Where Do Our Dead Go?

I am counted among those who go down to the pit; I am like a man without strength, set apart among the dead, like the slain who lie in the grave, whom You remember no more! They are cut off from Your hand.” — Psalm 88:5–6

In this Psalm we read how ink-black and terribly dark life can become for a human being. Seeing no way out anymore, no light at the end of any tunnel. It feels as though you wander in the realm of the dead, in the deep caverns of the earth, where you have no contact with anything or anyone, sunk so deeply into the darkest corners of your soul that you believe even God no longer looks after you, because the realm of the dead offers no possibility for reflection, for contact, for sharing, let alone for hearing a cry for help.

Fortunately, the Psalmist clearly states elsewhere that YHWH will always be with us, even in the darkest periods of our lives, wherever we may be, for He is a faithful God who remains near.

“Where can I go from Your Spirit? Or where can I flee from Your presence? If I ascend into heaven, You are there; if I make my bed in Sheol, behold, You are there. If I take the wings of the dawn and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there Your hand shall lead me, and Your right hand shall hold me fast. If I say, ‘Surely the darkness shall overwhelm me,’ even the night shall be light around me. Indeed, the darkness is not dark to You, but the night shines like the day; darkness and light are alike to You.” — Psalm 139:7–12

For me, the search for truth is extremely important, and the reason is obvious, but I will explain it through a beautiful Bible verse. This text speaks very personally to me because it governs my life; it has proven to be both my anchor and my compass.

“You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and these are they which testify of Me.” — John 5:39

If I want to value God’s Word properly, then I must study the Word and take it as it is written. That does not mean everything should always be taken literally, because there are texts that, within a prophetic context, require interpretation of the symbolic aspects used by the Spirit of God to bring clarity regarding future matters. The books of Daniel and Revelation are excellent examples of this, but the entire sanctuary service in the Torah also speaks powerfully through its symbolism. The shadow of the Reality itself is truly worthy of deep study.

There are even texts in the Bible that seem to stand in direct opposition to other texts, and that always requires prayer and deeper study in order to arrive at the proper understanding — understanding that the Spirit wishes to give us at the appropriate time.

The same applies to this subject, because it is a very emotionally charged topic. Often, desire becomes the father of the thought, shaping the lens through which we read. It clouds our understanding so that we either fail to read carefully what is actually written, simply do not understand what is written, or fail to let it fully penetrate us because tradition, grief, or even lack of knowledge creates a distorted picture.

Truth is also of vital importance in this matter because it determines how we view God and His plan of redemption, and in that regard truth is crucial.

“Did God really say...?” Satan said, sowing doubt and destruction. Through his persuasive speech and his enormous knowledge of God and His Word, he has, throughout the ages and from the very beginning, managed to lead people — and even entire nations — literally around the garden of Eden, with disastrous consequences.

Often we serve God, the Eternal One, in a way that is not God’s way, yet we do it with full conviction and devotion, comforted by the thought that God is love and therefore surely accepts that I do things my own way.

What happens to our loved ones when they die? Where do they go? In what state are they, and for how long?

“His spirit departs, he returns to his earth; in that very day his plans perish.” — Psalm 146:4

“For the living know that they will die, but the dead know nothing at all. They have no further reward, and even the memory of them is forgotten. Their love, their hatred, and their envy have already perished. Never again will they have a share in anything done under the sun.” — Ecclesiastes 9:5–6

Briefly, something about mankind.

Man was made from the dust of the earth, and this is not comparable to the dust that gathers on our shelves, under the bed, or worse yet, on our Bible. The dust of the earth is the soil upon which grass grows and lilies bloom in the field. At the time of creation, the composition of this dust was of exceptional and superior quality, consisting of valuable substances such as magnesium, selenium, iron, metallic minerals, potassium, sulfur, and so on.

97.85% of the human body consists of the following elements:

• 65% Oxygen — found in nearly all substances
• 18% Carbon — found in nearly all substances
• 10% Hydrogen — found in nearly all substances
• 3% Nitrogen — proteins and DNA
• 1.5% Phosphorus — DNA, bones, and teeth
• 0.35% Calcium — bones, teeth, and blood

Modern science has now reached the point — or at least claims to have reached the point — where it can build a human body from all these components. Yet it still faces an impossible challenge: giving life to that body.

Science claims to know how life functions, how it works, and what drives it, but it does not know where life itself comes from or how to give life to a lifeless shell called Adam.

What we as human beings are able to do is pass life on. When the bodies of a man and a woman function properly, they can transmit life. There is a power contained within the egg cell and the seed cell that erupts into a kind of big bang, an explosion of life, when they unite in fusion. In my view, however, the Source remains YHWH, the Eternal One, and the Psalmist already understood and described this thousands of years ago.

“For You formed my inward parts; You wove me together in my mother’s womb. I praise You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made; marvelous are Your works, and my soul knows this very well. My frame was not hidden from You when I was made in secret and skillfully woven in the depths of the earth. Your eyes saw my unformed substance, and in Your book they all were written, the days that were ordained for me, when as yet there was not one of them.” — Psalm 139:13–16

Our Creator tells us plainly how we were made and that He is the Source of life — of your life and mine. The Creator just as plainly tells us what happens to us at the moment we die, when we have reached the end of our temporary journey here on earth, when our breath has come to its final exhalation.

Why does mankind die at all? Why do we grow old, often become sick, and eventually die?

Because humanity was disobedient. They had, so to speak, run a red light and were therefore mortally wounded. The biblical version is that they ate the fruit from a tree of which YHWH had said they were not allowed to eat. The Lord said that the moment they did so, they would surely die. We now know they did not immediately drop dead on the spot, but the consequences became irreversible, and death entered their existence.

“By the sweat of your brow you shall eat bread, until you return to the ground, because from it you were taken; for dust you are, and to dust you shall return.” — Genesis 3:19

I assume there should be no misunderstanding about this. We were made by YHWH. It was a one-time act of molding and shaping clay by our Great Potter, with the finishing touch being that He gave life to them, beginning with Adam. He breathed life-giving spirit into him — the breath of life.

The rest of humanity came forth through the sharing and combining of one another’s life, strength, and energy. Foreign cells engaging one another in a struggle to give form to an invisible and shapeless beginning, until that life is eventually elevated into a visible wonder of nature. YHWH Himself calls us the crown of His creation.

From dust we came, and to dust we shall unfortunately return. No misunderstanding, no twisting of words, no manipulation, and no “you must interpret this differently” strategy.

Yet there are many people, including Christians, who believe that something returns to God.

I would be the last person to deny that, because I personally believe it as well. But the great question is: what returns to God? For that reason, a very brief and simple lesson concerning mankind.

“But a man dies and is laid low; indeed he breathes his last, and where is he? As water disappears from the sea, and a river becomes parched and dries up, so man lies down and does not rise. Until the heavens are no more, they will not awake nor be roused from their sleep.” — Job 14:10–12

Man: Body, Spirit, and Soul

For now, this order is important because it fits the biblical concept.

In the beginning, after five days of creation, God made man on the sixth day from the dust of the earth. Let us say that our Almighty Potter shaped Adam out of clay. After the Eternal One had formed Adam, He breathed the breath of life — spirit — into Adam through his nostrils, directly into his lungs.

“Then the LORD God formed man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living being.” — Genesis 2:7

The shell, the body, was nothing in itself, despite being made in God’s image and likeness. Without spirit, without the breath of life, man amounted to little or nothing.

The moment God breathed spirit — life-breath — into him, man came alive through the life that entered him through the nose into the lungs. The clay, the shell, came to life, began to move, breathe, see, hear, taste, feel, speak, think, and reason within itself. And what is remarkable about mankind is that he knows that he knows, but even more remarkable is that he knows who his Maker is.

From clay, from a mere shell and body, man became a living being with all kinds of gifts, possibilities, and abilities. The formed vessel received meaning, function, and purpose.

Thus man became a living soul.

The soul of man is the place of the immaterial — where feeling, reasoning, thought, and intellect reside.

When the spirit, the breath of life that came from God the Eternal One, enters through the nose and lungs and comes into contact with the body, man becomes a living soul. When man was formed from the dust of mother earth, he was dead — or rather, still dead. Suddenly man received spirit and became a living soul. Without spirit the body is dead, and without spirit there is not even a soul.

We would never have known Adam had he not received spirit — a spirit that, in contact with his body, made him aware of his surroundings and enabled him to interact with them. From that moment onward he could physically engage with his physical environment, and with the spirit that came from God the Eternal One he could commune with God’s Spirit.

“For just as the body without the spirit is dead, so also faith without works is dead.” — James 2:26

The spirit mankind received from God is the source of life and strength. Our spirit was able to communicate with God’s Spirit, and through the Spirit of God the Eternal One we learned what is good and evil.

“For God did not call us to uncleanness, but in sanctification. Therefore, whoever rejects this does not reject man, but God, who has also given us His Holy Spirit.” — 1 Thessalonians 4:7–8

When a person dies and breathes out his final breath — the breath he first received from God — then that breath, his spirit, returns to God.

“And the dust returns to the earth as it was, and the spirit returns to God who gave it.” — Ecclesiastes 12:7

What was first with God, what belonged to God, and what came from God the Eternal One into the lungs of man — into his veins, muscles, bones, cartilage, and tissue through the nostrils and lungs — awakened him to life and thus made him a living soul. Therefore it is that spirit which returns to God the Eternal One. Nothing more and nothing less.

It is not our soul that returns to the Eternal One.

It is not a soul that somehow continues living with God, or floats around us, or dwells in a haunted castle in whatever form.

“Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your strength, for there is no work, planning, knowledge, or wisdom in the grave where you are going.” — Ecclesiastes 9:10

When we die, when we breathe our last breath, we will rest in the grave until the day He calls His children. For Jesus will call His children at His second coming.

“For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of an archangel and with the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first.” — 1 Thessalonians 4:16

Let us state this clearly: it cannot be that when we die we go to heaven, and then when Christ returns on the clouds we go back into the earth again, back to dust, only to rise once more when He calls us. I sincerely hope you cannot believe that either, because to me it seems very strange. Sitting at Jesus’ feet in heaven, and then, once the moment arrives for Him to gather His children — who would already be there — we would first have to return to dust in the earth before being allowed to go with Him again and once more sit at His feet.

As difficult as this may sound to many people, when we die we are laid in the earth and will return to dust again, just as God declared to Adam and Eve. The Bible teaches us that there is no way to heaven except through Jesus. That certain people such as Enoch, Elijah, Moses, and several others may have gone before us, so that their example might encourage us concerning God’s promise to mankind, should be seen as exceptions. Even those exceptions were founded upon the redemptive work of Jesus on the cross of Golgotha, where He died for our sins.

Those who have repented and accepted the sacrifice of Jesus as the means by which we are ultimately redeemed from death and enabled to be reunited with our Creator, may rise because Jesus rose from the dead. This will happen at the moment He calls us at His second coming, for Jesus is returning because He purchased and paid for us with His life.

None of us, nor our loved ones who have fallen asleep, will look down on us from heaven or maintain contact with us. Everyone who passes away rests in the grave.

But when you die — and that moment will surely come someday — make sure you die beneath His wings, in His hands, redeemed from the eternal sting of death, so that your death may become only a temporary sleep.

“And I heard a voice from heaven saying to me, ‘Write: Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord from now on.’ ‘Yes,’ says the Spirit, ‘so that they may rest from their labors, and their works follow them.’” — Revelation 14:13

I will address one objection. The criminal on the cross said the following to Jesus:

“And he said to Jesus, ‘Lord, remember me when You come into Your kingdom. And Jesus said to him, Truly I tell you, today you will be with Me in paradise.’” — Luke 23:42–43

This text seems to suggest that the criminal immediately went with Jesus into paradise upon his death. Of course, Jesus could also apply an exception here, just as with Enoch, Elijah, and Moses. To die with Jesus — and in this case very literally — means to be with Him in paradise. For there is no other way to paradise except through Jesus.

Personally, I believe that on that very day the criminal received the promise and certainty of a place that Jesus would prepare for him.

In addition, after His resurrection Jesus testified to Mary that He had not yet been with the Father in heaven and that she was not yet to touch Him.

“Let not your heart be troubled; you believe in God, believe also in Me. In My Father’s house are many dwelling places; if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to Myself, so that where I am, there you may be also.” — John 14:1–3

As a child of God, I have this assurance.

Just as the Lamb of God — Jesus — was slain before the foundation of the world, and just as the names of those who rejected God the Eternal One would not be written in the Book of Life, so too my life and death in Christ are my assurance that I may have a place in His Kingdom, a place that Jesus through His sacrifice made possible for me to inherit.

This promise stands firm like a house built upon a rock, and that Rock is Jesus. On the basis of that certainty in Christ my Redeemer and Savior, on the basis of the fact that the Most High desired reconciliation with us and has reconciled Himself to us, I can say that already today I dwell in His paradise, that already today I may sit at the feet of Christ, that from this day forward I am seated upon the throne of the Most High in Christ, that already today I walk upon golden paths, and that I may regard it today as an accomplished fact.

“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ, just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before Him in love.” — Ephesians 1:3–4

The doctrine of the immortal soul is therefore a lie of Satan, and he began proclaiming it to Eve while she was still in paradise.

“Then the serpent said to the woman, ‘You will not surely die. For God knows that on the day you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.’” — Genesis 3:4–5

Nothing could have proven less true. From the moment mankind became disobedient to God the Eternal One and believed the father of lies, humanity became a mortal soul through transgression. From dust you were made, and to dust you shall return, although that was not the ultimate plan.

Even when Jesus gave up His Spirit and committed His Spirit into the hands of His Father, He rested in the grave for three days. Had He already gone to paradise? No, because this is what He declared to Mary:

“Jesus said to her, ‘Do not cling to Me, for I have not yet ascended to My Father. But go to My brothers and tell them: I am ascending to My Father and your Father, to My God and your God.’” — John 20:17

God is a faithful God, and if He promises us something, we can be certain that He will keep His Word. We do not need to remind Him of it. Apart from the exceptions, God does everything in good order, and we may meet Him in the clouds when He comes in full glory, power, and majesty, because He has overcome death.

When He calls us, we will listen and go with Him to a heavenly place. We will be able to go with Him when He calls us forth from the dust, and we shall be changed — a new spirit in a new body — so that we will become a new soul.

This is His promise; this is our comfort:

“In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall be changed. For this perishable body must put on imperishability, and this mortal body must put on immortality. And when this perishable has put on imperishability, and this mortal has put on immortality, then the saying that is written will come to pass: ‘Death is swallowed up in victory. O death, where is your sting? O grave, where is your victory?’ The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore, my beloved brothers, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that your labor in the Lord is not in vain.” — 1 Corinthians 15:52–58

So in short:

It is not the soul that comes from God and is breathed into man on the sixth day of creation — it is spirit.

Because spirit coming from God comes into contact with the body, which was made by God Himself, man becomes a living soul; man as a whole becomes soul.

When his breath of life leaves him, the soul perishes, passes away, ceases to function, ceases to exist. Everything the soul accomplished through spirit in union with the body comes to an end. Then nothing remains of man except the shell that will ultimately return to dust, while his spirit, which enabled the body to do all things, returns to the Most High.

The spirit that man receives is therefore not the soul, and the body that God made is not the soul either.

The soul comes into existence when these two come into contact. Through this man becomes aware, able to reason, able to perform countless activities, and able to understand what God through His Holy Spirit wishes to say to us, teach us, renew within us, and reshape in us. Through the spirit we are able to know God through the Holy Spirit, who — unlike our spirit — is indeed a Person.

Our spirit is not a person. Our spirit communicates with God’s Spirit, and through our soul we are able to translate and understand this communication. We form images and thoughts around it, and in this way we receive understanding through our mind, which we can then express in our conduct and actions.

I wish you God’s blessing, and let go of the deception — wherever you may have read it — that the soul returns to God and that the soul is immortal. That is not biblical. It was the very first temptation Satan presented to mankind:

“Then the serpent said to the woman, ‘You will not surely die.’” — Genesis 3:4