Highlights of Dawn

October 1973

Life After Death—A Film Review

RECENTLY there was a large gathering of earnest students of the Bible at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Michigan for the discussion of Bible truths and for mutual encouragement. The general public was specially invited to attend one of the evening sessions, at which a one-hour color film was shown dealing with the subject, “Life After Death.” A large gathering assembled to see this film, evincing the widespread interest there is in what happens to a person the moment the heart stops beating. There is a saying that “nothing is so sure as death and taxes.” It would seem that nothing can be done about taxes, but many people are searching earnestly to discover whether or not death is really the end of human experience.

Briefly, the film emphasized the fact that while there is life beyond the grave, it is not because man is inherently immortal and cannot die, but because there will be, according to the promises of God’s Word, a resurrection of the dead. Paul wrote that if there is no resurrection of the dead then those who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished—meaning that even Christians would perish forever in death but for the fact of the divinely promised resurrection of the dead.

The general format of the film presented at Grand Rapids was that of an earnest church worker visiting the sick of the neighborhood. The first one visited was a young boy suffering from a terminal disease, who was not expected to live more than a few months longer. Naturally his mother was heartbroken, and the boy despondent, so the church worker tried to comfort them by reminding the boy of how wonderful he would find it in paradise, as he called the future state.

While the boy had affirmed, when questioned by the church worker, that he thought he believed in God, he did not take kindly to the idea of dying and going to paradise. He said, “I don’t want to die. I want to stay alive and play with the kids.” When the church worker pressed the point a little more, the boy became agitated and said to him, “Well, why don’t you go there yourself, if paradise is such a good place!”

Naturally this ended the visit, and the church worker left the home, quite discouraged that he did not seem to have the right words for the situation. He went on to his next visit, at the home of a Spanish-American woman, also suffering from a terminal disease. This woman, it turned out, did not believe in God. Essentially her entire life had been a calamitous one of almost constant suffering; and while at one time she had a smoldering faith in God, she had lost this, and lost the faint hope which went with it.

It seems that her mother had endeavored to impress her with the thought that “God is love,” but she had seen so many seeming contradictions to this thought that when the church worker tried to impress her with the same thought, she too became agitated, and almost abusive. “God might love you, perhaps,” she opined, “but I have never seen any evidence of his love for me.”

Then the church worker reminded this Spanish-American woman of the Prophet Job, and the extent to which God permitted him to suffer, yet he loved him. The woman had never heard of Job, but asked her visitor to continue, so he asked the woman to read Job’s expression of his hope that he would be restored to life in the resurrection. He also emphasized that while waiting for the resurrection Job was asleep in death.

This made the woman curious. She had been taught that unbelievers are tortured after death, and asked the church worker why God didn’t keep right on punishing Job after he died, as she supposed he would do to her. In other words, she visualized that her suffering of a lifetime would be continued forever. Naturally she wanted her visitor to harmonize this with the thought that God is love.

The visitor admitted that this was a hard question to answer, which confirmed her conclusion that according to the teachings of the church she would continue to suffer throughout eternity. She flatly rejected this viewpoint, and told the church worker that it would be impossible for her to believe in such a god of torture. He asked her to keep an open mind, and he promised to do the same, but it was plain to him that this visit had utterly failed. He again realized that with his understanding of religion he had nothing to offer in the way of comfort to the sick and the dying.

His Theological Professor

This ardent but now much confused young church worker decides to visit his theological professor under whom he had studied in college, to see if he could help. The scene in the film of this meeting is most revealing. After the appropriate greetings the professor asks the young man how he is getting along, and he explains that he has some good days and some bad days, and that the current day had been a very bad one.

The professor is curious, and the young man explained that he had spent the day visiting the sick and dying, but had failed utterly to impart any comfort to those he visited. He had the words, he explained, but suddenly they seemed to have no meaning. Then the young man turns to the professor and asks straight-out, “Professor, are you afraid to die?” The professor admits that at times this is true.

“Then there is something wrong with our theology,” the young man insists. “We claim that those who believe in Jesus and serve him faithfully, go straight to heaven when they die, but no one wants to go to heaven, and even you admit that you are afraid to die. Professor, can you help me?” Then the professor explains that knowledge of the Bible is progressive, and that the mysteries of today may not be mysteries tomorrow.

With this the professor tells the young man of a little brochure one of his neighbors had handed him entitled, “Life After Death,” and while he had not read it too carefully, he believed his former student might well find some answers in it which would help to make his next day of calling on the sick more profitable.

The Night of Study

In the next scene we see the young church worker that night with his Bible and the brochure, “Life After Death.” Apparently he spent most of the night in his study of the Bible, and he found to his surprise that God speaks of the dead as being asleep—not alive in heaven, hell, purgatory, or paradise. The Old Testament prophets and kings are, in death, spoken of as being asleep. The Bible says that “Abraham slept with his fathers.”

In the New Testament we find the same basic truth set forth. In the 11th chapter of John we have the story of Martha and Mary and Lazarus. Lazarus became ill. His sisters sent for Jesus, but he did not come to them immediately, and after three days he announced to his disciples that “our friend Lazarus sleepeth. I go that I may awake him out of sleep.” The disciples thought that Jesus referred to ordinary sleep, and they said to Jesus, “Lord, if he sleepeth he doeth well.”

Then Jesus said to them plainly, “Lazarus is dead.” The whole world was condemned to death through Adam because of his original sin. But God in his love gave his only begotten Son to die for the dying race, and his death opened the way for an awakening from death. Thus, through this gift of God’s love, that which would have been eternal death, or cutting off from life, is transformed into a temporary “sleep.”

There are two facts concerning sleep which lend themselves well to this illustration. Those who are soundly sleeping are unconscious, and for them there is an expectancy of an awakening. The dead are also unconscious, and the Bible holds out an expectancy that in God’s due time they will be awakened from their sleep by divine power. “There shall be a resurrection of the dead, both of the just and the unjust.”—Acts 24:15

Jesus said, “Do not marvel at this; for the hour is coming when all who are in the tombs will hear his voice and come forth, those who have done good, to the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil, to the resurrection of judgment.” (John 5:28,29, RSV) This statement clearly shows that there is to be a resurrection, not only of those who have done good, but also of those who have done evil. In Paul’s statement he refers to these as the “just” and the “unjust.”

Among those who have done good are the faithful footstep followers of Jesus. In the resurrection these will be exalted to glory and honor and immortality. (Rom. 2:7) They will reign with Christ for a thousand years as priests and kings. (Rev. 20:6) The period of that reign will also be the thousand-year judgment day so clearly taught in the Bible. Just as Jesus will be the King supreme in his kingdom, with his followers sharing in his glory and authority, so he will be the great Judge, and his followers will participate with him in the work of judging the unjust world of mankind.—Acts 17:30,31

The work of judgment will not be merely the passing of sentence on the unjust, but one of rehabilitation. Only those will lose their lives who then fail to respond to God’s love as it will be exercised toward them through Christ and those who will be reigning and judging with him; and this will not be sentencing them to an eternity of torture, but to death. They shall be “cut off from among the people.”—Acts 3:23

The earth itself will then be perfected as man’s home as was originally intended, and will be the true paradise of God in which his redeemed and restored human creatures will live forever. The young boy of the film who resisted the idea of dying and going to paradise will rejoice to find himself in such a world of happiness, and to be assured that it will continue forever, with no blighting disease to rob anyone of the supreme happiness which the loving Creator intended for all his human creatures. Certainly the Spanish-American woman will also rejoice to obtain a better understanding of God and of his loving purpose toward her and toward all mankind.

“This Day”

Through his study of the Bible with the help of the booklet “Life After Death” the zealous church worker of the film gained this better understanding of the plan of God, and rejoiced in it. But he soon encountered opposition. His attention was called to the statement by Jesus to the thief on the cross, which according to the Common Version translation reads, “Verily I say unto you, Today thou shalt be with me in paradise.” If the dead are unconscious in what the Bible calls the sleep of death, how could the thief on the cross be with Jesus the same day he died? The church worker could not understand this seeming contradiction, so he called on his theological professor for help. The professor said that there were two schools of thought, but admitted that he had been unable to settle in his own mind just which one was correct.

Then the professor gets a thought. He remembers the man who gave him the booklet “Life After Death,” who was a nearby neighbor. This neighbor was called in and the question put to him as to what Jesus meant by the thief being with him in paradise. The explanation was very simple. The neighbor reminded them of what every scholar knows; namely, that punctuation had not been invented at the time of the writing of the original manuscripts of the Bible, and that properly translated, what Jesus really said to the thief was, “Verily, I say unto you today, thou shalt be with me in paradise.”.

This places the emphasis, not on when the thief was to be in paradise, but on the day that Jesus died. And for good reason. There was an inscription over the cross declaring that Jesus was a king, and despite the fact that Jesus was then dying, he had full confidence that he would be the great King in the kingdom which his Heavenly Father had promised. He knew also that one of the purposes of his kingdom was to establish a worldwide paradise, and that it would be the home of all the willing and obedient. So Jesus could with faith and confidence say to the thief, who had asked to be remembered in his kingdom, that although they were then both dying, life would be restored in the resurrection, and that Jesus would be in a position to bless the thief—and in fact all mankind—with health and life everlasting here on the earth, which was created to be man’s everlasting home.—Isa. 45:18

A Final Visit

The church worker and the professor seemed satisfied with the explanation they had heard concerning Jesus’ statement to the thief on the cross, and the church worker left to make another call on the Spanish-American woman. She was angry with him at first, because she thought he had returned to induce her to believe in a god of torment. But then he explained to her that he had done as promised; namely, he had kept an open mind, and that as a result he had received a beautiful new concept of what the Bible teaches; a concept which reveals that the great Creator of the universe is truly a God of love.

Then, briefly, he went over the facts of God’s loving plan of redemption and restoration through Christ, including the glorious hope of the resurrection of the dead. He used the illustration of an individual who was crucially suffering, and had been for a long time, and then one morning awoke from his sleep to find that he was no longer ill. How quickly this person would forget his former adversities; they would seem merely like a bad dream. The church worker assured the ill woman that this would be her lot when she was awakened from the sleep of death.

She thought for a moment, then replied slowly, and with great feeling, “Well, if God is like that, then maybe I could believe in him—maybe I could even worship him.”

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