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Don't understand how souls can be in heaven or hell currently. I thought according to the Bible that Judgement Day is in the future and that it is THEN that souls will be judged to go to heaven or hell. I'm atheist by the way so I am just inquiring as to this belief to clarify what Bible believers think.
Don't understand how souls can be in heaven or hell currently. I thought according to the Bible that Judgement Day is in the future and that it is THEN that souls will be judged to go to heaven or hell. I'm atheist by the way so I am just inquiring as to this belief to clarify what Bible believers think.
There is a discrepancy between the two conflicting ideas of the coming Last Days, Jesus coming on the clouds, the graves opening and the resurrection then. This is the Pharaseeical Jewish idea held by the apostles and Paul (his discussion of meeting Jesus in mid -air is after the graves 'open' which even he thought was imminent), and the Christian idea of gong to heaven or hell after a judgement directly after death.
I'm not sure where the latter idea came from, but it wasn't part of the original apostolic thought, and even the gospels are written with the last days and return of the messiah in mind.
Don't understand how souls can be in heaven or hell currently. I thought according to the Bible that Judgement Day is in the future and that it is THEN that souls will be judged to go to heaven or hell. I'm atheist by the way so I am just inquiring as to this belief to clarify what Bible believers think.
Most of our current conception of hell comes from Dante, not the scriptures. To the extent the scriptures appear to support those concepts it is because of dicey translation of key terms. The notion of the unending flames comes for example from references to the garbage dump outside Jerusalem where refuse was perpetually burned, and the concept it meant to convey was that miscreants would be discarded like so much rubbish. That reference is meaningless to modern readers (and translators), hence the tendency to overdetermine and spiritualize the meaning.
Those who teach "universal reconciliation" actually do a fair job of explaining all this. If I were still a believer today, I would probably be persuaded by their arguments.
Beyond those points, I was always taught that the main difference between the immediate afterlife you or I would experience if we slit our throats here and now, and the long-term afterlife past the resurrection of the dead, is that we wouldn't have a physical body until the resurrection of the dead. So the bliss or torment would be purely spiritual and non-physical. This sounds lame of course, because it is ... but there you have it. Just one more way in which disparate and conflicting notions are "harmonized" for popular consumption.
Don't understand how souls can be in heaven or hell currently. I thought according to the Bible that Judgement Day is in the future and that it is THEN that souls will be judged to go to heaven or hell. I'm atheist by the way so I am just inquiring as to this belief to clarify what Bible believers think.
You're right. Souls are currently awaiting their resurrection in an intermediate state of existence, which may be heaven-like or hell-like, depending upon how they lived their lives. But souls don't go immediately to either Heaven or Hell upon death. It would be kind of silly, when you stop to think about it (as you apparently have) for souls to go to Heaven for a period of time (in s a spirit state), and then at Judgment Day, to be resurrected, judged and maybe sent to Hell instead.
Aren't these Jehovah Witnesses? They say there is a "waiting"room where we get another chance at redemption?
many believe the "rapture"occurs upon DEATH and it is then that the words of Christ are manifested--
"I am," said Jesus. "And you will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of the Mighty One and coming on the clouds of heaven."
Yes, but not just them. The Seventh Day Adventists teach it, for example. Tyndale and some other reformation leaders argued for it, partly as an antidote to doctrines of the Catholic church such as purgatory and limbo.
Don't understand how souls can be in heaven or hell currently. I thought according to the Bible that Judgement Day is in the future and that it is THEN that souls will be judged to go to heaven or hell. I'm atheist by the way so I am just inquiring as to this belief to clarify what Bible believers think.
Texan, you're an atheist?
Live your life...be happy...enjoy ...don't get
muddled in what Christians believe!
I beg of you....
Bored? Learn about quantum physics, instead.
It's my understanding that some Christian groups hold to the idea of "soul sleep" where a person is "asleep" between death and judgement day.
In other words: dead in the ground. But that does appear to be what the bible teaches.
Last edited by mensaguy; 01-04-2017 at 07:02 AM..
Reason: Don't use red text.
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