Understanding Human Relationships After Death

1. What Happens When We Die? The Pastor’s Class Summer, 2013 Dr. Paul J. Kirbas

3. What Happens… When We Die

4. Our Plan • Observe the Biblical Answers • Discuss some Pastoral Situations • Raise some interesting Questions • Turn to Medical Science • Reach some possible conclusions

5. Our Plan • Observe the Biblical Answers

6. 3 Possible Answers Body, Soul, Spirit remain dead until Christ’s return Body dies and remains dead until Christ’s return, but spirit survives death Body dies permanently, spirit survives death

7. Our Plan • Observe the Biblical Answers • Discuss some Pastoral Situations • Raise some interesting Questions • Turn to Medical Science • Reach some possible conclusions

8. Our Plan • Observe the Biblical Answers • Discuss some Pastoral Situations

9. Ground Zero: Pastoral Care Five Pastoral Situations

10. Ground Zero: Pastoral Care Situation One

11. You are on the pastoral staff of a church. Recently you performed the wedding of two older adults, Fred and Jane, who had both been married before. In both cases, the previous spouse had died a few years earlier, after long and blessed marriages. Fred and Jane had gotten to know each other in a senior friendship program, and began dating. Six months later, they decided to get married. The wedding was very simple and sweet, and you were very happy to see that they had found each other in this late stage of life. One day, Jane came to see you. She said she was having some troubled thoughts, and wanted your guidance. She expressed to you that she was very happy with Fred, but that he certainly didn’t replace her first husband, to whom she had been married for 45 years, in her heart. When her first husband was dying, they both found comfort in the idea that they would be reunited again in the afterlife. But now that she was remarried, Jane isn’t sure what to make of that idea. In the afterlife, what will be her relationship with her first husband? How will that be different than her relationship with her second husband? Whose wife will she be? Jane has come to ask you these questions. Basically, how do our earthly relationships play out in the afterlife? How would you respond to Jane? According to the Christian faith as you understand it, what do we believe about human relationships in the afterlife, especially in relation to the issues of remarriage as presented by Jane?

12. Earthly Relationships In the Afterlife Matthew 22 That same day the Sadducees, who say there is no resurrection, came to him with a question. Teacher," they said, "Moses told us that if a man dies without having children, his brother must marry the widow and have children for him. Now there were seven brothers among us. The first one married and died, and since he had no children, he left his wife to his brother. The same thing happened to the second and third brother, right on down to the seventh. Finally, the woman died. Now then, at the resurrection, whose wife will she be of the seven, since all of them were married to her?"  Jesus replied, "You are in error because you do not know the Scriptures or the power of God. At the resurrection people will neither marry nor be given in marriage; they will be like the angels in heaven. But about the resurrection of the dead—have you not read what God said to you, 'I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. He is not the God of the dead but of the living."

13. Earthly Relationships In the Afterlife Luke 16 There was a rich man who was dressed in purple and fine linen and lived in luxury every day. At his gate was laid a beggar named Lazarus, covered with sores and longing to eat what fell from the rich man's table. Even the dogs came and licked his sores.  "The time came when the beggar died and the angels carried him to Abraham's side. The rich man also died and was buried. In hell, where he was in torment, he looked up and saw Abraham far away, with Lazarus by his side. So he called to him, 'Father Abraham, have pity on me and send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue, because I am in agony in this fire.'

14. Personal Identity

15. Ground Zero: Pastoral Care Situation One Considered

16. What Happens When We Die? The Pastor’s Class Summer, 2013 Dr. Paul J. Kirbas