# So you're dead. Now what? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [March 20, 2000, 3:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-youre-dead-now-what/17778 "2000-03-20T03:24:00Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Psycho\_Pirate](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/9e8a1a/32.png) [@Psycho\_Pirate](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Psycho_Pirate)\ **Post date:** [March 20, 2000, 4:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-youre-dead-now-what/17778/21 "2000-03-20T16:30:00Z")
Well here is what the King James Bible (as I read it) says will happen when you die. If you die in your sins without trusting Christ, your body is buried and your soul descends into Hell to await Judgement Day. If you die as a saved individual, your body is buried and your soul ascends into Heaven to await the Rapture. When the Rapture takes place, living Christians will bodily rise into the air. Their mortal bodies will be changed into immortal. The bodies of deceased Christians will rise from their graves and be transformed to immortal to join with their souls. Christians will then be judged before God according to their works, to be given rewards or denied rewards. When Judgement Day arrives (1007 years after the Rapture) the souls of Hell will stand before God and be judged of their sins, and will then be cast into the lake of fire forever. That’s it in a nutshell. ---
**Author:** ![Gaudere](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e495f1/32.png) [@Gaudere](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gaudere)\ **Post date:** [March 20, 2000, 4:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-youre-dead-now-what/17778/22 "2000-03-20T16:44:00Z")
> [@](#): > > When Judgement Day arrives (1007 years after the Rapture) the souls of Hell will stand before God and be judged of their sins, and will then be cast into the lake of fire forever. That seems a little odd. So non-trusters-in-Christ go to Hell when they die. Then they get dragged back out of Hell after a few thousand years and judged _and then_ thrown back into Hell! It seems a bit redundant; weren’t they _already_ judged when they died? The fact that Christians who go to heaven are given or denied rewards is strange too. What, you get slightly _less_ eternal bliss if you were a murderer who repented shortly before your death? Does anyone have the scripture that talks about this? ---
**Author:** ![RTFirefly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c77e96/32.png) [@RTFirefly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RTFirefly)\ **Post date:** [March 20, 2000, 5:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-youre-dead-now-what/17778/23 "2000-03-20T17:40:00Z")
All of the following, of course, is completely a matter of conjecture. I’ve got no special revelation about _anything_, including the _après vie_. One thing I believe about the transition from this life to the next is that it’s a move from within time to outside of time. (That’s fairly orthodox now, IIRC. And since we now see the universe as a four-dimensional bubble of spacetime, it’s hard for me to imagine it any other way.) If this is so, then there’s really no distinction between waiting until the Second Coming and ‘this day you will be with me in paradise.’ The Bible has many verses that suggest that some will go to heaven, and others to hell. It also has many verses that suggest universal salvation. What side of that divide one falls on depends on what sort of person one is, I guess. Christians have come up with such arbitrary schemes for how they believe people are assigned to heaven or hell, and I know that has to put off nonbelievers in a big way. Calvinists believing that we’re all predestined one way or the other (so that if you’re predestined to go to hell, that’s that, no matter what sort of life you live); Baptists and many other conservative Christians believing it all comes down to whether you’ve accepted Jesus as your personal Savior before you kicked (leading to all the ‘suppose you get hit by a car tonight’ BS); Mormons believing…well, whatever it is they believe about being able to give their ancestors an extra chance at heaven, that prompts their impressive efforts in genealogical research (Monty, Flinx - feel free to clarify); old-style Catholics’ believing that it’s all tied in with your observation of the appropriate sacraments; and so on, _ad infinitum_. Another thing I would expect is that whatever’s true would have a fundamental unity and elegance; if God can create a universe where the physics has the underlying elegance that it seems to have, I would expect that same quality out of eternity. So any theology of the afterlife that seems full of apparent contradictions, or where you can still see the scotch tape where they patched over some of the worst problems, I tend to reject out of hand. Along the same lines, I do the same with any scheme that makes God seem arbitrary and capricious, partly for the same reasons, but primarily because what I believe to be my experience of Him tells me that that’s the last thing He is. C.S. Lewis once wrote that the distinction between saved and damned came down to the distinction between those who, at the end, came face to face with God and said, “Thy will be done,” and those to whom God had to say, “_thy_ will be done.” That was fundamental enough to satisfy me for a long time. Madeleine L’Engle’s take on the subject, though, amounts to the fact that God has eternity to change the hearts of the latter group - and God, as she experiences Him, is the sort of God who would want to do just that. And she reminds us that God’s love and patience will outlast any human being’s hardheartedness. I had to think about that one for a few years, but I’ve settled into being pretty much satisfied with her reasoning, both at an intellectual and a moral level. It’s universal salvation, but in a way that’s not absolution without conversion and change. Like I said, this is all conjecture. But it’s what I believe, and it seems to fit together well, IMO. ---
**Author:** ![Liberal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/848f3c/32.png) [@Liberal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Liberal)\ **Post date:** [March 20, 2000, 5:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-youre-dead-now-what/17778/24 "2000-03-20T17:50:00Z")
**RT** You have a wonderful gift for clear analysis. Thanks very much. ---
**Author:** ![Psycho\_Pirate](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/9e8a1a/32.png) [@Psycho\_Pirate](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Psycho_Pirate)\ **Post date:** [March 20, 2000, 5:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-youre-dead-now-what/17778/25 "2000-03-20T17:52:00Z")
> [@](#): > > That seems a little odd. So non-trusters-in-Christ go to Hell when they die. Then they get dragged back out of Hell after a few thousand years and judged and then thrown back into Hell! It seems a bit redundant; weren’t they _already_ judged when they died? No. Hell and the Lake of Fire are two different places. Every sinner suffers the same in Hell. The level of suffering in the Lake of Fire is determined by the sins of the person. These verses show how Hell and the Lake of Fire are two different places. The dead described in these verses are the souls who died without trusting Christ, by the way. Revelation 20:12-15 "And I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God; and the books were opened: and another book was opened, which is the book of life: and the dead were judged out of those things which were written in the books, according to their works. **And the sea gave up the dead which were in it; and death and hell delivered up the dead which were in them:** and they were judged every man according to their works. And death and **hell** were cast into the lake of fire. This is the second death. And whosoever was not found written in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire. > [@](#): > > The fact that Christians who go to heaven are given or denied rewards is strange too. What, you get slightly _less_ eternal bliss if you were a murderer who repented shortly before your death? Does anyone have the scripture that talks about this? I Corinthians 3:13-15 “Every man’s work shall be made manifest: for the day shall declare it, because it shall be revealed by fire; and the fire shall try every man’s work of what sort it is. If any man’s work abide which he hath built thereupon, he shall receive a reward. If any man’s work shall be burned, he shall suffer loss: but he himself shall be saved; yet so as by fire.” As far as the rewards, the Bible speaks of different crowns that can be won for good service. The loss of reward is not as clear. Some believe that our works for God on Earth will establish how we will reign during Jesus’ millenial reign on Earth, but this is somewhat off topic. ---
**Author:** ![egkelly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/db5fbb/32.png) [@egkelly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/egkelly)\ **Post date:** [March 20, 2000, 8:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-youre-dead-now-what/17778/26 "2000-03-20T20:22:00Z")
The so called “near death” experiences (documented by such people as Moody and Kubler-Ross-HOW DO you make that umlaut happen?) seem to me to provide a glimpse of what my beyond the final curtain.Has any brave soul actually TRIED to induce a state of death, to see what happens? I recall that some heart transplant surgeries have kept the patient in a state of clinical death for as long as 4 hours-do these patients report anything strange? Finally-has anybody emerged (from a near death session) with horrifying tales of devils, burning sulphur, pitchforks, etc.? ---
**Author:** ![phouka](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/c5a1d2/32.png) [@phouka](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/phouka)\ **Post date:** [March 20, 2000, 8:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-youre-dead-now-what/17778/27 "2000-03-20T20:42:00Z")
eg, yeah, on a purely anecdotal level, my mom’s also told stories about reviving people in ER, only to have them scream in abject terror and beg ER staff not to let the demons get them. ---
**Author:** ![tracer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tracer/32/20578_2.png) [@tracer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tracer)\ **Post date:** [March 20, 2000, 8:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-youre-dead-now-what/17778/28 "2000-03-20T20:55:00Z")
Psycho Pirate wrote: > [@](#): > > Well here is what the King James Bible (as I read it) says will happen when you die. > > … > When the Rapture takes place, living Christians will bodily rise into the air. You do realize, don’t you, that the Rapture appears nowhere in the King James Bible. Or in any other translation of the bible, for that matter. It was part of “Dispensationalism”, a rather strained interpretation of scripture invented by theologian John N. Darby in 1832. * * * The truth, as always, is more complicated than that. ---
**Author:** ![bossbuster](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/13edae/32.png) [@bossbuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bossbuster)\ **Post date:** [March 20, 2000, 9:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-youre-dead-now-what/17778/29 "2000-03-20T21:14:00Z")
egkelly asked: Finally-has anybody emerged (from a near death session) with horrifying tales of devils, burning sulphur, pitchforks, etc.? I guess I havn’t heard of any…but something interesting I have noticed, is that whites tend to see white angels, asians see asain angels, blacks…etc… I guess heaven is segregated… I could be wrong…it happend once before… ---
**Author:** ![Psycho\_Pirate](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/9e8a1a/32.png) [@Psycho\_Pirate](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Psycho_Pirate)\ **Post date:** [March 20, 2000, 9:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-youre-dead-now-what/17778/30 "2000-03-20T21:14:00Z")
> [@](#): > > You do realize, don’t you, that the Rapture appears nowhere in the King James Bible. Or in any other translation of the bible, for that matter. It was part of “Dispensationalism”, a rather strained interpretation of scripture invented by theologian John N. Darby in 1832. John 14:1-3 “Let not your heart be troubled: ye believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father’s house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also.” Seems pretty clear to me. ---
**Author:** ![Ukulele\_Ike](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/df788c/32.png) [@Ukulele\_Ike](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ukulele_Ike)\ **Post date:** [March 20, 2000, 9:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-youre-dead-now-what/17778/31 "2000-03-20T21:51:00Z")
It does? You can read that passage and come out of it with the Rapture? Sure you’re not coming at it with just a TOUCH of a pre-conceived notion? ---
**Author:** ![cmkeller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cmkeller/32/118_2.png) [@cmkeller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cmkeller)\ **Post date:** [March 20, 2000, 9:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-youre-dead-now-what/17778/32 "2000-03-20T21:58:00Z")
Well, according to Orthodox Jewish thought, one meets his (or her) old relatives, and is then ushered into the court, where he is shown a replay of his life and called to account for his actions. If he (or she) was more than 50% good, he gets into heaven immediately (although the level of heaven depends on just how good), and if less, to hell for up to 12 months of purification until the soiled soul is fit to be in heaven. * * * Chaim Mattis Keller [ckeller@kozmo.com](mailto:ckeller@kozmo.com) “Sherlock Holmes once said that once you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the answer. I, however, do not like to eliminate the impossible. The impossible often has a kind of integrity to it that the merely improbable lacks.” – Douglas Adams’s Dirk Gently, Holistic Detective ---
**Author:** ![Larry\_Borgia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/larry_borgia/32/156_2.png) [@Larry\_Borgia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Larry_Borgia)\ **Post date:** [March 20, 2000, 10:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-youre-dead-now-what/17778/33 "2000-03-20T22:11:00Z")
egkelly, I guess you’re not a Simpsons fan, or you might remember when Homer recovered from a heart attack and told Dr. Hibbert, “Oh Doctor, I was in this wonderful place full of fire and Brimstone, and there were all these people in red pajamas poking me with pitchforks.” * * * Perked Ears indicate curiosity - Know Your Cat ---
**Author:** ![Gaudere](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e495f1/32.png) [@Gaudere](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gaudere)\ **Post date:** [March 20, 2000, 10:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-youre-dead-now-what/17778/34 "2000-03-20T22:21:00Z")
Chaim–does your explanation hold only for reasonably good Jews and holy non-Jews? I seem to recall that Orthodox Jews believe some people just die; only the good are resurrected. Is this correct, or am I wrong and everybody get a maximum 12 month sentence to hell and then onto heaven? So one goes to judgment instantly upon death, but is then bodily resurrected at least briefly? ---
**Author:** ![mipsman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e99b99/32.png) [@mipsman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mipsman)\ **Post date:** [March 20, 2000, 11:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-youre-dead-now-what/17778/35 "2000-03-20T23:41:00Z")
Basically, life’s a bitch, then you die. Then you are born again. ---
**Author:** ![elelle](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/f0a364/32.png) [@elelle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elelle)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2000, 12:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-youre-dead-now-what/17778/36 "2000-03-21T00:09:00Z")
To give another perspective, which I have done a lot of reading on, but certainly am no expert: Tibetan Buddhism has ancient texts which explicitly detail the after death state. The BARDO THOTROL, commonly known as the Tibetan Book Of The Dead, is a text to be read as the person is dying, preferably by a lama. To condense greatly, and hopefully do an incredibly meticulous tradition a small justice: When one dies, it takes some time to truly separate from the body. One may encounter peaceful or wrathful visions, but since Buddhist tenets say that everything is a projection of mind, is more indicative of a lack of understanding of the nature of reality. Since the consciousness is no longer shielded by it’s connection with a physical body, these projections appear in an overwhelming form. The Bardo Thotrol is read to guide one through these states, hopefully for the chance of enlightenment, or getting out of the loop of rebirth. If you miss that chance, you are attracted, by the laws of karma ( more complex than our Western understanding) and are born again, maybe as a human, maybe in one of several other realms. The Tibetan term for what part of us that goes on is not so much “soul”, as “essence”. The whole point of Buddhist meditation practice is to train the mind to perceive the nature of reality, for a more balanced life here, but also to more correctly understand what’s going on as you die. Tibetan Buddhism being a Mahayana tradition, the practitioner cultivates a wish not only for one’s own liberation from this cycle, but to stay and act as a guide to all sentient beings until we all get out of the loop. Pretty heady stuff, and amazing in it’s generosity. Sometimes it really scares the shit out of me, because the emphasis is that you have to do your own work. But, in the course of understanding “emptiness”, there is also a Compassionate Presence. Although not a Creator God as in the Judeo-Christian tradition. The book deserves a read. ---
**Author:** ![Twin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/85f322/32.png) [@Twin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Twin)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2000, 2:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-youre-dead-now-what/17778/37 "2000-03-21T02:03:00Z")
> [@](#): > > It does? You can read that passage and come out of it with the Rapture? > > Sure you’re not coming at it with just a TOUCH of a pre-conceived notion? Okay… I Corinthians 15:22-23 “For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive. But every man in his own order: Christ the firstfruits; afterward they that are Christ’s at his coming.” I Thessalonians 4:15-17 “For this we say unto you by the word of the Lord, that we which are alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord shall not prevent them which are asleep. For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first: Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord.” ---
**Author:** ![Psycho\_Pirate](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/9e8a1a/32.png) [@Psycho\_Pirate](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Psycho_Pirate)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2000, 2:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-youre-dead-now-what/17778/38 "2000-03-21T02:18:00Z")
Sorry about that. My twin brother’s internet cookies must have got caught in my post. That’s what happens when you share the same computer at home! 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Great\_Dave](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/46a35a/32.png) [@Great\_Dave](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Great_Dave)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2000, 4:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-youre-dead-now-what/17778/39 "2000-03-21T04:00:00Z")
PP: Still unclear as to how you get the Rapture out of those passages. Couldn’t you read that as happening at the end, without an intervening Rapture? Gaudere: Jesus’ divinity is accepted in pretty much all Xn sects. But that doesn’t mean it’s not open for a little debate. * * * -Dave “Violence is the last refuge of the ignorant.” -I. Asimov ---
**Author:** ![Gaudere](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e495f1/32.png) [@Gaudere](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gaudere)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2000, 5:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-youre-dead-now-what/17778/40 "2000-03-21T05:16:00Z")
> [@](#): > > Jesus’ divinity is accepted in pretty much all Xn sects. But that doesn’t mean it’s not open for a little debate. In which ones isn’t it? And how do you debate about His divinity if you accept wholly that He is God? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-youre-dead-now-what/17778.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-youre-dead-now-what/17778.md?page=3)