Now we know that if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God, an eternal house in heaven not built by human hands."

The tent. This body is like a flimsy tent. It's so flimsy. But God has gone ahead through Christ and built a permanent house for us. And when we die, we give up the flimsy tent for a permanent eternal dwelling place. Now you talk about gain. You know, I'll give up an old pup tent any time to get a mansion. And that's what Paul says. This is just like an old army tent. It's all worn out and tattered. You just give it away to gain the mansion that Jesus has gone on and prepared for us.

Now, what are those who have died in the Lord, what are they doing? They're doing what you and I will be doing when we die in the Lord. Are they sleeping in the grave unconscious, waiting for the day of resurrection? Or just it's ashes to ashes, dust to dust and one long eternal farewell? They're down there. There they are. They don't know anything. They're unconscious. They're dead. Is that where they are? No, not at all. Their body resembles sleep, but their spirit, that eternal part of them, is in the presence of God and very conscious.

The first thing that they're doing is that they are fellowshipping Christ. That's the first thing that we're going to do when we enter into the kingdom of God. That's who I want to see more than anyone else. I want to see Jesus. Because of Jesus I'm going there, and I want to look Him right in the eye, face to face, bow before Him and thank Him and thank Him and thank Him for taking the sting of death and hell and the grave, taking that away from me and giving me eternal life.

He gave me eternal life. He gives you eternal life. I want to bow before Him. I want to give Him thanks. The Apostle Paul said in Philippians, listen, "I am torn between two. I desire to depart and to be with the Lord, which is far better." He said, "I'm here, but I also have a desire to be with Him. Matter of fact, I feel torn between two." To depart. The word depart in the Bible has this connotation, that of a ship with the big ropes tied to the dock.

You know how they'll take those big ropes and they'll throw them over and they'll splash into the water as the ship is loosed from its moorings and begins to sail away from the dock. Paul is saying, "I'm going to sail away from this life and those things that are holding me to this life are going to be loosed in His time, not my time. But one of these days He's going to loose me and I'm going to sail away from this dock called Earth to be forever with the Lord."

He knew that when he died his body is going into the grave, but not his spirit. His spirit is going to be with the Lord. He also said to be away from the body is to be at home with the Lord. One of these days, this body and myself are going to separate. And that's exactly what death is. Death is a separation of the eternal visible which is my spirit from my body. That's what it is.

They just... they're cleaving now, but they separate. When they separate, the spirit goes to be with the Lord. And Paul says, "I am torn. I just feel I want this release to go to be with the Lord and I'm going to depart." And he says, "And when the body goes into the ground, I'm going to be with," meaning with the thought of the Bible has face to face and intimacy. "I'm going to have an intimate relationship. While my body is under the earth and that tombstone is there, I'm going to be with the Lord."

Now that's a wonderful faith to have. And every person can have it in Christ. This is the faith and the confidence that Jesus gives us. So we're going to be in fellowship with Jesus, but we're also going to be in fellowship with others who have gone on before us. Our loved ones who are now in the presence of God, our friends are now having a grand reunion with their friends in the presence of God. And as I go along, I'm going to give you scripture.

I've already been doing that as I've gone along. This is not a theory of mine. This is the word of God. This is the highest authority. We're not dealing with behavioral science, theology or philosophy, although this is theology. We're dealing with "Thus saith the Lord." So our friends who are now in the presence of God—my father died many years ago, and a number of years after that my sister died—now from what I understand of the word of God, when my sister got to heaven, my dad was there and greeted her.

Greeting her, knowing that was his daughter and this is my father. They met. They're there now. They're waiting on me. And won't be very much longer I'll be there. Won't be very much longer you will be there, and we will know one another in heaven. The Apostle Paul again in First Corinthians 13:12 speaks about being fully known. We are going to... Christ knows us fully now. We only know Him partially. There's no way in our finite mind that we can understand the fullness and the completeness of the Godhead.

But at that time, we will be known and we will fully know. So we will know God. We will know Jesus. We will see the nail prints. We will see all the scars that He's taken. We will know Him; He who has been invisible will become visible. And our friends and our loved ones, it just stands to reason if I have that kind of a relationship with Him and know Him, I will certainly know my loved ones and see them and be part of that family, that great, wonderful reunion that God has planned.

We will know and we will be known. When you get there before me, you look. I'll be on my way. I'll catch up. We're all going to heaven and we're going to know each other when we get into the presence of God. Jesus on the mount of transfiguration and with Peter, James and John, they knew Moses and Elijah. There is a known experience and the dead in Christ will know each other and be conscious of one another. The third thing we're going to be doing is experiencing a great rest.

Down here in this life, we just go from one conflict, one fight, one struggle, one labor. We're always fighting something, resisting some temptation, overcoming some trial. We just go from one to the other all through life, in and out of trials, in and out of temptations, in and out of difficulties. But there will be an eternal rest and we will not know that anymore. That'll all be over. And some of you are fighting some real difficulties right now. You really are.

But one of these days, you won't wear yourself out, exhaust your energy and your time struggling because you will have entered into the rest of the Lord and there'll be no more fights, no more battles, no more temptations. It'll be just one wonderful rest in Christ. Heaven's going to be a wonderful place. Many years ago, Charles Haddon Spurgeon was preaching on heaven one Sunday morning. And he said there was a person in the congregation, a Christian lady, that just kept her eyes on him and kept flashing back joy, it seemed.

And he said it just mystically in some way energized me. He'd known her to be an exemplary Christian. You see, the word of God turns Christians on. People who are in the word are excited and revived by the word. Other people are saying, "When's he going to get done now?" And he said as he preached on heaven—and he said he no doubt dwelt on that subject a little longer than maybe he would have dwelt upon it—but she was so enjoying it.

And he would glance her way and she would just smile. And he said, but after a while, he said her gaze became too fixed. And he preached a little longer and then finally he stopped and he said, "Would somebody kindly check on this lady back here?" Ten thousand people, he said, check on her. He said, "I think she's dead." Just then her husband called out, said, "Sir, she's dead." Without a sigh, without a groan, while he was preaching on heaven, she went there.

I'll tell you, heaven is a wonderful place. I'm excited. I really am excited that I know that I'm going. And I don't think the Christian needs to fear it. As a matter of fact, I know the Christian doesn't need to fear it, need to groan about it, need to resist it, need to sigh over it. One of these days, we're going to that wonderful place that Jesus went ahead and prepared for us. And we'll just slip out of these bodies and go into the presence of God to enjoy Him forever and ever.

Another thing that they're doing in heaven today and that you and I will do when we get there: we will worship. We will truly, truly, maybe if perhaps for the very first time, worship in spirit and in truth. Worship God. The angels are worshipping Him. They're gathered around the throne of God and they worship Him who sits upon the throne, just as the choir sang a moment ago, worshipping Him. They worship Him for several reasons.

One of the reasons was they are the ones who escorted Him to Earth when He came as a babe and was born in the manger. The heavens were filled up and they sang, "Glory to God in the highest and on earth peace, goodwill toward men." They escorted Him through the great kenosis when He emptied Himself and became a man. They followed Him all through His earthly life. And when He prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane, they were there to bless Him and to help Him.

And then when that day came when He arose from the dead and carried His people out to the Mount of Olives and said goodbye to them, lifted up His hands and blessed them and ascended back to heaven, while the disciples were standing on earth watching Him go back, the angels of God were looking over the portals of heaven as He was coming in. And the Psalmist, years before that happened, had a vision, and the Psalmist says what the angels did was to sing His praises.

And the angels sent the word among all the angels of heaven as they congregated, and they spoke to the gates and said, "Be ye lifted up ye everlasting doors, lift up your heads, O ye gates, and be ye lifted up ye everlasting doors that the King of glory might come in." We welcomed Him and we sent Him out, and now we welcome Him back. He who won, He who accomplished His mission. He who won over death for everyone who dares to believe upon Him.

And the angels welcome Him back. They praise Him throughout all eternity because He did what He set out to do, and death, hell and the grave couldn't hold Him. Not only do the angels welcome Him back with praises, you and I will be praising Him because listen: He didn't die for angels, yet the angels praise Him. He died for us. We are the ones who are the true authentic recipients of why He came to Earth. He died for our sins, not angel sins.

If the angels praise Him, how much more should you and I praise Him forever and ever? They're praising God. They're loving God. They are there. They are one. They have won through Christ. He has accepted Him, and those dear Christian brothers and sisters and fathers and mothers and relatives who have gone on before, they know that they are there and they know that we're coming. All because of Jesus. We couldn't have done this for ourselves.

We couldn't have, but He did it for us. Thanks be unto Him. Now, I want you to turn with me if you will to Hebrews chapter 12, verse one. Here's the last thing I want to point out about those dear ones who have gone on before: "Therefore since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us."

I want you to notice it's a race. This Christian life is compared to a race. And a race, it's a long race. To some of us, we've lived a long time. It's a long race. It's not a short sprint. And in that race, there are many things that reach out to entangle us. Notice it says that we are surrounded by witnesses. Now a witness is not a spectator. A witness is a participant. A witness is a testifier or a martyr, one who has given completely, given completely.

And we are surrounded by those who have already experienced the victory. And now they are praying and pulling and yearning that you and I would make it through.

Guest (Male): Today's message reminds us that believers who die in Christ are not lost or forgotten. They are alive in the presence of the Lord, experiencing rest, fellowship, and joy beyond anything the world can offer. At thehealingword.com, you'll find additional Bible teaching from Pastor Morris, along with free devotionals designed to strengthen your faith and encourage your walk with God.

Your support helps us continue sharing these messages of hope and eternal life. If you feel led, we invite you to partner with us through a financial gift. Next time, Pastor Morris continues the series with "The Resurrection of the Dead," exploring the great promise that one day the graves will open and believers will rise again.