He’ll come down from heaven and the dead in Christ will rise—they’ll go first. Then the rest of us who are still alive at the time will be caught up with them into the clouds to meet the Master. Oh, we’ll be walking on air! And then there will be one huge family reunion with the Master. So reassure one another with these words.

1 THESSALONIANS 4:16–18 MSG

IF YOU EVER NEED TO BE REMINDED OF THE FRAILTY OF humankind, I have a scene for you to witness. The next time you think people have grown too stoic and self-sufficient, I have a place for you to go. Should you ever worry that hearts are too hard and tears too rare, let me take you to the place where the knees of men buckle and the tears of women flow. Let me take you to a school, and let’s watch the parents as they leave their children in class for the very first time.

It’s a traumatic event. Long after the school bell has rung and class has begun, adults linger in the parking lot, offering words of comfort and forming support groups. Even though the parents know the school is good, that education is right, and that they’ll see their youngster in four short hours, still, they don’t want to say good-bye.

We don’t like to say good-bye to those we love.

But what is experienced at schools in August is a picnic compared to what is experienced in a cemetery at death. It is one thing to leave loved ones in familiar surroundings. But it is something else entirely to release them into a world we do not know and cannot describe.

We don’t like to say good-bye to those we love.

But we have to. Try as we might to avoid it, as reluctant as we are to discuss it, death is a very real part of life. Each one of us must release the hand of one we love into the hand of one we have not seen.

Can you remember the first time death forced you to say goodbye? Most of us can. I can. One day when I was in the third grade, I came home from school surprised to see my father’s truck in the driveway. I found him in his bathroom shaving. “Your Uncle Buck died today,” he said. His announcement made me feel sad. I liked my uncle. I didn’t know him well, but I liked him. The news also made me curious.

At the funeral I heard words like departed, passed on, gone ahead. These were unfamiliar terms. I wondered, Departed to where? Passed on to what? Gone ahead for how long?

Of course, I’ve learned since that I’m not the only one with questions about death. Listen in on any discussion about the return of Christ, and someone will inquire, “But what about those who have already died? What happens to Christians between their death and Jesus’ return?”

Apparently the church in Thessalonica asked such a question. Listen to Paul’s words to them: “We want you to be quite certain, brothers, about those who have died, to make sure that you do not grieve about them, like the other people who have no hope” (1 Thess. 4:13 TJB).

The Thessalonian church had buried her share of loved ones. And Paul wants the members who remain to be at peace regarding the ones who have gone ahead. Many of you have buried loved ones as well. And just as God spoke to them, he speaks to you.

If you’ll celebrate a marriage anniversary alone this year, he speaks to you.

If your child made it to heaven before making it to kindergarten, he speaks to you.

If you lost a loved one in violence, if you learned more than you want to know about disease, if your dreams were buried as they lowered the casket, God speaks to you.

He speaks to all of us who have stood or will stand in the soft dirt near an open grave. And to us he gives this confident word: “I want you to know what happens to a Christian when he dies so that when it happens, you will not be full of sorrow, as those are who have no hope. For since we believe that Jesus died and then came back to life again, we can also believe that when Jesus returns, God will bring back with him all the Christians who have died” (1 Thess. 4:13–14 TLB).

God transforms our hopeless grief into hope-filled grief. How? By telling us that we will see our loved ones again.

Bob Russell is a friend of mine who preaches in Kentucky. His father passed away recently. The funeral was held on a cold, blustery, Pennsylvania day. The snow-covered roads precluded the funeral procession, so the director told Bob, “I’ll take your dad’s body to the grave.” Bob couldn’t bear the thought of missing his father’s burial, so he and his brother and their sons piled into a four-wheel-drive vehicle and followed the hearse. Here is how he described the event:

We plowed through ten inches of snow into the cemetery, got about fifty yards from my dad’s grave, with the wind blowing about twenty-five miles per hour, and the six of us lugged that casket down to the gravesite. . . . We watched the body lowered into the grave and we turned to leave. I felt something was undone, so I said, “I’d like for us to have a prayer.” The six of us huddled together and I prayed, “Lord, this is such a cold, lonely place. . . .” And then I got too choked up to pray anymore. I kept battling to get my composure, and finally I just whispered, “But I thank you, for we know to be absent from the body is to be safe in your warm arms.”1

Isn’t that what we want to believe? Just as a parent needs to know that his or her child is safe at school, we long to know that our loved ones are safe in death. We long for the reassurance that the soul goes immediately to be with God. But dare we believe it? Can we believe it? According to the Bible we can.

Scripture is surprisingly quiet about this phase of our lives. When speaking about the period between the death of the body and the resurrection of the body, the Bible doesn’t shout; it just whispers. But at the confluence of these whispers, a firm voice is heard. This authoritative voice assures us that, at death, the Christian immediately enters into the presence of God and enjoys conscious fellowship with the Father and with those who have gone before.

Where do I get such ideas? Listen to some of the whispers:

For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain. If I am to go on living in the body, this will mean fruitful labor for me. Yet what shall I choose? I do not know! I am torn between the two: I desire to depart and be with Christ, which is better by far. (Phil. 1:21–23 NIV)

The language here suggests an immediate departure of the soul after death. The details of the grammar are a bit tedious but led one scholar to suggest: “What Paul is saying here is that the moment he departs or dies, that very moment he is with the Christ.”2

Another clue comes from the letter Paul wrote to the Corinthians. Perhaps you’ve heard the phrase “to be absent from the body is to be at home with the Lord”? Paul used it first: “We really want to be away from the body and be at home with the Lord” (2 Cor. 5:8).

At the second coming of Christ, our bodies will be resurrected. But obviously Paul is not speaking of that in this verse. Otherwise he would not have used the phrase “away from the body.” Paul is describing a phase after our death and prior to the resurrection of our bodies. During this time we will be “at home with the Lord.”

Isn’t this the promise that Jesus gave the thief on the cross? Earlier the thief had rebuked Jesus. Now he repents and asks for mercy. “Remember me when you come into your kingdom” (Luke 23:42). Likely, the thief is praying that he be remembered in some distant time in the future when the kingdom comes. He didn’t expect an immediate answer. But he received one: “I tell you the truth, today you will be with me in paradise” (v. 43). The primary message of this passage is God’s unlimited and surprising grace. But a secondary message is the immediate translation of the saved into the presence of God. The soul of the believer journeys home, while the body of the believer awaits the resurrection.

As Stephen was being martyred, he saw “heaven open and the Son of Man standing at God’s right side” (Acts 7:56). As he was near death he prayed, “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit” (v. 59). It is safe to assume that Jesus did exactly that. Though the body of Stephen was dead, his spirit was alive. Though his body was buried, his spirit was in the presence of Jesus himself.

Some don’t agree with this thought. They propose an intermediate period of purgation, a “holding tank” in which we are punished for our sins. This “purgatory” is the place where, for an undetermined length of time, we receive what our sins deserve so that we can rightly receive what God has prepared.

But two things trouble me about this teaching. For one, none of us can endure what our sins deserve. For another, Jesus already has. The Bible teaches that the wages of sin is death, not purgatory (see Rom. 6:23). The Bible also teaches that Jesus became our purgatory and took our punishment: “When he had brought about the purgation of sins, he took his seat at the right hand of Majesty on high” (Heb. 1:3 NEB). There is no purgatory because purgatory occurred at Calvary.

Others feel that while the body is buried, the soul is asleep. They come by their conviction honestly enough. Seven different times in two different epistles, Paul uses the term sleep to refer to death (see 1 Cor. 11:30 NIV; 15:6, 18, 20 NIV; 1 Thess. 4:13–15 NIV). One could certainly deduce that the time spent between death and the return of Christ is spent sleeping. (And, if such is the case, who would complain? We could certainly use the rest!)

But there is one problem. The Bible refers to some who have already died, and they are anything but asleep. Their bodies are sleeping, but their souls are wide awake. Revelation 6:9–11 refers to the souls of martyrs who cry out for justice on the earth. Matthew 17:3 speaks of Moses and Elijah, who appeared on the Mount of Transfiguration with Jesus. Even Samuel, who came back from the grave, was described wearing a robe and having the appearance of a god (1 Sam. 28:13–14 NASB). And what about the cloud of witnesses who surround us (Heb. 12:1 NASB)? Couldn’t these be the heroes of our faith and the loved ones of our lives who have gone before?

I think so. I think Bob’s prayer was accurate. When it is cold on earth, we can take comfort in knowing that our loved ones are in the warm arms of God.

We don’t like to say good-bye to those whom we love. Whether it be at a school or a cemetery, separation is tough. It is right for us to weep, but there is no need for us to despair. They had pain here. They have no pain there. They struggled here. They have no struggles there. You and I might wonder why God took them home. But they don’t. They understand. They are, at this very moment, at peace in the presence of God.

I had been ministering in San Antonio for less than a year when one of our members asked me to speak at the funeral of his mother. Her name was Ida Glossbrenner, but her friends called her Polly.

As the son and I planned the service, he told me a fascinating story about the final words his mother spoke. Mrs. Glossbrenner was unresponsive for the last few hours of her life. She never spoke a word. But moments before her death, she opened her eyes and stated in a clear voice, “My name is Ida Glossbrenner, but my friends call me Polly.”

Meaningless words of hallucination? Perhaps. Or, perhaps more. Perhaps Ida was, well, maybe she was at the schoolhouse doors of heaven. Her body behind her. Her soul in the presence of God. And maybe she was getting acquainted.

I don’t know. But I do know this. When it is cold on earth, we can take comfort in knowing that our loved ones are in the warm arms of God. And when Christ comes, we will hold them, too.