[amorphous]

Nothing indicates that a person WILL be with the Lord immediately after death.

There are thousands of reports out there by those who've had a near-death experience.

There is the thief on the cross with Christ. There are Enoch and Elijah, the firstfruits who rose along with Christ.

But there are scriptures which point to time spent in the grave. The prophet Daniel was to "go thou thy way till the end be: for thou shalt rest, and stand in thy lot at the end of the days." Paul teaches the Thessalonians, "For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command, with the voice of an archangel, and with the sound of the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first" indicates even Christians will spend time in the grave until Christ returns.

We can make general assumptions but let's not put the Almighty or those beings who serve Him in a box by claiming something is either-or. I doubt we know all there is to know about their powers or how things work in the domain they control.

[GreyFriar]

And there are centuries of teaching/preaching by ministers that the dead will lie in their graves until the 2nd coming of Our Lord. I will not opine the validity of the teaching but I remember both hearing of it and hearing it preached. Thus I can see that some Christian souls staying in their graves until that time, rather than rising immediately to heaven.

[imardmd1]

>V

Where did you ever get that idea? Enoch and Elijah have yet to die, but they will in the fullness of time:

"And as it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment: " (Heb. 9:27 AV).

"And I will give power unto my two witnesses, and they shall prophesy a thousand two hundred and threescore days, clothed in sackcloth. . . . And when they shall have finished their testimony, the beast that ascendeth out of the bottomless pit shall make war against them, and shall overcome them, and kill them" (Rev. 11:3,7 AV)

So much for Enoch and Elijah.

About the "firstfruits" you are referring to, you are in error that you think it is plural:

"But now is Christ risen from the dead, and become the firstfruits^{Greek singular} of them that slept. . . . But every man in his own order: Christ the firstfruits^{Greek singular}; afterward they that are Christ's at his coming" (1 Cor. 15:20,23 AV).

Without argument, Jesus of Nazareth is the only human whose body has been resurrected as a spiritual body of flesh and bone. At the present time, He is the only human present in God's Heaven, at the Father's right hand. This does not include Enoch or Elijah. They have not died physically, so they cannot yet be resurrected from the dead ones. The idea of Jesus' surrogate birth mother, Mary, being with him in Heaven physically is a figment of the Roman Catholic imaginative dogma. It is not so, and has no scriptural support.

Your opinion will have to take a back seat to that of the Holy Spirit as recorded in the Scriptures.

These "near-death" experiences are very much open to question. The control group would be humans that have never heard of The God or His Christ of the Bible previously, but have experienced such events, then returning to life and reporting that they have seen and heard God or Jesus in their temporary loss of animation.

I have never heard of such. Have you?

[Elsie]

There are thousands of reports out there by those who've had a near-death experience.

When there's one with a REAL death experience; I'll listen.

[Elsie]

But there are scriptures which point to time spent in the grave.

Indeed there are; and I'm glad you acknowledge them.

Here are the one's I've found...

Psalm 13:3
Look on me and answer, Lord my God. Give light to my eyes, or I will sleep in death,

 

Psalm 90:5
Yet you sweep people away in the sleep of death— they are like the new grass of the morning:

 

Daniel 12:2
Multitudes who sleep in the dust of the earth will awake: some to everlasting life, others to shame and everlasting contempt.
 
 
John 11:12-13
His disciples replied, “Lord, if he sleeps, he will get better.”
Jesus had been speaking of his death, but his disciples thought he meant natural sleep.

 

1 Corinthians 15:51-52
Listen, I tell you a mystery:

We will not all sleep, but we will all be changed—in a flash, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet.

For the trumpet will sound, the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed.

 

Ephesians 5:14
This is why it is said: “Wake up, sleeper, rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.”

 

 
1 Thessalonians 4:13
Brothers and sisters, we do not want you to be uninformed about those who sleep in death, so that you do not grieve like the rest of mankind, who have no hope.
 

[Elsie]

My issue is with those who claim ALL Christians go to Heaven at death; while also claiming that ‘the dead in Christ’ will rise at the Rapture.