What happens to Christians at the moment of death?

An online friend sent a couple theology questions last night. Here is the answer to one of them that I sent.

What happens when we Christians die, is it going straight to heaven or being asleep until the resurrection?

There is a sense in which both are true, biblically speaking and I’ll explain how in a moment. But essentially, the answer is we who are believers and thus eternally saved by Christ and His sacrifice go to heaven where He is right away at the moment of our death. Indeed for the believer, death is a “passing away” as it is often called. Jesus said He goes to prepare a place for us, from which He will return for us, and that place He spoke of was heaven, because He was going to the Father where He dwells. (See John 14:1-7) He wanted His children to be comforted by that since He would be away from the earth while we’re in it. We could be comforted both by the Holy Spirit’s presence within us, and by the knowledge that Jesus is coming back to take us to heaven where He is.

Now that raises the question of where are those who have already died in Christ, since His return is still future. Have they missed out on being returned for and taken to heaven? Or are they still waiting for that? Or are they already with Him there now? The Bible’s answer is that they are already there with Him now, and they are waiting for their resurrection which is a future event. 2 Corinthians 5:8 is a verse Paul wrote about looking forward to dying, because, “We are confident, I say, and willing rather to be absent from the body, and to be present with the Lord.” So we see that when physical death happens to the saved one (believers), his or her soul and spirit—the very essence of their identity and all they are, separates from this body; and immediately when that happens they will “be present with the Lord.” Actually, physically, literally there with the Lord in heaven—not just a metaphor. And they are alive and awake there. So that God, for example, was able to send Moses, who had died centuries before, along with Elijah, who had been taken up alive into heaven, to appear and converse with Christ on the mount of transfiguration.

When Christ does return for those of us in Him still living on the earth at the time of the rapture, He “will bring back with Him those who have fallen asleep in Him.” (1 Thess. 4:14) That brings us to the question of in what sense are those who live in heaven, waiting to come back with Him on resurrection/rapture day, asleep now? The Bible speaks of believers who have died as being “asleep,” not to say they are unaware of their surroundings or that they aren’t having the experience of heaven and God’s presence yet, but to reassure us of the certainty of the coming resurrection. Their bodies “sleep” in the grave, but they will rise again. Jesus spoke of Lazarus being asleep and His plan to “go wake him up.” The disciples didn’t understand, so Jesus explained that what He meant was Lazarus was dead. But to God, waking the dead will be easier than it is for us to wake our children who are sleeping.

Death is a shedding, or undressing of ourselves of these mortal bodies, in order to eventually put on the immortal glorified resurrected bodies that will be sinless, painless, and live forever. (See 1 Corinthians 15:53-55, a passage about the resurrection to come.) So our loved ones who have died in the faith are with Christ and have been so since the moment they left the body; and their bodies are asleep, waiting for the awakening of the resurrection when Christ returns for “those who are alive and remain.” (See 1 Thess. 4:14-17)

If you want to go deeper into that topic, my video message on John 11 is more detailed. Here’s a link: https://youtu.be/Yb06Togb1D8?si=1h8Qn16Qa2IZeeAi

The concept of “soul sleep” that those who are believers die and are unconsciously waiting for the resurrection without now enjoying the presence of the Lord is one foreign to the scriptures, though. It comes more from the cult that calls themselves “Jehovah’s witnesses,” as if they could be witnesses for Jehovah while rejecting the true identity of God the Son. They have arguments for “soul sleep,” but I would say they are patently untrustworthy to discuss the scriptures. Their leaders’ habit from the dawn of their cult has been to torture the scriptures until they confess to what they want. And their teachings are varied levels of bizarre ideas that truly no one could ever come up with just from reading the word of God without introducing the outside interpretations they alone demand. And even they believe that originally righteous ones from earth went to heaven. They just claim that Christ already returned more than a century ago and filled heaven to capacity with 144,000 saints so that now their “righteous ones” sleep until Jehovah comes because there is no room for them in heaven while they wait for His kingdom on earth. My city has hundreds of thousands of people in it, but God’s throne of heaven is a tiny place, don’t you know.

In short, everything the jw’s teach is hopelessly misguided and worthless, and should be dismissed without pause by anyone who wants to know God and hear from Him.

Take comfort that everyone who believed in Christ and His perfect sacrifice for sins on the cross, and later died, is with Him to this day, awaiting the moment He returns with them to give them resurrection bodies, and then change us into those bodies in the twinkling of an eye to then lift us up into heaven with Him.