The most dramatic illustration of what happens to us when we die can be seen in the passage from
John 11:38-44 where Yeshua calls Lazarus back from the
dead. He did not call him back out of heaven - but from out of the grave. Why? Because Lazarus was
dead - not hanging out in some etherial netherland. There is no
Hebrew thought in the Original Writings of a person's soul (which is translated as the English "spirit") being separated from the rest of what it means to be human. The division of man into "body-mind-soul" is a thoroughly Greek invention elaborated on by the Greek philosopher, Plato, in his book
"the New Republic". The Hebrew word,
nephesh has been translated into the English "soul" because of the influence of the Greek word
psyche introduced into the Septuagint (the Greek translation of the Hebrew
Tanakh (OT), also known as the LXX). In the Hebraic perspective, however, human beings are one homogenized entity - the person, the
nephesh. When the apostle Paul cites the Hebrew
Habakkuk 2:4 in
Romans 1:17 and
Galatians 3:11, he is
not speaking as if the soul could be saved but the body could not. Paul is speaking about the entire
person, the Hebrew
nephesh. Just as the verse in Habakkuk suggests, it is not a
soul that is "puffed up", it is an entire way of
being in the world that involves everything about a person - thoughts, choices, feelings, will and consequent actions. Compounding this doctrinal error is the unscriptural belief that humans possess an
immortal soul.
To this day, pastors within Christendom teach that, at death, the soul goes to a place called "heaven" for doing well, or to purgatory or "hell" for committing various degrees of evil. This concept of the immortality of the soul being something apart from the rest of a man only began appearing into what became "Christian" theology some 200 to 250 years
after the Resurrection of Yeshua when the writings of Ignatius, Marcion and Origen began the process of syncretism (which is the merging or fusion of different systems of thought or belief). However, the scriptures themselves
do not teach the immortality of the soul; rather, they reveal,
"...it is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes judgment; so Jesus, having been offered once to bear the sins of many, will appear a second time, not to deal with sin but to rescue from death those who are eagerly waiting for Him." (
Hebrews 9:27,
Matthew 16:27).
Neither do the scriptures reveal that when one dies, the soul goes to heaven or hell leaving the body behind. Rather, it clearly shows that when one dies they await the resurrection
of the dead - both of the righteous and of the wicked (
Daniel 12:2,
John 5:25-29,
1Corinthians 15:24-28,
Revelation 21:8).
The apostles were witnesses that Jesus was resurrected from
the dead, fulfilling the Promise of God, that is vital to others within His Family having the hope of also being raised from the dead just as He was.
Yeshua did not resurrect Himself - that was the Father's doing. Had the Father not raised Him, He would still be there (
Romans 8:11). Since there is no "time" in eternity, consequently, there is no time between a person's death and their resurrection. This is why scripture describes those who have died as being "asleep" because when you are asleep, there is no conscious awareness of the passage of time.
