With a terrible shriek, the convicted sinner plunges down to hell! Then, perhaps the next person is told: "You get to go to heaven!"

How many stories are there about "Saint Peter and the pearly gates"? With a resounding "whoosh!" up he goes. But why go to "heaven" when apparently God is right there before him? Obviously, those who concocted this mythological scene forgot a few important details.

But all this is pure myth—superstition mixed with some of grandma's applesauce.

The judgment of which the Bible speaks takes place over a lifetime, not in a few seconds.

You and I are said to be under judgment right now. Each day we are judged by our innermost thoughts, our actions, and our words.

How are we being judged?

Peter wrote:

"For the time is come that judgment must begin at the house of God [the church Jesus built]: and if it first begin at us, what shall the end be of them that obey not the gospel of God? And if the righteous scarcely be saved, where shall the ungodly and the sinner appear?" (1 Peter 4:17, 18 ).

We are judged by the words of God's revelation to mankind, the Bible. The word Bible comes from the Greek biblios. It means "books." Standing by itself, the word Bible connotes nothing holy or sacred. Only when we say "Holy Bible" are we truly referring to the sacred Scriptures. God's Word is like a sharp, two-edged sword that discerns even the intent and innermost thought of the human heart (Hebrews 4:12 ). It is God's Word which judges us.

The word judgment is used many times in God's Word to connote "fairness" and "equity," as well as "discernment" between right and wrong. Notice some examples:

"Therefore turn thou to thy God: keep mercy and judgment, and wait on thy God continually" (Hosea 12:6 ).

The term is used both positively, as in discernment and fairness, and negatively, when men pervert judgment. Amos wrote:

"Seek the Eternal, and ye shall live; lest He break out like fire in the house of Joseph, and devour it, and there be none to quench it in Bethel. Ye who turn judgment to wormwood [a bitter thing] , and leave off righteousness in the earth ... for I know your manifold transgressions and your mighty sins: they afflict the just, they take a bribe, and they turn aside the poor in the gate from their right ... seek good, and not evil, that ye may live: and so the Eternal, the God of hosts, shall be with you, as ye have spoken. Hate the evil, and love the good, and establish judgment in the gate [among the elders; the officials, the courts]: it may be that the Eternal God will be gracious unto the remnant of Joseph" ( Amos 6-15; excerpts).

Now, when will this greatest resurrection in all of history; the resurrection to judgment, or discernment, or trial, occur?

Notice how John described the glorious first resurrection, and then immediately described the second great general resurrection:

"But the REST OF THE DEAD lived not again until the thousand years were finished..." (Revelation 20:5 ).

As we have seen from many, many scriptures, the first resurrection takes place at the precise instant of the Second Coming of Christ. At that event, the living saints are changed in a "moment, in the twinkling of an eye," and caught up together with the "dead in Christ" who are resurrected to meet the descending Christ in the air.

In that same day, they all descend to the Mount of Olives. Jesus Christ will establish His Kingdom, and rule this world with a rod of iron for one thousand years. Read Revelation 5:10; 2:26; and 3:21.

But the "rest of the dead," including all the billions of human beings who never so much as heard the name of Jesus Christ, "lived not again until the thousand years were finished."

As we have read, it is at the end of the millennial reign of Christ and the saints (who are born into the God Family at the first resurrection) when the "rest of the dead" are to come forth from their graves.

These are the unsaved, the countless hundreds of millions and billions of human beings who lived in places like Irkutsk, Afghanistan, Niger, Rwanda, India, China, Japan; who lived from the time before the Flood of Noah until the time of the Battle of Armageddon. They are the Huns, the Magyars, the Celts, the Mayans, Aztecs, Incas, and the Toltecs. They are the ancient tribes of Africa, and the Vikings of Norway and Iceland.

Notice the biblical picture:

"And I saw a great white throne, and Him that sat on it, from whose face the earth and the heaven fled away; and there was found no place for them. And I saw the dead, small and great [the masses, peasants and farmers, together with the rich, kings and emperors] stand before God: and the books [Greek: biblios] were opened: and another book was opened, which is the book of life: and the dead were judged [remember, being "judged" is not being sentenced!] out of those things which were written in the books [Greek: biblios],according to their works" (Revelation 20:11, 12 ).

Your God is consistent. He says He does not change ( Malachi 3:6). The Bible says:

"Jesus Christ, the same, yesterday, and today, and forever" ( Hebrews 13:8).

How is God judging His own people today?

He is judging them according to the Bible, which merely means "books." It is the "books" of divine writ, the holy Scriptures, which judge us. God tells us we are being judged daily from the pages of His holy Word!

God is not going to judge differently, following the Millennium. He does not change. He is the same.

These countless millions of unsaved, ignorant, oftentimes savage people, who were in the most primitive, darkened state of Satan-inspired idolatry, are going to learn about God; they are going to learn in the same way you are learning, by hearing about, reading, studying, and being taught from the Word of God!

Millions of them lived during a time when human sacrifice to pagan gods was carried out! They are going to be re-educated, brought to a perfect knowledge of God and His purpose for mankind. They will have plenty of time to learn about God and His way of life.

Notice:

"For behold, I create new heavens and a new earth; and the former shall not be remembered, nor come to mind. But be ye glad and rejoice for ever in that which I create: for, behold, I create Jerusalem a rejoicing, and her people a joy" ( Isaiah 65:17, 18).

Clearly, this scripture tells us that memories of the old world, the sin-sick, crime-ridden, disease-infested, war-torn world in which you and I live today, "shall not be remembered, nor come to mind." If this is literal, and not merely metaphor, it indicates God will obliterate bad memories.

Though the following scriptures refer to a period of time called the "Great White Throne Judgment," they give us a pattern God will use concerning the lifespan of humans in the Millennium—the amount of time available for people to learn, and to practice, God's way of life.

"There shall be no more thence an infant of days; for the child shall die an hundred years old; but the sinner being an hundred years old shall be accursed" (Isaiah 65:20 ).

More on this one-hundred-year period later. For now, notice that God has decreed that after one hundred years, if a person is still unrepentant, still unyielding to God's laws, still stiff-necked and hardhearted, and living in sin, he will be "accursed," which means condemned. This truly IS a "sentencing"!

He is judged from God's Word during a one-hundred-year lifetime. If he or she is still refusing to obey God, to repent and be saved at the end of this time, a sentence is handed down. The sentence is death ( Romans 6:23).

Notice it:

"For behold, the day cometh, that shall burn as an oven: and all the proud, yea, and all that do wickedly, shall be stubble: and the day that cometh shall burn them up, saith the Eternal of hosts, that it shall leave them neither root nor branch" (Malachi 4:1 ).

Jesus said, in explaining the parable of the wheat and the tares to His disciples:

"The field is the world [notice, it is not the church!]: the good seed are the children of the kingdom; but the tares [a weed, sometimes called "cheat wheat"] are the children of the wicked one; The enemy that sowed them is the devil, the harvest is the end of the world; and the reapers are the angels. As therefore the tares are gathered and burned in the fire, so shall it be in the end of this world. The Son of man shall send forth His angels, and they shall gather out of His Kingdom all things that offend, and them which do iniquity; And shall cast them into a furnace of fire: there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth. Then shall the righteous shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father. Who hath ears to hear, let him hear" (Matthew 13:38-43 ).

Christ spoke of Gehenna fire. The term comes from a valley just outside the old city of Jerusalem, which served, anciently, as a town dump. Originally owned by the family of "Hinnom," or "Gehenna," as some scholars believe, this narrow valley was a place of "perpetual fires." Today, such practices are extremely rare in modern, developed countries. The stench from constantly smoldering refuse, garbage, and the like is intolerable.

But over two thousand years ago, just such fires continually burned in the piles of refuse, garbage, and discarded material in the valley of Hinnom. Some have proposed that, in the case of convicted criminals who had committed some great crimes and had been adjudged unworthy of decent burial, after being put to death by stoning, their battered bodies would be thrown into the perpetual fires of Hinnom.

Jesus used this noxious place as a type, or an example, of the dreaded "Gehenna fire" which shall destroy the incorrigibly wicked. Read Matthew 13:49-50.

Jesus used two different words which are translated "hell" into the English language. The most common word is hades in the Greek, and this word has nothing to do whatsoever with fires, or heat, or burning. It means, simply, "the grave."

Here is the proof. Notice what Jesus said about Capernaum, which had haughtily rejected His teachings;

"And thou, Capernaum, which art exalted unto heaven, shalt be brought down to hell: [Greek: hades] for if the mighty works, which have been done in thee, had been done in Sodom, it would have remained unto this day. But I say unto you, that it shall be more tolerable for the land of Sodom in the day of judgment, than for thee" (Matthew 11:23-24 ).

Briefly, the word hell in English comes from an old Nordic name for a false, pagan god, deriving from their superstitions about the "underworld of the dead." It was hel, or behelian. As late as the 1930s many American farmers still spoke of placing their potatoes in "hell" after harvesting. "Hell" merely meant a dark hole in the ground. It is the erroneous word used for the Greek word hades which should have always been translated "the grave."

But Jesus also spoke of a real "hellfire," which He called "Gehenna"!

Notice:

"And if your right eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast it from thee: for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into Gehenna" ( Matthew 5:29).

Here, I left the untranslated original word Christ used in place. The English-language Bible says "hell." But Christ's audience knew immediately what He meant. He referred to the noxious garbage dump outside Jerusalem, with its fires which consumed trash as well as an occasional body of an animal, or a criminal.

As an aside, it is important to note that Christ spoke by way of analogy, or in metaphor, and not literally. How do we know this? Simply by comparing scripture with scripture; by allowing the Word of God to interpret itself, without attempting to put our own meaning into it.

Since our bodies are the "temple of the Holy Spirit," ( Romans 6:13; 1 Corinthians 6:19-20), and the Bible absolutely forbids disfiguring or maiming our bodies, it is clear Jesus meant something else.

Obviously, He was showing how some human appetites, some desires, some passions, are as difficult to overcome, are such a part of some people, that rejecting them is like "pulling eye teeth," or gouging out an eye, or cutting off a hand.

It is also obvious that if a kleptomaniac (a compulsive thief) cut off his hand, he could still steal with the other hand; obvious that, if a person committed sins with the eye, he could still commit the same sins with the other eye.

The most important point to be made is that Jesus Christ said those who fail to overcome sin by the power of God, and with the help of the Holy Spirit, will be cast into Gehenna fire, there to be "burnt up," completely destroyed.

Notice the remainder of the passage you read in Malachi:

"And ye shall tread down the wicked, for they shall be ashes under the soles of your feet in the day that I shall do this, saith the Lord of hosts" (Malachi 4:3 ).

Gehenna fire consumes the bodies of unrepentant sinners, they do not burn forever.

A One Hundred Year Lifespan

Clearly, God shows us through Isaiah's 65th chapter that He will grant a one-hundred-year lifespan to human beings during the Great White Throne Judgment period, following the Millennium.

There is simply no other way to understand the verses we read. Notice it again:

"There shall be no more thence an infant of days, nor an old man that hath not filled his days..." ( Isaiah 65:20).

This reveals a very important and essential truth. Many scriptures show that during the Millennium the human family will continue to marry and bear children. Many scriptures portray the happy, glorious Kingdom of God, in which families and children are present (see Isaiah 11:4-9; Ezekiel 37:24-26; Zechariah 8:5).

However, during this one-hundred-year period, those who are resurrected as infants, and all the little children born during the last months of the Millennium who have not yet matured, will be the last generation of the human family.

From the moment of the beginning of the Great White Throne Judgment ( Revelation 20:11-12), no more babies are conceived or born.

"There shall be no more thence [there, during this period] an infant of days…" no more one-day-old, or two-week-old babies.

Also, there will be no elderly of mid-seventies, or in their eighties, who die. There will not be an "old man that hath not filled his days," meaning lived to be one hundred.

Notice the rest of this important scripture:

"For the child shall die an hundred years old, but the sinner being an hundred years old shall be accursed" ( Isaiah 65:20).

Obviously, these are two different categories. The child who dies at age one hundred is not classified as a "sinner," so the logical assumption is that the little infant who began to live at the beginning of this one-hundred-year period of judgment, and who arrives at his one hundredth birthday, simply dies of old age. Then what happens?

One of two possibilities, both completely substantiated in scripture; both already set as precedents by God Himself. One, he is either allowed to die the first physical death (for it is "appointed to men once to die") and then is instantly resurrected from the dead; or, two, he is changed from flesh to spirit, from human to divine, in an instant, in the "twinkling of an eye" ( 1 Corinthians 15:50-52) at the moment of the completion of the one-hundred-year judgment period.

Of course, none of this really concerns you and me, except as a matter of information, a desire to satisfy curiosity about "what happens to other people," or to our loved ones.

And that curiosity, that concern for loved ones, is what we must now come to understand.

Millions have been left in fear and worry over the fate of beloved family members. They have been deceived by the false teachings of the "immortality of the soul" and the "ever-burning hell," or by vague, musty old concepts of "purgatory."

I was once asked by a neighbor of mine, not a member of God's church, about his father. He described his dad as a very "good and decent" man. His dad had worked all his life for the U.S. Postal Service. He had been a good father, a provider for his family of four. He had been faithful to his wife, and had not been a gambler, or a drunkard. His main passion in life, after his early shift delivering mail, was to simply go to one of his favorite lakes and fish.

"But what happened to him when he died?" my neighbor asked. "I know he was not a Christian. He almost never went to church except when my mother would beg him to on a special occasion. But he didn't cuss, or drink, or smoke, or anything like that. So, since he wasn't `saved,' as they say, but yet he was a `good man,' did he go to hell?"

Literally millions of puzzled relatives have wondered about such things. And in the answer to these precise questions is some of the very best news you could ever hear!

To understand, you need to know what your Bible says about the state of the dead.

What is it Like to be Dead?

God says:

"For that which befalleth the sons of men befalleth beasts; even one thing befalleth them: as the one dieth, so dieth the other; yea, they have all one breath; so that a man hath no preeminence above a beast: for all is vanity. All go unto one place; all are of the dust, and all turn to dust again"( Ecclesiastes 3:19, 20).

God's Word says men die in the same fashion as cows, horses, dogs, or sheep. Their condition in death is the same. They both owe their lives to the oxygen in the air. When they die, they both decay, and return to the soil from which they come.

Are the dead conscious in some way?

"For the living know that they shall die; but the dead know not anything, neither have they any more a reward; for the memory of them [their memory—their conscious thought] is forgotten" (Ecclesiastes 9:5 ).

David knew this. He knew that man returns to the "dust," to the elements of the soil, from which we came. He wrote:

"What profit is there in my blood, when I go down to the pit [Hebrew: sheol, usually translated "hell," erroneously]? Shall the dust praise thee? Shall it declare thy truth?"(Psalm 30:9 ).

Thus, your Bible shows that when humans die, they are no longer conscious. They have no thoughts, no memory, no awareness. The Bible describes death as the deepest kind of sleep—black, stygian oblivion—complete unawareness of the passage of time; no pain, no worry, no memory.

Notice:

"While I live I will praise the Eternal: I will sing praises unto my God while I have any being. Put not your trust in princes, nor in the son of man, in whom there is no help. His breath goeth forth [he expires], he returneth to his earth; in that very day his thoughts perish" ( Psalm 146:2-4).

It is not the clever catch-phrase of some theologian to refer to death as "sleep."

God's Word refers to the dead in Christ as those who "sleep in Jesus" ( 1 Thessalonians 4:14). Notice some other examples:

"For this cause [not discerning the Lord's body in connection with the Lord's Supper, or Communion] many are weak and sickly among you, and many sleep" ( 1 Corinthians 11:30).

"Behold, I show you a mystery; We shall not all sleep [die] , but we shall all be changed. In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed" (1 Corinthians 15:52 ).

The dead know not anything, your Bible says. They have no memory. They are characterized as being in the most profound sleep, with no conscious thought, no awareness. At the instant of the resurrection, they will once again be thinking, remembering, conscious beings. To them, it will have been as if, from the moment of death to the moment of the resurrection, only a fraction of a second, the twinkling of an eye, had passed!

Millions of them will say: "What happened just then?" Millions will not even know they were dead, for millions have died so suddenly there was no time for thought, or even pain!

If you have any questions at all about whether the dead are conscious, they should have been put to rest by these divinely-revealed truths.

The Human Spirit

Look at what God's Word says about we human beings, about the human spirit God has given us, which makes us so far superior to animals; which gives us mind, conscience, depth of feeling, and character.

David prayed:

"Into thine hand I commit my spirit: Thou hast redeemed me, O Lord God of truth" (Psalm 31:5 ).

There are two Hebrew words translated "spirit." The most commonly used word is ruwach, which means "wind; by resemblance breath, i.e. a sensible [or even violent] exhalation; fig.life, anger, unsubstantiality; by extens. a region of the sky; by resemblance, spirit, but only of a rational being [include its expression and functions]:—air, anger, blast, breath, cool, courage, mind, quarter, side, spiritual, vain, whirlwind."

David used an entirely different word in his psalm. It is neshamah, pronounced "ne-shawmaw," and means "a puff, i.e. wind, angry or vital breath, divine inspiration, intellect, or an animal; blast, breath, inspiration, soul, spirit."

The first word is most commonly translated "soul," but is also rendered "spirit" in many places. It refers, usually, to the animal life of man, or the consciousness.

The second word is used more of the intellect, or the innermost psyche, and is correctly rendered, "spirit."

Notice another example of neshamah, where the word obviously means the innermost consciousness, thought, and intellect of man:

"The spirit of man is the candle [light] of the Eternal, searching all the inward parts of the belly" ( Proverbs 20:27).

Here, the word has to do with conscience; with the human character; with deep thought, introspection, meditation, philosophy; with our decision-making ability; accountability.

While man and animal "have all one breath"—that is, the same physical, chemical existence, supported by air, food, and water—they are completely different.

Man has a mind, while animals have brains.

Animals are creatures of instinct, but have no power to know or to wonder about their origin, about who, what, and why they are, and what is their destiny.

Animals have limited ability to reason. Experiments with dolphins, poodles, and chimpanzees have proved this. In one experiment, a dog trapped in a basement was observed to pile boxes atop each other until it had a platform high enough to the small window near the ceiling to escape.

But beyond this very limited ability, animals are creatures of automatically-programmed instinct. They have no creative ability. They cannot speculate, philosophically, the origin of things.

But God has placed a spirit in man—the human spirit. It is this spiritual essence, which is linked to the frontal lobes of the human brain and is conscious only when the brain is conscious, that gives man a mind as opposed to mere animal brain.

A little colt, only minutes after birth, staggers to its wobbly feet and immediately goes directly to the mare's teats to suckle. Somehow, by mere instinct, and by sight, sound, and smell, the tiny newborn animal knows exactly what to do.

Baby dolphins are born underwater. Immediately, they begin swimming, go to the surface, and take their first breath. Hundreds, no, thousands of examples could be cited from birds, fish, insects, and other animals of how automatically preprogrammed instinct causes them to survive.

Consider a newly-born human baby.

It is completely helpless. It would lie within inches of its mother's breast and starve to death if it were not cared for by the mother. It is the most helpless of all creatures.

Yet, consider the potential of that tiny human brain. Little by little, as the brain is programmed—as the baby bonds to its mother, father, brothers, and sisters—the baby learns.

Animals are capable only of squeaks, yells, barks, whinnys, bawling, calls, and grunts. While many animals, like elk or whales, are very vocal and utilize a wide range of sounds to communicate simple thoughts to each other, such as danger or feeding, the human mind is capable of learning language, with thousands of words, to express thought.

Any in-depth study into the human brain is a journey through stupendous, awesome, mind-boggling data; an introduction to the most incredibly complex organism known to mankind. How we think, reason, deduce, ponder, imagine, and create is almost incomprehensible.

You can know of nothing that is superior to your own mind, unless you are willing to admit other minds are better educated than yours, that they have stored more knowledge and experience.

But the human mind is the most incredibly complex thing of which we can come to know by the five physical senses. Could our marvelous minds have come into being by lesser intelligence?

Your own intellect demands the answer "No!" Only a vastly superior intelligence could have thought out, designed, and then created the human mind and spirit. Now, think with that marvelous mind God gave you.

It required two parents to produce you.

Your father's life, in the form of a microscopic spermatozoon, united with your mother's life, in the form of a fertile egg. At the instant of conception, you and I were much, much smaller than the period at the end of this sentence.

Yet, in that tiniest of beginnings was preprogrammed, in the DNA (for "deoxyribonucleic acid"), the genetic code which determined your sex, general height, weight, and shape; the color of your hair and eyes, color and texture of your skin, shape of your skull, and length of your fingers and toes—the characteristics which would make you "you" during your life. You would inherit, through this miraculous, microscopic beginning, qualities, proclivities, talents, and abilities from your family, including whether or not you are musical or tone deaf, whether you tend to be artistic or mechanical, and so on.

While it has been demonstrated that environment is a powerful shaper of character, the genetic code from your two parents is the most powerful of the two,

We take human life for granted. Yet, when we study into the incredible reproductive capacity of humans—how, we were conceived, formed in the womb, and born—we are left with a sense of awe and wonder.

David said to God:

"I will praise thee; for I am fearfully and wonderfully made: marvelous are thy works; and that my soul knoweth right well. My substance was not hid from thee when I was made in secret, and curiously wrought in the lowest parts of the earth. Thine eyes did see my substance, yet being unperfect; and in thy book all my members were written, [here, knowing nothing about DNA, David is in awe of the developing human fetus] which in continuance were fashioned when there were as yet none of them. How precious also are thy thoughts unto me, O God! how great is the sum of them!" (Psalm 139:14-17 ).

David was no doubt considering all the functions of the human body, contemplating the human eye, the ear, the sense of smell and touch, and the marvelous way in which all his vital organs contributed to his daily experience of living.

He no doubt meditated about the skeletal framework of our bodies, the musculature, with all the tendons, ligaments, and sinew connecting muscle to muscle and muscle to bone. He thought on the marvelous coordination of limb, hands, feet, and torso; how incredible it had been when he had become so proficient with a sling so as to hurl a rounded stone squarely into the forehead of the giant Goliath—the only unprotected place on His body. He no doubt thought of the awesome athletic feats of men in his army, of all the marvels of the human body.

When he said, "which in continuance were fashioned when there were as yet none of them," he no doubt was pondering the blood flow from mother to fetus; how it could be that, from a microscopic beginning, bone, tissue, muscle, the eye, the ear, the hands, and the feet could form.

David was in awe of God as Creator. He recognized the miracle that the human body presents to our view; the miracle of human life and reproduction.

It is only through the union between spirit and brain that such introspective thoughts are possible! Animals cannot contemplate their origins. Animals do not marvel at their ability to see, or hear. They cannot praise their Maker.

The human spirit is present from the instant of conception!

When did the Logos (John 1:1 ), who was the "Word," become the tiny, microscopic zygote which was to become Jesus Christ? At the instant the Holy Spirit engendered that very Life that was God within the womb of Mary!

Jesus Christ did not "become Christ" at the moment of birth, but nine long months before when He was conceived by the power of God's Holy Spirit!

Jeremiah was known of God before His birth! Other examples are contained in Scripture, including Cyrus, the Persian monarch, who was named four hundred years before he was born, which absolutely prove that the obscene process of abortion is murder of a human life! John the Baptist was conceived by a miraculous intervention from God; was foreordained to His mission prior to his birth! To imagine that aborting John or Jesus would merely have been a "choice" of a young woman is so unthinkably obscene as to defy human rationality.

There was never a moment—not a single second—when the Holy Spirit was not present with Jesus Christ.

Notice how Paul speaks of the human spirit and its connection with the Holy Spirit:

"For ye have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear: but ye have received the spirit of adoption, [Greek: "sonship," meaning more than legal adoption, but meaning actually being the literal offspring] , whereby we cry, Abba, [Hebrew word for "Father"] , Father. The Spirit itself [God's Holy Spirit] beareth witness with our spirit [our human spirit], that we are the children of God: And if children, then heirs; heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ: if so be that we suffer with Him, that we may also be glorified together" ( Romans 8:15-17).

These are vitally important truths—profound scriptures.

Let's understand what God's Word is telling us.

Written by: Garner Ted Armstrong