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Did Jesus teach instant heaven?, Did Jesus tell the thief a lie?, Do our souls go to heaven when we die, Hell has other meanings, hell now?, Jesus will come back once, like grave, No secret rapture, People in heaven
Now, don’t get me wrong and make no mistakes about it- I am a child of God; a member of the bridal party that will one day celebrate in Heaven. That is when Jesus comes back and we who are in the family of God will take to the air. If we are dead, we’ll be the first to rise, then they who are alive will meet us in the air. This is the 1st resurrection- the resurrection of the saved.
There will be no second chance at getting right with God. Jesus will destroy/ kill all the rest of the people- the ones that have not accepted that gift of God will die and remain where they fall until 1,000 years have passed.
The Word of god does NOT teach that we will go to Heaven after we die. When we die, being living souls, our very being will die as the breathe of life goes back to God. We will not be looking over our loved ones, that’s a lie that was perpetrated by Satan.
Jesus would have preached on that many times; verbally telling all who would listen (and He had crowds listening) that even though someone’s body died, their soul would go straight to Heaven. BUT, He never preached that. And what about Lazarus, whom Jesus raised from the dead? Lazarus would have been upset to have had to leave Heaven, where God sits on His throne, and where everything is so beautiful. Plus, everyone around him would have been asking him what Heaven was like. But no one did. People got upset when their loved ones, like Lazarus, died because the grave was it until Jesus paid the price of sin for all of us.
Hell, when spoke about in the Bible, usually meant the grave, or the tomb. ‘Because thou wilt not leave my soul in hell, neither wilt thou suffer thine Holy One to see corruption’. Acts 2:27 – Here the Bible is clearly talking about the grave. Some say this is talking about pergatory, a resting place for believers, but it’s not in the Bible. And if they were to take the souls (bodies) to Heaven, what would happen at the 2nd coming and resurrection? Would Jesus have to paste the soul and glorified body back together during or after the saints rose to meet Him? Of course not.
Many people refer to Jesus’ saving the repentant thief on the cross. The thief’s faith in Jesus was so strong, he wanted Jesus to simply remember him when Jesus got to heaven. ‘And he said unto Jesus, Lord, remember me when thou comest into thy kingdom’. Acts 24:42. This is where a lot of people and preachers (and when their minds are set/ made up, they will not listen to anything else- they close their minds. But here we have a problem with what Jesus told him.
‘And Jesus said unto him, Verily I say unto thee, To day shalt thou be with me in paradise’. Either Jesus told the thief a lie or He meant something else which I disagree with too. Go back and notice the punctuation, the comma after ‘thee’. There was NO punctuation in the original writings; that had to be put in during one of the half dozen translations- from Hebrew to Greek, from Greek to Latin, frfom Latin to German, and from German to many others. NOW, picture the comma here- ‘ I say unto theeTo day, shalt thou be with me’ (in paradise). You see, Jesus DID NOT go to His Father above that day or the next day. Jesus kept the Sabbath even in death and the Sabbath was Saturday!!! For those that know some about the Bible, Jesus showed Himself, to Mary first, on Sunday or Monday- ‘Jesus saith unto her, Touch me not; for I am not yet ascended to my Father: but go to my brethren, and say unto them, I ascend unto my Father, and your Father; and to my God, and your God.’ So you see, Jesus DID NOT go straight to Heaven, and if any one went straight there, Jesus certainly would have.
In closing this long posting, I want to say that this notion has its good side. For we (and that’s most or all) who have had loved ones die in a sinful predicament, they won’t be going straight to hell. Even when Jesus takes out all the unsaved people- ‘shall destroy with the brightness of his coming:’- they will not be suffering for at least 1,000 years, when the 2nd resurrection occurs, then the judgment. And they won’t suffer for ever; the Bible is full of passages that say they will be destroyed after suffering for a time.
For those of us who die in Christ, we will be dead- no thinking, no floating around, no haunting or giving messages; we will be DEAD until the 1st resurrection. The next thought, the next sight we see after dying will be our taking flight away from this earth where we will live and reign with our Lord and Saviour forever. The only ones promised eternal life are God’s family.
‘For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.’ John 3:16