What Really Happens When We Die

Life after death has been a major topic of discussion since man began to walk the earth. Every culture and religion has their own opinion on what happens when our bodies finally give out. Some say our "spirit" leaves our body and goes somewhere else. Some say these spirits roam the earth looking for peace. Other dogmas teach of the good going to a beautiful place while the evil are tormented in a fiery place.

The scientist and pragmatists among us just say we cease to exist.

So what is the truth? If we look to the Word of God for answers, we do get a picture of what life after death looks like. Unfortunately, the Holy Roman church tried to deceive many with how it treated the translation of Hebrew and Greek in God's scripture. They definitely were trying to paint a picture different from what the books of the Bible really said.

If we look at the Old Testament, we read the following passage concerning death.

Consider and hear me, O Lord my God; Enlighten my eyes, Lest I sleep the sleep of death; Psalm 13:3

Satan convinced Eve that she would not die if she ate of the forbidden fruit. After she ate it, she did in fact not die! But she did create a separation from the Creator that led to her body to begin the process of decay. There would be no coming back to the well to regenerate her human cells for eternal life as the tree of Life would have provided.

The Bible does not tell us how long Eve lived but Adam made it to 930. It seems it took him a long time to die. But God decided to adjust the length of time man would dwell on the earth dealing with death. In Genesis 6:3 he stated: " “My Spirit shall not strive with man forever, for he is indeed flesh; yet his days shall be one hundred and twenty years.”

Do you know anyone who has made it past 120? Genesis 6 was written over 3,000 years ago and still today, no one makes it past 12o.

Our sinful flesh can only remain alive in God's presence for so long. I am sure it grieved the Creator to see man's wickedness take over and He determined it would only dwell so long in the land before it became weak and decrepit. But God had a plan to redeem mankind and offer him a life everlasting.

The Spirit

And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being. Genesis 2:7

It is breath that God breathed into us to make us alive. The church changed this word throughout the Bible to spirit and the ghost of man was born. Even when Jesus was dying on the cross and said to God "into your hands I commit my spirit.", the Greek word used here is pnuema which is breath but the church was trying to get across something else. According to them, Jesus died and his ghostly spirit was released. He even told the thief on the cross that today he would be in paradise with Him. Let's look at that a little more closely.

In the Bible, the scribes who wrote the scriptures did not have punctuation. There were no periods or commas or quotation marks. It was up to the translators of modern times to insert those where necessary for the modern men at the time to read and understand God's Holy Word. Let's look at that passage again using the punctuation that was inserted after 300 AD.

And Jesus said to him, “Assuredly, I say to you, today you will be with Me in Paradise.” Luke 23:43

Assuredly, I say to you, today you will be with Me in Paradise.

If we place the comma after "you" like it is in today's translations, it sounds like on that day when they died, Jesus and the thief went to Paradise.

Assuredly, I say to you today, you will be with Me in Paradise.

But if we place the comma after the word "today", it means something completely different. It sounds like Jesus was telling the thief "I tell you today ... you will be with Me in Paradise." meaning that He was telling him today, you will be with me in Paradise at some point in the future.

Do we have any scripture to uphold this point of view? Well yes we do. When Jesus rose from the tomb, Mary went to hug Him. What did Jesus say to her?

John 20:17: Jesus said to her, “Do not cling to Me, for I have not yet ascended to My Father; but go to My brethren and say to them, ‘I am ascending to My Father and your Father, and to My God and your God.’ ”

So wait, if He and the thief were in Paradise on the day they both died, why three days later is He saying He has not yet ascended to the Father. Aha! Aha!

The comma was placed after the wrong word in the newer translations. The word spirit was also mistranslated away from breath to some type of ghost version of Jesus that escaped His body at death. This is how we get to our modern day depiction of when we die, we ascend to heaven in spirit but that is not truly biblical.

Jesus and the Old Testament tell us what happens when we die.

At Your rebuke, O God of Jacob, Both the chariot and horse were cast into a dead sleep. Psalm 76:6

“And I will make drunk Her princes and wise men, Her governors, her deputies, and her mighty men. And they shall sleep a perpetual sleep And not awake,” says the King, Whose name is the Lord of hosts. Jeremiah 51:57

And many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, Some to everlasting life, Some to shame and everlasting contempt. Daniel 12:2

New Testament

He said to them, “Make room, for the girl is not dead, but sleeping.” And they ridiculed Him. Matthew 9:24

When He came in, He said to them, “Why make this commotion and weep? The child is not dead, but sleeping.” Mark 5:39

These things He said, and after that He said to them, “Our friend Lazarus sleeps, but I go that I may wake him up.” John 11:11

Behold, I tell you a mystery: We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed—

1 Corinthians 15:51

Therefore He says: “Awake, you who sleep, Arise from the dead, And Christ will give you light.” Ephesians 5:14

For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so God will bring with Him those who sleep in Jesus. 1 Thessalonians 4:14

Lazarus sister Martha understood this. When Jesus arrived after Lazarus death, she said concerning his resurrection:

John 11:23

Jesus said to her, “Your brother will rise again.”

24 Martha said to Him, “I know that he will rise again in the resurrection at the last day.”

25 Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in Me, though he may die, he shall live. 26 And whoever lives and believes in Me shall never die. Do you believe this?”

27 She said to Him, “Yes, Lord, I believe that You are the Christ, the Son of God, who is to come into the world.”

The word Hell

According to the Bible, Hell is depicted as a fiery place the evil go after they die. If you were a newly organized church and you wanted to corral your followers and insure they did not get out of line, fear would be a great way to do that. Fear is a great motivator and when used properly can get people subjugated to you right away. What if I told you if you do not sit up and fly right you will find yourself tortured and burning forever. That'll scare the compliance into you... and it did for over fifteen centuries.

The Holy Roman church developed hell to force believers into following them so as to avoid torture and fire. They wrote God's Word in Latin so only a few could read it. Many at that time were illiterate and could not read. They burned people at the stake who translated the Bible to English to prevent everyone from reading it for themselves. If this is not reverse censorship, I do not know what is.

The word hell in the Bible is translated from Hebrew and Greek into either the grave or Gehenna which was a place in Jerusalem where the trash was burned. Once trash is burned it is gone forever. It does not burn and is not consumed. In the Lake of Fire, those who refuse to live with God will be consumed. They will not be burning forever. What kind of God would subject His children to being burned forever? Not one I would believe in or follow. Not a God of Love who gave Himself as a sacrifice so that we might join Him in Paradise.

The whole truth is that when we die, we ALL go the Hell as Hell is the grave.

“The Lord kills and makes alive; He brings down to the grave and brings up. 1 Samuel 2:6

As the cloud disappears and vanishes away, So he who goes down to the grave does not come up. Job 7:9

For in death there is no remembrance of You; In the grave who will give You thanks? Psalm 6:5

Adrift among the dead, Like the slain who lie in the grave, Whom You remember no more, And who are cut off from Your hand Psalm 88:5

And on and on it goes. All have sinned and fall short of the Glory of God. The wages of sin is death. Death in the grave separated from God just like God separated Adam and Eve from the Garden.

Death is sleep in the grave. Only God can wake us up. And He WILL because He loves us sooo much. So much so that He sent His Son to die a terrible death on the cross so that we could be redeemed and have a shot at eternal life.

Jesus rose from the grave with his physical body just like we will when He returns to reposses us who have become lost to sin. This has been the plan all along. Martha, Lazarus sister understood this. One key thing to take away here is that Jesus rose with his physical body, just like Lazurus. There are humans in Heaven now and all of them are in their physical body not spiritual ones.

So all the days of Enoch were three hundred and sixty-five years. 24 And Enoch walked with God; and he was not, for God took him. Genesis 5:23

Then it happened, as they continued on and talked, that suddenly a chariot of fire appeared with horses of fire, and separated the two of them; and Elijah went up by a whirlwind into heaven. 2 Kings 2:11

Yet Michael the archangel, in contending with the devil, when he disputed about the body of Moses, dared not bring against him a reviling accusation, but said, “The Lord rebuke you!” Jude 1:9

And Elijah appeared to them with Moses, and they were talking with Jesus. Mark 9:4

So according to the Bible, Enoch, Elijah, Moses and Jesus are in Heaven in their physical bodies awaiting the time when God will restore the Kingdom to its once glorious place on Earth. What a wonderful day it will be.

The Bible does not mention any spiritual humans in Heaven. But what about the Martyrs mentioned in Revelation 6 and the Elders in Revelation 7??

Well, we read in Matthew 27

51 Then, behold, the veil of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom; and the earth quaked, and the rocks were split, 52 and the graves were opened; and many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised; 53 and coming out of the graves after His resurrection, they went into the holy city and appeared to many.

Notice they were asleep in the grave. Could these saints that were raised at Jesus death be the Martyrs mentioned in Revelation 6 or the Elders mentioned in Revelation 7? Remember, Revelation was written by John around ~ 90AD which would have been sixty years after Jesus crucifixion. The Bible is not clear on where these people hail from. Based on the physical resurrection of humans, I would doubt these martyrs or Elders are spiritual beings but in fact would be of physical in nature just like Enoch and Elijah.

According to the Word of God, when we die, we go to sleep. As with sleep, the night goes by very fast and the next instant we are awake as if only a few minutes have passed. Abraham, David, Solomon and Israel have been asleep for centuries but for them at the resurrection, it will only seem like a few moments have passed by. The same will be true for my grandmother and all of my other descendants. Those who seek the Lord will be resurrected to eternal life. Those who only seek to satisfy themselves and reject God will also be resurrected only to find themselves tossed into the Lake of Fire to be utterly destroyed forever. They will exist no more.

The evidence for this in the Bible is pretty overwhelming. No where in the Bible does the Bible speak of an immortal soul that ascends to heaven at death. I would love to comfort those who grieve the loss of a loved one with this concept but it just is not the case.

Look up the phrase immortal soul in any Bible translation and you will get the following..

Sorry, we didn’t find any results for your search.

The immortal soul or spirit of man does not exist in the Bible. If we are to look to the Bible as the source of truth regarding the state of man and his future, we will find as I have what I laid out above.

God is a loving God and knows life without Him is utter hell. We are experiencing it today with people killing each other, disease taking out millions, earthquakes and storms killing children and destroying property. But today we have some assemblance of hope in God and He does intervene from time to time to save His children from calamity. But imagine a world where that hope will never exist. Where the forces of nature, disease and lawless men are allowed to run amok with no resistance.

This is a world without God and one no one could survive in. Instead of placing the evil people of our world into this one, God in His mercy removes them completely from existence as He knows no one would want to live in that world of chaos and destruction. One where satan's fury and anger would have no leash.

If you do not believe in the Bible or God well all I can offer is that a book that has survived over 3,000 years and been through so many language translations and has spawned over billions of believers should at least be read. Kinda like War and Peace but with a much happier ending.

The whole truth is this. Man was created by God to live in Paradise with Him. In order to live in harmony with Him, we must be obedient to His words for they are life itself. If we cannot abide by these words, we must be separated like goats from the sheep. In His mercy, He knows we cannot live without Him as He is the life. Nonexistence is better than a world without God. Don't be a goat. The Great Shepherd has come to retrieve us and gave His life so that we may be reunited with the One who created us to live with Him in Paradise forever as was ordained from the beginning of time.

And That is the Whole Truth.

Don't let the deceiver instruct you otherwise. I want to spend eternity with you.

May God truly bless you in your ongoing walk with Him.

And remember, God always answers His kneemail.

Amen? Yes Amen...See you on the Sea of Glass.. :)