Where will you be, 5 minutes after you die?
I have seen that question printed on a tract to be handed out. I have heard the question asked. I have asked that question, on occasion, of people I’ve witnessed to.
Let’s use that question today as a spring-board for discussion, and think it through.
As I see it, there are really only three honest answers to this question, and I’d like for us to address those honest answers one at a time.
Now I should make clear to begin with, that I am not taking into consideration the answers that someone of a non-Christian religion might give. Their answers are for the most part sincere, but they are sincerely wrong. Some are downright depressing (don’t run over that frog; it might be your great grandmother!).
For instance, a Hindu would give you one answer, and in so doing, would be very honest in his response. But since he is deceived from the very foundation of his religion, then all the beliefs built up on that religion must be false also. So, it would be a waste of time to take his answers into consideration.
I am approaching this question from the standpoint of Christian thinking and revealed scriptural truth. If someone is not inclined to accept some very fundamental beliefs about God, then there is really no point going on.
On the other hand, if the listener/reader is willing to begin with the basic foundation that there exists, a real and personal God, Who created all things and ultimately rules the universe, then it is very important to the listener/reader, whether he realizes it yet or not, to pay close attention and attempt to honestly answer this question for himself.
As I said, I believe there can only truly be three honest answers to the question, “Where will you be, 5 minutes after you die?”
The first would be the Believer’s answer. By “Believer”, I mean someone who has heard and understood that Jesus was God who became flesh, suffered, shed His blood and died to pay the penalty for the sins of the world, then rose bodily from the dead on the third day and ascended into Heaven, with a promise to one day return and receive to Himself, all who have believed on these things.
A Believer is someone who has understood that message, repented of his or her sin, turned and accepted God’s free gift of salvation, and thus secured for him/herself a place with God for eternity. The Believer is assured by the Holy Spirit Who lives in him that he now stands right before God, and because of that indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit he has a hunger for more of God’s Word, and a desire to both please God, and to be made more like Jesus. He studies the scriptures, and as a result of that study he knows (among other things), that when he closes his eyes to this life, he will open them in the spiritual realm to behold the face of the risen Christ. As Paul makes clear in II Corinthians 5, to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord. That is one of the fundamental things a ‘Believer’ believes; that is his hope and one of the scriptural truths that fills him with joy and inspires endurance in him to serve His Lord in the present life.
So for the Believer (the kind of person I’ve described here), the answer to the question “Where will you be, 5 minutes after you die”, comes very easy. His immediate reply (usually with a smile and a far away look in his eye that non-believers cannot understand), will be, “I’LL BE WITH JESUS IN HEAVEN”.
If that particular believer is a preacher you may get a much lengthier answer; perhaps even more than you wanted to know; but in essence the answer will be just that. “I’ll be with Jesus”.
Now we’re going to have to be coming back periodically to the Believer’s answer, but for now let’s leave it as stated and move on to the other two honest answers.
The second honest answer that I can imagine coming in response to our question would be: “I DON’T KNOW”.
Now this reply can come from two different lines of thought. You may be talking to a Believer; someone who fits into the first category, but either due to a lack of good teaching or a lack of understanding on his own part, he has no assurance of his position before God.
One of Satan’s great lies is that salvation must be earned, and then worked at to be kept. So it follows that after people become Believers they must ‘unlearn’ this lie and learn the truth. That comes easy for some, and hard for others.
What makes it even harder is that through the centuries the churches themselves have propagated this lie. Not that they were doing it knowingly and willingly, but men who have climbed to positions of authority in the ecumenical community have never really understood the truth, so they unwittingly teach the lie to others, and so on.
So someone may say, “I don’t know where I’ll be 5 minutes after I die, but I hope I’ll be in Heaven” or “I hope I will have been good enough to be accepted in Heaven” or something along those lines.
If they have already told you that they believe from the heart that Jesus died to pay for their sins and rose again from the dead, and they are not lying about that, then you are talking to a Believer. I can say this with confidence because Romans 10:9,10 says,
“...that if you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raiseD Him from the dead, you shall be saved; for with the heart man believes, resulting in righteousness, and with the mouth he confesses, resulting in salvation”.
So if they can say those things in sincerity, but still be unsure of where they will go when they die, then what they need is some sound teaching and prayer. God is faithful. At some point He will bring them through to a settled conviction in their heart, and they will then know very deeply and firmly where they are going, and they will finally begin to walk in victory, full of joy.
The other kind of person who says “I don’t know” in answer to our question, if he is answering honestly, is the person who has not heard or not understood the gospel message at all. Therefore, he really does not know.
This is the person it ought to be very easy to witness to; because once you have asked the question, “Where will you be 5 minutes after you die?” that question will plague his mind until he either decides to find out for sure, or to just not care at all.
If he continues to care, then the question is going to become increasingly distressing to him until he finds out.
It may take a while. The question may come into his mind and go out of his mind according to his work schedule and other obligations that require his attention, but occasionally, when all is quiet and he has time to think privately, the question will come back and, as I said, he will either have to deal with it, or harden himself and deceive himself into thinking it doesn’t matter and he doesn’t care.
The reason I feel confident to assert that he will be deceiving himself, is because I am sure that whether it be soon or a long time from now, he will care very much indeed. If not in this life...then immediately after he dies. Of course, then it will be too late to change his mind about his decision, but still, he will care very much.
But now here is where the “I don’t know” person runs into a problem. In fact, if the Christian witnessing to him does his job, then the “I don’t know” person immediately ceases to exist.
If a Christian asks a non-Christian, “Where will you be, 5 minutes after you die?”, and the reply is “I don’t know” (or any similar form of that answer), then the Christian’s job is to tell him what the Bible says about belief in Christ and God’s promises concerning that kind of belief, and what the Bible says about those who reject that message and refuse to believe.
Once the Christian has said what needs to be said, the “I don’t know” person vanishes.
**POOF!**
Not that he really disappears completely. Actually what happens is that he becomes one of the other two types of people. One, I’ve talked about: THE BELIEVER
The other (the third type of honest answer to the question) is one I’ve already strongly hinted at: “I DON’T CARE”.
The “I don’t know” person, once he has heard the truth, cannot continue then to be an “I don’t know” person; at least, not honestly. Upon hearing the truth he either becomes a BELIEVER, or an “I don’t care”; for he can no longer honestly say, “I don’t know”.
Ok, so let’s talk about the “I DON’T CARE” answer.
I have called this one of the only three honest answers to our question; but now I have to back up just a little and qualify my statement.
You see, it is not an entirely honest answer at all; for as I have already said, there will come a time when that person will actually care very much indeed.
He will either come to a time in his life when everything seems to be turning against him, and he realizes he is no longer in control of his life, and he may then want to reconsider the claims of Christ and reach out to Him for help. That would be the desired result, of course.
On the other hand, if he does not ever come to that place, he will one day die physically, a condition that will only serve to match what he has always been spiritually, and he will enter into eternity apart from God.
He will find then that there is no light, but only darkness. He will suddenly realize that he now, for eternity, belongs to the one who kept him deceived all his life, and he will instantly know that he has chosen the wrong master.
He will still have lusts and desires and addictions, and those lusts and desires and addictions will continue to grow ever stronger, but never will there be even the hint of satisfaction or shred of fulfillment for those lusts and desires and addictions. If you think for a moment about what that would be like, then I think you’ll have to agree that, helpless as he will be to change his circumstances, he will nevertheless care very much.
So the “I don’t care” answer is really not an entirely honest one after all, by virtue of the fact that one way or another he will one day be forced to care.
So what does this all boil down to?
Three honest answers to the question, “Where will you be, 5 minutes after you die?”
Approaching them again, only in reverse; The “I don’t care” answer; which loses its credibility the moment that person either dies or comes to an awareness of his dire need for God in his life.
Next, the “I don’t know” answer, which ceases to exist the moment that person hears the truth and is forced to choose one side of the fence or the other.
And that brings us full-circle to the only answer which is both, honest, and unchanging...the Believer’s answer; “I WILL BE WITH JESUS”.
So we may as well spend the rest of our time talking about that answer and what it means; but I want to preface my closing statements with this challenge:
If you are listening to/reading this and have been paying attention, then you have to be either a Believer, or an I don’t care person.
You may have come to this point in time as an I don’t know person, but that person went **POOF**, after I told you about God’s promise of eternal life with Him through faith in Christ’s death and resurrection.
If you are capable of honesty (in your own heart and private thoughts, even if not with anyone else), then you must see that you are either a confessed Believer in Christ, or you are continuing to deceive yourself into thinking that you do not care.
If that is where you are; if you are sneering inside and smugly telling yourself that I am a loon, and that you don’t care, there’s nothing I can do for you.
Just please don’t let yourself be further deceived into thinking that attending church and singing with Believers or giving money to good causes or acting like a ‘good person’ will help you in the end.
As one fiction writer put it, “We all owe a death”. Those who have Believed in Jesus have already died. They have died to sin and the old life, and in exchange, Jesus has given them His new kind of Life; the kind that cannot be changed or taken away. Here are some scripture verses to prove that claim:
John 11:25,26
“Jesus said to Martha, ‘I am the resurrection and the life; he who believes in Me shall live even if he dies, and everyone who lives and believes in Me shall never die. Do you believe this?’”
John 5:24
“Truly, truly, I say to you, he who hears My word, and believes Him who sent Me, has eternal life, and does not come into judgment, but has passed out of death into life.”
and Paul wrote:
“I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me, and delivered Himself up for me”.
So you see, if you have never recognized your need for a Savior, and felt sorry for your sin and turned to God and believed in Jesus’ shed blood for salvation, then in reality you are a corpse. You are spiritually dead in trespasses and sins, and being in church or giving money to the poor, or engaging in all the most pious religious exercises won’t help you in that condition, any more than makeup and nice clothes will keep a dead body from stinking.
Jesus said that God is the God of the living, not the God of the dead. He cannot be your God until He imparts His own special life to you, and if you remain in your present condition you are only fooling yourself. Long after Abraham had left this world, Jesus spoke to the religious elite of His day as though Abraham was alive, and they were dead. That is because God doesn’t define life and death the way the world defines it. Abraham still lives...even if you who are reading this right now, are dead.
One day you will stand before Him and try to justify yourself with having gone to church and served on committees and having fixed the church plumbing or helped to distribute goods to the poor; and, sadly, He will say, “Depart from Me...I never knew you”. He cannot deny Himself. He is the God of the living.
You either die now, willingly and voluntarily and let Him give you His life, or you cling desperately to the shallow facade of life you think you have now, and in the end, die the death that goes on forever.
Are you beginning to care just a little? I hope so.
Let’s talk now about the only answer that is both honest, and unchangeable.
“I will be with Jesus”.
I will try to explain why the Believer can give such an answer, and so confidently.
Many people who are not Believers become offended when Christians confidently claim that they are going to go to Heaven. They are offended because they are still under that deception of thinking that salvation must be earned and worked at to be kept; so, it sounds to them as though the Christian is bragging that they are good enough for Heaven.
In reality, what gives the Believer his confidence in where he will spend eternity, is the knowledge that he is indeed not worthy, but that God, through Christ, has provided Heaven for him free of cost. When the Believer understands this, two things happen:
1. He knows that he can put all his trust and hope in that promise, because none of it came from or is dependent on his goodness or ability. It all came from God, Who is faithful and able to fulfill His promises.
2. The Believer understands that since God is the One who invented the plan of salvation, and carried it out, and offers it to all who believe, then only something stronger than God could ever reverse that process. Since the Believer knows that God is all powerful and there is no power above Him, then the Believer can rest securely, speak confidently, and live victoriously over all the circumstances of life.
But there is really a third thing that happens in the one who Believes the claims of Christ.
He is transformed into someone who does know; with a knowledge that the most brilliant of minds outside of Christ cannot ever have...and into someone who does care; much more than any simply human heart can care...because now he is caring with a heart that is being made like Christ’s heart.
Because he now has the divine ‘knowing’ and ‘caring’ in him, it is not boasting at all - but simply testifying of truth - to say as Paul said in II Corinthians 5:9
“Therefore also we have as our ambition, whether at home (with the Lord) or absent, to be pleasing to Him.”
If you are a Believer and you know that you are a Believer, I would challenge you to do some soul-searching today. Don’t think of yourself sitting piously in the church pew, but think of your daily life; your habits; your daily practices; your habitual responses to the people and the circumstances that come into your life; and ask yourself this question: “Is it my AMBITION ... to be pleasing to Him?”
If you tell yourself ‘yes’, then don’t let it rest there; go on to ask yourself, “Does my private life...and do my private thoughts...support my claim to have as my ambition, to be pleasing to Him?”
If you read verse 10, you will see that Paul is telling us that we all must appear before the judgment seat of Christ.
If you are an “I don’t care” person, don’t let this bother you one bit. This verse isn’t talking about you. You will not stand before the judgment seat of Christ. You are already judged, and all you need to do is go on not caring, and the only thing you will need to be concerned with is going before the Judge for sentencing.
If you are a Believer, you are one that Paul is talking to here. He is saying that we as Believers...we whose sins have already been judged and put away forever...will stand to have our works judged, whether good or bad, useful or worthless, gold or dross.
We don’t ever have to worry about being rejected by God. We are accepted forever in the Beloved, Jesus Christ.
We only need to be concerned with whether our works will be judged as good or bad, and that is why it is so important now to “have as our AMBITION, to be pleasing to Him”
I need to close now; but I’m going to ask you not to stop thinking now. I would admonish you to go, as soon as you can, to a place where you won’t be disturbed, and read the rest of this chapter from II Corinthians.
If you are a Believer, please note especially, verses like 17-19. I pray that as you read and meditate on those verses, God will give you an assurance in your heart and mind that perhaps you have never sensed before; an assurance of His love and His provision for you; an assurance of what He has made you. NOT improved; NOT renovated; but a NEW CREATURE. A NEW MAN. A NEW CREATION, IN CHRIST.
Also please note in verse 19 that He has not counted your trespasses against you. You stand before Him clean and accepted for eternity. Let the knowledge of that give you the joy and love for Him that will drive you to live as ambassadors for Christ; pleading if you must with the “I don’t knows” and the “I don’t cares” to simply believe and be reconciled to God.
If you are reading this and you either came to it as an “I don’t care”, or as an “I don’t know” but now have become an “I don’t care”, then I am now pleading with you; PLEASE CARE!
Care now. You will someday; why not now?
As though God were entreating through me, I beg you on behalf of Christ, BE RECONCILED TO GOD. Please care enough just for a moment; just long enough to understand that - He made Him (Jesus) Who knew no sin, to be sin on your behalf, that you might become right with God in Him.
My prayer is that all who hear or read this sermon, and many others as a later result of our witness, will be able to say with confidence, “Five minutes after I die, I will have been with Jesus, for five, glorious minutes!” AMEN.
