HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, May 20, 2025 – Life after death is either a goal, a pipedream, a delusion, or a guarantee, depending on what you believe in. For me, life after death is a promise that I hope will be fulfilled as it was for Jesus and for others mentioned in scripture whose bodies changed from earthly to heavenly in a twinkling. This is the life after death I’m aiming for.

But getting to that heavenly body will require a radical transition. We won’t just wake up one day and find that our body is now perfect and immortal. No amount of diet, exercise, plastic surgery, or wishful thinking can make us perfect, let alone immortal: Only God can do that for us.

The transition from an imperfect mortal body to a perfect immortal one involves physical death. Just as we died spiritually to be reborn, gaining God’s Holy Spirit in the process, we’ll someday also die physically in order to gain physical immortality. And if the ecstasy of our spiritual rebirth is anything to go by, I expect the gaining of our heavenly body will be at least equally as ecstatic, if not more so. If this is the case (and I truly believe it is), it’s something to be desired; not feared, desired.

This transition is the resurrection. It’s what Jesus preached and what he underwent in the privacy of his tomb cave, after which he emerged unrecognizable both in form and voice, though his soul remained the same. It’s worth noting that being resurrected is not the same as being raised from the dead. Elijah raised a boy from the dead, as did Elisha. Jesus also raised several children from the dead and then famously raised his friend Lazarus. But these “raised” people retained the same earthly bodies (that is, imperfect and mortal) they had prior to their death, and so they weren’t resurrections. They were a return to life, much like people can be returned to life through medical interventions like defibrillators, heart massage, CPR, or adrenaline injections. In modern parlance, they’re NDEs (near-death experiences) rather than permanent deceases.

Resurrection requires the permanent decease of everything that is mortal. We’re not recycled back into a different body, like the deeply flawed reincarnation theory proposes; our body is transformed from mortal to immortal. When he appeared to his disciples after his resurrection, Jesus explained that he was not yet “ascended” but was in the process of being so. Still, in his newly immortalized body, he was able to appear and disappear at will and to have his wounds probed without feeling any pain. He then later literally rose up into the air in front of several witnesses, disappearing into the clouds. A mortal body cannot do these things.

Every one of us who makes it to Heaven will transition from an imperfect mortal body into a perfect immortal one. Our body will change at our resurrection the same way as our spirit changed at our rebirth, but our soul will stay the same because God made our soul to last forever. Did you know that your personality is seated in your soul? And just as your personality didn’t change at your rebirth, it also won’t change at your resurrection. The “you” you are now will continue for all eternity, shedding at physical death only those personality traits that don’t belong in Heaven. Hopefully, when our time comes, there won’t be that many traits to shed.

I don’t know about you, but I am so looking forward to the transition! I’m not going to do anything to hasten it (God doesn’t want us to do that), but I’m also not doing anything to delay it. I’m not interested in prolonging my days here on Earth; I’m grateful for whatever time God allots me, but I’m not going to beg for more time, like Hezekiah did. I want to be where Jesus is and to go through the transition that Jesus went through to get there. I want to be perfected and immortalized in the way that God promises us we will be and Jesus showed us we can be.

I want to be resurrected. I want to ascend.

I want to transition.

I want to go Home.