And the LORD said to Moses, “You will soon rest with your fathers… Deuteronomy 31:16
15You, however, will go to your fathers in peace and be buried at a ripe old age. Genesis 15:15 (God speaking to Abraham)
Then Abraham breathed his last and died in a good old age, an old man and full of years, and was gathered to his people. Gen. 25:8
So Isaac breathed his last and died, and was gathered to his people, being old and full of days. And his sons Esau and Jacob buried him. Genesis 35:29
And when Jacob had finished commanding his sons, he drew his feet up into the bed and breathed his last, and was gathered to his people. Genesis 49:33
“For David, after he had served his own generation by the will of God, fell asleep, was buried with his fathers, and saw corruption; Acts 13:36
A common phrase in the Old Testament for death is “to be gathered with his fathers” or “gathered to his people.” We can pass right over this without pausing to reflect on the pregnant meaning of the text. In death the saints are not placed in an undifferentiated and mass people, but rather they are gathered to their clan, family and people. The assumption clearly is that grace runs in covenantal lines. Even in death the covenant bonds of Christian family are not extinguished.
The after life then is not merely a mass collection of individuals but will be characterized by the eternal reunion of families as in Christ. This language underscores that God works covenantally in salvation. The Christian expectation is that God saves us, our children, and our grandchildren to a thousand generations and further that those familial generations will be gathered in the after life as family.
At that time the circle will be unbroken.
That this mindset continues right through to the last book of the Bible is seen by the presence of all those nations as nations in the New Jerusalem. (Revelation 21:24-24; 22:2)
Not even in death are we atomistic individualistic integers. The family continues. This bespeaks an importance on family that contemporary Christianity has lost. We don’t speak of loved ones dying in Christ as being “gathered to their people,” or “gathered to their fathers.” Instead we speak about an abstract heaven.
Clearly the Biblical language is that one of the glories of death is taking one’s place again with one’s peoples.
God Himself identifies Himself as the God of families. The God-Man Jesus Himself brings this forth when He quotes from Exodus 3:6 saying to His enemies,
31 But about the resurrection of the dead—have you not read what God said to you, 32 ‘I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’? He is not the God of the dead but of the living.”
God, in His calling, calls families to Himself and those identified with their redeemed families in life continue to be identified with their redeemed families in death, if only because in Christ they remain alive, and that in their family relations and identities. This is why it can be said that when we die we are “gathered to our fathers,” / “gathered to our people.”
We are who we are because of the givens God has placed us in. Those givens are matters like our racial / ethnic heritage, our gender, our relationships — first as children and later as cousins, fathers or mothers and aunts or uncles. We are who we are because of those God given “givens.” Death does not annihilate the “givens” with which God bequeathed us. The idea that we are “gathered to our fathers” insinuates all that and more.
Even, and perhaps especially the relational given-ness of marriage doesn’t go away in the after-life. Many will appeal to Matthew 22, where Jesus says to His enemies who denied the resurrection and who were trying to flummox Him with their causitry,
30 At the resurrection people will neither marry nor be given in marriage; they will be like the angels in heaven.
Note that this passage is commonly taken as a defeater for the kind of reasoning used above. However Jesus is not denying that the deep seated affections and relationships created by marriage are eliminated but only that the institution itself will be eliminated. It is easy to imagine that the scaffolding of the relationship will be sloughed off while the relationship will continue to exist in the life beyond this life. This understanding would comport with St. Augustine’s observation,
“Marriages are on account of children; children on account of succession; succession on account of death. But in heaven, as there is no death, neither is there any marriage.”
True… there is no marriage, however that is not to say that the relationship established by the institution of marriage is negated. It is not to say that Husbands will not still have an especial closeness with their wives while on earth in the life after life. To deny this turns the life after life into a Gnostic and atomistic paradise.
The idea here is that if it is I as I who is entering life after life, then it is the I who existed with all the givens and realness of this life — but as glorified. Otherwise it would be some other I besides I myself who is experiencing life after life. In the life after life I will remain WASP, male, son, brother, husband, uncle, cousin, father and friend. The “givens” given by God in creation will be carried over into the fullness of redemption, except as glorified.
All of this is just a matter of reading the less clear Scripture in light of the more clear Scripture. Scripture explicitly teach that families and nations exist in the life after life. We can’t be gathered to our fathers in death without the idea that families continue. As such, the passage where Jesus deals with the Sadducees on the issue of marriage shouldn’t be allowed to overturn nations in the New Jerusalem in Revelation anymore then we allow Arminians to misuse passages to overturn the clear teaching of the Doctrines of Grace.
