What happens when you die? I guess it's a question that we all have cause to think about at some time or other. It is the theme of Mitch Albom's popular book The Five People you Meet in Heaven". In the book we witness the final minutes of Eddies life in this world and the beginning of his life in the next.

"He awakes in the afterlife, where he learns that heaven is not a lush Garden of Eden but a place where your earthly life is explained to you by five people who were in it."

We journey with Eddie to meet his five people who explain to him the meaning of his life. Not everything Eddie learns is pleasant, for example the first of his five people tells Eddie that as a child he was unwittingly responsible for his death. The Blue Man seeks to assuage Eddies guilt by telling him: "You say you should have died instead of me. But during my time on earth, people died instead of me, too. It happens every day."

The second person that Eddie meets is his former Sergeant from the Second World War. Again Eddie's life is explained to him, as they talk about their time together in a prisoner of war camp and their escape. Though there is another unpalatable truth about his life to confront him, it was his sergeant who shot Eddie to stop him entering a burning building and who then was killed by a landmine in ensuring his men got home. The lesson he comes to teach Eddie "Dying? Not the end of everything. We think it is. But what happens is only the beginning."

Eddie then meets an old lady he never knew in life before meeting his wife. Eddies fifth and final person is a young Asian girl, the shock is in her words "You burn me". As an escaping prisoner of war Eddie had torched a house, the fleeting figure he thought he may have seen was this young girl. But as her actions make clear she forgives him, in some sense his whole life, meaningless as he saw it, was making up for what he did. His final act of saving a small girls life at the cost of his own part of making amends.

Having met his five people the book ends for Eddie with him in his wife's arms and God muttering the final word 'Home'.

It is an interesting thought; what happens when you die. Many of us would like it to be like that offered by Mitch Albom. A place where our lives are explained, where we meet our loved ones and see how our actions affected those around us. But the striking thing about Albom's vision of heaven is that it is all about me. It is all about Eddie.

Actually the Bible says heaven is not the end! The Bible doesn't just describe heaven - it talks about a new heaven and a new earth. It describes God recreating everything new, without the things which cause us to cry out for a new world in our current experience of this one. Heaven a glorious stop over, a little like Singapore on a flight to Australia, it is not the final destination.

The new earth is one that is far more appealing than Albom's fictitious heaven. Imagine a world with no pain, no suffering where you never again have to attend a funeral, still less the funeral of a young child. Where there is no crime; no mugging, no child abuse, no terrorism, no hatred, no lying, no envy. Where there is no illness; no Aids, no cancer, no food poisoning, no bird flu, not even a common cold.

It is a destination which is without anything to mar or ruin it, there is no sin, no rebellion against God, there is no battle to do what we know is right. It is where God is with his people. But sacrifice is part of the new creation, why? Because it is only through the death of Jesus in our place that we are made fit to stand before God and be given this future.

It is a place with no sin and we are drenched with sin. Jesus Christ dies to cleanse us, to pay our penalty, to die in our place so that we can be right with God and know that our future is assured.

"Dying? Not the end of everything. We think it is. But what happens is only the beginning." And the future is more glorious than a pier with those you knew gathered around you. It is a place in a new creation, a creation where God is known and knows us and where there is nothing imperfect. It is ours not because our final act is a heroic one but because God sent his Son into the world to die in our place. All we provide is our failure yet he provides us with his standing before God as his Perfect Son if we will believe in him.

Christianity & Culture