Hello! This question has been bugging me a lot lately and I would like some answers and I believe you all may be the best resource for me to get information. I’ve always wondered what will happen after I die. What will I see? What will I feel? Will it hurt? Is heaven even real? Will I see my loved ones again? I’m honestly not sure how to feel and sometimes start panicking at the thought of never being able to feel or see anything ever again. I need some reassurance that everything will be okay.
I believe that when the saved die they die and remain dead until the resurrection of the good and evil. The saved are resurrected to new life. The unsaved faces the wages of sin and their body and soul are destroyed.
The saved will be together eternally within the others that also heard their names called in the book of life.
I personally suggest looking into Conditional Immortality.
But remember never take someone’s word. Listen to many, and research it yourself. A good, sincere, smart Christian can still be completely wrong about their interpretation.
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Klax
(The only thing that matters is faith expressed in love.)
5
The faithfulness of Christ saves all. It’ll be good. Forever. For all.
We are told a little about what to expect for our future in eternity with Christ, and we can trust that it will be all good.
What is less clear is what exactly happens between death and eternity. The Bible gives us hints, but not many details. The truth is that we really don’t know exactly.
I think that it is possible that we will not be conscious of any passage of time between our death and our resurrection. From our experience, it may be instantaneous: our next conscious experience after we have lost consciousness may be our resurrection. I think it unlikely that we will be aware of or experience any passage of time in any case. Whatever it is that we call our “soul” will be existing outside of time and space. Without our body’s senses and the cognitive capabilities of our minds, I am not certain that we can say that we will be aware of or will think anything.
By the way, about the resurrection: Don’t be concerned about getting your old body back. That will be dead forever. The type of body that can exist for eternity with Jesus must operate under very different physics, and thus an entirely different body awaits us. We will be recognizable, to be sure, and maybe we will all be looking at our best and in our prime.
I am a little surprised that people don’t know their Scriptures better. After all what happened when Jesus died on the cross? He surely did not lie lifeless waiting for the day of resurrection. In case people think he enjoyed a special ressurection because he was Jesus just review Luke, chapter 23, verse 43 where he tells the criminal crucified next to him who befriends him: “Assuredly I say to you, today you will be with me in Paradise.” Again the criminals’ soul will ascend immediately into heaven.
Just out of curiousity I wonder if you imagine any portion of a person’s body continuing in eternity. Or is it something spiritual that is imagined as continuing on?
I think of that saying about rendering unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s. I would have thought, by the same logic, that our bodies would owe a debt to the biosphere which must be returned before anything else about the person can go forward. Full disclosure: I don’t personally think there is anything specific to me which can continue on after death. I do think there are any number of higher order categories in which I am but one instantiation which can and will continue on after my biological death, and that strikes me as more important. The things that set me apart aren’t so important as the things which include me.
I’m not sure. I’ve not studied it out enough to be certain. But I guess if I was hard pressed to draw a conclusion based on what I think I know it would be that I believe in a bodily resurrection at some point since Christ himself rose from the dead. I don’t think that he came back in a way different from us.
I agree entirely with Stefan Stackhouse. I have suspected we will be in our prime for some years now. I have several arguments for why I believe that.
The most compelling is that no one recognized the resurrected Jesus right away. Why? Because he was in his prime, around 20 and none of the witnesses to his resurrection knew Him when He was 20. They all met Him for the first time when He was around 30. My 20 year-old self did not look like my 30-year old self. The similarity was there, but even good friends who met me after I was 30 would not have immediately realized it was me if one day I had showed up as my 20-year old version.
Well nobody really knows. But here are some possibilities.
Atheist: Absolutely nothing happens – death is the end. Some people find that frightening. I think it is the height of irrationality and illogic to be frightened of absolutely nothing (and so the only explanation which makes any sense to me is ego). For most people, life becomes a tiresome accumulation of pain, sorrows, frustrations and disappointments. To be sure there are lot of things to make life worthwhile, but for most the accumulation of negative aspects eventually weigh you down and just plain nothing begins to sound better and better.
Damnationalist: God has prepared a torture chamber in which to make you writhe in extreme and unending torment forever if you are foolish or unlucky enough not to have heard the secret of how to escape such a fate which you deserve utterly for even the most trivial of offenses.
Annihilationist: God requires certain standards of character for his kingdom and if you don’t fit in then God will put you out of your misery by terminating your existence so that nobody has to put up with the knowledge that you are somewhere else failing to enjoy the delights of their heavenly state – because that would spoil things for everyone.
Universalist: One way or another God will eventually get you up to snuff. You will be reprogrammed and adjusted to fit into His kingdom so that everybody will know that God and His right way of doing things is absolute victor over everyone and everything in every way.
Spiritual Methodological naturalist: Our choices have consequences for who and what we are, having an effect on our experience of existence which continues after death. Some of these choices may be self-destructive habits which like a degenerative illness tear down everything of value within us including our freedom of will. Another choice may be to open the door through which God can work on us to tear down these self-destructive habit instead.
What do you want to see? What do you want to feel?
Death, it is fairly certain, will hurt. That is after all the purpose for which pain exists – to make us avoid the events which can cause our death.
I think so. All the above options except the first one agree that there is a good place to go to or state to be in. I think heaven and hell are the natural logical consequences of the fundamental forces of creation and destruction. And thus I see evidence of them both all around us in life.
Do you see them while you are alive? How well do you actually know them? If you are simply looking for another chance to know them, then I am not so sure the answer is yes.
That is a difficult question which lies somewhere between complacency and hysteria – neither of which will help you. The reality is that it could very well not be ok, but this is not helpful unless it motivates you to find out what you can do about it.
In borrowing from the humor thread (can’t find the post right now to link, but will try to recreate) You should not ask such metaphysical questions of your doctor, as it may go something like this:
What will happen after I die, doctor?
“We clean the room and admit another patient.”
That sounds a lot like the typical view of a eternal punishment chamber of the suffering never ends and if the suffering does end and all people are eventually saved it’s universalist but if the people there are eventually destroyed then it’s a annihilation.
Annihilation is still a broad view. The only thing it means is that eventually the body and soul of some people are destroyed. It’s not a argument over if God does it like it says in the Bible or if it’s something you do to yourself or if it’s a combination of both.
The difference is that God isn’t doing evil to anybody – people are doing it to themselves. In which case, there is nothing uniform or absolute about it – objectively or subjectively. It is God in the Biblical role of shepherd again rather than, non-Biblical role of watchmaker, designer, and controller – He is just there to help if we want Him to.
More importantly the difference between the spiritual and physical is that while the physical has its nature and existence from an external structure and system (the mathematical space-time laws of nature), the spirits of living things have their existence from their own nature alone, created by their own choices. So there simply are no external forces by which these spirits can be destroyed. This is part of the essence of life and free will. Eternal life and eternal existence are two completely different things. Hell is an existence without that which makes existence worthwhile. Only the infinite being of God can provide this without limit – and this is why eternal life requires a relationship with God.
Hallelujah, finally a hint of levity and dark humor. I’ve been wanting to share the lyrics to a song my mother would sing to us. But I never heard most of these lyrics. Her toned down version did include “the worms crawl in, the worms crawl out, the worms play pinochle on your snout”.
Nowadays this would probably earn one a visit from child protective services if your kid came into school singing this and they learned it came from your mum.
Should be especially easy for my future devours lol. I want to be buried in just a thin cloth sheet. I even thought as far as do insects really go down that deep often? I think mostly not and so I was thinking to make it easier should do a sort of Hügelkultur deal where a raised bed is made. I’ll still be whatever legal depth I have to be but do layers of horizontal and vertical limbs to help make it less compact so more insects could more easily get down. “ A host plant for the decomposers”.
But I also really like the ideas of being buried in the “tree nutrient sacks”. Let mushrooms turn me into tradable nitrogen and used in the foliage of flora xd. Do you think we cause mophead hydrangeas to bloom pink?
Same here. I used to have the romantic idea that I’d like to be left out for a higher order carnivore but then I learned how toxic we are for almost anything else. So as annoying as flies are I should be grateful for their service as a vehicle back into the biosphere.
I believe all will be okay at death. Notice how people who experience near death seem to be at peace about own death afterwards. I think that when it’s our time to go, we’ll be ready and everything will be okay.
That is shaky ground. So is an ad populum argument. And being comfortable about a conclusion is overrated as being correctly conclusive – feelings are notoriously malleable and untrustworthy.
The most important question is what do you think about Jesus, and similarly, do you love God, the latter really encompassing the former.
I will submit that this is a shaky ground too. Plenty of Christians are terribly afraid of not being one of the elect, or of committing the unpardonable sin or of being rejected by God because of a willful sin, etc. list goes on.
I have bouts of anxiety myself. But I found that our bodies are pretty adaptive to the situation. For instance, one may be terrified of anesthesia and surgery but once they have an appendix burst or otherwise require an emergency operation, suddenly, the fear of anesthesia fades away and there is kind of giving in to fate or to whatever happens. So I believe the NDEs. Not because there may be something beyond death. Not necessarily. There could be or maybe not. However, our bodies will typically prepare us for dying to where we won’t be as afraid of it.
