Gone Home To Be With The Lord?

When someone dies, the expression “Has gone home to be with the Lord” is a phrase that should never cross our lips of those who say they are believers.  Many are given the false comfort that their departed loved one is now in heaven with God contrary to the fact that there is no teaching in scripture that says the soul is separated from the body at the moment of death.  But yet today the world, as well as those who call themselves Christian, say that somehow disembodied souls go to heaven or hell when they die.  The bible never teaches a separation of a conscious soul from its body at the moment of death and its immediate departure to heaven or hell, thus teaching disembodied souls.

Irenaeus in Bk. 5 (Against Heresies) says, "Some who are reckoned among the orthodox go beyond the prearranged plan for the exaltation of the just, and are ignorant of the methods by which they are disciplined beforehand for incorruption. They thus entertain heretical opinions. For the heretics, not admitting the salvation of their flesh, affirm that immediately upon their death they shall pass above the heavens. Those persons, therefore, who reject a resurrection affecting the whole man, and do their best to remove it from the Christian scheme, know nothing as to the plan of resurrection. For they do not choose to understand that, if these things are as they say, the Lord Himself, in Whom they profess to believe, did not rise again on the third day, but immediately upon his expiring departed on high, leaving His body in the earth. But the facts are that for three days, the Lord dwelt in the place where the dead were, as Jonas remained three days and three nights in the whale’s belly (Matt. 12:40) . . . David says, when prophesying of Him: ‘Thou hast delivered my soul from the nethermost hell (grave).’ And on rising the third day, He said to Mary, ‘Touch me not, for I have not yet ascended to my Father’ (John 20:17). . . . How then must not these men be put to confusion, who allege . . . that their inner man [soul], leaving the body here, ascends into the super-celestial place? For as the Lord ‘went away in the midst of the shadow of death’ (Ps. 86: 23), where the souls of the dead were, and afterwards arose in the body, and after the resurrection was taken up into heaven, it is obvious that the souls of His disciples also . . . shall go away into the invisible place [Hades]. . . and there remain until the resurrection, awaiting that event. Then receiving their bodies, and rising in their entirety, bodily, just as the Lord rose, they shall come thus into the presence of God. As our Master did not at once take flight to heaven, but awaited the time of His resurrection . . . , so we ought also to await the time of our resurrection.”

Note how Irenaeus calls those who err as “heretics” who teach that a soul goes immediately to heaven at death.  This means that today what is considered “Orthodox Christianity” are filled with heretics.  What is considered Orthodoxy today is not really Orthodox at all.  What is promoted in Christianity today is not biblical.

E.W. Bullinger (How to Enjoy the Bible) makes an excellent observation concerning 2 Corinthians 5:8: "It is little less than a crime for anyone to pick out certain words and frame them into a sentence, not only disregarding the scope and the context, but ignoring the other words in the verse, and quote the words ‘absent from the body present with the Lord’ with the view of dispensing with the hope of Resurrection (which is the subject of the whole passage), as though it were unnecessary; and as though ‘presence with the Lord’ is obtainable without it!"

Jehovah’s Witnesses are labeled cultists because they don’t believe that the soul goes to heaven when a person dies.  They are more orthodox in this area of belief than mainstream Christianity that claims Orthodoxy.  This is biblical teaching and not heretical.  So anyone, whether Jehovah’s Witnesses or not, are labeled as “heretics” or accused of “foolish talking” who proclaim the truth found in scripture that when a person dies, the whole man dies, which means he is “asleep” in the grave awaiting for the resurrection of the last day. 

There is no part of a person that is immortal!  The dead do not survive as conscious souls in heaven or in hell. 

Dr. Paul Althaus in his book, The Theology of Martin Luther (Fortress Press, 1966, pp. 413, 414) states:

"The hope of the early church centered on the resurrection of the Last Day. It is this which first calls the dead into eternal life (I Cor. 15; Phil 3:21). This resurrection happens to the man and not only to the body. Paul speaks of the resurrection not ‘of the body’ but ‘of the dead.’ This understanding of the resurrection implicitly understands death as also affecting the whole man.... Thus [in traditional orthodoxy] the original Biblical concepts have been replaced by ideas from Hellenistic, Gnostic dualism. The New Testament idea of the resurrection which affects the whole man has had to give way to the immortality of the soul. The Last Day also loses its significance, for souls have received all that is decisively important long before this. Eschatological tension is no longer strongly directed to the day of Jesus’ Coming. The difference between this and the Hope of the New Testament is very great."

What is taught today about what happens when a person dies is not "Orthodoxy,” but simply reflects pagan Platonism.

Paul gives believers the following instructions,

“Make every effort to present yourself before God as a proven worker who does not need to be ashamed, teaching the message of truth accurately. But avoid profane chatter, because those occupied with it will stray further and further into ungodliness, and their message will spread its infection  like gangrene. Hymenaeus and Philetus are in this group. They have strayed from the truth by saying that the resurrection has already occurred, and they are undermining some people’s faith.” 2 Tim. 2:15-18

To hear more detail on this subject in mp3 by Anthony Buzard, click here

For reading material see:  What Happens When We Die?