Hebrews 11 and Life After Death

Hebrews 11, "the faith chapter," reminds us about some of the many faithful acts done by our forefathers in the Old Testament. It also, in league with other Scriptures, reminds us again that the righteous do not go to heaven when they die, but are asleep in their graves awaiting the resurrection.

At the end of Heb. 11, in verses 39-40, we are told, "And all these, having obtained a good testimony through faith, did not receive the promise, God having provided something better for us, that they should not be made perfect apart from us."

The promise and being made perfect are linked together: the promise of perfection. What is this promise of perfection? Heb. 5:9 tells us: "And having been perfected, He [Jesus] became the author of eternal salvation to all who obey Him." It's the promise of salvation, of eternal life, to all who choose to obey God and walk in His ways!

If the faithful from past generations do not inherit eternal life apart from us, then they cannot be in heaven already, as we saw in a previous post on this topic. Indeed, as the Apostle Peter proclaimed on the Day of Pentecost in Acts 2, King David "is both dead and buried, and his tomb is with us to this day" (Acts 2:29) and "David did not ascend into the heavens" (Acts 2:26).

In fact, this passage in Hebrews that's the subject of this post is a perfect parallel of 1 Thes. 4:16-17, which describes the First Resurrection thusly: "For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of an archangel, and with the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ shall rise first. Then we who are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air."

All of God's firstfruits, those in the First Resurrection, will stand in God's presence together. The dead have not gone to heaven already. Heb. 11:39-40 further establishes these two truths.