How Can I Know?,
How Can I Know I’m Going To Heaven When I Die? | Part 1
By Dr. Robert Jeffress
In his book, The Denial of Death, Ernest Becker writes that “the idea of death, the fear of it, haunts the human animal like nothing else.” Perhaps that is why we do everything we can to avoid the inevitability of death. Work, recreational pursuits, and relationships are welcomed diversions from the knowledge we all instinctively possess that every passing second moves us closer to the date of our demise.
Author Saul Bellow says, “The living are like birds flying over the surface of the water. One bird may plunge into the water and never surface again, but the rest of the birds keep flying on.” Every day, nearly 5,000 Americans die, but we cannot afford to pause and consider our own mortality for too long. The thought is too terrifying.
But occasionally, death strikes so close to home that it pierces the suspension of disbelief we have created for ourselves. Consider the story of the Old Testament patriarch Job. Work, wealth, and the worship of God were integral parts of Job’s world that kept him from thinking too much about his mortality.
However, a freak storm that claimed the lives of all of his 10 children shattered Job’s self-created bubble and motivated him to cry out to God with the bottom-line question of human existence: “If a man dies, will he live again?” (Job 14:14a). When you think about it, every other question in life pales in significance to this one.
- “If my mate dies, will he live again?”
- “If my child dies, will I see her again?”
- “When I shut my eyes for the last time here on earth, will I slip into an eternity of nothingness, or is there some other existence beyond the grave?”
Every other question we have examined in this series is important, but none is as far-reaching as whether or not there is any existence beyond death. If this life is all that there is, then we should discard the claims of Christianity and find a new paradigm for living. The “eat, drink, and be merry for tomorrow we die” philosophy makes perfect sense if we place a period after the word “die.” However, if our life on earth is only a brief prologue to an eternal existence that is determined by our beliefs and behavior on this side of the grave, then we would be wise to adopt different philosophies for living in the here and now.
1. Evidence for Life After Life
Is there any evidence for a positive response to Job’s question? Is there life after life and death? An easy way to bring this chapter to a quick conclusion would be to say, “See the Bible.” After all, since we have already established at least in some reader’s minds—that the Bible is God’s Word to us and can be trusted to tell the truth, it would be easy to quote numerous passages in both the Old and New Testaments as prima facie evidence for a post-death existence. But given the importance of this question, we naturally wonder, “Is there any additional evidence beyond the Bible for life after life?”
I believe that there are four extra-biblical evidence of the existence of life beyond the grave. Admittedly, some are stronger than others, and none is conclusive on their own, much like the circumstantial evidence collected at a crime scene. Individual pieces of evidence may not be enough to answer the question “collectively, they may point in. Similarly, these four clues point in the direction of an existence that transcends our life on Earth:
- Near Death Experiences (Hebrews 9:27; 2 Corinthians 12:1-4)
- The Transcendence of the Mind
- Dirty Jokes and Death (Ecclesiastes 3:11)
- The Empty Tomb
Historically Verifiable Facts About the Empty Tomb
The fact that Jesus’ body has not been discovered in the more than 2,000 years after His death is strong evidence for the reality of life after death, especially when you consider the following facts that can be verified outside of the Bible:
- Jesus is accepted almost universally as a historical figure.
- Jesus’ followers have claimed for more than 2,000 years that He was miraculously raised from the dead. They asserted that His resurrection is the signal proof that He was the Son of God.
- Jesus’ detractors, beginning with the Roman and Jewish authorities who called for His execution, have denied this claim and have continuously sought to extinguish the Christian movement since its inception.
2. The Biblical Teaching About Life After Death
- The Inevitability of Death and Possibility of Heaven or Hell (Ecclesiastes 9:2-3a; Ecclesiastes 3:17; Matthew 7:13-14; Luke 16:22-23a)
The reality of two possible destines for us after we die is most clearly taught by Jesus in His story about a rich man and a poor man named Lazarus. These two men could not have experienced more disparate lives. The wealthy man lived a luxurious existence, while Lazarus had to subsist on the crumbs that fell from the rich man’s table. Yet, in spite of these inequities while on earth, both men experienced the same fate: death. But Jesus’ story doesn’t stop at the cemetery: “Now the poor man died and was carried away by the angels to Abraham’s bosom; and the rich man also died and was buried. In Hades he lifted up his eyes, being in torment…” (Luke 16:22-23a). Two men who lived two very different existences and experienced two radically different destinies. What are these two possible eternal destinies that await us?
- The Reality of Hell
Hell is one possible destination for those who die. Jesus consistently warned about the reality of hell. Of the 1850 verses in the New Testament that record Jesus’ words, 13% of them deal with the subject of eternal judgment and hell. In fact, Jesus spoke about hell more than He did about heaven. Unless you are going to capriciously pick and choose which of Jesus’ words to believe or disbelieve, you must draw some conclusion about Jesus’ teaching about hell. It is intellectually dishonest to say, “I believe Jesus was a great moral Teacher, or perhaps even the Son of God, but refuse to believe what He said about hell.” His extensive teaching on hell does not allow that option. What did Jesus say about Hell?
- Hell is an actual location. (Matthew 25:46)
- Hell is a place of indescribable and eternal torment. (Luke 16:24; Mark 9:48; Matthew 22:13; Matthew 25:46)
- Hell will contain the majority of humanity. (Matthew 7:13-14; Matthew 7:21-23)
- Hell is a forever destination. (Luke 16:26)
Jesus declared that the great gulf between hell and heaven is “fixed,” meaning that no one can ever travel from hell to heaven or from heaven to hell. “But what if an occupant of hell believes in Jesus Christ and accepts His forgiveness?” It is too late, Jesus taught. In hell, everyone is a believer.
Fortunately, there is an alternative to this terrible place that Jesus warned about. And next week, we are going to discover what that alternative destination after death is and how we can be assured of arriving there when we die.