Risen from the Dust

Are you searching for biblical answers about hell, heaven, and the Resurrection of the Dead?

Christians generally believe in life after death. Yet there are so many different explanations of what the bible says about heaven and hell, that we can't keep track of them all. If we're all reading the same bible, then why are there so many interpretations?

We can simplify the problem by understanding the two main views about hell, heaven, and the Resurrection.

The most popular view is that when a person dies they are judged, and go to heaven or hell forever. This view is often presented as being the correct orthodox view. Yet this ignores key passages in the bible. The bible describes a future resurrection of the dead, a judgment day, a return of the saints, and a new heavens and earth.

The other main Christian view focuses heavily on the Resurrection of the Dead. According to this view, when a person dies they cease to exist as a person. The dead enter a state of sleep until they are resurrected and judged. In other words, there is no immediate afterlife, only a final resurrection that leads everyone into eternal life or damnation. As with the other view, there are scriptures that it struggles to explain.

Like many biblical controversies, each side has a set of verses that they use in support of their belief, and also verses that are used against them. Also like many biblical controversies, there are certain key revelations that are being missed on both sides. These missing pieces keep both sides from arriving at a view that is coherent with all the scriptures.

The bible describes two different afterlives. There is an immediate afterlife for those who have passed on, and there will also be an eternal afterlife at the end of the world. There is a current temporary heaven and hell, but also an eternal heaven and hell. One afterlife is pre-resurrection, and relates to faith, but the other is post-resurrection, and relates to works. People's inability to rightly-divide between them creates much confusion and division.

The resurrection of the dead should be understood as the transition between these two different afterlives. People will be resurrected into their places in the eternal afterlife. In the resurrection, every soul will pass through Christ and into the eternity. Every soul will receive either eternal life in the Kingdom, or eternal damnation in the Lake of Fire.

• It is commonly believed and taught that when someone dies they are judged and either go to heaven or hell forever and ever. It's true that when a person dies their soul goes directly to either heaven or hell, but there will also be a future day of judgment. On this Judgment Day, the souls who didn't make it into heaven will be raised up out of hell, and judged according to their works (see ch.18 Second Resurrection).
• There are not one, but two hells in the bible, a current and a future one (see ch.2 Hades and Gehenna). The current hell is more of a reservoir for the great multitudes of unbelievers. The second hell is called the Lake of Fire. The Lake of Fire is a place of final and permanent damnation, but not eternal torment. On Judgment Day, all of the souls from the first hell will be judged, and enter into either eternal heaven or the Lake of Fire.
• Heaven and hell are both real places, but not physical places. Heaven is not floating around in outer space, and you can't dig a hole down into hell (see ch.7 Underground Hell, Space Heaven). They exist in the spiritual dimension, so to speak.
• Heaven and hell are real locations, but they are also states of being. Hell is one of death and despair, and heaven is one of life and peace (see ch.6 Spiritual Life and Death).
• People who have died are not literally asleep. The bible sometimes refers to the dead as being asleep, or sleeping in the dust, to convey to us their ongoing spiritual reality. It's similar to how in modern times people say that the dead have "passed on", because they believe that they still exist, except in a different place.
• In the future, all humanity will partake in something called the Resurrection of the Dead. What actually happens in the Resurrection of the Dead is a bit mysterious. The best way to describe it, is that people's disembodied souls will be transformed into angelic spiritual bodies.
• The Resurrection of the Dead is divided into two parts (see ch.14 Resurrections of the Dead). First there will be a resurrection of the saints at the start of the millennium, and then there will be a resurrection of unbelievers after the millennium. The resurrection of unbelievers is part of Judgment Day.
• The millennium is a thousand year period of time that separates the two resurrections from each other (see ch.20 Resurrection at Christ's Return). It will be a spiritual golden age of teaching, peace, and enlightenment (see ch.26 Millennium Nations).

Buckleyapologetics is non-denominational. I have been blessed by several teachers and scholars over the years, but the most important was Arnold Benjamin Murray who passed away in 2014. He shined the light of God into a dark world.

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"Therefore whosoever heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them, I will liken him unto a wise man, which built his house upon a rock: And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell not: for it was founded upon a rock." (Matthew 7:24-25 KJV)