Author Archives: pastorjeremyhelmuth

8 Things that Happen When you Die (Part 1)

When is the last time you’ve thought about what happens after you die? Physically. Mentally. Emotionally. Spiritually. If we are only physical creatures without any immaterial aspect to our existence, then there is only one thing that happens when we die. But if we are complex beings, made of both temporary and eternal elements, then we should spend a moment considering the potential of an afterlife.  

#1 – Our body dies and DECAYS.

Death is often defined as that moment our heart and brain stop. When my mom’s heart stopped, the doctor checked her pulse and declared her deceased.

As the heart ceases to pump blood, the brain shuts down, the body grows pale and begins a cooling process.

Over the next several hours, rigor mortis spreads throughout the entire body. The body has no more purpose in this life. No more talking, walking, running, kicking or eating. The body is finished. Solomon speaks of what happens at death: “the dust returns to the ground it came from” (Ecclesiastes 12:7).

Depending on how and where the body is buried (preservation, weather, etc.), the body could decompose into a skeleton within weeks or decades. My mom was placed into a coffin. Amazingly, the process of decomposition is quite long for someone laid to rest in a coffin. It could take fifty years for the body’s tissues to liquify and disappear, leaving behind mummified skin and tendons. Eventually the skin and tendons will also disintegrate, and after eighty years in the coffin, the body will be in skeleton form. After a hundred years, the last of the deceased bones will have collapsed into dust. Only the most durable part of the body, teeth, will remain.

That is what happens to our physical body when we die. But is this the end? Is there something inside the human body that lives on after the grave?

Just as Solomon explained that the body will eventually return to dust, he gives us hope that “the spirit returns to God who gave it” (Ecclesiastes 12:7).

We have much evidence from the Bible that our spirit will exist far beyond death. Just as we spend time thinking about what happens to our physical body when it dies, it is vital that we consider what happens to our spirit when our bodies are finished. What can the Christian hope for when he or she breathes their last breath on this earth?

#2 – ANGELS carry you to heaven.

Jesus told us a story about a man named Lazarus who died and was carried to heaven by angels (Luke 16:22). We are not told how long our journey is to heaven.

The moment we die, we might instantly be in the presence of Jesus in heaven. On the other hand, our spirit might fly with the angels for a multitude of miles to heaven.

Maybe we will fly past planets and stars, through galaxies and the entire universe before we arrive at heaven. This might take several minutes, instead of being immediate. Could it take a few hours? We have no idea, and in many ways it does not matter.

Heaven is not here on this earth as it was during the early days when Adam and Eve were sinless. Heaven is “out there” somewhere and we are told that the only way to this paradise is through Jesus Christ (John 14:6).

#3 – You see the glorious SIGHTS of heaven.

When Stephen was near death, God gave him a glimpse of what heaven looks like (Acts 7:59). As your spirit enters heaven, you will initially see Jesus and the glory that has been awaiting you. Here are just a few awe-inspiring things you will notice (from Revelation 21-22). 

The holy city, with an appearance of jasper, clear as crystal.

Massive, high walls with angels at all twelve gates.

The city streets will be pure gold, like glass.

Enormous pearls will be at every gate.

The river of life.

The tree of life.

You will see God’s face.

Try to imagine how spectacular this moment will be for every Christian. Your faith will become sight and you will see this glorious place that God made for your enjoyment for all eternity.

#4 – You hear the glorious SOUNDS of heaven.

The glory of heaven is not just about all the incredible sights, it also includes the new reality of absolute truth that will surround you in completeness.

Paul was caught up to paradise and heard inexpressible things that no one is permitted to tell (2 Cor 12:4).

This verse implies that there is knowledge in heaven that is too vast for our earthly brains to grasp. I am not sure how our new, heavenly minds will have this “inexpressible information” downloaded, but it will allow us to understand the mysteries of God to a fuller extent.

Right now, we only know part of the mysteries in this life.

The Bible addresses this reality:

We know in part and we prophesy in part, but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears…now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known (1 Cor 13:9-12).

We desire the complete story in the tragedies and complexities of life. Why did someone die in a car accident? Why do healthy people die of cancer in their forties and smokers live past their eighties? Why was I infertile, but all my friends were able to have children? Why does more bad stuff happen to me, but other people seem to have an easy, blessed life? Why did two of my children become Christians but the other one rejected the faith?

These are a few questions out of the countless that cannot be answered this side of heaven. I am not sure if God is going to answer every single question we have ever had in our experience on earth, but we are given the promise that our minds will become complete when we are in heaven.

#5 – You will be PRESENT with Jesus.

A man approached me after I conducted his wife’s memorial service. He is a Christian and has a deep, genuine faith as far as I can observe. He told me that his wife is now in a state of sleep and is awaiting the resurrection. He showed me a couple passages that seem to imply that Christians experience some sort of “soul sleep” when they die (Daniel 12:2; 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18). Since they are sleeping, the time will seem to have passed quickly, and when they are awakened, it will only seem like a few seconds. But it might have been hundreds or even thousands of years.

This is a popular view among some Christians. But when you consider the context of all Scripture, “soul sleep” does not paint an accurate picture of what happens when we die. The apostle Paul was confident that when he died, he would be with Jesus in heaven:

We are confident and would prefer to be away from the body and at home with the Lord (2 Cor 5:8).

The logic is clear: if I am in my body, I am still alive on earth and away from the presence of God. If I die and my body turns to dust, I am with Jesus Christ.

Let’s look at what Jesus said to the thief on the cross:

“Truly I tell you, today you will be with Me in paradise” (Luke 23:43).

The key word here is TODAY. In the present moment, not at a later time.

Did this thief deserve heaven? Absolutely not. But that is why we are saved by grace. The thief simply called out to Jesus for salvation and received it. The thief didn’t soul sleep. He didn’t have to deal with his past sins in purgatory. He was made righteous the moment he called upon Jesus and at his death immediately went to be with Jesus.

Now that we have made clear that we will be in the presence of Jesus after our death, it might be appropriate to think about what that will be like.

Every year, more than 50 million people die throughout the world.

That means that on an average day, more than 150,000 breathe their last breath.

Over 6,000 per hour.

More than a hundred a minute.

Every second, at least one person dies.

What does this have to do with our interactions with Jesus?

Have you ever considered how many of those people who die are Christians? Estimates say that there are about one billion Christians on planet earth out of about seven billion people.

That is a ratio of 1 of 7.

This number is probably high, because we are told that the way is narrow and only a few find it (Matthew 7:14). Let’s say the ratio is more like one out of twenty. If this is the case, then every single minute, there are at least five Christians entering heaven ready to see Jesus and walk around with Him and spend significant time with their Creator and Savior. Then, sixty seconds later, another five Christians are ready for their first interaction with Jesus. And then another five, and another five.

After only one hour, more than three hundred Christians have entered into heaven and all of them want Jesus’ attention.

Have you ever thought about the logistics of Jesus interacting with so many people at once as their personal savior in heaven? How will Jesus handle this? The Bible explains that He will interact with us personally. We are told that He will wipe away our tears, so He gets close to us in proximity.

And I am just discussing the new Christians here. What about all the others who have been there for a few days, years or centuries? Will they get any alone time with Jesus, or will everything be done in community? I do not have the answers to these questions, but I do know that God is able to do things that are very different from our limited mindset: “As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways and My thoughts than your thoughts” (Isaiah 55:9). It will not be impossible for Jesus to meet with thousands of people at a time, and yet each of those people feel as if Jesus is only meeting with them. We cannot understand this mystery, but we know that God is good, and so this will also be good.

I am not sure exactly what it will look like to have our first interaction with Jesus, but I know that Jesus gave love, joy, peace, wisdom, attentiveness, compassion and hospitality to so many when He walked this planet.

It is impossible to describe how life-giving our friendship will be with God. It will be the best part of heaven. Just imagine every good quality in a human, and then exponentially increase those virtues, and you are starting to get closer to how incredible God will treat you in heaven.

Part 2 will continue next week with the final 3 things that will happen to us when we die…

The Senseless TRAGEDY of 1883

I lost my GREAT GREAT UNCLE to a devastating accident 139 years ago. His name was Levi. He was only 23 years old when he lost his life.

Levi had his entire life in front of him. Little did he know that on April 22, 1883, he would encounter the worst day of his life.  

Sunday. The day the accident happened.

When someone dies, have you ever given much thought to which day of the week they passed away? We often talk about how we want the date of the death of our loved ones to skip over holidays and birthdays because it creates a gloom over such special days. But we don’t get to choose when we die.

We rarely think about how death on a particular day of the week will affect us forever. If someone dies on a Tuesday or a Thursday there is no strong feeling derived from that day. But Sundays are different.

Sundays are for going to church. Eating a big lunch. Taking a nap. Playing outside. Enjoying the family. Resting under the willow trees as the wind spreads out the long branches.

Have you ever stopped doing something indefinitely because you found out about someone’s death as you were enjoying a particular event or activity? Once your heart connects a person’s death with something you love doing, often you lose the desire to continue with that life-giving pursuit.

I have a friend who refused to dine at a particular restaurant because he was eating there when he received the news about the death of his dad. He couldn’t overcome the image of that fateful day when he was in the middle of eating a cheeseburger. He left the juicy piece of beef on the table, rushed out of the building, and raced to the hospital. In his mind, the uneaten meal is still sitting on the table, waiting to be finished.

That Sunday was rainy, overcast, and gloomy. Typical spring Indiana weather. Levi and his eighteen-year-old sister Elizabeth were riding together in a horse and buggy to church. Elizabeth decided to pull out an umbrella and open it to shield them from the huge rain drops falling from the grayish clouds.  

The simple act of expanding an umbrella spooked the horse.

The hoofed beast reared its front legs and bolted down the road and into the ditch.

The steep decline flipped the buggy sideways, throwing Levi from the safety of his seat.

A board fence abruptly stopped his motion. 

Levi died from internal injuries three days later.

One morning Levi is a young, strong, energetic twenty-something. Later that week he is dead. How could an umbrella, horse, gravity and a fence be the recipe for death?

What a senseless tragedy.

Two individuals were riding the same horse and buggy on a rainy day. Why was Levi thrown from the buggy to his death at the age of 23? Why did Elizabeth receive the privilege of living 68 more years on this planet? She died at the ripe old age of 86. Something does not seem quite right. Life often seems intolerably unfair.

If I could sit down with Elizabeth and ask her about this accident, what would she have said? She carried the burden of this memory for almost seven decades. How many times did she ask “IF ONLY” to herself after this horrible day?  

IF ONLY…I hadn’t opened the umbrella.

IF ONLY…the horse remained calm.

IF ONLY…it was me hitting the fence.

IF ONLY…Levi would have struck a soft patch of grass.

IF ONLY…

Have you ever played the game of “IF ONLY”? If you’ve played it, you have always been the loser. Playing this game will only send our mind into a dark place. Resist the temptation to dwell on all the different scenarios that could have changed the outcome of the tragedy

When our minds begin to think “IF ONLY”, combat these worthless thoughts with truth. Not one human is able to turn back the clock of time and change any event. Not one human knows or understands all of the variables that formulate a tragedy. It is harmful for your mind to spend too much time in the confusion of “why” something happened. You might understand a certain percentage of “why” but God knows every situation fully. We must consistently remind ourselves of this truth:

As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways and My thoughts than your thoughts. As the rain and the snow come down from heaven (Isaiah 55:9-10).

God’s ways are higher than our ways. He knew why Levi was thrown out of the buggy and died. That is high level despair. When we try to reach that high with our minds, our souls regress into a pit of misery.

I find it fascinating that the context of this passage in Isaiah includes rain.

Rain caused an umbrella to open,

which caused the horse to bolt,

and caused Levi to fly into a fence,

ultimately causing his death.

What caused Levi’s death? Rain? Umbrella? Fence?

The answer is… ONLY GOD KNOWS.

Fast forward from April 22, 1883 to April 28, 2022. The day my mom died. It has been difficult to make sense out of her death. A virus attacked her body.

A virus that has claimed the lives of 6,330,572 humans worldwide.

The virus is so tiny that we cannot see it with our eyes, but its destructive power has been felt in almost every family throughout our planet. 

I’ve played the “IF ONLY” game a few times over the last few months.

IF ONLY…the virus never arrived in 2020.

IF ONLY…the virus didn’t linger for a couple years.

IF ONLY…she didn’t have a compromised immune system.

IF ONLY…the medication worked.

IF ONLY…God healed her lungs.

IF ONLY…

There is no winning this mind game. I must instead fill my mind with “whatever is true, noble, right, pure, lovely, admirable” (Philippians 4:8). During the aftermath of a tragedy, we must train our brains to think about what is excellent and praiseworthy.

When my mind wants to play the “IF ONLY” game, I instead will focus on these two truths:

#1 - The SECRET THINGS belong to the Lord (Deut 29:29).
#2 - The Lord is GOOD, a refuge in times of trouble. He CARES for those who trust in Him (Nahum 1:7).

God is both good and supernaturally powerful. If God is only good, but doesn’t have the intelligence or the strength to perform miracles, then He is not fully divine. If God is only higher than us without any compassion, then He is merely a heavenly dictator. But if God is caring, omnipotent (all-powerful), and omniscient (all-knowing), then we can TRULY TRUST in Him, no matter what tragedy we encounter.

When a man dies from an umbrella, I will trust in God’s goodness and knowledge.

When a woman dies from a virus, I will trust in God’s goodness and knowledge.

When you face a senseless tragedy, will you trust in God’s goodness and knowledge?