The Interim State

On 5 August 1960 C. S. Lewis wrote to a correspondent:

"I believe in the resurrection, and also (rather less confidently) in the natural immortality of the soul. But the state of the dead till the resurrection is unimaginable. Are they in the same time that we live in at all. And if not, is there any sense in asking what they are 'now'?" Collected Letters, Volume III, p. 1177

It should not be surprising that C. S. Lewis found the state of the blessed dead until the resurrection to be unimaginable. After all, the Bible doesn't say much about it.

Certainly the presence of the souls of the blessed dead with Christ is assured by such verses as these:

"I tell you the truth, today you will be with me in paradise." Luke 23:43

"Do not let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God; trust also in me. In my Father's house are many rooms; if it were not so, I would have told you. I am going there to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am." John 14:1-3

But the description of this interim state, until the resurrection of the body, until the creation of the New Jerusalem (Revelation 21), is rather vague in Scripture. In fact, Jesus' story of the rich man and Lazarus (Luke 16:19-31) is one of the only pictures in Scripture I can think of which gives any description of this interim state.

"Are the blessed dead in the same time in which we live?" Lewis asks. In Revelation 6 the souls of the blessed dead under the altar are in some kind of time sequence for they ask: "How long, Sovereign Lord, holy and true, until you judge the inhabitants of the earth and avenge our blood?" Then each of these souls is given a white robe and told to "wait a little longer" until the full number of martyrs is completed.

Thus the blessed dead must be in some kind of time sequence. But are they in our same time sequence? Only God knows.

The hope of the Christian is that when he or she dies he or she will be with Christ. And then, as C. S. Lewis says at the end of Letters to Malcolm:

". . . after who knows what aeons of the silence and the dark, the birds will sing and the waters flow, and lights and shadows move across the hills, and the faces of our friends laugh upon us with amazed recognition.

"Guesses, of course, only guesses. If they are not true, something better will be. For 'we know that we shall be made like Him, for we shall see Him as He is.'"

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