A Pastor’s Perspective

“Where Will You Go When You Die?” by Mike Hill, pastor of Calvary Chapel Aberdeen (mjhill@ida.net)

He passed away.  She departed.  That ol’ codger kicked the bucket.  The sweet child went to the other side.  He bit the dust.  She croked. 

These are just a few expressions we toss around to take the edge off the cold fact of death.  Let’s face it.  Most of us would rather not think much about the subject.  Funerals jar us back into the reality that everyone will die.  Sooner or later, even your number will be up.  The statistic “10 OUT OF 10 PEOPLE DIE” includes you. 

A good friend told me about a funeral this past week.  The funeral obviously included the fact that a woman died, but the service was more of a celebration of life.  Family and friends gathered to not only celebrate this woman’s time on earth but also her “Home Going.”  For the believer in Jesus, death becomes the door to going home with the Lord.  Paul confidently described that to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord (2Corinthians 5:8b).

There are certain appointments I’ve cancelled.  I had to reschedule others.  Death is one appointment none of us will postpone or cancel.  God’s complete and unchanging Word, the Bible, bluntly states, “…It is appointed for men to die once, but after this the judgment” (Hebrews 9:27b).  That rules out reincarnation.  Good thing, too.  Who’d want to come back as a cow or a cockroach?

When I came to terms with my own mortality, I realized there would be a day of reckoning for me.  I will stand before my Maker.  “Where will I end up for eternity?”  As I pored over the words of Jesus, I initially didn’t feel much hope.  My lifestyle linked me with “the many” Jesus described on the broad path that leads to destruction rather than being with “the few” who enter the narrow gate to eternal life.  I was terrified.  “Please, Lord, I want to go to heaven.  Show me the way!”  I discovered that the issue wasn’t just my outward behavior.  My core problem was within me.  “The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked.  Who can know it? I, the Lord, search the heart, I test the mind, even to give every man according to his ways, according to the fruit of his doings” (Jeremiah 17:9-10).  My heart and life were weighed in the balances of God’s righteous standard.  Verdict?  Guilty.  Sentence?  Eternal death.  Hell…forever.  Bad news for me.

But God had some good news for me as well.  The death I deserved was absorbed by the death Jesus didn’t deserve.   And, Jesus didn’t die for good people.  Jesus died for sinners…for His enemies.  Jesus died for me.  Desperately,  I prayed, “Lord Jesus, I know I am a sinner.  Thank you for dying for me on the Cross for my sins.  Please come into my heart and forgive my sins, be my Lord and Savior.  Change me from the inside out and make me the man You want me to be.”  Now where will I go after I die?  Heaven…in the presence of the Lord; the Bible told me so.

Where will you go after you die?  Some say, “I don’t know for sure.”  Others say, “Heaven…because I’ve been a good person.”  The fact is, no one is good enough for heaven.  Jesus said, “Many will say to Me in that day, 'Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in Your name, cast out demons in Your name, and done many wonders in Your name?’…I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you, depart from Me…’” (Matthew 7:22-23a).  How can you know if you’ll go to heaven?  It’s not necessarily what you know, but who you know.  Know Jesus.  Put your faith in what He did for you on the cross, then you will truly rest in peace!