CHRISTIANS: When does the afterlife begin: Immediately after death or when everyone is raised from the dead?

Question

In other words, do Christians lie dead for a while, then rise up, or are they taken into heaven immediately from the moment their body dies?

Answer 1

your eternal soul ascends straight to heaven immediately after death.

Answer 2

After one dies. NO one goes to eternal hell or eternally to the material heaven. What ever ones consciousness is at the moment of death is what they will attain. Either hell heaven, or earth (in the materiel world) depending on their desire and karma and if one thinks of God they go to the eternal Spiritual Kingdom. The problem is in the Bible there is confusion on the two heavens The material heaven which is part of Creation and the eternal heaven which is never created it is eternal. For info google harekrishnatemple.com Read Bhagavad Gita as it is BY Bhaktivedanta Prabhupada- tells everything one wants to know about karma reincarnation, after life etc. Limbo is actually when one is in the whom of a mother again. A type of sleep for seven moths and then they become conscious within the whom.

Answer 3

There are two parts to death; the physical and the spiritual. At death the physical body goes into the grave and the soul/spirit goes to an intermediate state. For the saved that state is in the presence of the Lord but not heaven. For the unrepentant sinner that intermediate state is hell.

The soul/spirit will remain in that state until the Second Coming of Christ. At that time He will resurrect all. The souls/spirits of the saved will be resurrected into a new glorified body and reside in Heaven for eternity. The Souls/Spirits of the unsaved will resurrect into their old bodies (as they were before death) and be sent to reside in the Lake of Fire and Brimstone for eternity. That is God’s plan for saved and sinners.

Answer 4

Resting in peaceful sleep until Christ comes again. The dead in Christ will rise first.

Ephesians 5:14, 1 Thessalonians 4:16-17

Answer 5

The story of the rich man and the beggar Lazarus will answer your question ... I know you guys hate cut and paste, but I'll just do the beginning so you can get the idea....


"There was a certain rich man, which was clothed in purple and fine linen, and fared sumptuously every day: And there was a certain beggar named Lazarus, which was laid at his gate, full of sores, And desiring to be fed with the crumbs which fell from the rich man's table: moreover the dogs came and licked his sores.

And it came to pass, that the beggar died, and was carried by the angels into Abraham's bosom: the rich man also died, and was buried; And in hell he lift up his eyes, being in torments, and seeth Abraham afar off, and Lazarus in his bosom.

And he cried and said, Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus, that he may dip the tip of his finger in water, and cool my tongue; for I am tormented in this flame."

Answer 6

The after life began the moment you believe; dying to sin. You have eternal life while here on earth. Death is just a transition to the other side to be with the Father.

Christians do not die; they sleep. They sleep because when they believed they do not die again.

For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish but have everlasting life. When? Now.

Answer 7

My religion, Baptist, believes that we are dead and stay there until Jesus' Second coming in which he will say, "All the dead in Christ shall rise." And then the others on earth will be taken into the Heavens.

Answer 8

The BODY..... Goes into Destruction... to be raised LATER... both for the JUST.... and the UN-JUST!

But the Spirit......

(2Corinthians 5:5-to-8) Now he that hath wrought us for the selfsame thing is God, who also hath given unto us the earnest of the Spirit.

(2Co 5:6) Therefore we are always confident, = = = knowing that, = = = whilst we are at home in the body, = = = we are absent from the Lord:

(2Co 5:7) (For we walk by faith, not by sight:)

(2Co 5:8) We are confident, I say, and willing rather to be absent from the body, = = = and to be present with the Lord.

Thanks, RR

Answer 9

The answer plain and simple is that the next life begins after everyone is raised from the dead but please allow me to ellaborate.

Most people believe we go to Heaven of hell immediately after death but this not supported by the original scripture. It's a man-made concept that either began because of mistranslations in the Bible or the Bible was purposely mistranslated to fit uphold the concept.

The fact is, everyone goes to hell until the rapture (the return of Jesus) occurs. Here's where the bible tells us that;

1Th 4:16 For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first:
17 Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord.

If we went to Heaven immediately after death, there would be no "dead in Christ"

The belief that the sinful and non-believers go to hell for an eternity of fiery punishment is based soley on the misinterpretation of four words that are translated as "hell". Here are the facts.

In the OT, the word Hell comes from the Hebrew word she'ôl which means "The place of the dead". There are also several places where she'ôl is translated as simply the grave

In the NT, it comes from the Greek word hadēs
which has the same meaning as she'ôl and from the word geenna which is a "valley of (the son of) Hinnom; gehenna (or Ge-Hinnom), a valley of Jerusalem, used (figuratively) as a name for the place (or state) of everlasting punishment"

Notice the word "figuratively".

There's only one other word translated as hell. It's used only once and refers to fallen angels, not man:

"tartaroō" meaning "Tartaros (the deepest abyss of Hades)"

Here's the verse:

2Pe 2:4 For if God spared not the angels that sinned, but cast them down to hell, and delivered them into chains of darkness, to be reserved unto judgment

In Revelations, hell is mentioned only four times and each time it's simply associated with death. i.e. Rev 20:14 And death and hell were cast into the lake of fire. This is the second death. The word death in "second death" is literal and it means that hades, including tartaros will be destroyed. That rather disproves eternal tortures doesn't it?

Jesus went to Hell before he was resurrected and that's where all the dead go while awaiting Judgement Day. It's simply a waiting place, not a place of eternal damnation and fiery torture.

People will be rewarded or punished according to the way they live their life while on this Earth but eternal torture in Hell is not on the agenda.

I know I'm giving much more of an answer then you were looking for but I'm not good at short answers. My first sentence would simply not suffice without an indepth explanation.

Edit: Some people point to the folowing verse as evidence that we go to heaven immediately: Luk 23:43 And Jesus said unto him, Verily I say unto thee, To day shalt thou be with me in paradise.

The word today comes from the Greek sēmeron which means Neuter (as adverb) of a presumed compound of the article G3588 (“tau” changed to “sigma”) and G2250; on the (that is, this) day (or night current or just passed); genitively now (that is, at present, hitherto)

The number's above are the reference numbers used by James Strong in his Exhaustive Concordance and refered to as "Strong's numbers". The word can be taken either as "this day" or "this age". This verse does not prove the "Heaven immediately after death" concept.

Answer 10

This could get interesting...


Ecclesiastes 9:5 precludes an afterlife: "For the living know that they shall die: but the dead know not any thing, neither have they any more a reward; for the memory of them is forgotten." Another translation: "For the living know that they shall die: but the dead are not conscious, neither have they any more a reward; for the memory of them is forgotten."

Answer 11

The person will wait in a deep dreamless sleep till awakened in a new form/body and called into judgment. Note * this is only my outlook it does very with the individual.