when we enter the kingdom

[prcfighter]

ok i know this is debated alot. but i want some feed back on the issue. Some people believe you go to heaven if you put or faith in christ right after you die. Others (including myself) believe you have to be ressurection at Jesu's 2nd coming before you can enter heaven. I would like some people to FRIENDlY respond to this on what they believe and back it up BIBLICALLY!. thank you in advance and i know this can get heated so please remember to keep in friendly.

[Nero's Fiddle]

if you put or faith in christ right after you die

Just want to clear one thing up... You mean that the person has trusted in Christ BEFORE dying and then goes directly to heaven after death, correct?

In other words, you are not trying to combine a question of "soul sleep" with one of having a second chance at salvation after death.

I just want to make sure you're not asking both questions at the same time, as that would complicate things quite a bit .

Before continuing with this topic, you should visit the "Soapbox Debate" room and read the one on soul sleep. Many points have been addressed at length there.

[prcfighter]

i mean that before dying the person has accepted Christ. when he dies does he "soulsleep" or go straight to heaven. and ill check the saopbox. thx

[prcfighter]

well i have to disagree and you need some scripture to back that up.

[billie]

the bible says "to be absent from the body is to be present with the father". the audience there wre believers. If you want exactly where that is you'll have to wait til i can find the verse

[Christian]

The verse you are speaking of is...

2 Corinthians 5:6

Therefore having always confidence,

knowing that while we are in the body we are absent from the Lord.

Also prcfighter, "soul sleep" is the minority view among Christians.

I'd ask you to provide your Scriptures that support your viewpoint on this subject.

in Christ,

Christian

[gekko]

here's the scripture:

"Therefore we are always confident, knowing that, whilst we are at home in the body, we are absent from the Lord: For we walk by faith, not by sight: We are confident, I say, and willing rather to be absent from the body, and to be present with the Lord."

no where in that portion of scripture does it say that right when you die you go to be with the Lord.

no where in that scripture does it say that right when you die that you dont go to be with the Lord.

paul is simply saying that while we are mortal - we are not in the presence of the Lord.

paul is also simply saying that he would rather get out of this mortal state and be in the presence of the Lord.

[Floatingaxe]

the bible says "to be absent from the body is to be present with the father". the audience there wre believers. If you want exactly where that is you'll have to wait til i can find the verse

Actually it is 2 Corinthians 5:6-8 "So we are always confident, even though we know that as long as we live in these bodies we are not at home with the Lord. That is why we live by believing and not by seeing. Yes, we are fully confident, and we would rather be away from these bodies, for then we will be at home with the Lord."

Blessings!

[Christian]

From John Piper's "What happens when you die"

(A little long but on topic and well worth the read )

What Paul is doing in 2 Corinthians 4:16 - 5:10 is showing the Corinthians why he does not lose heart in spite of all the troubles and afflictions (4:8-12). Especially in view of the fact that he knows he is dying; his body is wearing away. Look at 4:16--"Therefore we do not lose heart, but though our outer man is decaying, yet our inner man is being renewed day by day."

It is utterly crucial that we not lose heart. Some of you have taken such a pounding physically and financially and relationally that you have often been tempted to "loose heart"; to give up. To say, "It isn't worth it." "Que sera, sera". "Who cares?" Paul faced the same temptation (vv 8-12) and this text holds one of the keys to why he did not lose heart.

To show that this really is crucial to his point here look at verses 6 and 8 of chapter five which is part of the same train of thought. Verse 6: "Therefore, being always of good courage . . ." Verse 8: "We are of good courage, I say." We'll come back to these verses in moment, but the point now is simply to show you that what Paul is doing here is giving the basis of being of good courage and not losing heart. That is the effect I would like it to have on you.

Now let's go back to 4:16 and follow his line of thought to see what is threatening to make Paul lose heart and lose courage, and what is keeping him from losing heart.

Verse 16: "Therefore we do not lose heart, but though our outer man is decaying . . ." Here is the threat he is dealing with: His body--"the outer man"--is decaying; it is wearing out. He can't see the way he used to (and there were probably no glasses). He can't hear the way he used to. He does not recover from beatings the way he used to. His strength walking from town to town does not hold up the way it used to. He sees the wrinkles in his face and neck. His memory is not as good. His joints get stiff when he sits still. In other words, he knows that he, like everybody else, is dying. His outer man is decaying. That's the threat to his courage and joy.

Now why doesn't he lose heart?

The first part of the answer is again in verse 16: "Therefore we do not lose heart, but though our outer man is decaying, yet our inner man is being renewed day by day." He doesn't lose heart because day by day his heart, his inner man, is being renewed. If his decaying body tends to make him lose heart, something else tends to make him gain heart. What is it?

His renewed heart comes from something very strange: it comes from looking at what he can't see. Verse 18: "We look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen; for the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal." This is Paul's way of not losing heart: looking at what you can't see.

Recall how Jesus criticized the religious leaders in his day: "Seeing they do not see and hearing they do not hear" (Matt. 13:13). In other words there was something to "see" in Jesus' life and teaching which they didn't see but should have seen. That has got to be reversed if we are to get our hope and our courage from Jesus and not lose heart. It has to be said of us, "Not seeing, they see; and not hearing, they hear. That's what Paul was doing in verse 18; he was looking at things that are not seen."

Paul illustrates this in chapter 5, verse 7: "We walk by faith, not by sight." This doesn't mean that we leap into the dark without evidence of what's there. But it does mean that the most precious and important realities in the world are beyond our senses now, and we "look" at them (v. 18) through what we know of Christ from faithful witnesses who have seen him and heard his voice. We strengthen our hearts--we renew our courage--by fixing the gaze of our hearts on invisible, objective truth that we learn about through the testimony of those who knew Christ and were taught by him (cf. Eph 1:18-23).

What truth? What do we fix our gaze on to experience day by day the renewal of the inner man in the face of death?

To answer this we look back to verse 17 for a powerful summary statement, and we look forward into chapter 5 for the unpacking of this summary statement.

Verse 17: We renew our inner man each day by looking at this truth: "Momentary, light affliction is producing for us an eternal weight of glory far beyond all comparison."

The decaying of your body is not meaningless. The pain, pressure, frustration and affliction are not happening in vain. They are not vanishing into a black hole of pointless suffering. Instead this "momentary, light affliction (he calls it that even though it lasted for years and was unremitting and often excruciating) is producing for us an eternal weight of glory far beyond all comparison."

In other words, the unseen things that Paul looks at to renew his inner man is the immense weight of glory that is being prepared for him not just after, but through and by, the wasting away of his body. There is a correlation between the decay of the Paul's body and the display of Paul's glory. When he is hurting he fixes his eyes not on how heavy the hurt is, but on how heavy the glory will be because of the hurt.

Now what does he see when he looks to the unseen glory? As he goes on in chapter five he fills in some what he sees as he looks at the unseen.

Now the next two messages concern these verses: the resurrection body and the judgment of believers. But neither of these is the focus of this message. So if I pass over something too quickly, read the next sermon.

Verses 1-5 are about the hope of receiving new, glorious bodies at the resurrection. Verses 9-10 are about the judgment and Paul's effort to please Christ the Judge. Our focus is on verses 6-8, the hope of being with Christ immediately when you die.

But let me read you the verses about the resurrection body because there is a crucial connection between this hope and the hope of being with Christ (without a new body) immediately when you die. Verses 1-5:

For we know that if the earthly tent which is our house is torn down [he's talking about his body which is decaying], we have a building from God [a building as opposed to a tent for a house--that is, something more durable and lasting, namely, a new resurrection body], a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. For indeed in this house [this "tent-house," our present body] we groan, longing to be clothed with our dwelling from heaven [that is, our resurrection body; he mixes metaphors here shifting back and forth now between being clothed and being housed]; inasmuch as we, having put it on, shall not be found naked [in other words, he does not prefer to put off his present body like a garment and become a disembodied soul--that's what nakedness means]. For indeed while we are in this tent [this mortal body], we groan, being burdened, because we do not want to be unclothed [we don't want to be a bodiless soul], but to be clothed [on top of our present clothes--he wants the second coming of Christ to happen so that he will not have to die and be without a body, but rather have his present body swallowed up in the glorious resurrection life of the new body], in order that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life. Now He who prepared us for this very purpose is God, who gave to us the Spirit as a pledge.

We'll talk more about this in the next message. For now, here's the crucial point: If Paul had his preference he would choose to receive his new resurrection body at the second coming of Christ without having to die. And the reason he gives is that the experience of "nakedness"--that is being stripped of his body--is not something as good as having his body swallowed up by life as he is changed in the twinkling of an eye at the second coming of Christ.

This means that the great final hope of the Christian is not to die and be freed from our bodies, but to be raised with new, glorious bodies, or, best of all, to be alive at the second coming so that we do not have to lose our body temporarily and be "naked" (souls without bodies, cf. Mt. 10:28; Rev. 6:9; Heb. 12:23) until the resurrection.

But does that mean that dying and going to be with Christ does not happen, or that it is not good? No. Paul puts things back in perspective again in verses 6-8.

Therefore, being always of good courage, and knowing that while we are at home in the body we are absent from the Lord [the full intimacy we long for is not possible here]--for we walk by faith, not by sight-- we are of good courage, I say, and prefer rather to be absent from the body and to be at home with the Lord.

Now get this. In verse 4 Paul says, "He does not want to be unclothed." His first preference is not to be "absent from the body." He says that in comparison to being over-clothed with the new resurrection body if he is alive at the second coming of Christ. That would be his first preference. But if that is not possible--if the choice is between more life here by faith and going to be with Christ--he prefers that God would take him; EVEN IF it means nakedness, that is, even if it means that he must be stripped of his body.

And the reason for this willingness to leave his body behind is not because the body is bad--O, how he wants the experience of the new resurrection body--but because being at home with the Lord is so irresistibly attractive to Paul. Verse 8: "I prefer rather to be absent from the body and to be at home with the Lord."

Summary

So Paul renews his inner man by looking to unseen things. He looks at three possibilities and prefers them in descending order. First, he prefers that Christ would come and clothe his mortal body with immortality so that he would not have to die and be an incomplete, disembodied soul. But if God does not will that, Paul prefers to be absent from the body to living on here, because he loves Christ more than he loves anything else. To be absent from the body will mean to be at home with the Lord; a deeper intimacy and greater at-homeness than anything we can know in this life. Finally, if God wills that it is not time for the second coming or time for death, then Paul will walk by faith and not by sight.

In that faith he will be of good courage and, even though his outer man is decaying, his inner man will be renewed day by day through this faith in the unseen weight of glory.

[prcfighter]

the bible says "to be absent from the body is to be present with the father". the audience there wre believers. If you want exactly where that is you'll have to wait til i can find the verse

You have miss quoted the BIble. it says to be absent from the body AND to be present witht he father. and i no way does this say you go to heaven immediatly after death and you have you taken the verse out of context