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III. The Intermediate State
A. THE SCRIPTURAL VIEW OF THE INTERMEDIATE STATE.
1. THE SCRIPTURAL REPRESENTATION OF BELIEVERS BETWEEN DEATH AND THE
RESURRECTION.
The usual position of the Reformed Churches is that the souls of believers
immediately after death enter upon the glories of heaven. In answer to the question, “What
comfort does the resurrection of the body afford thee?” the Heidelberg Catechism says: “That
not only my soul, after this life, shall be immediately taken up to Christ its Head, but also that
this my body, raised by the power of Christ, shall again be united with my soul, and made like
the glorious body of Christ.”[Q. 57.] The Westminster Confession speaks in the same spirit,
when it says that, at death, “The souls of the righteous, being then made perfect in holiness,
are received into the highest heavens, where they behold the face of God in light and glory,
waiting for the full redemption of their bodies.”[Chap. XXXII, I.] Similarly, the Second Helvetic
Confession declares: “We believe that the faithful, after bodily death, go directly unto
Christ.”[Chap. XXVI.] This view would seem to find ample justification in Scripture, and it is well
to take note of this, since during the last quarter of a century some Reformed theologians have
taken the position that believers at death enter an intermediate place, and remain there until
the day of the resurrection. The Bible teaches, however, that the soul of the believer when
separated from the body, enters the presence of Christ. Paul says that he is “willing rather to be
absent from the body, and to be at home with the Lord.” II Cor. 5:8. To the Philippians he writes
that he has a “desire to depart and to be with Christ,” Phil. 1:23. And Jesus gave the penitent
malefactor the joyous assurance, “To-day shalt thou be with me in paradise,” Luke 23:43. And
to be with Christ is also to be in heaven. In the light of II Cor. 12:3,4 “paradise” can only be a
designation of heaven. Moreover, Paul says that, “if the earthly house of our tabernacle be
dissolved, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens,”
II Cor. 5:1. And the writer of Hebrews cheers the hearts of his readers with this thought among
others that they “are come to the general assembly and church of the firstborn who are
enrolled in heaven,” Heb. 12:23. That the future state of believers after death is greatly to be
preferred to the present appears clearly from the assertions of Paul in II Cor. 5:8 and Phil. 1:23,
quoted above. It is a state in which believers are truly alive and fully conscious, Luke 16:19-31; I
Thess. 5:10; a state of rest and endless bliss, Rev. 14:13.
2. THE SCRIPTURAL REPRESENTATION OF THE STATE OF THE WICKED BETWEEN DEATH AND
THE RESURRECTION.
The Westminster Catechism says that the souls of the wicked after death
“are cast into hell, where they remain in torments and utter darkness, reserved to the
judgment of the great day.” Moreover, it adds: “Besides these two places (heaven and hell) for
souls separated from their bodies, the Scripture acknowledgeth none.”[Chap. XXXII.] And the