Chapter 13

When Your Loved One Was Not a Believer

Hope and Postmortem Opportunity

Daniel sat in the pastor's office on a Tuesday afternoon, eleven months after his father's funeral. He had not slept well in any of those eleven months. His father, Frank, had been a good man — a steel-mill foreman for thirty-eight years, a husband for fifty-four, a man who never raised his voice in his children's hearing. He had also never, that anyone knew, made a clear profession of faith in Jesus Christ. He had gone to church on Christmas Eve and Easter when the kids were small. He had stopped going when the kids grew up. He had been kind to neighbors, generous to strangers, faithful to his wife. He had not, as far as anyone knew, ever knelt by a bed and asked Jesus to be his Savior.

After the funeral, an old friend of Daniel's had come up to him at the meal. The friend was a sincere Christian. He meant well. He laid a hand on Daniel's arm and said, "Brother, we have to be honest. Your dad's in hell." Then he walked away.

Daniel had not been able to pray the same way since. He could not bring himself to say his father was in hell. He also could not bring himself to lie and say his father was in heaven. He sat now across from his pastor, a coffee mug going cold in his hands.

"Pastor," he said, "I just need to know what is actually true. Not the easy answer. Not the harsh one. The true one. What does the Bible really say about my dad?"¹

Honoring the Question

I want to begin by saying something Daniel needed to hear, and that maybe you need to hear too. The ache you are carrying is sacred ground. It is not a sign of weak faith. It is not a sign that you are about to slide into something heretical. It is a sign that you loved someone, and you love God, and you are trying to hold both loves at once without letting either one drop.

Two answers fail this ache. The first is the flippant universal answer: "Don't worry — everyone goes to heaven somehow." That answer is not biblical, and the grieving heart usually senses it. It feels like a sugar pill — sweet at first, dissolved in seconds, doing nothing. The second answer is the harsh certainty: "The Bible says he didn't believe, and that's that. He's in hell. You have to trust God." That answer claims more than Scripture itself claims, and it leaves the bereaved with a God who looks like a courtroom clerk closing a file at the moment of last breath.

The Bible itself sits in a different place than either of those answers. It tells us that salvation is found in Christ alone, that no one comes to the Father except through Him, and that we should take the gospel with utter seriousness. And it also shows us a God whose love is wider, deeper, and more relentless than most of us have been told.² This chapter is for those who want both truths. The reverent gospel. And the relentless love.

What Scripture Clearly Teaches

Let me say first what every responsible Christian must say. Salvation is by grace, through faith, in Jesus Christ alone. Paul writes in Ephesians: "For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast" (Ephesians 2:8–9 ESV). Jesus Himself said, "I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me" (John 14:6 ESV).

We do not water this down. We do not reduce the cross. We do not say that good people go to heaven because they were good. No one — not your kind father, not your hardworking mother, not the loyal friend — enters the presence of God on the merit of their kindness. We enter only through Jesus, only by grace, only by faith.

But — and this is where Daniel's question must be carefully heard — Scripture does not actually teach that the precise moment of biological death is the absolute final second that any human being can ever encounter Christ. We have often assumed that the last beat of the heart slams a door shut. Many sermons say it that way. But Scripture itself does not say it that way. The Bible teaches that judgment follows death. It does not teach that judgment is identical to the moment of death. There is a difference. And that difference is where biblical hope can stand.³

The Biblical Foundation for a Wider Hope

Let me lay out the case carefully. There are at least three passages that, taken together, suggest that Christ's saving work reaches further than the moment of bodily death. We will look at two of them at length here.

The first is from First Peter, chapter 3:

This passage is famously hard to interpret. Christians have read it three or four different ways across the centuries. But several careful evangelical scholars argue that the most natural reading is this: between His death and resurrection, Christ went, in His spirit, and preached to the spirits — meaning, to the dead — who had perished in the days of Noah. That is, He preached the gospel to people who had died in unbelief.⁴ John Cooper, no soft-hearted speculator but a careful evangelical defender of the conscious intermediate state, treats this reading as a serious possibility, well supported in the history of Christian interpretation.⁵

A few verses later, Peter says it again — even more clearly:

Read those words slowly. The gospel was preached to those who are dead. Why? "That they might live in the spirit the way God does." Whatever else is going on in this passage, it is hard to escape the plain words: the gospel reaches the dead. Their bodies have died — judged in the flesh, the way bodies are. But the gospel reached them so that their souls might live.⁶

Now here is the second passage, from Romans:

Christ is Lord of the dead. Not just a memory among the dead. Not just the file-clerk who pronounces the verdict on those who have died. He is Lord — present, active, sovereign — among the dead. His Lordship did not stop at the cemetery gate. He died, He rose again, and one of the explicit reasons given for that whole arc is that He might be Lord both of the dead and of the living. The dead are still under His Lordship. They are still within His reach.⁷

A common objection is, "But doesn't Hebrews 9:27 say that it is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes judgment?" Yes, it does. And that verse is true and important. But notice what it actually says. It says that judgment follows death. It does not say that the last second of breathing seals the verdict. There is a real and final judgment. Hebrews does not tell us how long the gap between death and judgment is, or what God may yet do during that gap. What we know is that judgment is coming. What we are not told is that pursuit has ended.⁸

Three texts. Christ preached to dead spirits. The gospel was preached even to those who are dead. Christ is Lord of the dead. Together they suggest a wider scope of Christ's work than the one many of us were given.

This Is Not a New Idea

Postmortem opportunity is not a brand-new invention of soft-hearted modern Christians who could not stomach hard doctrine. Some of the most respected teachers of the early church — men whose writings shaped the creeds we still recite — held something very like it.

Clement of Alexandria, writing in the late second century, taught that Christ's preaching to the spirits reached beyond the days of Noah and that the gospel could find people who had died without hearing it. Origen, despite his other controversies, held that God's pursuit of the lost continued beyond this life. Gregory of Nyssa, one of the great Cappadocian Fathers and a teacher in profound continuity with the Nicene faith, held a deep and abiding hope in the saving reach of God's love.⁹

In our own time, careful evangelical scholars have made serious biblical and theological cases for postmortem opportunity. James Beilby, in Postmortem Opportunity, lays out a thorough biblical and historical argument. Stephen Jonathan, in Grace Beyond the Grave, builds the case from Scripture and pastoral reasoning. Clark Pinnock, in A Wideness in God's Mercy, argued that God's offer of salvation is not arbitrarily cut off by physical death. Gabriel Fackre and Terrance Tiessen have engaged the question rigorously. Jerry Walls — a convinced evangelical philosopher — has argued at length that a God of perfect love continues to seek the lost.¹⁰ We are not making this up. We are joining a serious conversation that has been going on for nearly two thousand years.

What Postmortem Opportunity Does and Does Not Claim

Let me say very plainly what postmortem opportunity claims and what it does not claim. This matters because the position has often been caricatured.

Postmortem opportunity does NOT claim that everyone is saved in the end. It is not universalism. People can still finally and irrevocably reject Christ — and Scripture warns soberly that some do.

It does NOT claim that the gospel is unimportant or that earthly evangelism can be set aside. We are still commanded to preach Christ in this life, to invite friends and family to Him now, to live as missionaries while we have breath. Earthly faith matters. Earthly faith brings present joy, present transformation, and a clear hope at death.

It does NOT claim certainty about your specific loved one. We cannot say with confidence, "Your father is saved." We cannot say with confidence, "Your father is lost." We can say: he is in the hands of a God whose love does not give up.

What it DOES claim is this. The God who is love continues to love and pursue lost souls beyond death. That pursuit may take place during the dying process itself, in the intermediate state — that conscious "between time" before the resurrection (see Chapter 2) — and at or during the final judgment. It claims that no one will face final judgment without having had a real, personal encounter with the real Jesus, free from whatever distortions, traumas, prejudices, or hardened images of religion blocked them in this life. And it claims that those who, in that clear encounter, finally and freely respond in faith, will be saved through the same Christ who saves us.¹¹

A Glimpse from the Edge: The Howard Storm Case

One near-death experience case has come up again and again in this conversation, because it appears to show, in real time, exactly the kind of pursuit we are talking about. It is the case of Howard Storm.

Storm was a tenured art professor and chairman of the art department at Northern Kentucky University and, by his own description, a hardened atheist. He had spent decades dismissing Christianity.¹² In 1985, in Paris, he collapsed from a perforated stomach. During an extended period without resuscitation, he describes leaving his body, encountering at first dark and tormenting beings, and feeling himself dragged toward something that looked very much like the outer darkness Jesus warned about.

In the depths of that horror, he later said, an old Sunday school song from his childhood came back to him: Jesus loves me, this I know. He had not believed it for decades. But in that moment, alone in the dark, he cried out — almost in defiance, almost in desperation — "Jesus, please save me." A point of light appeared. The light came down to him, lifted him up, and held him close. He understood it to be Jesus. He later wrote that the love he experienced in that embrace was beyond any love he had ever known.¹³

He returned to his body. He left his career as a tenured art professor. He went to seminary. He became a pastor. He has spent the rest of his life telling this story — not as proof of anything, but as testimony.¹⁴

We do not build doctrine on Howard Storm. We build doctrine on Scripture. But we notice him. A soul that had said no to Christ for decades, in the moment of dying, met the real Jesus, cried out, and was rescued. If the door had slammed shut at the last heartbeat, what was Jesus doing there?¹⁵ (For more on encounters with Jesus in NDEs more broadly, see Chapter 9.)

So What Do We Tell Daniel?

What do we say to Daniel? What do we say to you, if you are Daniel?

We say this. We do not know with certainty where your father is. No honest pastor can promise you that. But here is what we do know. The God who has been pursuing your father all his life — through your mother's prayers, through every kindness shown him, through every quiet stirring of conscience — that God did not stop pursuing at the last breath. He is still the Lord of the dead. He is still seeking.

Whatever cartoon version of Christianity your father may have rejected — the angry pulpit-pounding from his childhood, the hypocrisy he saw at work, the wounding he received from religious people — that cartoon is not the real Jesus. The real Jesus, your father has met or will meet. And He will be exactly who He is: the One who took on flesh, bled on a cross, rose from a grave, and loves your father more than you do.¹⁶

So pray for your father. He is not beyond your prayers. He is not beyond God's reach. Hold real hope. Not the hope of certainty — we do not have certainty. Hold the hope of the character of God, the hope of the cross that paid for sins your father did not even know how to name, the hope of a Lord who does not stop loving when we stop breathing.

Trust the love of God. He is not done with the people you love.

For Your Reflection

1. Who is the loved one whose spiritual state weighs on your heart as you read this chapter? Take a moment to picture their face.

2. What have you been told about where they are now? Was it the harsh answer, the dismissive answer, or something else? How has it sat in your soul?

3. Does the picture of a God who keeps pursuing — even past death — stir hope in you, or does it feel hard to believe? Why?

4. When you imagine your loved one meeting the real Jesus — not the version they may have rejected — what would you want Jesus to say to them?

5. Is there a prayer for them you have stopped praying because you assumed it was too late? Would you be willing to start again?

6. What is it that Scripture promises you, and what is it that Scripture does not promise you, about this loved one? Can you sit honestly with both?

7. What would it mean for your grief, today, to entrust this person to the love of God instead of carrying their eternity on your own shoulders?

For Pastors and Caregivers

Daniel's question is one of the most common — and most consequential — questions in pastoral ministry. The way you answer it will shape his picture of God for the rest of his grief, and probably for the rest of his life. Take it slowly. Take it tenderly. Tell the truth.

Key pastoral observations. First, this is the question that drives more bereaved Christians out of the church than perhaps any other. People who have been told their unbelieving parent or sibling or child is certainly in hell, often delivered with a confidence Scripture itself does not display, frequently never come back to a church. Second, the bereaved person asking this question is rarely looking for a doctrinal lecture. They are looking for honest hope. Honest is the key word. They will know if you flinch from truth, and they will also know if you are giving them sugar.

What to say. "We don't know with certainty where your loved one is. But we have biblical reasons for real, warranted hope. The God who has been pursuing him his whole life did not stop at his last breath. He is the Lord of the dead and the living, and He is still seeking. Let's trust His character together." If they ask whether they can pray for the deceased, do not panic. You can say: "You can entrust your father to God. You can pour your love out in prayer. God is not bound by time the way we are." Resist the urge to over-systematize. They do not need a fully worked-out eschatology. They need a fully reliable God.

What NOT to say. Do not say, "Well, he's in hell — God's ways are higher than ours." That is not pastoral confidence; that is theological violence. Do not say, "I'm sure he's in heaven" if you do not actually know. Lying to comfort the grieving is a deep wound disguised as kindness. Do not shrug and say, "We just don't know," in a tone that cuts off the conversation. The bereaved person can hear that you do not want to engage. Engage. The Bible has more to offer than that shrug.

Watch-outs. This is theological territory where pastoral care and doctrinal precision must meet. If you are personally uncomfortable with postmortem opportunity, be honest about your discomfort, but do not weaponize your discomfort against the bereaved. Steel-man this position before you respond to it. If your tradition has not given you space to consider it, give yourself the gift of reading Beilby or Jonathan before the next funeral. Also watch for guilt. Many people in this situation are blaming themselves for not "witnessing harder" while their loved one was alive. Hear that. Address it. Do not let unresolved guilt go untended.

Next steps. After the conversation, do not vanish. Drop a note in two weeks. Pray for the bereaved by name, and for the deceased by name — and tell the bereaved you are doing it. If they want to read more, hand them a copy of Beilby's Postmortem Opportunity or Jonathan's Grace Beyond the Grave. Be willing to walk this slowly with them. Hope grows in. It rarely arrives all at once.

One more thing. If you yourself are the bereaved one — if you are the pastor whose own father, or mother, or brother, died without clear faith — you are allowed to hold this hope for yourself, too. The pastor is not exempt from grief, and not exempt from hope.

For Further Reading

James Beilby, Postmortem Opportunity: A Biblical and Theological Assessment of Salvation After Death (IVP Academic, 2021) — The most thorough recent evangelical case for postmortem opportunity, biblically careful and pastorally aware.

Stephen Jonathan, Grace Beyond the Grave: Is There Hope for Those Who Die Without Christ? (Wipf & Stock, 2014) — Accessible, biblically grounded, and written with grieving readers in view.

Jerry L. Walls, Does God Love Everyone? The Heart of What's Wrong with Calvinism (Cascade, 2016) — A philosophical-theological argument that God's love is genuinely universal in scope.

Clark H. Pinnock, A Wideness in God's Mercy: The Finality of Jesus Christ in a World of Religions (Zondervan, 1992) — A classic evangelical argument that hope rests on the character of God.

Gabriel Fackre, Ronald H. Nash, and John Sanders, What About Those Who Have Never Heard? Three Views on the Destiny of the Unevangelized (IVP, 1995) — A fair-minded, multi-view dialogue worth reading even where you disagree.