Where does a person go immediately after death?
While most Christians believe some sort of heaven or hell is the ultimate eternal residence, beliefs on the transition between death and the resurrection vary.
There appear to be at least three basic types of beliefs on where those who die end up: (1) Go directly to God's presence; (2) Travel to a spirit world existence; (3) Go into a sleep or unconscious existence until the resurrection, when they will awaken.
Here's a sampling of seven churches and their beliefs:
Pastor Steve Goodier of Christ United Methodist Church, Salt Lake City, said there's no firm belief in his faith regarding the dead. However, he said the average church member believes that once the spirit separates from the body in death, the spirit goes to be with God.
"Most call this heaven; it's a spiritual realm," he said.
He believes we will be reunited with loved ones there, although that isn't a specific biblical doctrine, he says.
Pastor Goodier said United Methodists focus more on living their lives as well as they can, rather than worrying about where they will go immediately after death.
"The Bible states we step into the presence of God," Pastor Terry Long of Calvary Chapel of Salt Lake said.
How we handle that visit depends on our relationship with God, he said. How righteous we are in this life is critical to staying in God's presence in the afterlife.
Richard Wolf, an elder in the North Salt Lake congregation of Jehovah's Witnesses, said that his faith believes we sleep in the grave after death, like Lazarus did during Jesus' ministry.
We rest in death, the Witnesses explain in their "What Does the Bible Really Teach" book — "in a deep sleep without dreams," and the dead do not hear, think or suffer (Ecclesiastes 9:5 and John 11:11).
They believe the sleeping dead await the resurrection, where the righteous will live forever on a paradise earth with loved ones.
That's similar to the basic beliefs of Seventh-day Adventists. Their official Web site states: "The wages of sin is death. But God, who alone is immortal, will grant eternal life to His redeemed. Until that day, death is an unconscious state for all people. When Christ, who is our life, appears, the resurrected righteous and the living righteous will be glorified and caught up to meet their Lord. The second resurrection, the resurrection of the unrighteous, will take place a thousand years later."
Southern Baptists do not believe in sleep in the grave. They believe spiritual life, at least for believers in Christ, continues after death in a state of conscious being until the resurrection of the dead at the return of Christ, according to "Soul Sleep," written by Tal Davis of Apologetics Denominations, a Southern Baptist Convention entity.
They essentially believe that at dead the spirit immediately returns to God. The righteous will rest with him, while the wicked will be held under darkness until the judgment, according to Davis.
According to a Catholic home page, www.catholic-ew.org.uk/, Catholics don't profess to know exactly what life after death is like. However, they believe that if you die in good spiritual state, in friendship with God, you go to heaven. But many people are not pure enough to come into God's presence immediately so they undergo purification — purgatory — to achieve the holiness necessary to enter into heaven.
"This is 'the final purification of the elect' (people who will go to heaven). It is different from the eternal punishment of souls in hell, because people in purgatory know that they will go to heaven when they have been purified. This doctrine also explains why Catholics pray for the dead. We do not believe that when you die, you are beyond help. We believe that our prayers could help people in purgatory," the Web site states.
The Catholic Encyclopedia states: "The sinner failing to do penance in this life may be punished in another world, and so not be cast off eternally from God. ... For unrepented venial faults for the payment of temporal punishment due to sin at time of death, the Church has always taught the doctrine of purgatory."
What about the really wicked?
The Catholic Encyclopedia states: "The Church professes her faith in the Athanasian Creed: They that have done good shall go into life everlasting, and they that have done evil into everlasting fire ... the souls of those who depart in mortal sin, or only in original sin, go down immediately into hell, to be visited, however, with unequal punishments."
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints teaches that the dead instantly arrive in a postmortal spirit world. There the good and wicked are divided.
President Joseph F. Smith taught: "The spirits of all men, as soon as they depart from this mortal body, whether they are good or evil ... are taken home to that God who gave them life, where there is a separation, a partial judgment, and the spirits of those who are righteous are received into a state of happiness, which is called paradise, a state of rest, a state of peace, where they expand in wisdom, where they have respite from all their troubles, and where care and sorrow do not annoy.
"The wicked, on the contrary, have no part nor portion in the spirit of the Lord, and they are cast into outer darkness, being led captive, because of their own iniquity, by the evil one.
"And in this space between death and the resurrection of the body, the two classes of souls remain, in happiness or in misery, until the time which is appointed of God that the dead shall come forth and be reunited both spirit and body, and be brought to stand before God, and be judged according to their works. This is the final judgment" (as quoted in the "Encyclopedia of Mormonism").
Brigham Young taught that this realm of spirits is here on the Earth, though hidden from us by an unseen veil.
A vision by Jedediah M. Grant, a member of the First Presidency in Brigham Young's presidency, revealed the righteous part of the spirit world to be organized into families and have perfect harmony. President Grant saw the dwelling places there were exceptionally attractive, exceeding, in his opinion, the beauty of Solomon's temple, with flowers of numerous kinds (as recollected by President Heber C. Kimball at President Grant's funeral, on Dec. 4, 1856, Journal of Discourses 4:135-6).
Latter-day Saints also have an unusual belief in a pre-Earth life — a conscious existence with God prior to birth. The prevalent LDS belief is that a veil is lifted at death and the memory of that pre-Earth life is instantly restored then.
However, teachings by at least one past general authority challenge that belief. Elder Melvin J. Ballard, an apostle from 1919-1939, asserted that man's pre-Earth knowledge is not automatically restored at death to all people and that men must still basically live by faith in the spirit world. (From a talk in the Ogden Tabernacle on Sept. 22, 1922.)
LDS teachings also indicate that those who did not have a chance to learn of the gospel of Jesus Christ in mortality can be taught in the spirit world. Righteous spirits in the spirit world spend their time teaching the gospel to those who will listen (Mormon Doctrine, Page 762).
Spirits converse as people do on Earth in the spirit world and can learn and repent in that realm. However, repentance may be 10 times more difficult in the spirit world — without a mortal body — according to Elder Ballard.
E-mail: lynn@desnews.com