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This is something that has popped into my head here and there for some time now.  And I’ve read other answers to this kind of question out on the web (see links below).  But I wanted to ask it in more of a theological setting to see what others here could add to the subject. Please note that I’m not trying to be callous regarding death and the intense emotions it brings.  As an only child who lost both parents at a young age, that vile enemy death has had a far-reaching and deeply emotional effect on my own life.

So here is the question: Why are people who believe death leads immediately to immortality so sad for those who “pass-on”?

Some have downplayed the significance of the Kingdom because it isn’t mentioned by name as much in the rest of the New Testament, outside of the Synoptic Gospels. But it is mentioned in certain significant passages and tied in with other concepts, using other terminology. The epistles are addressed to people who have already accepted the Gospel of the Kingdom, and now see it from the point of view of “heirs” - a word mentioned quite frequently in the epistles. The promise that Abraham and his seed should be “the heir of the world” (not of “heaven”) is referred to in Romans 4:13-14. And Christians are called heirs in Romans 8:17; Galatians 3:29; 4:1,7; Titus 3:7; Hebrews 1:14; James 2:5; I Peter 3:7.

Continuing in my quest to convert many of my father’s collection of out-of-print theology works to the digital medium, I thought I’d post a short work from an old Central Advent Christian Mission Society booklet.  The title of the booklet is “What’s It All About?  - Life, Death, Then What?” and is a collection of works by three AC ministers.  I do not know the date those works were originally written, but I’m guessing the booklet itself was from the 1960’s or before.  The price of the booklet was 25 cents or five for $1.  This particular small piece is from a larger work by the Rev. A. W. Sibley entitled simply “Resurrection“.  I’ll post more at later dates - perhaps when I buy a new scanner/optical reader to make the whole conversion process much easier.

Since the Reformation, it has been taught more and more among Protestants that Jesus declared the Kingdom to have arrived, but that he taught his disciples the “true” understanding of the Kingdom, namely that of God’s reign in one’s heart.  In addition, another common misunderstanding that leads to the belief that the Kingdom must have been redefined is the question of when Jesus expected it to take place. If Jesus had indeed meant a political kingdom that would overthrow Israel’s oppressors, he would seem to have been wrong about it being “at hand.” Much is made of Jesus’ supposed belief that his return would be in the lifetime of his disciples, but he told them he did not know when he was going to return (Matthew 24:36; Mark 13:32).

Jesus proclaimed that the Kingdom of God was near, but that there would be an interim period before it was fully inaugurated. The Kingdom, to him, was primarily the eschatological (end-times) reign and judgment of Messiah on earth. It is in this sense that it would fulfill the promises to Abraham and David, and the many prophecies of the Day of the Lord and the coming of the Son of Man.

A few weeks back a cousin in my large extended family (my mother was one of 8 brothers and sisters) died of cancer at the extremely young age of 21.  Since her death I have wanted to write her mother (my first cousin once removed) and her grandmother (my first cousin) a sympathy note that included a few words of Biblical encouragement.  Of course the difficult thing here is that my extended family is primarily all Baptist.  And as such they’re believers in going to heaven at death instead of remaining non-existent in the grave until The Resurrection at the return of Jesus.  So for me the challenge is how do I express sympathy while planting a few “truth seeds” about the biblical truth of The Resurrection?  I don’t want to be rude or preachy. But at the same time I wanted to express the hope that Scripture presents and see if God carries those seeds to fertile soil at some point in the future.

In Part 1, we saw that the words for “generation” (Hebrew, dowr; Greek, genea) can have more than one meaning, and one of the meanings is a group of people with like characteristics, especially a group characterized by negative traits, as in “this crooked and perverse generation.”  We saw examples in the Old Testament, and we saw that this sense was in fact used more often than the literal sense in the Gospels.

When it comes to the statement Jesus made that “this generation will not pass till all these things be fulfilled” (in Matthew 24:34, Mark 13:30, and Luke 21:32), is he identifying the generation chronologically or morally?  Is he talking about all his contemporaries who lived at that time, or is he speaking of “this wicked generation”?  Scholars have given various interpretations of this passage, and frequently miss the figurative use of “generation” as it is more common in Hebraic thought than in Western. Nevertheless, that passage must be considered in light of its context and other related Scriptures.

One of the main reasons that other viewpoints don’t like the idea of a futurist interpretation of prophecy is that certain sections of Scripture appear to have Jesus say that the end would come before that generation passed away.  There has been much speculation about whether Jesus was mistaken or misunderstood, since the Kingdom apparently did not come to pass in the lifetime of his disciples.  C. S. Lewis wrote in his essay, “The World’s Last Night” (in 1960),

Every Halloween when I see all the faux tombstones in stores and yard scenes that have “R.I.P.” on them, it causes me to ponder the irony of them.

The dominant religion of the U.S. is Christianity.  And Christianity as we all know has the dominant belief that man is inherently immortal and goes off to either the good place (i.e. Heaven), or the bad place (i.e. Hell).

I was going to continue with the next article in the series on my web site, about how the definition of the Kingdom has been changed over the years.  But I’ve been doing some reading, especially in the Early Church Fathers, and will be expanding that article.  In the meantime, this article is from the Future Events section, and deals with one of the most crucial issues regarding the nature and timing of the Kingdom of god. Thanks to Alex Hall for much of the research in this article.