The Moment You Die

The Moment You Die

We are confident, I say, and willing rather to be absent from the body, and to be present with the Lord (2 Corinthians 5:8)

Believer, do you realize how close you are to seeing Jesus? The Bible teaches us that the moment a saved soul departs the worn body it is found in the presence of its beloved Jesus.

Our atheist friends will tell us that we have no soul, and that when we die, that is it.  Snuffed out.  Our Hindu neighbour is struggling to escape another round of incarnation, hoping to finally drift off into nirvana. That dear Muslim shop keeper is hoping for a sensual paradise … but no Allah to be found. The Jehovah Witness at your door is told that his soul will sleep until the final judgement. But Jesus, in dying weakness was able to say in answer to a dying thief’s nine-word prayer (“Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom”) “I tell you the truth, today you will be with me in paradise.” (Luke 23:42,43)

Seeing Jesus will be like waking from a dream. You know what that is like.  While in the dream, your dreaming self believes it to be real – until you awake and shrug off the dream, be it pleasant or nightmarish, and open the curtains to reality. So it will be when you, who have treasured Jesus more than this life, die. In the next moment you will be in the presence of the One who loved you before you loved Him, who bled for you while yet His enemy, who wooed you with His Gospel love, who fed you by His Word, who kept you though endless storms and trials, who pursued you time and again when you wandered, who promised His Father that He would never lose you, but present you faultless before His throne.

I think it safe to say that at that moment every pain and anguish of this life will drift away and our souls will be enraptured by a smiling face more beautiful than anything we have ever seen or imagined. And we will finally be at home, for, “We are confident, I say, and would prefer to be away from the body and at home with the Lord.” (2 Corinthians 5:8). Home! Where we belong. No longer strangers and pilgrims in a weary land, but with Jesus and the redeemed. Every faith battle today is worth it for the sake of that Day!

And it is so, so close …

 And they shall see his face … Revelation 22:4