When do we go to heaven in the bible

The major point, therefore, is that life now in the body is to be followed immediately by life then with Christ. As one must be either in or out of his body for there is no third alternative , so he must either be absent from or present with the Lord for there is no third alternative. In 2 Cor. Here he explains what this entails for the Christian. The two experiences are mutually exclusive. Departure from mortal corporeality on earth marks the beginning of residence with the Lord in heaven.

Is the transition immediate? It would appear so, as the following facts bear out: 1 in v. It would seem that v. Our absence from Christ is only spatial, not spiritual cf.

While in the body we do not literally see Christ at least, most of us don't! For then the dust will return to the earth, and the spirit will return to God who gave it. Ecclesiastes NLT. Indeed it does. So in Ecclesiastes it is simply our breath that returns to God.

Noting living our conscious returns to heaven when we die. It is simply our breath. David clarifies this for us. They breathe their last, and then where are they? The Bible answers the question for us just two verses later.

People are laid to rest and do not rise again. Until the heavens are no more, they will not wake up nor be roused from their sleep. Job NLT. Job, like Jesus and Paul and everyone else in the Bible never say the dead have gone home to be with the Lord or have gone straight to heaven.

King Solomon is in total harmony with the rest of Scripture when he wrote,. The living at least know they will die, but the dead know nothing. They have no further reward, nor are they remembered. Whatever they did in their lifetime—loving, hating, envying—is all long gone. They no longer play a part in anything here on earth. As already noted, Jesus Himself never mentioned anyone dying and going home to be with the Lord, or going straight to heaven when they died.

In John Jesus said Lazarus was asleep. Jesus did not say Lazarus had gone home to be with the Lord or was in heaven. He said he was asleep.

In John Jesus clarifies that Lazarus is dead. Jesus calls death sleep. But I do not want you to be ignorant, brethren, concerning those who have fallen asleep, lest you sorrow as others who have no hope.

Paul refers to the dead as fallen asleep. He does not want us to be ignorant about what happens when we die. So he gives us the total truth. For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so God will bring with Him those who sleep in Jesus. For this we say to you by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive and remain until the coming of the Lord will by no means precede those who are asleep.

For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of an archangel, and with the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And thus we shall always be with the Lord. Paul plainly and clearly tells us the same thing the Angel told Daniel. The dead in Christ will be raised at the second coming.

Once a protestant minister told me that there could be more to death and life after death beyond just what the Bible tells us. But if that was so then Paul would have left us ignorant, and in 1 Thessalonians Paul tells us he is not leaving us ignorant. Besides, in John we are promised the Holy Spirit will lead us into all truth not just partial truth. Someone may ask, what difference it makes knowing that we go to heaven at the resurrection and not when we die.

One reason is when we claim the soul is immortal we call the Bible a liar. Another reason is it makes God seem unfair. I once attended a funeral of a small girl who was hit and killed by a car. The preacher talked about how happy Jesus was having fun with the little girl in heaven while the mother sobbed on the front pew uncontrollably.

Jesus will see the girl at the resurrection along with her mother. But maybe the most important reason we should know the truth about death and the resurrection is that the truth closes the door to spiritualism that Pope Leo X opened during the dark ages. My heart breaks for people who tell me they would give anything to be able to speak with a dead loved one again. At the same time, while I dearly loved my mother and look forward to seeing her in the resurrection, I feel no need to talk with her right now.

I need to talk to Jesus, and I can any time anywhere! I live for Jesus! I am more than happy to live every day with joy talking with Jesus, until He returns and I will see Him face to face along with my mother and Daniel-never to part again! Thanks for the timely post above but something always bother me for sometime. I have witness several people died on several different occasion.

I was the last person to witness their death. At death people exhale their last breath. In Genesis it tells us about how and what God did and man became a living soul. A timely and beautiful process. God breathe out and Adam breathe in-that is the process of respiration. I am not so sure I agreed. Should someone finds a person not breathing which means their have no breath. Should that person preform CPR on the unconscious person and he recovers and regain consciousness and starts talking, how do we explain that process?

Will we say the person spirit leaves them when they were not breathing? Then where did the person spirit went?

To God and back, or was that an out of body experience? I personally believe our spirit and out breath are two different thing. Our spirit is unseen and it is spiritual. When a fetus is conceive in a woman the fetus needs oxygen but the fetus does not breath. It is as birth the beautiful process of breathing begins. It is generally at that first cry the baby breaths in and a beautiful process begins. The process of respiration. If so be, are we saying the fetus had no spirit because the fetus was not breathing before birth?

Breathing is a physical phenomena, the process of breathing can be seen, can be counted. The bible says in Deut , Matt , Mark , Luke to love the Lord with all of our faculties. Can others say what do you think? I absolutely love William's perspective on this topic, but along with you I do have to question the usefulness of defining the human spirit as simply our "breath. Some have called our spirit the "spark" of life, but my understanding is that it takes the continuous exercise of divine power to keep us alive, and not just a "spark.

Those who have died either in or out of the Lord are in an unconscious state until the resurrection of life, or the resurrection of condemnation, whichever applies. The Bible could hardly be more plain about this. That said, I am inclined to think that we Seventh-day Adventists have sometimes gone to unwarranted extremes in trying to explain this. That is, some of our more common explanations or expressions simply aren't true.

We can only know the things that God has revealed to us. Beyond that, isn't it better just to say that we don't understand everything perfectly? We are not just a body. According to the Scriptures, we are body, soul, and spirit. According to Paul in I Corinthians 15, in the resurrection of life, or when translated at the 2nd coming of Christ, we'll get a new body of an entirely different kind.

If we are going to get a new body, then in essence we are not our body. Our body is a marvelous machine, lent to us, that allows us to function in a conscious state. So, what are we, then? We are a soul. The essence of who we are as an individual is the very definition of the soul, and according to the Bible, when the spirit departs and the body returns to the dust, the soul sleeps. This unconscious state is so complete that we have no sense of the passage of time.

This is why Paul, in Philippians 1, can speak as if his death would mean immediately being with the Lord. Subjectively, that's how it will be for the believer, instantly. I must admit that the precise definition of the spirit is the one thing that is least clear to me. Obviously, a part of its meaning is that it is the power that keeps us alive. Whether or not the meaning of "spirit" goes beyond that, to include anything specific to the individual, I simply don't know.

When the spirit departs, we are dead -- yet not dead in the most important sense, because our future resurrection is a sure thing; so we are really only sleeping. And will she recognize me? This bothers me, because I've heard that the Bible says somewhere that in heaven we won't remember the former things.

A: I have no doubt that in heaven your mother will recognize you, and you will recognize her—even if you never knew each other on earth. The former things will not be remembered, nor will they come to mind. Instead, it gives us a great promise: Someday all the sins and pains and failures of this world will be over, and we will be with Christ forever.

Think about that for a moment. In this world, even the memory of what someone did to us years ago can still cause us pain. In the meantime, make it your goal to walk with Jesus every day. Do you know Him? If not, make your commitment to Him today.

Q: When we get to heaven, will we know what's happening on earth? If so, how can we be happy? There's so much misery in the world that I'd think it would just make us sad. But what we do know about heaven is that we will be with God—and because of that, heaven is a place of supreme joy.

That will give us joy! The result of sin is death, spiritual separation from God Romans The good news? Step 3 — God sent His Son to die for your sins! Jesus is the only way to God. All you have to do is believe you are a sinner, that Christ died for your sins, and ask His forgiveness. Jesus Christ knows you and loves you. What matters to Him is the attitude of your heart, your honesty. I believe you died for my sins and rose from the dead. I trust and follow you as my Lord and Savior.

Guide my life and help me to do your will. In your name, Amen. By the start of Christ's thousand-year Kingdom on earth, all saints both Old and New Testament believers will have received new physical bodies as part of the First Resurrection, according to Revelation 20, and all will live eternally with Christ in their new bodies.

The Church saints are resurrected at the Rapture, which is the modern name given to the moment Paul described in 1Corinthians 15 , when the Church saints who have died and are present in spirit with Christ in Heaven receive new physical bodies followed by those Church saints still alive on the earth. The Old Testament saints are resurrected at the conclusion of the Tribulation, according to Daniel Then all saints enter the Kingdom together in new eternal bodies. On the other hand, the destination for unbelievers in death is very different.

Hades is still occupied and its numbers grow by the hour. Every unbeliever who dies is separated, soul from body, and the spirit enters Hades where they await their day of judgment. Hades is under our feet in the center of the earth, according to the Bible, and the spirits of all unbelievers go to this place regardless of when they died in history.

They suffer in torment day and night, according to the Bible, yet Hades is not their final abode. A final, future judgment called the Great White Throne Judgment awaits all unbelievers at the conclusion of the thousand-year Kingdom on earth, according to Revelation At the start of this judgment, all unbelievers are removed from Hades and given new physical bodies in the Second Resurrection, according to Revelation At this judgment, these will be condemned to the "second death," which is the Bible's term for an eternal existence in the Lake of Fire.