What happens to us when we die? Do we ever live again? Do we go to heaven or to hell as soon as we die?
Fortunately, the Bible gives us clear answers to these questions. According to God's word, we human beings do not have souls---we are souls. At creation, God breathed the gift of life into the body He had formed for Adam, and Adam became a living soul, or person. At death, the gift of life returns to God who gave it, and our bodies return to the dust from which God first made them.
But the gift of life that returns to God at death is not a conscious "soul," fully aware of what is happening around it. The Bible says that death is a time of unconscious oblivion---that the dead are totally unaware of what is taking place around them. The bible also makes it clear that at death we do not go directly to heaven or to hell, but to the grave---there to remain until resurrected later by Christ.
Most of the world and many Christians today believe that human beings are immortal---that though our bodies may die, our "souls" live forever. but the Bible teaches otherwise. It clearly states that human beings are mortal and that only God is immortal. But it does say that at the second coming of Christ, He will give the gift of immortality to all His true followers.
When Jesus was here on earth, His preferred term for death was sleep. Sleep usually implies waking up again. And since, in God's reckoning, we were all included in Christ as our representative Man when He rose from the dead, He has broken the power of death for all of us. Some of us may "sleep" for a while before Christ returns, but death has been defeated, and if faithful, we will awaken again someday.
Please remember to click on the verses :)
Gen. 2:7 Eccl. 9:4, 5 Job 7:9, 10
Eccl. 12:7 Ps. 146:3, 4 Job 14:12
Psa. 104:29 Ps. 6:5 1 Tim. 6;15, 16
John 11:11-14 Ps. 115:17 1 Cor. 15:51-55
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