QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS

End Times Prophecy Passport

By Chuck Swindoll

Q: Do believers go straight to heaven when they die? Do nonbelievers go straight to hell when they die?

A: Every human being has both a body and a soul. When we die, believer or nonbeliever, our bodies go to the grave. However, our souls go to different places. A believer in Jesus Christ who dies today will go directly to heaven. Paul says in 2 Corinthians 5:8 that believers would “prefer rather to be absent from the body and to be at home with the Lord.”

Contrary to popular opinion, nonbelievers today do not go directly to hell when they die. Instead, they go to hades, which the Bible describes as a place of fiery torment (Luke 16:23-24). We know that hades is a place of punishment distinct from hell because in Revelation 20:14 the apostle John wrote that death and hades will be “thrown into the lake of fire,” another name for hell. At the final judgment of nonbelievers—the great white throne judgment—all nonbelievers will be resurrected to receive their sentence.

Finally, the bible makes no allowance for any kind of “soul sleep,” a presumed state of unconscious slumber for our souls while we await our resurrection at judgment day. Proponents of “soul sleep” try to reconcile verses that speak of the dead being asleep (2 Kings 14:29; 1 Thessalonians 4:13). However, these verses are using the image of sleep to refer to the dead body, not to the soul. As Paul noted in 2 Corinthians 5:6-8, to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord. The Bible provides plenty of examples of people who are conscious during the period between their death and their bodily resurrection (Matthew 17:3; Revelation 6:9-10).

Next up: Where will those who die as infants spend eternity?