What happens when we die? What the Bible says and what each church teaches

Sheol: where the Old Testament dead go

The Hebrew Bible’s word for the realm of the dead is sheol (Strong’s H7585), “Hades or the world of the dead (as if a subterranean retreat)” in Strong’s definition. Jacob, mourning Joseph, says: “I will go down to Sheol mourning for my son” (Genesis 37:35). The BSB, WEB and ASV keep “Sheol” there; the King James has “the grave” and the Douay–Rheims “hell”. In Psalm 16:10 the King James also has “hell”. So readers of the older versions meet “hell” where the Hebrew means the place of all the dead, not a place of punishment.

Ecclesiastes describes Sheol as silence: “in Sheol, where you are going, there is no work or planning or knowledge or wisdom” (9:10). Yet the Old Testament also hopes past it: “For You will not abandon my soul to Sheol, nor will You let Your Holy One see decay” (Psalm 16:10), and “many who sleep in the dust of the earth will awake, some to everlasting life, but others to shame and everlasting contempt” (Daniel 12:2). When Peter applies the psalm to Jesus’ resurrection (Acts 2:27), the Greek word for Sheol is hades.

Hades, Gehenna and Paradise: three words behind “hell” and “heaven”

In the Greek New Testament (SBL edition) hades occurs 10 times, gehenna 12 times and paradeisos 3 times. English Bibles often blur them:

Hades (G86) is “the place (state) of departed souls”, the Greek counterpart of Sheol. In Jesus’ story of the rich man and Lazarus, the beggar is carried “to Abraham’s side” while the rich man is “In Hades, where he was in torment”, with “a great chasm” between them (Luke 16:22–26). The Douay–Rheims, translated from the Latin, says the rich man “was buried in hell.” It is a parable, but the Catholic and Orthodox catechisms below both cite it for what happens at death. Hades is not final: “Death and Hades gave up their dead”, then “Death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. This is the second death — the lake of fire” (Revelation 20:13–14).

Gehenna (G1067) is the Valley of Hinnom outside Jerusalem, where, Jeremiah says, people built “the high places of Topheth in the Valley of Ben-hinnom so they could burn their sons and daughters in the fire” (Jeremiah 7:31). Strong’s says its name came to be “used (figuratively) as a name for the place (or state) of everlasting punishment”. All but one of its twelve uses are Jesus’ own words (the exception is James 3:6), as in the warning against going “into hell, into the unquenchable fire” (Mark 9:43). The King James “hell” therefore stands for three different words: sheol, hades and gehenna (and once, at 2 Peter 2:4, a fourth, tartaroō).

Paradise (G3857) is “a park, i.e. (specially), an Eden (place of future happiness, ‘paradise’)”. It appears in Jesus’ promise to the thief (Luke 23:43), in Paul’s account of a man “caught up” to it (2 Corinthians 12:4), and as “the Paradise of God” where the tree of life stands (Revelation 2:7).

“Today … in Paradise”: Luke 23:43 and the comma

One of the criminals crucified with Jesus asks, “Jesus, remember me when You come into Your kingdom!” (Luke 23:42). The answer:

All five attach “today” to the promise. The early Greek manuscripts had little or no punctuation, and the word order (literally “Truly to you I say today with me you will be in the Paradise”) lets “today” go with either half. The New World Translation of Jehovah’s Witnesses, who teach that a dead person cannot see, hear or think, reads: “Truly I tell you today, you will be with me in Paradise”. The Catholic Catechism cites the verse among those showing that each person’s destiny is settled at death (paragraph 1021). The comma does not settle the question; a reader’s view of the other passages usually settles the comma.

Read the chapter: Luke 23 (BSB) · KJV · Douay–Rheims.

“Away from the body”: Paul’s hope

Paul’s verbs are a pair: ekdēmeō (G1553), “to emigrate”, and endēmeō (G1736), “to be in one’s own country, i.e. home”. The Douay–Rheims catches the first with “pilgrims”. Yet in the same chapter Paul does “not wish to be unclothed but clothed, so that our mortality may be swallowed up by life” (5:4): his final hope is a new body. From prison he weighs living against dying:

²³ I am torn between the two. I desire to depart and be with Christ, which is far better indeed.

“Depart” is analuō (G360), “to break up, i.e. depart”. Churches that teach a conscious intermediate state treat these two passages as their clearest evidence; the Catholic Catechism (1021) cites both.

Do the dead sleep? Ecclesiastes, Lazarus and 1 Thessalonians 4

The Adventist view, often called “soul sleep”, starts from passages like this:

⁵ For the living know that they will die, but the dead know nothing. They have no further reward, because the memory of them is forgotten.

Jesus speaks of death as sleep: “Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep, but I am going there to wake him up,” and then plainly, “Lazarus is dead” (John 11:11–14). Paul writes about “those who sleep in death”: “God will bring with Jesus those who have fallen asleep in Him”, and “the dead in Christ will be the first to rise” (1 Thessalonians 4:13–16). The verb is koimaomai (G2837), “to slumber; figuratively, to decease” in Strong’s. Adventists read the sleep as real unconsciousness until the resurrection. Most other churches read it as a gentle name for death, because the sleeper wakes.

The other side has texts too. Near its end Ecclesiastes says “the spirit returns to God who gave it” (12:7). In Revelation John sees “the souls of those who had been slain for the word of God”, crying “How long, O Lord, holy and true” (Revelation 6:9–10). The Westminster Confession, below, says souls “neither die nor sleep”.

Resurrection and judgement: 1 Corinthians 15, Hebrews 9:27 and Revelation 20

Whatever happens in between, the New Testament’s hope is the resurrection. Christ is “the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep”, and “The last enemy to be destroyed is death” (1 Corinthians 15:20, 26). The raised body is the same person changed: “It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body” (15:44). “We will not all sleep, but we will all be changed” (15:51); the Douay–Rheims, following the Latin, reads “We shall all indeed rise again: but we shall not all be changed.” The resurrection is for everyone: “those who have done good to the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil to the resurrection of judgment” (John 5:29).

²⁷ Just as man is appointed to die once, and after that to face judgment,

Catholics read “after that” as including a particular judgement at death as well as the general judgement at the end: the Catholic Catechism cites the verse for judgement at death (1021–1022), and the Baltimore Catechism says Christ judges us “immediately after our death, and on the last day” (question 408, below).

Revelation 20 tells of those who “came to life and reigned with Christ for a thousand years. … This is the first resurrection” (20:4–5); then “the dead were judged according to their deeds” (20:12), and the lake of fire is “the second death” (20:14). Christians read the thousand years in different ways; Adventists place it between two resurrections. Jesus says the lost “will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life” (Matthew 25:46). Those who hold that the lost are destroyed point to another saying:

²⁸ Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Instead, fear the One who can destroy both soul and body in hell.

Read the chapters: 1 Corinthians 15 · Hebrews 9 · Revelation 20.

What each church teaches, in its own sources

Historic texts are quoted from public-domain editions; modern statements are copyrighted, so they are summarised and linked.

Roman Catholic

Council of Florence, Laetentur caeli (July 6, 1439). The truly penitent who die in God’s love before making satisfaction for their sins are cleansed after death by “cleansing pains”, and the Masses, prayers and alms of the living help them. Souls without stain, or already cleansed, go at once to heaven and see God; those who die in mortal sin, or in original sin alone, go at once to hell, though with unequal punishments.

Council of Trent, Decree concerning Purgatory (December 1563; J. Waterworth’s translation, 1848). The council restated “that there is a Purgatory, and that the souls there detained are helped by the suffrages of the faithful, but principally by the acceptable sacrifice of the altar.”

Baltimore Catechism No. 2 (1885). “Christ will judge us immediately after our death, and on the last day” (question 408). The outcomes after the Particular Judgment “are Heaven, Purgatory, and Hell” (412). “Purgatory is a state in which those suffer for a time who die guilty of venial sins, or without having satisfied for the punishment due to their sins” (414). The site’s course lesson on judgment, resurrection, purification and eternal life has the whole lesson with study notes.

Catechism of the Catholic Church (1030–1032). Those who die in God’s grace but imperfectly purified are assured of salvation and are purified after death; this purgatory is “entirely different from the punishment of the damned.” The Catechism grounds it in prayer for the dead, quoting 2 Maccabees 12:46, which the 1609 Douay–Rheims renders: “It is therefore a holy, and healthful cogitation to pray for the dead, that they may be loosed from sins.” (2 Maccabees is not in the Protestant Old Testament.) It also refers to 1 Corinthians 3:15: “He himself will be saved, but only as if through the flames.”

Eastern Orthodox

The Longer Catechism of St Philaret of Moscow (approved by the Russian Holy Synod; R. W. Blackmore’s English, 1845, as printed by Philip Schaff). “The souls of the righteous are in light and rest, with a foretaste of eternal happiness; but the souls of the wicked are in a state the reverse of this” (question 372). Perfect happiness waits for the resurrection and last judgement (373). Souls who “departed with faith, but without having had time to bring forth fruits worthy of repentance” may be helped “by prayers offered in their behalf”, especially at the Eucharist, and by works of mercy (376).

Purgatory. The Orthodox Church prays for the departed, as the catechism shows, but it does not accept the Latin doctrine of purgatory; the union signed at Florence was later repudiated. At Florence, Mark of Ephesus refused to sign the decree of union, and purgatory was among the questions he wrote against. The Orthodox Church in America calls purgatory “completely alien to Orthodox Christianity” and says Orthodox Christians pray for the dead so that the Lord will have mercy on them. (See also prayers for the dead.)

Lutheran

Augsburg Confession, article 17 (1530; Concordia Triglotta, 1921). “Christ will appear for judgment, and will raise up all the dead; He will give to the godly and elect eternal life and everlasting joys, but ungodly men and the devils He will condemn to be tormented without end.” It condemns those who think the punishments of the damned will end.

Smalcald Articles, part 2, article 2 (1537). Luther calls purgatory “nothing but a specter of the devil”, because it conflicts with the teaching that only Christ helps souls. Yet the Apology of the Augsburg Confession (article 24) grants that “the ancients speak of prayer for the dead, which we do not prohibit”; what it rejects is offering the Mass for the dead.

Reformed and Anglican

Westminster Confession of Faith, chapter 32 (1646).

The bodies of men, after death, return to dust, and see corruption: but their souls, which neither die nor sleep, having an immortal subsistence, immediately return to God who gave them: the souls of the righteous, being then made perfect in holiness, are received into the highest heavens … And the souls of the wicked are cast into hell … Besides these two places, for souls separated from their bodies, the Scripture acknowledgeth none.

The last sentence rules out purgatory, and chapter 21 says prayer is to be made for the living “but not for the dead.” The Church of England’s Thirty-nine Articles (article 22) call “the Romish Doctrine concerning Purgatory” “a fond thing vainly invented”.

Seventh-day Adventist

Fundamental Belief 26, “Death and Resurrection”. The wages of sin is death; God, who alone is immortal, will give eternal life to the redeemed; until then death is “an unconscious state for all people”. When Christ appears, the righteous dead are raised and, with the living righteous, glorified and taken to meet him; the unrighteous are raised a thousand years later. It cites, among others, Ecclesiastes 9:5–6, 10, John 11:11–14 and 1 Thessalonians 4:13–17. Fundamental Belief 27 adds that after the thousand years the unrighteous are consumed by fire from God.

Annihilationism: a minority view

Conditional immortality holds that the soul is not immortal by nature and that the lost are finally destroyed rather than punished without end. Adventists hold it. Among evangelicals the Anglican John Stott defended it tentatively in Evangelical Essentials (1988), from the Bible’s language of destruction and perishing (Robert Peterson replied for the traditional view in 1994). In 2000 a report for Britain’s Evangelical Alliance, The Nature of Hell, called annihilationism a “significant minority evangelical view”.

The traditions side by side

All of them wait for the same thing: the resurrection of the dead and Christ’s judgement.

A prayer

Lord Jesus Christ, you wept at the grave of your friend and called him out of death. Comfort all who mourn. Keep us in your grace while we live, and when we die bring us home to you. Raise us on the last day, and let us share in your resurrection, where there will be no more death or mourning. Amen.

This prayer is original to this page. See also All Saints’ Day and All Souls’ Day, prayers for the dead, De profundis and hope in grief.