What is the state of the soul or spirit, after the death of the body until resurrection?
So often, usually at funerals, you hear that the person in question is now in Heaven with those that have gone before, but nowhere does it state that. Resurrection occurs with the return of Christ and “believers will receive new, immortal, perfect bodies”. I am interested in the time between bodily death and resurrection. One of the big problems in the early church, as seen by references in the New Testament, was what happened to the believers who had ‘fallen asleep’ (i.e. died) before Christ’s return. Within New Testament studies, the difference between the earlier books with an emphasis on the imminent return of Christ (parousia), and the later books when it seemed that said return was not going to happen immediately, is frequently referred to. Various ideas were proposed. For example, the ideas of ‘limbo’ and ‘purgatory’ as holding areas for souls after death and before the end-times resurrection developed in the middle ages. However, there is no need for a celestial waiting room, w
