I’ve been studying 1 Thessalonians this week and it presents a concept that has been puzzling me for some time. We are told in the Bible, to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord, and Jesus said to the thief on the cross, this day you will be in paradise with Me, and there are many other similar verses in the Bible. Now comes Paul Chapter 4 telling us that we “sleep” when we die and when Christ comes back we shall rise first and those Christians alive will follow.
Wat???
So, do we sleep until His return, or do we go immediately to be with him?
Seems very confusing and the Bible is not real clear, at least within my thick skull. The Apostle Paul wrote, “Now I know in part; then I shall know fully.” Do we have to await the afterlife or the Rapture to understand this passage?
As noted earlier the Bible definitively indicates that when we die we enter immediately into God’s presence provided we belong to Christ. From our limited point of view, death and sleep may seem similar, but not from God’s point of view. Paul once said, “We are confident (of eternal life), I say, and would prefer to be away from the body and at home with the Lord.” Later, we will be given new bodies – bodies that will never age or be subject to death, because they will be like Christ’s resurrection body. The Bible says, “The dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed.”
So, the answer is yes and yes I guess. The understanding I have come to is that we will instantly be in the Lord’s presence in soul and spirit form. Could this be the form of “sleep” to which Paul is referring? The fleshly shell that we occupy will be abandoned and go to the grave, much like a cocoon that is left behind when a beautiful butterfly emerges. Then at the second coming of Jesus all Christians will be reunited with our imperishable glorified bodies, and like beautiful butterflies we will spread our wings and join our glorious Father in heaven.
A few years back I gave my personal testimony to several hundred people in Atlanta at a benefit for homeless children. Afterwards a very large African American lady came up to me and hugged me so hard I thought I might pass out and am sure I was getting blue in the face by the time she released me. She exclaimed, “God changed you from a big ol ugly caterpillar to a beautiful butterfly. Praise God!” Then she kissed me on the cheek with a big wet kiss.
Hmmm . . . I hope to see her again when we both spend eternity in heaven.
1 Cor. 15:52
Listen, I tell you a mystery: We will not all sleep, but we will all be changed – in an instant, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed. For the perishable must be clothed with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality . . .