In a recent posting I asked if heaven would be the future home of the saints.  In that series I highlighted several Scriptures that have been rejected by many all but a few readers over the years.  Having taught God’s unedited Truth for quite some time, this comes as no surprise.  I assume that most of the readers of this website are professing Christians, therefore I assume that very few readers accept what I write, even though I provide Biblical book, chapter and verse references for everything I put forth.  One will note that when I express my personal opinion I state that it is indeed only my opinion.  I have also found that the following statements are true: “What people do not deeply love, they will not deeply study.”  “When people do not love the truth, they will eventually believe a lie.”  Relative to the church and the Word of God, both statements have proven to be true.

The Biblically proven fact that God’s people have never, do not and will not go to heaven following their deaths is a hard Truth for church people to accept.  My experience has shown me that those who accept the Bible as written, including the “fine print,” are few in number, therefore I feel compelled to return to the subject of death and heaven, this time with more time given to a totally misunderstood subject– the SOUL OF MAN–specifically what it is and where it goes following physical death.  What I will bring forth out the Bible will contradict what church leaders have been preaching for some 1700 years.  Theirs is the perverted Gospel that the Apostle Paul warned us about in his epistle to the churches of  Galatia (1:6-9).  That church people go to heaven upon death is part of the church’s perverted gospel which Satan’s false prophets continue to proclaim as “God’s truth.”  However, as Scripture tells us, there two personages called by that name: the God of the Scriptures and the god of this world (2 Corinthians 4:4).  Not only has the church embraced a false god (Satan) as their lord, they have also embraced a false Jesus.  The supposed “son” of the supposed “god” the church worships and obeys is that “other Jesus” Paul warned us about in 2 Corinthians 11:4.  As a result of worshiping and serving a false god and his false christ, false Christianity proclaims her perverted version of the Holy Bible as “thus saith the Lord.”

One of the false church’s false “truths” involves going to heaven upon dying.  Obviously, death precedes the supposed trip to heaven we hear so much about in sermon and song.  Also, the soul of man has become an important part of the death-heaven scenario in that it is supposedly the soul that enters heaven and remains there for eternity.  None of which is Biblically true.  Let us honestly study the Word of God as written, specifically His “fine print,” to learn the Truth about the soul and its future.  It is the “fine print”–specifically one’s belief in and obedience to it–that separates sheep from goats/wheat from tares and good fruit trees from bad fruit trees.

Historically, death has been viewed by different people in different ways.  During World War II Japanese Kamikaze pilots embraced death with zeal, believing that their national leader was in fact god himself who would look fondly on them for their sacrifice.  Today the Muslims are taught that if a man dies in battle he will awaken surrounded by a covey of beautiful virgins.  For this reason Muslim men look forward to death in battle.  The ancient Egyptians honored death as the passage from one life to another for every Egyptian.  Ancestor worship is an indication of how the dead were revered and honored in some societies anciently.

However, for the rest of humanity, death continues to be avoided if at all possible.  There is much misinformation found within professing Christendom concerning two aspects of death: what is the soul and what is its final destination.  The primary death issue involves the SOUL OF MAN.  The initial problem revolves around the fact that man does not know what the soul actually is.  Church people have for hundreds of years been taught that, upon death, he/she (his or her “soul”) is immediately whisked up to heaven where he/she will live for eternity.  The previous series concerning heaven and the saints debunked that theory and laid out the Scriptural Truth relative to the future of God’s true saints.  The entire church-soul-death-heaven fallacy revolves around the identity of the human soul which, we are assured, CAN NEVER DIE AND GOES DIRECTLY TO HEAVEN UPON DEATH.  Neither of these so-called “truths” is backed up by the Scriptures.  In fact, the truth is the exact opposite.

But before we delve into the subject of this series, let us determine why the church has embraced the idea that the dead go directly to heaven or hell.  Like so many of the beliefs and customs found within professing Christendom, going immediately to either an incredible paradise or a horrible abyss was borrowed from the world of heathen religion. How did this happen?  How did so much pagan religion become the foundation stones upon which professing Christendom is built?

At one time the Roman Empire ruled much of the known world.  Having embraced Catholicism as its religion, the empire became the enforcement arm of the Catholic Church.  When the church determined that everyone within the empire must be Catholic, she used the Roman military to force the masses to “convert” at the point of a sword.  One either “converted” or died.  Most of the people became Catholic.  There were many heathen religions represented in the area ruled by the Roman Empire.  In order to placate their new “converts” the church incorporated many of their gods, beliefs and practices into her catechisms.  It is because of that practice that such things as the Sunday Sabbath, Christmas, Easter, Halloween and St. Valentine’s Day became “Christian” observances.  Beliefs in such things as the trinity, the rapture, the Friday death and Sunday resurrection of Jesus, the use of man-made images such as the cross, fish, statues, pictures and engravings of religious figures also came from the world of heathen religion.  Read Simon of Samaria: The Legacy.  Key word–Legacy.  Practically all of the church’s beliefs and practices are wrong, either partially or totally.  It is the job of God’s true ministers to use His Word to show the false church His Truths in His Word and to lead as many as will follow them out of the counterfeit organization that calls itself “the church.”  L.J.