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WHO SURVIVED HEAVEN'S GATE? #5

WHERE IS MOM NOW?

Probably the story that caused the most agony following the Heaven's Gate suicide tragedy March 25, 1997 has to be that of Yvonne McCurdy-Hill of Cincinnati. A mother of five kids, including twins born just three weeks earlier, she walked away from her children, her job with the post office, and two bank foreclosures. This was just six months before the cult suicide, and her husband Steven, who also joined briefly, managed to extricate himself from the clutches of Marshall Herff Applewhite.

But not Yvonne. Her body was among the 39 found at Rancho Santa Fe. Her parents, her husband, her friends had all begged her to get out — but no. She took the same fatal phenobarbital journey as the others, leaving behind those five small children. And when the family learned what had happened in that San Diego mansion, it was a crushing blow.

"It's my children's mother," sobbed Steven when he learned that his wife was dead. "We got towels, we're crying so much," added a friend. "He [Steven] tried everything to get his wife out of there, but they blocked him."

Well, friend, it's a great tragedy, isn't it? And in a way, that tragedy lingers for the McCurdy-Hill family. Because they've got to wonder still: where is Mom now? What happened to her? Especially for the husband, Steven, who was in that cult and almost died too, the question must haunt him. Did her "soul" make it to that spaceship? Is she on a UFO now? Where exactly is his wife here on September 3, 1999?

It's ironic, but maybe not surprising, that an topic of Bible truth that God intends to bring comfort and hope should instead be the source of major confusion here in 1999. There are many, many books out there today on the topic of "What happens when we die?" I've mentioned several already, and we have a whole additional week to continue this study.

I want to take you back today to a Bible passage that's very important, and we began with it clear back on Monday. It's found in First Thessalonians chapter four, and here's the irony. Paul begins the passage telling us this:

"Brothers, we do not want you to be ignorant about those who fall asleep, or to grieve like the rest of men, who have no hope."

So even the people of God can be confused about what happens when our friends and relatives die. Even Christians can sit in the funeral home with this thought pounding at them: what now? Where is Mother now? Can she hear us? Does she see our grief? Her body's right here in the casket; we can see that. But is her soul some other place? And will we ever be together again? Yes, even Christians have these questions.

The other thing that's clear in this verse — and thank God there's really no debate on this point — is this: The Bible gives us good news. For the Christian, death is not the same tragedy that it is for others. We all agree together: death is not the end. There IS a resurrection. There IS a reunion. We will be together again someday. And as Paul wrote to the Christians in Thessalonika, he wanted to reassure them with that great news. "Don't be ignorant . . . and don't be sad."

However, as I shared on Monday, there seems to be a conflict of ideas running between verses 14 and 16, which immediately follow. Here at the Voice of Prophecy, it's our biblical conviction and our doctrinal heritage that a man or woman's soul is not an immortal, separate entity. Instead, we accept the Bible's plain teachings that a person who dies has no conscious thoughts, no awareness of time, no emotions of any kind. "Death is a sleep," says the Word of God many, many times in both the Old and New Testaments.

However, here in verse 14, there does seem to be a suggestion or possible interpretation that a Christian's soul is up in heaven, and that when Christ comes again, He brings those people with Him. Listen to this from the New International Version:

"We believe that Jesus died and rose again." No disagreement there, of course. "And so we believe that God will bring with Jesus those who have fallen asleep in Him."

This one verse leads many faithful Christians to believe that when a person dies, their soul — a separate, surviving entity — goes immediately to heaven. And that when Christ returns to this earth the second time, Jesus will bring those souls with Him. Furthermore, as the Resurrection happens, also at this Second Coming, those souls will then have bodies — now glorified and immortal — to inhabit once again.

However, is the Bible really teaching this? Will the disembodied souls of Christians come down from heaven on the same cloud as our triumphant Savior? That viewpoint is immediately challenged by Paul himself just two verses later. Notice:

"For the Lord Himself will come down [or descend] from heaven, with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ will RISE first." Then verse 17: "After that, we who are still alive and are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will be with the Lord forever."

So here are two unavoidable truths. When Jesus comes again, the dead in Christ will RISE. They don't come down, they come up out of their graves. "The dead in Christ will rise first." Over in First Corinthians 15 he makes the exact same point:

"Listen, I tell you a mystery. We will not all sleep, but we will all be changed — in a flash, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound [that's at the Second Coming, of course], the dead will be RAISED imperishable, and we will be changed."

However, you may still be thinking: True, the dead are raised then. The body is raised UP to meet the soul coming DOWN out of heaven. However, that interpretation really does run directly into a huge contradiction in logic back in First Thessalonians four, where Paul very plainly says:

"After that [the resurrection], we who are still alive and are left will be caught up together with them [those who were dead] in the clouds to MEET the Lord in the air."

And I have to ask: does it make sense to write about the resurrected saints rising up to meet Jesus in the air . . . if they've been with Him in heaven all along? It tortures logic, writes one Bible scholar, to suggest such a meeting if these souls have been fellowshiping continuously with Jesus for centuries anyway. And it also strains believability, in my opinion, to suggest that Christ comes down to earth to resurrect or rescue saints who are already with Him in heaven. All Christians love that verse in John 14 where Jesus promises His followers:

"And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you unto Myself; that where I am, there ye may be also."

In fact, I'm finding that more and more Christians are concluding that this popular belief in an immortal soul going directly to heaven simply doesn't coexist well at all with the doctrine of the Resurrection. The one really does render the other one either obsolete or, at the least, very difficult to explain.

However, that doesn't remove our present difficulty of First Thessalonians 4:14, where Paul writes about Jesus bringing these people with Him, those who have fallen asleep in their faith in Christ. How can verse 14 and verse 16 be there side by side in one Bible, where one says Jesus brings them DOWN with Him, and the other clearly says He raises them UP in that last day?

Let me share with you, though, another version's rendition, and this is the well-respected Good News Bible, embraced by students and scholars of many faiths. Here's verse 14 again:

"We believe that Jesus died and rose again, and so we believe that God will TAKE BACK with Jesus those who have died believing in Him."

Do you see the immediate difference in meaning? Because Jesus died and was resurrected, Paul writes, these sleeping saints have the promise of eternal life. When Jesus comes again, then, they'll be raised to new life, to immortality. Both here and in First Corinthians 15, that's the clear teaching of the Bible. And then Jesus Christ, our Redeemer, takes them BACK to heaven, along with those of us who may have the great fortune to still be alive when Jesus comes again.

Friend, let me say this as we close up Week #1 of this two-week study. There's a framework of truth here that holds together so beautifully. It takes the plain statements of the Bible about death being a sleep, about the Resurrection, and about the Second Coming — and it gives us a consistent, panoramic picture of reliable truth.

On the other hand, there are certainly ways to interpret in the opposite direction. It's possible to find hard verses — and I'll be the first to say that they are indeed hard — and conclude that human beings are naturally immortal on our own, that our souls live on forever with or without God. There are some difficult passages to consider next week, and you might be thinking of them right now, your brow furrowed in doubt as you turn that radio dial. I promise you we'll try to take on as many as possible beginning on Monday. But allow me to make the point again: some of these suggestions regarding immortality and reincarnation and New Age contacts and souls surviving death are precisely what led to the grisly headlines coming out of Rancho Santa Fe.

In the meantime, may God give us both courage and confidence in His Word.