Online Resource Library
Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadQuiet Talks by Samuel Dickey: Gordon, Samuel Dickey - Quiet Talks on Life After Death: 12. Our Question Aswered
TOPIC: Gordon, Samuel Dickey - Quiet Talks on Life After Death (Other Topics in this Collection)
SUBJECT: 12. Our Question Aswered
Other Subjects in this Topic:
Our Question Aswered
And, I think- it may make things stand out clearer, if, first of all, I tell a simple connected running story of what happens to these at death, without using references. Then we will gather the great teaching passages out of the Book, with chapter and verse, and then gather up certain out-standing events or incidents of the Book, that illustrate and emphasize the teachings. The story grows wholly out of these teachings and events.
At last then we come to answer the question, where is he? And one may well get into some quiet corner, where he can think quietly, and try to take in, the wondrous story that answers the question.
The moment of death has come. The physician, standing so impressively still, with his trained finger on the pulse, says in a hushed voice, "he is gone." Where? The beginning of death is the beginning of life. The close here is the opening there. The end is really the beginning. The shutting door to us is an opening door to him.
At once, quicker than you can bat your eye, or catch your breath, he is consciously in the immediate presence of our glorified Lord Jesus Christ. He doesn't go alone. A convoy of bright-faced angel-beings meet him, and take his spirit straight up into the presence of Christ in the homeland.
I said at once. I said it thoughtfully. I was using the language he and his angel convoy would use. He doesn't travel what we think of as a long distance through space. He is instantly at his new destination.
Time and space and distance are things that be-long to our thinking down here. It takes such and such a length of time, we say, to go such and such a distance. That is necessary earth talk. Up there, in the spirit world, they go as swiftly as thought through what we call a long distance. We can't take it in possibly, but it is clearly so.
And so the moment he has gone from us here, he has arrived there, in the new home. He sees Jesus. He meets the loved ones gone before. There's the wondrous reunion at once. He hears strains of music such as his human ears have never heard.
All pain of body, all distress of mind, all strain of spirit are all gone. He is at home in a new world, where life and light, harmony and glad joy, are the very atmosphere to an extent we simply cannot take in down here. His cup of enjoyment and happiness is full.
That is a general statement of what has come to him the instant he slipped the tether of life here. Now there are certain detailed particulars of intense interest, of which we have equal assurance.
He is the same person that we knew down here. His identity is unchanged and undisturbed. The same essential characteristics, the same individualities, that mark him to his loved ones, remain. All the traits that go to make up his distinct personality remain the same. All distinctive moral traits of a weak or not good sort are gone. But through all the growth and development which now goes forward there will persist the same identity of person as we knew here.
Closely allied to this is the matter of mutual recognition. One of the commonest of questions is about knowing each other up there. There is nothing clearer and surer than this thing of instant full mutual recognition. We shall be more over there, not less, our powers keener and more developed.
But, you are thinking that. years have gone, by earth's reckoning of time, since they left us. We have changed, perhaps very decidedly. And they have changed too, have they not? you say. The possibility of meeting the one tenderly intimately loved without instant recognition comes with a sharp sense of pain.
A mother thinks of her babe, perhaps, who died in infancy. The little one had already wound its tendrils so tight in and out about the mother heart. Not unlikely she thinks still of a little babe. Yet she would be grieved and startled beyond words, after years of separation, to find her child a little thing quite undeveloped.
Well, a little thought reveals the comforting truth. Over there in His presence is fullness of life. Our spirit perception will be far keener there than here. Our loved ones will have grown, and in the growth all that is best has developed, and developed with the distinctive individual traits.
That mother, as she crosses the threshold of the real life, if not before, will instinctively recognize that her babe has grown, much more, and better, and differently, than if here. She will be looking to meet her child, now matured, cultured, poised, grown with the fine growth of all spirit and mental and individual traits. There will be the intense desire to have it so.
And it is so that she will meet her child. There will be instant recognition that this thoughtful matured manly man, this womanly woman, grown into the fine spirit image of Christ, is her child of the long years ago. And with the recognition will be great joy because of the growth. The recognition will be instant and mutual and joyous.
Now, further, as he comes into Christ's presence there will be no discussion of his sin. For he, this man we are talking about, was in touch of heart with the Father. And the sin question has all been settled for him.
Christ's death and resurrection settled it. The blood of Christ covers his sin. And he is accepted by the Father even as His Only Begotten is accepted. He begins to appreciate now just what a tremendous thing Jesus did for him in dying.
But there will be certain changes in him of a moral sort. As he comes into the presence of Christ, certain things in his character will be removed or changed. It will be done just as putting a lump of gold ore into the fire instantly makes a separation of whatever there is in the ore that is not gold. The other part is burned up, or thrown off.
Christ is pictured as a man of Fire. Fire purifies. Fire consumes what can't stand the heat of its flame. Christ's mere presence will act on one's character as he comes into that presence, just as the actual fire acts upon the lump of gold ore.
Whatever in a man's character, of the sort characterized by Paul as "wood, hay and stubble," that is, whatever won't stand the fire of the pure presence of Jesus, will be removed as by the burning of fire. That is, whatever there is of selfishness, self-seeking, pettiness, uncontrolled passion, self-will, bitterness, narrowness, the artificial and the like, will go.
It is to be feared that in some cases the fire will burn up more than it leaves. For fire is relentlessly truthful and honest. No doubt many a man's life, (that is, the opportunity of his stay on the earth), will be practically lost because it has been controlled by un-Christlike motives.
But his soul, or after-life, the man himself, will be saved. For that is a matter of Christ's blood. Indeed some will be saved because of what the fire does. For not even Christ's blood can save the growth of selfishness encrusting this man, who at heart really does trust Christ. The blood saves the man himself, the fire burns up these bad growths. There will be some pretty severe shrinkage in the presence of the purifying Man of Fire.