Then how is His second coming going to work??
Are the ones 'with Him' going to get placed BACK into their graves, so that they can "rise to meet Him in the air" with those of us believers who are still alive??
This is the pre/post millennialism debate.For those with a pre viewpoint these verses can be reconciled by interpretation of 1 Thessalonians 4 as the translation of our physical bodies into our spiritual bodies.
The thrust of these verses was reassuring the early Christians who were afraid that brethren who had died would miss out on the second coming.Remember these people believed it would be in their lifetimes.Paul is telling them that those asleep(dead)are indeed secure and we will be translated into our spiritual bodies together at the Rapture.
Is this an "echo" while the soul behind it has passed to heaven? and
.That some cling to this world even after death
No, it is demons, seducing you into the idea of unconditional immortality
spiritualism & familiar spirits (btw, one of the three unclean spirits, like frogs Rev.16:13)
Ecclesiastes 10:5 -
.for there is no work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom, in the grave, wither thou goest.
the dead go immediately to either Heaven or hell.
Daniel 12:2 -
.and many of them that sleep in the dust shall awake, some to everlasting life
.
took a Bible
.to bed with me
Then you should maybe look up Ecclesiastes 9:5
.the dead know not anything, the memory of them(that is, the dead ones memory) is forgotten.
Do see Elsies post .#112, please. It confirms this.
Matt. 24: Take heed that no man deceive you
.but many will be deceived.
Absent with the body, present with the Lord (not festering in the grave as your heretical rotting in teh grave until the Second Coming doctrine would have us believe).