People are looking for answers about life and death.
No doubt, you've wondered about life after death. What happens when we die?
Will we just cease to exist? Will we become ghosts haunting the attic of our
old house? Will we be reincarnated as some other creature? You know, the world
is filled with ideas about what happens to us when we die. But you know, as Bible
believers, we don't have to engage in such speculation and guessing games
because the Bible tells us both where we came from and where we're going. The Bible
traces the soul of man from conception into eternity. The soul of man doesn't
actually begin on the earth, it begins in Heaven.
Ecclesiastes 12:7 says that when we die the soul-- or the spirit--
returns to God who gave it. So at the moment of conception, when the egg meets
the sperm, a human life is created and God places a soul—or a spirit—into
that new body. And for the next 70 or 80 years, however long we live,
the physical body becomes the dwelling place of the spirit.
Second Corinthians 5:1 refers to our physical body as a tent. It is a
temporary dwelling place. But eventually the physical body wears out and we die.
It is at that moment that the spirit or the soul departs from the physical body.
James 2:26 says, "The body without the spirit is dead." The Psalmist says we live
70 or 80 years and then "we fly away" Psalm 90:10. But
where do we fly to? Where do we go when we die? All souls who died
go to a place that the Bible identifies as Hades. Hades is the waiting place
of the dead. It's kind of a holding area for disembodied spirits.
And both the righteous and the wicked go into Hades. Now, many people are
confused about that because they think of Hades as the dwelling place of the
wicked only, but that's incorrect. All of the dead good and bad, go to Hades. Now,
Luke 16 tells us that Hades is divided
two realms. One is called Paradise. It's where the faithful go. It's the place
Jesus told the thief on the cross he would go, Luke 23:43. The other
compartment of Hades is known as Torment. It's a place of suffering and
punishment. It's the destination where all of the wicked will go to await judgment.
With the exception of the Lord Jesus Christ, all of the souls who have
ever died are still in the Hadean realm. They're in Hades awaiting the day of the
Lord. But what's going to happen when the day of judgment arrives? On that day,
there will be a bodily resurrection of all of the dead who have died. John 5:28
Jesus said, "For the hour is coming in which all that are in the graves shall
hear His voice and shall come forth--they that have done good, unto the
resurrection of life, they that have done evil, unto the resurrection of damnation."
Now, in addition to the bodily resurrection on that day, Hades will be
emptied of all of the spirits and those spirits-- those souls-- with be reunited
with their bodies. But the body will be different then. The resurrected body will
not be one of flesh and blood. It will be a new incorruptible body. And then, both
the righteous and the wicked, will be gathered before God for their
pronouncement of judgment and at that time God will reward the righteous by
calling them to inherit Heaven, a place of eternal comfort and bliss. But the
wicked will be sentenced to hell,
a place of eternal fire in the lake that burns with fire and brimstone. Dear
friend, the most important issue in this discussion is in which of those
alternatives will you spend eternity?
You know, where you go when you die depends on what you do while you live. If
you're interested in a more in-depth study of what happens to us when we die
or a study on how to be saved from hell, we invite you to visit the following
links where you can find detailed lessons tracing the scriptures for these
very important topics.