The following "Question" was asked by a member of the congregation at Grace Community Church in Panorama City, California, and "Answered" by their pastor, John MacArthur Jr. It was transcribed from the tape, GC 70-23, titled "Questions and Answers--Part 51."  A copy of the tape can be obtained by writing, Word of Grace, P.O. Box 4000, Panorama City, CA 91412 or by dialing toll free 1-800-55-GRACE. Copyright 2001 by John MacArthur Jr., All Rights Reserved.

Question

Answer

Believers who die--there’s nothing in the Bible to indicate that they’re watching over us. There’s nothing to indicate that they are even aware of what’s going on down here--nothing whatsoever. In fact, there’s every reason to assume they know nothing about what is going on down here. They are, to put it in the words of the old hymn, “lost in wonder, love, and praise.” Once they have entered into the presence of the Lord, you know, “absent from the body, present with the Lord,”; “to depart and be with Christ”--once they’ve left here and entered into the presence of the Lord, there is absolutely a total disconnect from this world. There is no indication in Scripture that they have any further knowledge of or awareness of the things going on in this world.

If, in fact, that were the case that would invade their perfection with imperfection. That would invade their holy environment with sin. That would invade their perfect fulfillment with dissatisfaction. So, there is nothing in the Scripture to indicate that that is the case and everything in the Scripture to indicate that when you leave here, you go into the presence of the Lord in which there is fullness of joy forevermore and your fellowship is with the church triumphant.

In Hebrews, chapter 12, it talks about the fact that we are encompassed about by a great cloud of witnesses. Now, to understand that, you need to only look at the cloud of witnesses that are identified in the prior chapter. Hebrews 11 lists all those people-“the heroes of faith” we call them--from Abraham and Sarah, which is a long passage, and Moses and all the way down to the prophets Isaiah and etc., etc.--Gideon and Barak and Jephthah and all those heroes of the faith. And in what sense are they a cloud of witnesses? They’re not a cloud of witnesses in the sense that they are sitting around witnessing us. Some preachers used to preach that they’re like filling a big heavenly stadium and we’re running in a track down here and they’re all rooting us on--that is not the image there. The picture there is that they are witnesses to the validity of living by faith, they don’t witness us; they witness to us about the validity of faith.

In other words, they chose faith over everything. Abraham chose to believe God over his own common sense, Moses chose to disdain the court of Pharaoh and to believe God to his own suffering, and many of those others are listed there who stopped the mouths of lions, who were sawn in half like Isaiah, who yielded up their lives to death and were martyred. They are all witnesses to the validity of living by faith in God. And so what we have in that cloud of witnesses is the whole Old Testament history of all the people who were benefited and blessed because they lived by faith. Their testimony is to the power of a life of faith! It’s not that they are “watching us.”

Added to Bible Bulletin Board's "MacArthur’s Questions and Answers" by:

Tony Capoccia
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