Death and the State of the Dead - Part 2

2 Corinthians 5:8, State of the dead, what does this verse mean?

2nd Corinthians 5:8:  ‘We are confident, I say, and willing rather to be absent from the body, and to be present with the Lord.’ Ok so many people use this Scripture to say the next thing that happens when a person dies is that they are resurrected and they go to be with the Lord.

That raises a lot of issues because the Bible is very clear that the Resurrection takes place when Jesus comes back.  The Lord will descend from Heaven with a shout, with the Voice of the Archangel, the dead in Christ shall rise which is found in 1st Thessalonians chapter 4.

So what do we do with this verse, to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord? Well keep in mind that when a Christian or a saint dies, they have no awareness of time.  Paul speaks of it as a moment, the twinkling of an eye.  Their next conscious thought is the Resurrection and being in God’s presence. King David died about thousand years B.C., and the Bible says he slept with his fathers.  When you read Acts chapter 2 Peter’s says David’s still dead, he’s still buried, and he’s not yet in Heaven. It can’t get much more clearer than that.  But, when Jesus comes, King David is coming out of his grave, he’ll be caught up with the Righteous to meet the Lord in the air, he’ll have his immortal, glorified body.  But for David, when he closed his eyes and Bath Sheba and Nathan the Prophet were around his bedside, the next thing he’s aware of it seems like instantaneous – to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord. Paul, in 2nd Corinthians, he also speaks about being carnally minded and spiritually minded.  Paul is also hinting at something here that when we are absent from the body, meaning we’re not living for the flesh, we are then living for the Spirit. So there’s a Spiritual application to that verse that a lot of people miss.  It has nothing to do with the Resurrection or the physical presence of God.  It’s talking about not being bodily, carnally minded but being spiritually minded. Very simply, when a Christian dies, their next conscious thought will be the resurrection of the dead when Jesus comes back – the dead in Christ rising which is found several times in Scripture. That hasn't happened yet of course. It is so clear from the words of Jesus. He said they will be raised up the last day; and again Paul says that at the Lord’s coming, the dead in Christ will rise. Again Paul says in 1st Corinthians 15, the dead in Christ will rise at His coming. And so, obviously, they haven’t risen yet but for those who are sleeping in the Lord, their next conscious thought is the Presence of the Lord. The dead sleep and it’s a totally unconscious experience – it’s a dreamless sleep - so that, the next, it’s a twinkling of an eye, so as far as our loved ones are concerned, when they die their next conscious thought is the Presence of the Lord. What messes us up in my opinion is that, we live in a dimension of time that God is not confined to. God can go into the future and see it perfectly. He can take Prophets into the future and show them with great detail exactly what’s going to happen. There were so many Prophets in the Bible that Jesus worked through/with. Take Daniel for example. God can take a Prophet back in time, which might be easier, and show them exactly what’s going to happen. So with this I think what we need to understand is that the Judgment, as far as the time we live in, the Judgment and the Resurrection has not happened yet. It doesn’t make sense to give people their rewards before they’re raised and before they’re judged. So Paul I think is just saying if I am absent from the body my next conscious thought is the Presence of the Lord.