Questions about Heaven

I had a couple good questions asked about “The Rapture” message especially related to 1Thessalonians chapter 4. 

 ”The scripture seems to imply that people who have died are just dead, and will be raised to heaven only at the time of Christ’s return.  Yet we all seem to believe, and state, that our deceased loved ones have gone to heaven and wait for us there.  Do our souls after death just go into some limbo state?  Or do our souls, as believing Christian’s, immediately go to be with God?

The Bible tells us that “To be absent from the Body is to be at home with the Lord!”  (2 Corinthians 5:8)  Thessalonians is talking instead about the great day of the Lord, when God redeems all His Church into His eternal Kingdom, dead and living, through the resurrection,  meaning when we die our Spirit is lifted to God and then waits for the day of the resurrection of the Body and the transformation of God’s people and God’s Church (sin and death done).  When Jesus died, His spirit immediately was lifted to God but 3 days later He experienced a bodily resurrection.   In Matthew 16:3,4 we have Jesus meeting with Elijah and Moses on the Mount of Transfiguration, two men that had died long before, and yet their spirits had been in heaven, too waiting for the full resurrection.  Jesus also tells the story of Lazarus, the rich man, who, while in hell looks up into heaven and sees Abraham in “God’s bosom”    The Bible speaks often of the spirit/soul in each person.  In Thessalonians the word “Sleep”  is used, a word often used for the death of a Christian meaning the Body is “Dead, asleep” but the spirit is still alive.  This has been the belief of almost every Protestant Church since the reformation, and I believe, the clear belief of the early Church. The spirit that God created and placed in each person is not going to remain in a grave until The Rapture, nor do I believe is capable of remaining in a grave, but will be reunited with the Body at the last day.  This is the purpose of redemption and salvation that Jesus already walked through for us.

The Picture is that Jesus comes back to earth with those who had ”been asleep” meaning their bodies are dead, and often dust, but their spirits are with him in the place prepared as John 14 tells us. Then the resurrection takes place, a transformation “Like unto His glorious body”.  God’s purpose since the garden has been to restore what had been lost This calls for the full resurrection of body as well as the soul which happens  for the Church at the point of the rapture. God will have His Church and will not lose His people.  The same God that created the earth will recreate it.