Life after death

Many people think that we go to heaven at death.   This is a pleasant thought, but there is no evidence for this in the Bible.   People like to believe it because it gives them comfort.   The word ‘soul’ in the Authorised Version of the Bible simply means a living creature or a living person.   Examples of this may be found in Genesis 2.7 and Genesis 12.5.   We also read in Ezekiel 18.4 that the soul that sins shall die.

 Read Ecclesiastes 9:5 which tells us that the dead do not know anything.

 The word ‘hell’ in the Bible generally means ‘the grave’.   It is the same word in the original Greek.   So when we read in Acts 2:31 the reference to hell, this indicates that Jesus was in the grave after he had died.   He did not go to heaven until 40 days after he had been raised from the dead.

 The reference to God’s house in John 14:2 does not refer to heaven.   Jesus said in the next verse that he would come again.   There would therefore be no point in people going to heaven as Jesus is coming back to the earth.   God’s house is referred to in 1 Timothy 3:15, and we read here that it is referring to the church.   The word ‘church’ means ‘the people’ rather than the building.   It is the Greek word ‘ekklesia’ (anglicised as ‘ecclesia’), and means literally those ‘called out’.   In the passage in John 14, Jesus was referring to a house in the future, of which he would be the chief cornerstone.   This would be a house made up of people called out, people who are followers of the Lord Jesus Christ.