I think we're on. Hello Facebook and people who are on Facebook. We're going to have a joke in a moment. going to take a break from having a song this week. Maybe we'll have another song next week, but we had, a few weeks ago, we had nothing practically but songs, and this week we're going with nothing practically but talking. So, hopefully that'll be okay with you. Next week, the topic that we're gonna tackle is what do Christians believe about the last days, the end times, the end of life as we know it? What do Christians believe about death? That's the topic for next week. This week it's about what happens immediately upon death. What happens to people right when they die. In the immediate moments after they die, what happens. Are you ready for your joke? Which is separate from what maybe happens at the day of judgment. So now we got our joke. Alright, what kind of candy do you get at the airport? What kind of candy do you get at the airport? Plain chocolate. Why do fish like to eat worms? I can't think of a good answer for that either. Because they get hooked on them. What do you call a fish that doesn't have any eyes? I don't know. Avsh. Avsh. Avsh. I don't know what that's supposed to mean. Right? Does that make any sense? It's a visual joke. So when you see it, it's what you call a fish without any I's. It's a FSH. There's no I. So as opposed to A space F-I-S-H, it's A space F-S-H, no I. It took out the letter I. One more joke. One more joke, I promise. Why can't basketball players go on vacation? Oh, something to do with traveling. They don't want to get called for traveling. Yes. Very nice. Alright, I got one. Alright, so we're going to jump into our discussion and our lesson about what happens immediately upon death here in just a second. But if Angela, it's become her customary role, if she could open us with a brief opening prayer and then we'll get started. Precious Heavenly Father, Lord, we thank you for gathering us together this Pentecost Sunday, Lord. When you came and came as tongues of flames over your first followers and birthed the church, Lord, we thank you for letting us see another anniversary of this, Lord, and we ask for you to come again, Lord, and be with us, Lord, and just be the fire of God in us. Lord, as Pastor Troy is sharing, and as your people are listening, Lord, just let the fire of God be in us. Lord, to hear your word, to receive your word, and Lord, and to walk by it. And we just thank you, and thank you for your presence here, and we ask for all of this in Jesus' name, amen. Amen. So what happens to humans when they die? At the moment they die, what is it that happens to humans? Well, it's important to define our terms, so let's start by examining, let's get some context and a framework. What is a human? What is it that makes up a human? There are different aspects to our being that comprise our humanity, comprise who we are as individual people, as individual humans. And most of the people that tackle this kind of a question, there are always some wild-haired people on the edges of views, extreme views. But the overwhelming majority of people who have these kinds of discussions about what is it that makes up a human, generally fall into two camps. One camp being that there are two parts to who we are, and the other camp being that there are three parts to who we are. So sometimes it's called the tripartite or bipartite debate. Tri for three, bi for two, tripartite, bipartite. More often you'll hear it talked about as a trichotomy and a bichotomy. or dichotomy rather, di also being for two. So trichotomy, dichotomy is the most common language here. Again, trichotomists believe that there are three parts or pieces or aspects to our human existence and dichotomists believe that there are two. So are humans three or humans two? And what are these three and or two parts? So we can try to turn to scripture to find our answers there, and we run into almost an immediate problem as we start to do our digging into the Bible, and that is that scriptures on this particular kind of question have a level of imprecision in the language, and imprecision in how the relevant terminology could be understood and used. So, for example, in Luke 10, verse 27, we read that we should love God with all our heart and soul and strength and mind. That's four. And then in Matthew 22, verse 37, we read that we should love God with our heart and soul and mind. That's three, omitting strength. And then in Mark chapter 12, verse 30, we find that we should love God with all of our heart and our soul and our mind and our strength. And then Mark adds in verse 33 of chapter 12, we should love God with all of our heart and understanding. So understanding is a fifth thing along with our strength again. So between these three synoptic gospel verses, we have five different words that describe the aspects of what we are as humans, who we are as humans, what are the parts and pieces that make us who God has designed us to be. Five different words, and not one of them is the word body. And we know we have a body, so you gotta throw that one in. But there's nobody anywhere that's a legitimately recognized theologian who's got respect in Christian circles, who's advocating for a view that there are four, or that there are five, or that there are six, or that there are more than that aspects or parts to being human. It's customary in Christian circles to conceive of mankind. It's most customary to think about us as consisting of two parts and only two parts and that they are distinct parts, namely body and soul or body and spirit. Now, trichotomists They are not the majority in Christian thinking, but they're there. And the trichotomists say that there are three parts, the body and the soul and the spirit. So trichotomists are viewing the body as material and separate from the immaterial, the invisible, if you will. And they say that that which is invisible The soul and the spirit are two separate things. Dichotomists would say spirit and soul are interchangeable, basically, and are one and the same thing. One of the reasons that I'm not a trichotomist myself is that it's my feeling, having studied through this issue over the last 15 years, I haven't spent a lot of time on it, but the amount of time I have spent on it over the last 15 or 20 years, It seems like the the trichotomous view is mostly derived from roots that find it their beginnings in ancient Greek philosophy More so than in the Bible. So I'm a little bit concerned that maybe some Christians somewhere along the way highly influenced by Aristotle and Plato imported that philosophy into their Bible reading as opposed to having the Bible be imported into their philosophical outlook as to who we are as people. I wouldn't say trichotomists are heretics. I wouldn't say that we can't be in communion with them and that there's necessarily anything wrong with trichotomy, but you gotta make a choice. Well, got to? I don't know if you have to. If you're going to try to make a choice, you're going to make a choice, and my choice would be dichotomy rather than trichotomy. By the way, I have heard a nuanced position on this debate that uses all three labels in a somewhat interesting way, and I find the idea to be kind of helpful in the right context, say that there are two parts to each human, the body and the spirit, and that these two parts, the body and the spirit, in combination, could be called the soul. And so the soul isn't a separate part, but it's a label or a moniker that's attached to the wholeness of what it is to be human. That's interesting, and actually in certain passages in the Bible, that understanding of how to interpret soul, and even the way we use soul, like somebody goes out to sea and the ship sinks and they say 150 souls were lost, we're meaning the whole human, right? The body died and the spirit went to wherever the spirit goes, and so, In those senses, it can make sense. The problem is that's not always the way that the words are used and how we're always defining a term, particularly in these kinds of debates. And so you have to be very careful if you're gonna have that particular nuance to go out of your way to define your terms at the start of the conversation. So maybe it's more trouble than it's worth, but I mention it because I think it's interesting and can be helpful. So what's it all mean? Well, regardless of the view that we hold, we can agree that Christians are to love God with the entirety of who they are. Whether two parts, three parts, whatever, all of who we are, total being, is to love God, to worship God. We can agree on that. And again, for our purposes, we're gonna be holding primarily to a dichotomous view as we walk through some things this evening. I think the big thing, whether it's trichotomous or dichotomous, by the way, The big thing to take away here to keep in mind is that both of those views would be in agreement that there is a physical component, a material component, something we can see and touch and feel, and that there is an immaterial, a invisible, a spiritual component or aspect or piece. And the Tricons say there's two of those, but at least there's a material and there's an immaterial aspect to being human. and that these aspects are distinct, they're different, they're not one and the same, and yet, mysteriously, like so many truths, the hard truths of trying to understand the scripture, there's a mystery where there's a vital union between the two. We are not fully who we were intended to be, not fully who God made us to be, if we're not both body and spirit, body and soul. Kind of like, you know, God is Trinitarian, right? We have the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, and all three are God, and yet God is all three, It's three in one, one in three. Similar with humanity. We're body, we're spirit, we're soul. We're both of those, and yet both of those together are one. And it's hard to find the right language to combine that, like the Bible. It's written by human authors and also written by God. Which one is it? Yes. It's kind of the same thing. Are we one? Are we two? Yes. So keep that in mind, the unity and duality, the duality and unity is an important piece of what we are. So why this all matters? This is a long setup, I know, to answering the question for today. Why does this all matter on the question of what happens to us immediately when we die? Well, Genesis chapter 2 verse 7 says, the Lord God formed man from the dust of the ground, that's the material, right, the physical, you can see it and touch it part, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, that's the spirit, the immaterial, the thing you can't see, and man became a living being. And then this particular verse, actually Genesis chapter 2 verse 7, We find a kind of a very short commentary on that verse in Ecclesiastes 12, verse 7, where it says that dust, the material, the physical part, returns to the ground from which it came, and the spirit, that breath of life that God breathed in, returns to God who gave it. And so you can see that when we die, something happens to both parts. of who we are in union. And those are both Old Testament references. In the New Testament, Matthew 10, verse 28, we're told, do not be afraid of those who kill the body, but cannot kill the soul. Rather, be afraid of him who can destroy both soul and body in hell. And so understanding that there's these different aspects or pieces or parts to being human directly relates to what happens when we die because something happens when we die physically and something happens when we die spiritually. So that's why we have to understand and get that clarified up front. So the Lord makes a plane, a person has an entity that men may kill, the body, the soma in the Greek. The body can be killed. My neighbor could come over here and could kill my body. I could hit by a bus tomorrow and the bus could kill my body. But the bus can't kill my soul. My neighbor can't come kill my soul. Although there's somebody famously right now, the wife of Elon Musk, what's her name? That singer lady, artist lady. She's gonna try to auction off her soul, so you could buy her soul, she thinks. Anyway, but she's not really in control of that, and nobody could kill her soul, except the one who gave her her soul, gave her that life spirit, that there's an entity that men cannot kill, and that would be the immaterial part, the soul, or in the Greek, the psyche. I'm gonna read a couple of scriptures here that also lend to what we're talking about, and then we're gonna do kind of a round robin. verse reading. This is just a potpourri of relevant verses. These are the kinds of verses when you read them they help to reinforce or inform or call to mind the kinds of things we're talking about this evening. So in 2nd Corinthians chapter 5, the first 10 verses in chapter 5 say, Now we know that if the earthly tent, the body, that we live in is destroyed we have a building from God, that is the resurrection body, We groan longing to be clothed with our heavenly dwelling because when we are clothed, we, our souls, will not be found naked as long as we are at home in the body. we are away from the Lord, we would prefer to be away from the body and at home with the Lord. So we make it our goal to please him whether we are at home in the body or away from it. So here we can see that the body is the person and the spirit or the soul is the person and the two together are the person. We can talk about ourselves in either regard and be talking about our full selves and yet it's almost like an incomplete self if we're not taking the two in concert. And in Philippians chapter one, verses 21 through 24, for to me to live is Christ and to die is gain. This is the Apostle Paul writing. 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, meaning depart the physical material to be with Christ, which is far better, but it is more necessary for you that I remain in the body. So when he leaves the body to go be with Christ, it's still him. And yet, there's something incomplete, as we read about in 2 Corinthians 5, about not having our bodies. So, it's a little bit disconcerting. So now, we're not gonna have a lot of discussion, but just a potpourri, just rapid fire reading some of these. Dina's gonna read a handful of verses, and Angela's gonna read a handful. So, I'm gonna start there, Genesis 3. Genesis 3, verse 19, by the sweat of your face, you shall eat bread till you return to the ground, For out of it you were taken, for you are dust, and to dust you shall return. Acts 13 verse 36, for David, after he had served the purpose of God in his own generation, fell asleep and was laid with his fathers and saw corruption. Luke 23 verse 43, and he said to him, truly I say to you, today you'll be with me in paradise. Hebrews 12, verse 23, and to the assembly of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven and to God, the judge of all, and to the spirits of the righteous made perfect. And Acts 3, 21, whom heaven must receive until the time for restoring all the things about which God spoke by the mouth of his holy prophets long ago. Ephesians 410, he who descended is the one who also ascended far above all the heavens, that he might fill all things. 1 John 3 and 2, beloved, we are God's children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared. But we know that when he appears, we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is. Luke 16, 23 through 24. And in Hades, being in torment, he lifted up his eyes and saw Abraham far off and Lazarus at his side. And he called out, Father Abraham, have mercy on me and send Lazarus to dip the end of his finger in water and cool my tongue, for I am in anguish in this flame. Romans 8, 23. And not only the creation, but we ourselves who have the first fruits of the spirit grown inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. In Revelation 7, verses 4 and 15, and I heard the number of the seal, 144,000 sealed from every tribe of the sons of Israel. Therefore, they are before the throne of God and serve him day and night in his temple. And he who sits on the throne will shelter them with his presence. I got the next one, so you go. So this is Jude, verses six and seven. And the angels who did not stay within their own position of authority, but left their proper dwelling, he is kept in eternal chains under gloomy darkness until the judgment of the great day, just as Sodom and Gomorrah and the surrounding cities, which likewise indulge in sexual immorality and pursued unnatural desire, serve as an example by undergoing a punishment of eternal fire. 1 Peter 3, verse 19 talks about in which he went and proclaimed to the spirits in prison. 2 Peter 2, verse 9. Then the Lord knows how to rescue the godly from trials and to keep the unrighteous under punishment until the day of judgment. 1 Thessalonians 4, 17. Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, so we will always be with the Lord. And 1 Corinthians chapter 15, verses 51 and 52. Behold, I tell you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed in a moment in the twinkling of an eye the last trumpet for the trumpet will sound and the dead will be raised imperishable and we shall be changed. Job 19 verses 26 and 27 and after my skin has been thus destroyed yet in my flesh I shall see God whom I shall see for myself in my eyes shall behold and not another my heart faints within me First Corinthians, chapter 15, verses 42 through 44. So is it with the resurrection of the dead, what is sown is perishable, what is raised is imperishable. It is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness, it is raised in power. It is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body. Acts 24 verse 15, having a hope in God which these men themselves accept that there will be a resurrection of both the just and the unjust. John chapter 5 verses 28 and 29, do not marvel at this for an hour is coming when all who are in the tombs will hear his voice and come out. Those who have done good to the resurrection of life and those who have done evil to the resurrection of judgment. Philippians chapter 3 verse 21, who will transform our lowly body to be like his glorious body by the power that enables him even to subject all things to himself. So we've provided a broader context, some of the philosophical arguments and the terms that are used. We've gone through now, I don't know, probably 20, 25 verses of the Bible that are important in the conversation of what happens to us when we die, and then what ultimately happens to us when we die at the judgment, some things that might help us figure out what that intermediate state might be between death and final judgment day. a majority of the most important verses that get bandied about and talked about in these kinds of discussions. So we've got all that on the table now, so now we can finally get to our question, what happens to us immediately upon death? So we can see by what we've read and what we might already know from being in church if we are Christians who participate in congregations, our bodies after death, They return to dust, as it says in the scripture. They decompose, they see corruption. That's another way the Bible talks about it. So that's what happens to our bodies, but our spirits, our souls, which never die. God made our spirits to be forevermore living on. We're making his image, we have an ongoing spiritual existence in that image bearing. They don't die because the spirit, the soul, it has this immortal subsistence. And so, upon death, the body dies and begins to return to dust, and the spirit goes immediately to return to God. and that might strike you as a little bit like a gobsmack upside the head, wait a minute, everybody immediately goes back to return to God, the maker? And I'm arguing and I'm suggesting the Bible argues, yes, those who are declared righteous in Christ, They are received into the highest heavens, as one of the great Christian confessions puts it. So those who are Christian believers, true elect, those chosen and saved by Christ, they immediately are received, they go to be with God, and are received into the highest heavens. Those who are not trusting in Christ's redemption they're cast into hell. And so a second ago I just said, yeah, wait a minute though, but everybody immediately returns to God. And now I'm saying they're cast into hell. What does that mean? Well, that gets into our definitions of how we're understanding what hell is. So again, the spirits that are in heaven, the spirits in heaven have been deemed to be in hell. perfect in holiness, deemed perfect in holiness because of Christ's perfect record and he shares all that he has with those who are his. And so those are Christians are deemed as perfect in holiness. They are then called into, allowed to approach, if you will, the favorable presence of the face of God, the favorable presence of God. That's heaven. Wherever you have the unabashed, favorable presence of God, you have heaven. And in heaven, we're living in light and glory. And again, those bodies are decomposing and are returning to dust. But at the end, when the body is resurrected, then there's a full redemption of the bodies, and the body and the spirit are again joined, and it's a different kind of a body, we know. It's a spiritual body, a glorified body. But there's something recognizable and similar to our current bodies. There's some ask, because we know that Jesus was able to eat and drink after he He rose again, and they could see him, and yet it seemed he could pass through walls, he could appear as it were out of nowhere. So he wasn't always necessarily recognizable immediately. He had to make himself recognizable, and yet there was something recognizable about him. So there's something about our bodies that will be the same, but something that will be significantly different. So the saints, that's their experience. They die, and immediately the spirit awaiting the resurrection of the body, the spirit immediately goes into the favorable presence of God. The spirit's in hell. Those spirits not accepting God's own payment for their sin. They want to stand on their own record, not Christ's record. And so their own record is not deemed perfect in holiness, because none of us on our own record can be deemed perfect in holiness. And so they are ushered into the unfavorable presence of God. And where there is the unfavorable presence of God, There is torment and darkness and judgment, full judgment of God on their whole self, ultimately the body too, and the soul and the spirit. Unfavorable presence of God, that is hell. Now some Christians haven't maybe been discipled in a way where they understand it that way, but I'm telling you, It's the biblical truth. There is no place that God isn't. God is all-powerful, all-knowing, all-present, right? He's omnipresent. There is no place you can go where God isn't. So too many times we think in terms of, well, people go to hell and they're cast out away from God. No, they're cast out away from the favorable presence of God, but they cannot escape God's presence. And so what they experience is the unfavorable presence of God, which is hell. Now at the last day, those who are God's people shall again have bodies. and our bodies and our spirits will be united together, and this time, this union of body and spirit is inseparable, and that will be our existence, as we understand what the scriptures tell us, forevermore. So those who are in Christ get their bodies, get new bodies, renewed bodies, get their bodies back, however you wanna think about that, united with their spirit, their soul, and then that becomes their glorious existence in the favorable presence of God forever. Those who are not God's people, Those who have rejected Christ, well, they get their bodies, too, reunited to them with their spirit. But in their case, their bodies are raised to dishonor. They're not raised into honor. They're not raised into perfect holiness. They're raised into dishonor. And some would say that they're raised to eternal torment. Some would say they're raised to be sent into oblivion through annihilation. That's an entirely different discussion. We could spend an entire hour talking just about whether or not people are annihilated and cease to exist at the final judgment, or if they continue to exist in eternal torment forever. But for our purposes today, the question is what happens to us immediately upon when we die? Immediately, there's a separation from the body. The immaterial and the material separate. The body decomposes. The spirit goes to be with God. Those who are in Christ go to be with God in a favorable way. Those who are not in Christ go to be with God in an unfavorable way. until down the road, whenever the final, when Christ returns and there's a final judgment, and then there's the next phase, which an awful lot of Christian teaching focuses on. There's not as much, it's not as common to talk about what happens immediately upon death. It's more common to talk about what happens at the judgment day. And I would say there's good reason maybe for that. So... Before maybe wrapping up with some thoughts on this, I wanna try to open up for discussion. I don't know if anybody has opined with a question or a comment on the comment section. I don't know if anybody in the room has a comment or question on it. Well, I always thought, and maybe I'm wrong, there is the separation, but before Jesus went to be crucified, fully resurrected and that's why he was like oh don't cling on me I haven't received my full body yet I haven't received my my glorified you know when he says don't touch me you know basically when he was he was talking to Mary yeah okay so I feel like that's what happens to us until the second coming that we are like see-through for lack of a better word because that's how Jesus was he is the second coming so he doesn't have to wait because he is you know what i mean like he is who he is but we have to wait so i feel like we're in that season until final judgment based on that. Yeah, I hear what you're saying, but I'm not positive that that's the best way to understand that particular passage. When Jesus is talking about, you know, don't touch me, the Greek there, it's really about don't grab onto me, don't clutch me, don't cling to me. It's not about, oh, I can't touch you. It's about don't hang onto me. And he's saying, this is not the time for that. I need to, don't hang on to me, I'm gonna need to depart. And I'm gonna send the paraclete, the comforter, I'm gonna send the spirit. So don't hang on to me now, you'll have plenty of me for eternity eventually, but don't hang on to me now, that's not the time. I think that's a better way to understand that passage. He's saying, I'm not back to stay. Well then how is he able to walk through walls? Because you can't walk through walls if you have a body. When he just appeared with them and they were eating, Yes, but Christ has his resurrection body at that time. He did? That's how I understood it. Okay. So he has his resurrection body. Oh, I thought it was those 30 days in between, like when they were walking on the road to... He hadn't resurrected yet, had he? No, so, okay, this is a larger... Are we getting a nice time frame? No, no, this is good, because this is a larger... See, this is why it's important. Everything's interconnected, and it's sometimes hard to talk about one issue without talking about several other issues. And so this is good. So what is heaven? Heaven is not we go up to float on a cloud with harps and we look like little cherubs, right? There's not that. And it's not we do nothing and that we just, you know, sing praises and say holy, holy, holy nonstop at infinitum forever. The biblical understanding of what heaven is, remember, it's not so much that we go to be with heaven. Heaven comes to us. Again, remember how I defined it before, heaven is wherever the favorable presence of God is dwelling. Wherever the favorable presence of God dwells, that's heaven. Well, right now, it's not exactly here, although there's a sense in which heaven is here on earth inside of each believer because we are temples now for God, so there's a sense where there's a piece of heaven. in articulate language, but there's a piece of heaven on earth now, but the full expression of heaven isn't here now. I mean, look at the news going on around us these days, right? So, but at the end, heaven comes to earth, if you will. There's a remaking of earth. Earth is transformed back into, you know, what was pictured in the Garden of Eden. There's a there's a re-perfection of the earth, a remaking of the earth. And what's old passes away and is replaced by something new. But it's not completely and utterly new. It's a remaking of what already is. So when we talk about the end of the world, we're not talking about the earth as we know it now. Well, completely, utterly, 100 percent cease to exist absolutely. We're talking about it will be so transformed by the arrival of heaven, the full, holy, favorable presence of God. Invading is the word I have in mind, but that sounds like the wrong word. Coming upon and remakes things so much, you can't even really recognize the earth anymore. It's so renewed and transformed. It's as if the old has been completely destroyed, but that's not really what's going on. So anyway, that's important because when that happens, that's when the believers have their bodies to walk the renewed earth. Christ, as a precursor, the first fruits of that, he's walking the earth, 2,000 years ago. And so he has his body to do that. But that version of earth doesn't exist until after the second coming and the judgment day. And so that's why the believers, if the believers die and they have bodies, where are their bodies? Where do they go? There's no physical realm for those bodies within which to exist until earth is remade So that's why it says in some parts... Because the body is asleep, it hasn't been resurrected. In case I forget, remind me to talk about the sleep question, but it looks like you're chomping to say something too. Yeah, maybe this will be helpful about the nature of the body. So I'm reading out of 1 Corinthians 15, 44, and Paul is speaking and he's saying, It is sown a natural body. Our bodies are sown a natural body. It is raised a spiritual body. If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body. So I think the difference between a natural body and a spiritual body is that a spiritual body, apparently because of the example of Christ, it has these spiritual properties to it. where it can go through solid materials. Yet there's a firmness to it, a tangibleness to it, because you can touch the body and the body can eat, yet it's a super body. It has these properties. You can also appear and disappear instantly, which we can't do in these bodies. So I just think it's Speaking to Troy's point, just like the earth is going to be, we can't really imagine how great it's going to be. These bodies are just so far beyond. I mean they travel at the speed of thought, which is even faster than the speed of light. Because the speed of thought is instantaneous travel. You can just appear just like that. And so I think it has these spiritual qualities to it. Yet it's still a physical body and it doesn't have blood. We know that because in another place, Paul says, flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom. So Christ didn't have blood in that resurrected body, but he had bone, he had firmness to it. So flesh and bone inherits eternity, not flesh and blood. It's just, I guess the best kind of one word phrase, or a couple word phrase you can use, it's a super spiritual body, is my understanding. Right, well your sister, by the way, makes a comment, and this is something interesting, kind of along these lines, so she says that she and your mom have been having terrible dreams about Chris, which is Troy's sister's husband who passed away, like he's actually there, and what is that? I think it's demonic, personally, but because he was not a believer, I think it's demonic. So I think it's a demonic attack. So how does it read? They're saying that they sense his presence, or they feel like they see his presence? Are they having dreams about it? We have been having terrible dreams about Chris, like he's really there. What is that, both mom and dad? Okay, so there's so many things that it could be, and it's all speculation, but throughout some things that occurred to me. One is that it might just be a dream, You were sharing an interesting dream about an hour ago with us that you had last night or the night before. And she's like, what does this mean? I don't know what it means. And you shared a dream like two or three nights ago that was very odd and strange. So sometimes a dream is a dream and it doesn't mean There might be a message, God speaks to people in dreams, there's numerous examples of that in the Bible, so there might be some sort of message that God is seeking to convey to you through your dreams. Could've been that burrito. But I wouldn't wanna leap, I wouldn't even get close to leaping to the idea that, oh, because I'm having dreams about a person, that that person is actually physically present in my bedroom, while I'm having that dream. That's a pretty big leap. Now if you're feeling like when you woke up you were feeling like there was a presence there, like maybe he was there. I'm not going to discount the possibility that there was a presence there, but the presence is not Chris. You know, it could be someone masquerading as Chris, trying to trick you into thinking it's Chris. It could be that, but it's not actually Chris. And if you feel like you're seeing him, well, there's nothing to see yet. He's not gonna get his body back until after the second coming to face judgment. So there's a resurrection of the body joined back with the spirit so that that soul, the body and spirit, get judged together and then face their eternal fate. So there's no apparition really as far as a dead person to come back but that doesn't mean that there aren't spirits and ghouls and goblins because there's a spirit world and we're too quick to discount that. We are in a spiritual war. Well how are we in a war that's spiritual if there's no spirit realm? What are we fighting against? We're fighting against nothing. We did not discuss it. Carl comes home Wednesday when they prayed, evil get out of this house on the name of Jesus. There were no more dreams. So that answers the question. It could be. So when we are prone to We're prone to take our eye off of Jesus and pay attention to the waves around us. When we're prone to do that, when there are distractions going on, those distractions can come from within our own minds. our own inclinations, our own habits, our own behaviors. Sometimes we're our own worst enemy. So there can be those reasons why we take our eye off the prize, off the hope that we have in Christ. And when our hope is, when we take our eyes off the hope we have in Christ is when we make poor decisions, when we get more anxious, when we're more prone to sin. Bad things can happen when that's the case. So sometimes it's ourselves. Sometimes it's pressures from the world. you have a neighbor who screams and yells at you and that sets you off or somebody on the road cuts you off on the road and you give them the bird and you know and that's not a good so the world brought temptation before you and put you in a bad place or that just the nature of the news and what's going on in the world today those sorts of things can happen and then of course it's a spiritual war and so we can face attacks or deceptions from the spirit realm to try to, again, take our mind off of what's most important. So if it was indeed a spiritual attack or a spiritual thing that was going on, and then you put your hope and your eyes back on Christ as opposed to the waves around you, and you're doing that when you pray and call out in Christ's name and say, I'm putting my hope and faith in Christ. Jesus, help me. Jesus, cast us away. I'm trusting in Jesus. And I know he says at the cross, it is finished, and you evil entity, whatever, have no power or right to even be here because I'm standing on the righteous blood of Christ. Your hope is fully on him then. Well, the enemy's gonna retreat, maybe making a comeback at some other time, but is gonna retreat in that moment because their tricks didn't work that time. Angel had mentioned 1 Corinthians chapter 15, just a few verses after what she read. It's in verse 51. Behold, I tell you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed. And this gets to the sleep question. And this is actually important. I almost forgot about this, but it's important that we touch on this. Jehovah's Witnesses believe in something called soul sleep. There's a movement that labels itself as Christian called The Way, believes in soul sleep. Seventh-day Adventists believe in a doctrine of soul sleep, and they point to verses like what Dina mentioned about five minutes ago and the verse I just mentioned saying that we shall not all sleep, we'll be changed. You know, in Psalm 13, chapter three, Consider and answer me, O Lord my God. Light up my eyes, lest I sleep the sleep of death. Daniel 12, verse 2. And many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life and some to shame and everlasting contempt. John 11, 11. After saying these things, he said to them, Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep, but I go to awaken him. 1 Thessalonians 4, verse 14, And 1 Thessalonians 5, verse 10, who died for us so that whether we are awake or asleep, we might live with him. All of these verses should be understood and if we had time to really dive in into the context and look at ancient Greek and ancient Hebrew idioms and terms of phrase, we would see that these are euphemisms for death. We do that even today. Somebody dies, and you're gonna relay that information to somebody, and you might say, yeah, my good friend died yesterday. But you also might say, my good friend passed away yesterday. My good friend gave up the ghost yesterday. We have these euphemisms that we use. In the Bible, if you don't think that the Bible has euphemisms, oh my gosh, there are so many. If you read in some of the English translations, the way it's phrased, the way the translation reads, it talks about shaving their heads and shaving the hair of their feet. What do you think the hair of their feet might mean? It's a euphemism for pubic hair. I think the king, he's killed while he's in the bathroom. Right, he's in the bathroom, and the Israelites, they sneak in, they kill him, his guards don't realize that happened, and after a long, long time, like, dang. He's been in there, in the way it reads, covering his feet for a long time. We should go check on him. Covering his feet is a euphemism for squatting to make a bowel movement. There are all sorts of euphemisms in scripture, and this sleep for death thing, is a euphemism. because there are times when Jesus will say, oh, they're just sleeping, like, oh, they're just sleeping, and then Jesus realizes, okay, they're not understanding, I'm using a euphemism, let me make it clearer, he's dead. Okay, I used a euphemism, you guys aren't picking up on that, no, he's not sleeping, he's in fact dead. So euphemisms for that. Now, the Jehovah's Witnesses, the Seventh-day Adventists, they will point to a verse in Ecclesiastes that talks about the dead know nothing. You know a person dies and they fall asleep and they know nothing because they're unconscious and they're saying it's like when we're asleep we know nothing we're unconscious we don't know anything when we're sleeping and so we'll use that kind of a verse and there's and other verses like that well with Ecclesiastes using that particular verse as just a larger Bible study example, whenever you read Ecclesiastes, you have to understand the context of the whole book of the Bible. And that particular book of the Bible is talking about our existence on this planet in the here and now. It talks about over and over again about how life is under the sun. Not under the sun of God, under the stellar and to our sun, the thing that gives us light and heat. What life is like under the sun? What life is like to walk the earth? What life is like from this perspective? That's what Ecclesiastes is all about, which is what makes the final end, the final chapter of Ecclesiastes So cool, he's talking about how everything's vanity, everything's meaningless, everything's nothingness, nothing matters in this life. You can do all the right things and bad things still happen. You can look at people who do all the wrong things and good things happen to them. Life's not fair. No matter what I do, I'm still gonna die. You know, there's a seasonality to life. It doesn't matter what you do, these seasons are gonna happen. There's a time for this, a time for that. Under the sun, there's a time for everything. Anything and everything can happen under the sun. It's just, we can't control these things, and so why not just give up? Why not just, you know, boom, be done with it? And then you get to the end of the book, and it talks about, however, in God, meaning outside of, this merely physical, under the sun realm. That's where our true hope is. That's where the true power and authority lies. And so all of this is put in context. All of the here and now is put in context. And that's one of the things, as I lead down to wrapping up, that I wanna talk about. Our physical bodies, under the sun, our physical bodies die. Our spirits, our souls continue to exist when we die. And I think that this should give us comfort and it should give us perspective on what our life is like in this world. It's true that our physical bodies are wearing out. As my grandmother used to say years ago when she was still around, she would say, ah, it's hell growing old. but it sure beats the alternative. And so we're wearing out, we're getting tired, we get sick, we experience pain and emotional pain and sorrows and life is hard and it's particularly hard for a Christian. And I've said this before, I'll say it again now, if you're a Christian and your life is not hard, you're doing something wrong. Because if you're living an obedient life and you're trying to advance the cause of the kingdom and you're engaging in spiritual warfare, you're on the front lines of the battle, life should be hard. If it's not something, maybe you're not fighting the fight the way you could or should. Something's amiss, it seems to me. We were promised suffering. In fact, Peter tells us in the New Testament, not only is there a promise of suffering, It's a great promise, it's a good thing because we have the privilege, this is how Peter phrases it, we have the privilege of participating in the sufferings of Christ, of sharing in the sufferings of Christ. We get to experience that part of Christ's experience with him and through him and in him and if we're not suffering, that's a huge part of Christ's experience that we're missing out on. And so, anyway, that's a bit of an aside. So it's true that it's hard and we wear out and all that sort of stuff, but while that's true, we still maintain the hope that our inner person, the spiritual, the immaterial, that is being increasingly perfected and renewed and sanctified until ultimately it is glorified and will not perish. And so we have this realistic view of things that brings us perspective on what the here and now is really all about and yet gives us great comfort and hope knowing that there's this duality to who we are. And so when we do that, we have what I would call a proper biblical perspective. And this sort of perspective, it can help us, help to keep us from being overwhelmed by the things of the material world, of the physical limitations that we face. And at the same time, while it helps us to have a realistic view of the material world, it keeps us from getting overly focused on that world and maybe overly confident in what the world can provide because there are tastes of heaven, little reminders, little kisses from God that remind us of what awaits us and so sometimes we have beautiful homes or we have a really good day or we have a fantastic moment in our relationship with someone or we achieve a goal that gets the endorphins flowing and you feel like man this is like this is as good as it gets and then you realize no it's not as good as it gets but it's a reminder that there is something that is as good as it gets and that's awaiting and so I think Understanding that we are both physical and not physical, and that both of those are who we are, helps us to keep everything in balance or in blend. I prefer the word blend more than balance. Is everything blended in an appropriate way when our thinking is correct on that? We've got maybe a couple of minutes before we think about closing with some prayer, but any other thoughts? Any thoughts over there? Maybe one more thought about sleep. When I think about the story of Lazarus and the rich man, and the rich man going to hell and Nazareth going to Abraham's bosom, I think that's a real story because in parables, Christ never used names. He just said a woman or a male, whatever. So I think that really did happen, and it's a revelation. I don't want to get into this, but before, you know, he died on a cross that, you know, there was this separate chambers of hell or whatever. And people went, who were saved, went to Abraham's bosom, and people who were not went to the tormenting part. Anyway, what I'm getting at with respect to sleep, I noticed a scripture that the wicked, or at least I can't think of an example, when wicked people died, they were described as going to sleep. So I also understood that when Christ euphemistically used the word sleep for death, he was speaking of people at rest. You know, because when you sleep, you're resting. So when he, I think my understanding is when he says, you know, our friend, Lazarus, speaking of the Lazarus that he raised, when he said our friend Lazarus was asleep, I think he wanted his, he used that word so that his disciples would understand he's in a place of rest. You know, his body, I think, was, you know, dead and unresponsive, you know, like this, you know, piece of furniture. But his soul was resting, I think is what he was trying to say. And it's just like a fine line or whatever. Yeah, I think that could be helpful in a pastoral sense to talk about death as people are at rest. And to your point, it's a fine line, and I'd want to be careful how far we wanted to push the line. Because I tend to think in terms of it's mostly like in the Bible, People who want to accuse the Bible of not understanding how the world works don't understand how the Bible works. Too often I've heard this argument. It talks about the Sun revolving around the Earth idea, as opposed to the Earth revolving around the Sun. But all it's talking about is the way we even speak today about the Sun. It rises in the East and it sets in the West and it travels across. Well, we know the sun's not traveling anywhere. The sun is in the center of our, well, it might be traveling, but it's not traveling the way we're talking about it, in the center of our solar system, and we're traveling around it. And we know that, and yet we still talk about the sun moving across the horizon or whatever. So again, the Bible is written in a way that we can understand from our perspective in words and ideas that make sense to us. And so I think that's part of what's going on with this sleep language, too, because when somebody dies, and they're laying there, particularly if they've just died. I mean, you've probably done this. I did it with my dog the other day. Our dog's getting old. She's gonna be 15 next month. And I went in and she didn't stir at all when I opened the door. She was laying there and I thought, is she dead or is she sleeping? and I looked really close, I was trying to see if there was any breathing, and it took me a minute to really be sure, okay, she's breathing, she's not dead. So the point is, somebody who's dead gives the appearance of being asleep, and so it's not, you know, so when Paul is basically yelling at the congregation, because they're not making good choices, and so, you know, some of you will fall asleep. Some of you made such bad choices, you've died as a result of your bad choices. That's what he's saying there. So I think it's just a way to talk about death in a way that, a euphemistic way that makes sense. I'd have to study that out. I haven't thought about whether or not there's any examples of somebody who we would have reason to believe wasn't among the elect who died and was referred to as being asleep. That'd be a fun little side study that I'll tackle. I haven't heard that before. So I like that. That's good. At some point I feel like this discussion is leading to the idea of spiritual manifestations, apparitions or whatever. Apparitions you mean? and make up words. Well, aberrations is a word, but I don't think that's the right word for that context. Ghosts. How's that? You know, that concept of, ooh, are there ghosts? Are there not ghosts? Are we seeing something? Are we not? People are fascinated by that because we're fascinated with the spiritual realm. But what is really going on there? And can you ever see a believer as a ghost? And then you look at the one scripture where he calls upon Samuel called Saul. So how do you figure that? Was there a supernatural thing that happened there that God allowed for that to teach a greater lesson? Because God can do anything. What is the lesson in that? So that might be something. I'll make a note. Next week we already determined we're doing, what was it? what Christians believe about the last days, so we'll do that next week, but maybe the week after that we'll do the ghost story. Okay, so I think we're back. Are we back? There's a delay. My phone started to ring and it interrupted the Facebook feed, but I think and hope that we're back now. Let's draw ourselves to a close with a prayer. We're actually just past an hour, so I was thinking we might try to do a group prayer, but maybe we'll just do a closing prayer, and maybe I'll ask Angela to do that again, if she doesn't mind. Is there any last comments we have to address before we do that? Okay, well, if you would just close us in prayer, and we'll call it a night. Thank you, Heavenly Father, for this time that we had together. Lord God, we appreciate it. We appreciate the insights that were shared, Lord, and we're trusting, Lord, that you work through of Pastor Troy, Lord, to answer some questions, to get some clarity, Lord God, and to just help people understand your ways and your word better, and we are grateful for that. We ask, Father, that you would be with us and with everyone who's listening, Lord, be with all of our families and keep us in safety and in provision, and we thank you and we ask you all of these things in the precious name of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, amen. Thank you. Thank you for your participation, ladies. And thank you for your participation on the internet. And we will be back next week, Sunday, six o'clock. God bless.