Our Souls Return to God, while We Remain for Judgement

[newton3005]

The Bible infers that those who are judged to have been righteous will go to Heaven. It is never too late to be judged as being righteous, as Jesus showed us when in Luke 23:43, Jesus, on the cross, says to the condemned man on the cross next to him after he asks Jesus to remember him in Verse 22, “Truly, I say to you, today you will be with me in paradise.” Th condemned man was fortunate, since the rest of us don’t know when the day of our final judgement will come.

The Bible infers that each of us are composed of two parts. One part, which is emphasized in the OT, is our souls. Ecclesiastes 12:7 says, “...the spirit returns to God who gave it.” God in Ezekiel 18:4 says, “Behold, all souls are mine...”

There is another part of us which is emphasized in the NT, and that is the part of us that is buried. The part of us that is buried is not specifically identified. John 5:28-29 says, “...an hour is coming when all who are in the tombs will hear his voice and come out, those who have done good to the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil to the resurrection of judgment.” Who is John referring to? It seems it would be a stretch to believe that he is referring to the bones that are buried. Then again, nobody who walks the earth may ever know, since John 5:28-29 infers a specific time to be set aside for all to be judged at once.

We can almost accept that it may be a long time before that time comes. The Lord in the OT has us living to the thousandth generation. If 20 years equals a generation, we’re talking 20,000 years. Including the OT, it’s only been four to five-thousand years since God created Adam, so we still have a ways to go.

Consider Revelation 1:7 which says “Behold, he is coming with the clouds, and every eye will see him, even those who pierced him...” In reading this Verse alone, we can surmise that Jesus is the one that is coming, since he was the one who was pierced when he was on the cross. And even that is a long time ago before today. And as stated in John 5:28-29, he is coming to judge us.

It is said that God has made Laws that are expressed and implied, and He has given Jesus the authority to judge man based on those Laws. So, our final judgment rests with Jesus.

 

[d taylor]

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​

A born again child of God is not judged, at least not judged to see if they are born again. That (being born again) happens at the very moment a person believes in Jesus for God's free gift of Eternal Life.

The only judgment a born again child of God will face is the Bema Seat judgment of Jesus. Which is a judgment to establish the gain or loss of rewards.

 

[Clare73]

The Bible infers that those who are judged to have been righteous will go to Heaven. It is never too late to be judged as being righteous, as Jesus showed us when in Luke 23:43, Jesus, on the cross, says to the condemned man on the cross next to him after he asks Jesus to remember him in Verse 22, “Truly, I say to you, today you will be with me in paradise.” Th condemned man was fortunate, since the rest of us don’t know when the day of our final judgement will come.
The Bible infers that each of us are composed of two parts. One part, which is emphasized in the OT, is our souls. Ecclesiastes 12:7 says, “...the spirit returns to God who gave it.” God in Ezekiel 18:4 says, “Behold, all souls are mine...”
There is another part of us which is emphasized in the NT, and that is the part of us that is buried. The part of us that is buried is not specifically identified. John 5:28-29 says, “...an hour is coming when all who are in the tombs will hear his voice and come out, those who have done good to the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil to the resurrection of judgment.” Who is John referring to? It seems it would be a stretch to believe that he is referring to the bones that are buried. Then again, nobody who walks the earth may ever know, since John 5:28-29 infers a specific time to be set aside for all to be judged at once.
We can almost accept that it may be a long time before that time comes. The Lord in the OT has us living to the thousandth generation. If 20 years equals a generation, we’re talking 20,000 years. Including the OT, it’s only been four to five-thousand years since God created Adam, so we still have a ways to go.

Consider Revelation 1:7 which says “Behold, he is coming with the clouds, and every eye will see him, even those who pierced him...” In reading this Verse alone, we can surmise that Jesus is the one that is coming, since he was the one who was pierced when he was on the cross. And even that is a long time ago before today. And as stated in John 5:28-29, he is coming to judge us.
It is said that God has made Laws that are expressed and implied, and He has given Jesus the authority to judge man based on those Laws. So, our final judgment rests with Jesus.

Yes, my Judge is my Savior.

 

[Dan Perez]

The Bible infers that those who are judged to have been righteous will go to Heaven. It is never too late to be judged as being righteous, as Jesus showed us when in Luke 23:43, Jesus, on the cross, says to the condemned man on the cross next to him after he asks Jesus to remember him in Verse 22, “Truly, I say to you, today you will be with me in paradise.” Th condemned man was fortunate, since the rest of us don’t know when the day of our final judgement will come.

The Bible infers that each of us are composed of two parts. One part, which is emphasized in the OT, is our souls. Ecclesiastes 12:7 says, “...the spirit returns to God who gave it.” God in Ezekiel 18:4 says, “Behold, all souls are mine...”

There is another part of us which is emphasized in the NT, and that is the part of us that is buried. The part of us that is buried is not specifically identified. John 5:28-29 says, “...an hour is coming when all who are in the tombs will hear his voice and come out, those who have done good to the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil to the resurrection of judgment.” Who is John referring to? It seems it would be a stretch to believe that he is referring to the bones that are buried. Then again, nobody who walks the earth may ever know, since John 5:28-29 infers a specific time to be set aside for all to be judged at once.

We can almost accept that it may be a long time before that time comes. The Lord in the OT has us living to the thousandth generation. If 20 years equals a generation, we’re talking 20,000 years. Including the OT, it’s only been four to five-thousand years since God created Adam, so we still have a ways to go.

Consider Revelation 1:7 which says “Behold, he is coming with the clouds, and every eye will see him, even those who pierced him...” In reading this Verse alone, we can surmise that Jesus is the one that is coming, since he was the one who was pierced when he was on the cross. And even that is a long time ago before today. And as stated in John 5:28-29, he is coming to judge us.

It is said that God has made Laws that are expressed and implied, and He has given Jesus the authority to judge man based on those Laws. So, our final judgment rests with Jesus.

AND in Luke 23 :16:31 the rich man SOUL was in HELL

His spirit went to God that gave it , in ECC 12:7

And his body is in a GRAVE .

and this happened ALL under the LAW of MOSES


But today under GRACE , your BODY goes to a GRAVE .

But where does the SOUL GO ?

And where does the spirit GO and these man SPIRIT does not go back to God

You will find your answer in 1 Cor 5:5 where the SOUL and SPIRIT GO !!

dan p

 

[The Liturgist]

It seems it would be a stretch to believe that he is referring to the bones that are buried

I have to disagree emphatically on that point, in that our body, that is buried, is what all Early Church Fathers believe this referred to, since Scripture speaks of us being resurrected incorruptibly in the same manner our Lord, God and Savior Jesus Christ was, and as my beloved Lutheran and Anglican friends @ViaCrucis @Jipsah and @MarkRohfrietsch can confirm, this view also represents normative Protestantism.

Furthermore, in the Orthodox church our experience has been the relics of the holy martyrs of the early church, and of later times, and also of the other saints whose status as members of the Church Triumphant has been made known to us, are usually incorrupt, with the decay stopping either at their bones, or in some cases at their flesh. Likewise, Roman Catholicism has a number of incorrupt relics of saints.

In that we believe the body is an integral part of our person, which will be restored, even if destroyed, at the day of judgement, the Orthodox and several other traditional churches are frequently opposed to cremation.

This because we believe that the body of Christians is sacred, having been created in the image of Christ our True God and being the temple of indwelling the Holy Spirit, and that burning it is essentially iconoclastic. For this reason, the Orthodox church will not perform a funeral where someone has been voluntarily cremated against the will of the church - in the US, to offset the high cost of burial, many Orthodox Christian parishes, in addition to having arrangements similar to those of traditional Rabinnical Jews who also reject cremation, will keep a coffin on hand continually that can be used by whoever next reposes in the church, and there is a strong preference for simple coffins, which are manufactured at various monasteries including the convent of St. Barbara in Southern California, which has a lovely group of nuns. It is in the sale of coffins and caskets where people are frequently most heavily overcharged by the funeral homes.

But to reiterate, in those cases where the body has been destroyed, for example, if someone was cremated involuntarily by a public health authority due to a disease, or if they were killed violently so that their body was obliterated or cannot be found, or if in the case of the great martyr St. Ignatius of Antioch, one of the most important fathers of the early church at the end of the first century, they were devoured by lions, God can, regardless of what happened, restore the body to existence, and thus we shall be raised incorruptible.

For those whose relics display incorruptibility in the present, this is rather a blessing that the Eastern Orthodox and Oriental Orthodox believe is used by God as a means of receiving His uncreated grace - indeed, many of the relics of the saints are known to the Orthodox to stream myrhh (such as those of St. Nicholas), much like the holy icons, and many have been associated with miraculous healing. I myself have venerated relics, both of the saints and of the Cross, and strongly recommend the practice.*

* John Calvin once made the oft repeated claim that there are enough relics of the cross to build a galleon, but this is false - in the 19th century a French scientist measured all of those fragments of the Holy and Life Giving Cross posessed by chruches in Europe and came up with less than a third of the required mass. If we consider that the Ethiopian Tewahedo Orthodox Church reports having an entire wing of the cross as a relic, that would mean that at most a bit more than half is accounted for. Thus while it is possible there are counterfeit pieces of the cross (but one can study the provenance of them - if they are associated with miraculous healings, like the True Cross was - indeed this being how it was located in the fourth century by St. Helena, than it is unlikely they are counterfeit), the total amount is consistent with what we would expect given the number of relics destroyed in the Muslim conquest of the Mediterranean and Eastern Europe and the iconoclast destruction of relics in the 8th century and the 16th and 17th century in some Calvinist lands.

 

[Jermayn]

The Bible infers that those who are judged to have been righteous will go to Heaven. It is never too late to be judged as being righteous, as Jesus showed us when in Luke 23:43, Jesus, on the cross, says to the condemned man on the cross next to him after he asks Jesus to remember him in Verse 22, “Truly, I say to you, today you will be with me in paradise.” Th condemned man was fortunate, since the rest of us don’t know when the day of our final judgement will come.

The Bible infers that each of us are composed of two parts. One part, which is emphasized in the OT, is our souls. Ecclesiastes 12:7 says, “...the spirit returns to God who gave it.” God in Ezekiel 18:4 says, “Behold, all souls are mine...”

There is another part of us which is emphasized in the NT, and that is the part of us that is buried. The part of us that is buried is not specifically identified. John 5:28-29 says, “...an hour is coming when all who are in the tombs will hear his voice and come out, those who have done good to the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil to the resurrection of judgment.” Who is John referring to? It seems it would be a stretch to believe that he is referring to the bones that are buried. Then again, nobody who walks the earth may ever know, since John 5:28-29 infers a specific time to be set aside for all to be judged at once.

We can almost accept that it may be a long time before that time comes. The Lord in the OT has us living to the thousandth generation. If 20 years equals a generation, we’re talking 20,000 years. Including the OT, it’s only been four to five-thousand years since God created Adam, so we still have a ways to go.

Consider Revelation 1:7 which says “Behold, he is coming with the clouds, and every eye will see him, even those who pierced him...” In reading this Verse alone, we can surmise that Jesus is the one that is coming, since he was the one who was pierced when he was on the cross. And even that is a long time ago before today. And as stated in John 5:28-29, he is coming to judge us.

It is said that God has made Laws that are expressed and implied, and He has given Jesus the authority to judge man based on those Laws. So, our final judgment rests with Jesus.

I've always thought that we don't go anywhere upon death, but Jesus' return with feel instantaneous because we are essentially stepping outside of time when we die. Kind of like when you have surgery you feel like you are waking up the instant you go under.

 

[The Liturgist]

I've always thought that we don't go anywhere upon death, but Jesus' return with feel instantaneous because we are essentially stepping outside of time when we die. Kind of like when you have surgery you feel like you are waking up the instant you go under.

The chief problem with that is that it disagrees with the lived experience of the early church until the present, since we have had too many incidents of saints who have reposed in the Lord appearing miraculously to support the doctrine of “soul sleep” which is basically what you are referring to. Aside from that, some were taken up to Heaven bodily - St. Elijah, St. Moses (who we know was resurrected after death because of his appearance at the Transfiguration of Christ on Mount Tabor), and our glorious lady Theotokos and ever virgin Mary (this event was thoroughly documented by the early Church, and the Blessed Virgin Mary is the only New Testament saint for whom no bodily relics exist, which exist even in the case of St. Ignatius, who does not appear by name, but who was among those children blessed by our Lord in the Gospels, being the one He picked up, for in the case of St. Ignatius of Antioch, as I mentioned previously, his flesh was devoured to lions, but his breastbone survived this, and is venerated to this day) and also probably St. Enoch the Prophet.

 

[Jermayn]

The chief problem with that is that it disagrees with the lived experience of the early church until the present, since we have had too many incidents of saints who have reposed in the Lord appearing miraculously to support the doctrine of “soul sleep” which is basically what you are referring to. Aside from that, some were taken up to Heaven bodily - St. Elijah, St. Moses (who we know was resurrected after death because of his appearance at the Transfiguration of Christ on Mount Tabor), and our glorious lady Theotokos and ever virgin Mary (this event was thoroughly documented by the early Church, and the Blessed Virgin Mary is the only New Testament saint for whom no bodily relics exist, which exist even in the case of St. Ignatius, who does not appear by name, but who was among those children blessed by our Lord in the Gospels, being the one He picked up, for in the case of St. Ignatius of Antioch, as I mentioned previously, his flesh was devoured to lions, but his breastbone survived this, and is venerated to this day) and also probably St. Enoch the Prophet.

Being protestant, I know little about many of the Saints you are referring to, but I can't deny the transfiguration. Didn't even think of that regarding this subject. You totally put the idea of soul sleep to bed. Thank you for your insight!

 

[The Liturgist]

Being protestant, I know little about many of the Saints you are referring to,

Actually I only mentioned two saints who aren’t in the Bible, but in the case of St. Nicholas of Myra I’m pretty sure you’ve heard of him.

In the case of St. Ignatius, all traditional liturgical Protestant churches venerate St. Ignatius of Antioch, who was martyred in the Coliseum sometime between 95 and 120 AD. Indeed you can read the propers for his feast day on the website of the Episcopal Church: Ignatius of Antioch, Bishop and Martyr, c. 115

The Anglicans using the Episcopal liturgy have this lovely collect for his feast day: “Almighty God, we praise thy Name for thy bishop and martyr Ignatius of Antioch, who offered himself as grain to be ground by the teeth of wild beasts that he might present to thee the pure bread of sacrifice. Accept, we pray, the willing tribute of our lives and give us a share in the pure and spotless offering of thy Son Jesus Christ; who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Ghost, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.”

As for the other saints I referred to, such as St. Moses, St. Elijah, and the Blessed Virgin Mary, they are literally in the New Testament (if only briefly in the case of St. Moses and St. Elijah) and in the case of St. Moses and St. Elijah are very important persons in the Old Testament.

Of course, there are plenty of saints who have appeared after death who I could have mentioned who you would not have heard of, such as St. Abanoub, a child martyr from the Diocletian persecution, and St. Nektarios of Pentapolis, a Greek bishop, both of whom have been seen recently in Coptic Orthodox and Romanian Orthodox churches, respectively.

At any rate, I appreciate your very kind words. I regard the Transfiguration as a definite refutation of soul sleep and an indication that prior to the Resurrection our Lord allows us to repose with Him in Abraham’s Bosom, as we see in the story of the Rich Man and Lazarus, before raising us in a state of incorruption.