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Questions from You: About Easter and Heaven

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During our “Questions from Jesus” series, we’re encouraging Faith Church attendees to submit questions they may have to Jesus and/or to Faith Church through the number (219) 440-2463. Over the next few weeks, we’ll be trying to answer some of the questions submitted on this blog. Check back weekly as new questions are added.

We’ll tackle two in this post:

  1. Why is Easter on a different date every year?
  2. There are passages supporting Christians resurrecting after Christ’s return rather than dying and going to heaven. What convicts us that people die and go to heaven now? Absent from the body is to be present with the Lord?

Why is Easter on a different date every year?

The reason that Easter shifts every year is because its date is tied to the lunar calendar, as Easter is the first Sunday after the first full moon occurring after the March equinox (the first day of Spring in the northern hemisphere, usually March 20); it will be between March 22 and April 25. We celebrate Easter on this day because Jesus’ death occurred at the Jewish Passover, which similarly varies each year because it is tied to the lunar calendar (first full moon after the equinox). If the first full moon is a Sunday, then Easter is delayed a week, so it does not always coincide with the Jewish Passover (which does not have to start on a certain day of the week). Whereas Christmas can be any day of the week, Easter is always on a Sunday because Jesus rose on a Sunday, which is why Christians worship on Sundays rather than on Saturdays (the day of the Jewish Sabbath). The Nicene council of 325 AD set this pattern for the celebration of Easter so that there would be more uniformity, as churches were using different calculations (and different calendars). I should also note that the Eastern Orthodox Christian tradition uses a slightly different calculation than Western (Protestant and Catholic) churches so they sometimes have Easter on a different date, and there have been Christians through the ages that have not used this same system, as the Bible does not give explicit directions on when to celebrate Jesus’s resurrection — but all traditions celebrate it someway and on some day!

There are passages supporting Christians resurrecting after Christ’s return rather than dying and going to heaven. What convicts us that people die and go to heaven now? Absent from the body is to be present with the Lord?

This is a good question and one that I think can help us clarify what Christians believe in terms of what happens when we die. As we see in the Apostles’ Creed, a summary of Christian beliefs that Christians of different church traditions and denominations share, Christians believe in the “resurrection of the body.” Jesus’s resurrection points us to our own resurrection (1 Corinthians 15:20-22; Romans 8:11, 22-23). The Old Testament prophets (Isaiah 26:19; Ezekiel 37:12-14; Daniel 12:2), Jesus (John 5:25-29), and Paul (1 Thessalonians 4:17) all talked about the dead being raised, with Paul repeatedly talking about the transformation of our bodies (Philippians 3:20-21; 1 Corinthians 15:42-49); it is not just that we die and go to heaven but that we are raised from the dead with new and glorious bodies. In addition, Paul talks in 2 Corinthians 5 about being naked when we are disembodied (see 2 Corinthians 5:2-3); we are body and soul and the dead await the restoration of that unity in the resurrection. Therefore, our ultimate hope is not to be living in heaven but to have our bodies raised so that we live on the new earth, with God’s presence being on the new earth in a special way — as we see in Revelation 21 and 22. In fact, if you read Revelation 22, you see that the new earth looks a lot like the Garden of Eden rather than a bunch of clouds! The hope of the new heavens and earth is also found in Isaiah 65:17; 55:22 and 2 Peter 3:13.

So, why do we say that someone goes to heaven when they die? We see in various places that believers are in the presence of God while they await the resurrection of their bodies.

  • Jesus tells the thief on the cross in Luke 23:43, “And he said to him, “Truly, I say to you, today you will be with me in paradise,” pointing the thief to hope in paradise when he dies.
  • Paul words to the Philippians indicate that he believes that when he dies, he would be in the presence of Christ (but not yet raised) in Philippians 1:21-23: “For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain.  If I am to live in the flesh, that means fruitful labor for me. Yet which I shall choose I cannot tell. I am hard pressed between the two. My desire is to depart and be with Christ, for that is far better.”
  • Paul writes to the Corinthians in 2 Corinthians 5:6-8 with words that indicate that when we are away from the body we will be in the presence of God: “So we are always of good courage. We know that while we are at home in the body we are away from the Lord, for we walk by faith, not by sight.  Yes, we are of good courage, and we would rather be away from the body and at home with the Lord.” When we leave the body, we are at home with the Lord.
  • The parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus points to the dead having consciousness, with believers in paradise and unbelievers in torment (Luke 16:19-31) – but yet this is intermediate, with a future state of hell for unbelievers and the new heavens and the new earth
  • We do not simply sleep while we wait for the resurrection, as both Jesus (Luke 23:46) and Stephen (Acts 7:59) give their spirits to God at death. Other passages that point to the conscious existence of the dead rather the soul sleeping include Psalm 16:10; 49:14-15; Revelation 6:9-11; 14:13.

Therefore, we say when someone dies that they are in heaven, but also we look forward to their resurrection; heaven is the intermediate state and their immediate state, but the hope of the resurrection is our ultimate state.

Questions? E-mail them to Theology@wearefaith.org or text them to (219) 440-2463.

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