Transcript
Ben Fallon: Thanks for joining us for another episode of “Ask Paul Tripp.” We've been receiving a lot of questions about death recently, not in a morbid way, but more out of a theological curiosity. So, Paul, I'm going to throw a few of them your way, and the first, plain and simple, “What happens when we die?”
Paul Tripp: Well, what the Bible declares is to be “dead in the body, to be home with the Lord.” Now, what that means is my soul is immediately united with my Redeemer, but my body is still in the ground, or could we say, this is a little macabre, “in the urn,” waiting for the physical resurrection of the body. And the physical resurrection of the body will happen; we will be made 100% new again. Our bodies will no longer be subject to the ravages of the fall–that's weakness, suffering, aging, a completely recreated body. And no, we won't float around in the clouds in white robes playing harps. The Bible says this world is going to be burned up and then recreated to a “new heavens and a new earth.”
And so, we're going to have a physical existence on the new earth. And if the plan of God is to reverse the curse of the fall, and return us to a completely perfected cosmos world, then there's a good indication we will be doing what Adam and Eve were commissioned to do. Remember, Adam and Eve worked, but work was not the result of the fall. Arduous work, hard work, was a result of the fall. Adam and Eve were to dress and subdue the garden, to be fruitful and multiply. They had work to do; they were the resident managers of God's created world. So, it's hard for us to conceive that all of that will happen in a world that's completely perfect and inhabited by completely perfect people with none of the travail of relationships and weeds and pollution and incorrupt government, and all those things that we deal with. It'll be a glorious, physical existence forever in this new world.
BF: Is there a waiting period between the final resurrection of the body and the immediate uniting of our spirit?
PT: What the Bible presents is “to die is to be present with the Lord.” And so, there's an immediate uniting of my spirit, my inner man, with my Lord. If you want to talk about waiting period, the physical body waits for the final resurrection, but I'm in the presence of the Lord. And that's so encouraging! We just had a friend who just in the last couple of days died, had dementia, was very sad. And it was very comforting to us and to his family that he was now in the arms of the Lord, still waiting that physical body for the final resurrection.
BF: How long will that period be, or will we even have a concept of time while we wait as we know it today?
PT: We're talking about something so amazing and incredible, it's hard to put your mind around. I mean, how are bodies that have been cremated and sprinkled across the ocean, how are they reassembled? It's just so incredible and amazing! And that's where the limits of our ability to conceive end, and you just have to say, “I stand believing that God has the power to make happen what he has said will happen because it's beyond our conception how this will happen. Although I'm pretty cool with hanging with Moses and Abraham, David and Paul. It's very pretty cool. So, yeah.
BF: Bob asks, “What does Scripture support more: pre-tribulation, mid-tribulation, or post-tribulation rapture?” Then somebody else asks, “Is it even worth discussing and debating these end of time issues? What difference does it make to my life today?”
PT: I would answer the question, again, more fundamentally. It's inescapable! We're rational beings. God made us to be meaning-makers. We're always taking life apart, we're archaeologists and philosophers, and that's just who we are. And so, we're always going to do it.
Now, here's what I want to warn people against, that you don't believe what you can't figure out, that you refuse to believe what you can't conceptualize, or you doubt God's promises because you can't make sense out of them. That's where you have to accept your human limits and say, “Faith rests.” The way that I always say this, I said this to our children growing up when they were too little to understand things that we needed to communicate to them, is that “You don't trust God because he helps you to understand everything; you trust God because he understands everything; and because he understands everything, he's trustworthy!” And so, sure, I'm going to think about these things.
But let's talk about eternity. Why is there this story of eternity in Scripture? Why do we get to eavesdrop on eternity? It's not so we can spend all our time asking questions that are beyond answering. It's to help me live “right here, right now.” It's helped me to know that this moment isn't a destination where everything, all the good stuff, is going to happen to me right now. This moment is a preparation for a final destination. And so, I live with a destination mentality that both helps me to endure, and it gives me hope. That's why we're given all of these truths, even some that take us beyond our ability to understand.
BF: Thanks, Paul. And Bob, while you might be disappointed that Paul hasn't answered your specific question or written a book on pre-trib., mid-trib., or post-trib., he has taught extensively on what it means to live in light of the promise of eternity right here, right now, in your everyday life and relationships. Culture tells us you only live once, but as Christians, we know this isn't true. But how does the promise of heaven change the way we live today on earth? You can find out in either Paul's book or video series titled, Forever, Why You Can't Live Without It. That's available at paultripp.com/forever. We'll be back on Saturday with a new episode of “Ask Paul Tripp.” Thanks for listening.
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