The Death Experience

Is there a realm outside of what we see? Is there an unseen world operating alongside this one, right now, while you go about your ordinary day?

One of the most deceptively simple moments in all of Scripture quietly answers that question. In Luke 2:15, after the angels announced the birth of Jesus to a group of shepherds, the text says they “left them and went back to heaven.”

No explanation. No distance described. They were present, and then they weren’t. They didn’t travel far. They simply stepped out of what we can see into what we normally cannot. Wait - before you think I’m crazy, stay with me.

This isn’t an isolated moment. In Genesis 28, Jacob is sleeping in the wilderness with a rock for a pillow when God gives him a dream of a staircase stretching between heaven and earth, angels moving up and down on it.

When he wakes, he says something profound: “Surely the Lord is in this place, and I did not know it.” God was there the whole time. Activity was happening all around him. He just didn’t have eyes to see it.

And in 2 Kings 6, when a servant panicked at the sight of an enemy army surrounding the city, the prophet Elisha prayed not for deliverance but for sight, and suddenly the servant could see the hills were full of heavenly armies that had been there all along.

The crisis hadn’t changed. The enemy hadn’t moved. But the servant’s perception of reality had been completely transformed.

Jesus made this picture undeniable. In John 1:51, He pointed back to Jacob’s dream and essentially said, that staircase, that connection between heaven and earth, that’s Me. The stairway is Jesus - He’s the connection between here and Heaven.

And the Apostle Paul, in 2 Corinthians 12, describes being caught up to what he called the third heaven, not the sky, not the cosmos, but the actual dwelling place of God, and what he encountered there was so overwhelming, so far beyond human language, that he wrote he didn’t even know whether he was in his body or out of it.

Even today, many speak of Near Death Experiences. They vary and some don’t align with real truth - the Bible, yet it’s a possible glimpse of the next realm and many of the NDE’s are verified.

Just make sure you are relying on God’s word and not the words and images of ordinary people. Your eternity relies on it.

Now, if you’re someone who finds all of this hard to believe, I understand. But consider this. If you went to the deepest parts of the ocean, you would find creatures so strange and so far beyond what we’d expect that they’d seem like science fiction.

Same with space, the further we look, the more we find, and we’ve barely scratched the surface. Just because something is unseen doesn’t mean it isn’t real.

God is so vast, so holy, so far beyond the limits of human comprehension that you and I are quite literally a speck in the grand scheme of His creation.

A little humility about what we don’t know might be the most honest position any of us can take.

Here is what all of this leads to. Hebrews 9:27 tells us that everyone must die once, and after that face judgment.

Death is not a wall, it’s a door. And on the other side of that door, awareness doesn’t decrease. It expands. What was unseen becomes undeniable.

But here’s the part that causes me to pump the brakes every time I think about it, you won’t get to choose your destination at the moment of death.

That choice is made before the door opens. Jesus said in John 14:6, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. The only way to the Father is through me.”

Not a way. The way.

And for those who follow Him, Revelation 21 tells us the finish line is a new heaven and a new earth, where God’s presence is with His people fully and forever.

So the question isn’t simply whether an unseen world exists. The better question is, who will you follow today?

What truth will you actually investigate and settle in your heart before you have your own death experience?

The room you’re in right now is not empty of God’s presence. The silence you feel is not the absence of His activity. And like Jacob in the wilderness, you may be standing in a place where the Lord is fully present, and not even know it yet.

The death experience is not about discovering something new. It’s about stepping, fully and finally, into what has always been there. The only question is who you’re connected to when that door opens.

Right now, as you read this, you can say: God, I’m a sinner, Jesus lived and died and suffered to pay for my past, present and future sins. I accept Him not just as Savior to rescue me from Hell, but also as my Lord. To learn about Him, thank Him, follow Him, love Him, and let Him Lord over my life. I accept Him now.

Teach me, help me, and prepare me for my death experience. It’s coming sooner than I know. IJNIP amen ♥️