U.S. President Donald Trump likes to talk about dead people being alive in heaven and looking down at us. Oftentimes, he says they are looking down at his presidency and smiling, indicating they are happy about it. Oh my goodness! That’s a sure-fire way to trick the spiritually naive into believing in Trump and his political policies.
The Arizona Republic columnist Dana Milbank writes about this subject today in his piece entitled, “Trump communes regularly with the dead.” He relates:
“A few weeks ago, while posthumously honoring a World War II hero, Trump gave the man’s family a report on their departed loved one. He was ‘looking down from Heaven, proud of this incredible honor, but even prouder of the legacy that lives on in each of you, so true.’
“A few weeks before that, at what was billed as a celebration of patriotism at the White House, Trump reported to the crowd that fallen soldiers are pleased with his economic policies and increases in the stock market. ‘Many of them are looking down right now at our country, and they are proud,’ he said.”
Milbank reports that this kind of public speech pours forth from the president quite often, and the columnist provides several other instances of it. One is rather comical. Milbank relates, “Occasionally, something must get lost in the cloud and Trump receives a heavenly miscommunication. Speaking to a steelworker at the White House in March, Trump informed the man: ‘Your father, Herman, he’s looking down, and he’s very proud of you right now.’
“‘Oh, he’s still alive,’ the steelworker said.
“‘Then he’s even more proud of you,’ Trump said.”
Milbank also related, “Trump informed Jerry Falwell, Jr., president of Liberty University, that his father ‘is looking down on you right now and he is proud.’ Same with Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen’s mom. And golfer Justin Rose’s father.” Oh, now we’re bringing this defective theology to the PGA Tour.
Donald Trump sounds like an evangelist who keeps delivering the same message. But is it correct? Bible believers should recognize that it is not. But only a few do. So many people believe what they want to believe, even when it comes to Bible believers.
Nowhere does the Bible say any dead people, except Jesus, are alive in heaven because their souls are immortal, let alone that they are looking down from there to earth to see what humans are doing. But that’s what most Christians have been taught to believe. I know. I’ve been an evangelical Christian all of my adult life, and that’s what I was taught and believed for about thirty years.
Then one weekend I attended a Bible conference in Houston, where I lived. It was about the concept of the future resurrection of the dead, which is clearly taught in both testaments of the Bible. The main thrust of the conference–which was conducted by Resurrection magazine, a British publication–was that although the Bible clearly asserts there will be a yet future resurrection of the dead at the end of the age, it does not affirm the immortality of the soul nor that any dead people are alive in heaven except Jesus, who was resurrected from the dead and days later ascended to heaven.
That was a shock to me. I began scouring my Bible to try to prove otherwise, and I couldn’t do it. I knew of the two standard New Testament texts which are cited to prove this wrong. But when I thought more about them, I decided these teachers were right, that those texts–2 Corinthians 5.1-8 and Philipppians 1.21-23–do not clearly affirm either the immortality of the soul or that righteous human souls go to heaven at physical death. The Apostle Paul wrote both of these texts.
In 2 Cor 5.1-8 (NRSV), Paul’s language “our heavenly dwelling” and being “further clothed” refers to our future resurrection body. When Paul concludes, “we would rather be away from the body and at home with the Lord,” he only means that he yearns for the resurrection, which is the only time when we will be “with the Lord” Jesus. That is because Christian resurrection will occur at Jesus’ second coming. Paul therefore does not have in view anything about going to heaven when we die.
Paul begins the shorter Phil 1.21-23 by saying, “For to me, living is Christ and dying is gain.” He does not have in mind that his soul is immortal, so that when he dies his immortal soul will go to heaven. Moreover, that very idea is not anywhere in his extant letters or the entire Bible. Rather, Paul was a trained, biblical theologian prior to his conversion to Jesus. The Bible for him and all Jews, including Jesus, was what we Christians call “the Old Testament.” It has much more information about what happens to people when they die than the New Testament does. The obvious reason for this disparity is that the Christians who wrote the New Testament did not feel the need to write as much about that subject since they merely accepted what the Old Testament says.
What does the Old Testament (OT) say about what happens to people between their death and resurrection? Theologians call this time period “the intermediate state.” The OT says perhaps 100x or more that when people die, their soul goes down to Sheol, which is sometimes characterized as “the pit.” Sheol was the word (origin unknown) the Hebrew people used to refer to an actual place where the souls of dead people go to await resurrection and judgment. The Greeks believed in the same concept of the soul going down except they called that place Hades. Thus, Sheol equals Hades. The OT repeatedly says human souls “sleep” or are “asleep” in Sheol.
The word Sheol appears 67x in the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament), and the word Hades appears 12x in the Greek New Testament (NT). Concerning the Greek NT, English versions sometimes translate Hades in it as “hell.” But I think it is best to transliterate these two words since they are designated as the names of those places. I recently heard a Christian preacher say he had never known about “Sheol” until he was over fifty years old. I guess he didn’t read the Hebrew Bible, but only English versions that don’t transliterate Sheol. Some do, including NRSV, NASB, and ESV, the three main ETs that I use. (The NIV does not have “Sheol.”)
Where is Sheol/Hades? The OT is abundantly clear about this–Sheol/Hades is located deep inside the earth. That is why Jesus predicted concerning his death, “For just as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the sea monster, so for three days and three nights, the Son of Man will be in the heart of the earth” (Matthew 12.40).
The concept of the immortality of the soul originated with Greek philosophers. And since they were dualists, they denounced the Hebrews’ concept of the resurrection of the human body. The early Christians clung to the OT view and thus vehemently rejected the Greeks’ belief in immortality of the soul. It’s because the Bible says nothing about people going to heaven. Rather, the righteous will be raised from the dead to experience eternal life in the holy New Jerusalem that will come down to earth (Revelation 21-22; cf. John 14.1-3).
The classic book on all of this is Alan Segal’s Life after Death: A History of the Afterlife in Western Religion (Doubleday, 2004, 866 pp.). What we learn from Segal’s book is that people believe what they want to believe. Both Diaspora Jews and Christians eventually gave up the biblical teaching in favor of thinking of their loved ones still be alive in heaven.
A woman who had recently believed in the pre-tribulational rapture teaching once asked me about it. I replied that I had been taught that, but that I changed to believing in posttribulationalism within premillennialism. “So,” she said, “you believe Christians will go through the frightening tribulation?” I answered, “yes.” She exclaimed, “Why would you want to believe that?” Precisely! She thereby unwittingly revealed that she believed in pretribulationism because she wanted to believe in it, that it was more appealing to her rather than because she attributed it to divine revelation of the Bible.
Martin Luther believed aright on this, thus rejecting the immortality of the soul. He explained that dying and the soul sleeping in Sheol is like living people being asleep at night. He then said when the trumpet sounds and Jesus shouts to awake the believing dead, they will arise just like a living human being awoken by an alarm clock. Luther also correctly explained that Paul’s words in Phil 2.23, “my desire is to depart and be with Christ, for that is far better,” mean that the intermediate state will be like physical sleeping, so that when resurrection comes, it will be like falling asleep and then awakening in morning, not having remembered being asleep.
In conclusion, Donald Trump and all people who want to know about what happens when people die should read the right Bibles about this: the Hebrew Bible and English translations NASB, NRSV, and ESV. But then, does Donald Trump read the Bible? How does he know about people being in heaven. I suppose he’s just going by what people have told him.
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