Christians: after you die, straight to Heaven or ressurection at Judgement Day?

Question

I was raised in the Christian faith, and I was always told that when you die, you go to Heaven or Hell, where you live on simultaneously with those still alive on Earth. I.e. when my father died, I was told "he is looking down on us from Heaven now" etc.

However, looking through the biblical quotations and websites, it seems now to me that the Christian view is that when we die, we die and are non-existant until Judgement Day, where we're all raised from the dead, judged, and then assigned to Heaven or Hell. In this view, the dead are not "amongst the living" in the way described above.

Which of these do you believe? And do you have quotes from the Bible to support your view?

Answer 1

Ressurection after Judgement Day. And eternal life on the planet that God marked as the home for human beings.

Answer 2

Afterlife-Luke 16:19-31 you do live after you die, Jesus gave this parable about the rich man who was wicked and the poor man. Parables are stories Jesus gave so that people would have to study them to find their true meaning, this has to do with the Afterlife.
Since Jesus was resurrected we will all be resurrected as well. (john 5:28-29, john 11:25)
John 5: 24-25 says that the dead will hear the Gospel, so they are still alive and will have a chance to hear and accept the gospel if they didn't while they were alive in the flesh.
Concerning Heaven 2 Corinthians 12:2 (a third Heaven?) 1 Corinthians 15: 40-42 talks about different degrees of bodies, which I believe to be the different degrees of heaven as Paul mentioned the Third heaven.
So when you die you don't go directly to heaven, but as in the parable in Luke, a type of waiting period and maybe for the rich man that was his personal hell. But then we get resurrected and then judged, and then God tells us where to go. Maybe to the third heaven, maybe to the first or second, all depends on how you live your life here on earth.

Answer 3

Hello SnogleDK! Do you have to be a Christian to respond?
Oops! Wrong planet must have made a mistake.
Christian theologians have been beating themselves up and burning each other on stakes for the lack of a better understanding. How many Gods are there? For there to be a heaven and hell their "dominions" would each need a ruler or
"boss". So...God is the boss of Heaven and the devil is the boss of hell. The only problem is that there is no hell. You are close to God (heaven) or you are far from God (hell). God is the devils boss. He calls all the shots and the devil is a little guy. Sneaky and dangerous but in noway equal to God.
How could existance become non-existant. What? kinda like God has this BIG refrigerator that He lets the "saved" chill out in till Judgement Day?
Spiritually alive or spiritually dead is the key.
Until later! Chill out!

Answer 4

Well, that's sorta right. The people that are dead and just dead are the ones that died before Jesus did. After that, we gained the ability to enter Heaven, Purgatory, or Hell. At Judgement Day, the living will be brought together with the dead and those in Purgatory, and all that aren't already in Heaven or Hell will be assigned one of the two.

Answer 5

Dear,
A christian is one who follows Jesus Christ, not the one who follows a belief system. In that aspect i am a Christian.

Heaven and Hell are within us. Not somewhere outside.

Church always confronted science. They even murdered scientists for not following them. Do you think they are Christians? Are they following Jesus, the master? No, Never. They are hunting for their powerful survival. Wake up!!

Your body is mass. Your soul is energy. Both never get destroyed. Science tell that energy can't be destroyed. The soul, the energy in your body... how can it go to heaven or hell then? Your body also gets converted into some or other form of mass. Then where are you going after death? Nowhere. You are always here in one or other form. The same energy and mass may take another form of organism. You are always here.

There is something called "Sanatana Dharma", (eternal truth) which is the root of today's Hinduism. Learn more about it. Learn more about your self. Then you will not ask questions... You have all your answers there.

Master's grace
www.artofliving.org

Answer 6

The Bible says, "Absent from the body, present with the Lord", but I personally do not believe that means instantly because if it did then who is going to be resurected? I don't know the passage but I know there is a place, probably in Revelation where it talks about Jesus' return and that the dead in Christ shall rise. I think that we are all going to go into a kind of sleep when we die and then when Jesus comes back we will be given new bodies and go with Him. That is the ones that are born again, those that weren't, well, God will judge them at another time.

Answer 7

My belief is, that when we die our spirit goes to another plane to await the end of time, at which time the Lord will descend to judge the living and the dead, I`m not a bible reader, but a Christian who believes the prayer, "The Apostles Creed" which contains this quote, 'sitting at the right hand of God the Father almighty, from thence he shall come to judge the living and the dead."

Answer 8

Punter, get your mind out of the gutter, quit reading blogs on the I-net and read the scriptures, Proverbs 3:5-7 says " Trust in the Lord Always and lean not on your own understanding, in ALL YOUR ways Acknowledge Him and He will direct your paths. Scripture also says, in Hebrews 13:9 not to be carried away with divers and strange doctrines, also in Hebrews 9:27 it says, " and as it is appointed unto men, once to die, but after this, the judgment. If you go to the Bible you will find the right answers

Answer 9

Well the key is that Jesus often said that Christians will never die. When their physical bodies wear out or get sick or in an accident and die, their spirit retrurns immediately to God from where it came. In the twinkling of an eye, they pass from physical life to spiritual life. Judgment for a Christian is not to determine heaven or hell. That is determined at the moment of his or her salvation. Judgment is to determine the size of his reward. It's a pretty deep subject and people confuse things in Revelation with this topic. But the events in Revelation occurred long ago. I wish we could talk in greater deatil but Q&A is not the place.

Jhn 11:26 And whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die. Believest thou this?

Always remember - we have both physical life and spiritual life. When the physical life ends, the spiritual kicks in. For non-Christians there will be TWO SEPARATE DEATHS - first physical and then spiritual. A soul is a terrible thing to waste and eternity is a long long time.

Answer 10

Ezekiel 18:20. The soul that sinneth, it shall die. The son shall not bear the iniquity of the father, neither shall the father bear the iniquity of the son: the righteousness of the righteous shall be upon him, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon him.
James 2:24. Ye see then how that by works a man is just.
Matthew 19:16-17. "And behold, one came up to him, saying, "Teacher, what good deed must I do, to have eternal life?" "And he said to him, "Why do you ask me about what is good? One there is who is good. If you would enter life, keep the commandments."
James 2:26. "Faith without works is Dead"
Proverbs 21:18. “The wicked is a ransom for the righteous, and the faithless for the upright”