Where the Dead Go…
I thought I’d try tackling an interesting subject here since my normal focus is on those topics which concern everyday Christian life and the occasional dive into eschatology.
This one is eschatology-adjacent only in the sense that the topic is the place where the dead end up after this life.
Unlike other ministries out there that preach that when a man or woman dies, they go to heaven or hell, the truth I understand is that the underworld looks more like something out of Hercules than something out of a Catholic mass.
The Bible says nowhere a spirit goes to heaven or hell when it dies. In fact, the spirit of a human being lives on after death, but it goes to a place called Sheol.
What is Sheol, exactly? Is it some ethereal paradise where the most boring things imaginable happen to us?
No, far from it.
“All go to one place. All are from the dust, and to dust all return” (Ecclesiastes 3:9 [ESV]).
“O LORD, You have brought up my soul from Sheol; You restored me to life from among those who go down to the pit” (Psalm 30:3 [ESV]).
“The LORD kills and brings to life; He brings down to Sheol and raises up” (1 Samuel 2:6 [ESV]).
The dead go to one place: the realm of the dead. Sheol is a place similar to the Greek conception of the underworld (something I’m partial to at the moment since I’ve written a tale about an ancient myth in modern settings).
The Bible does not anywhere say that to die means going to heaven or hell. But multiple times throughout the entire narrative arc of the Scriptures, from Adam to New Jerusalem, we have the dead resolving their existence in the intermediate state after life and before the bodily resurrection.
There are two extremes we should never fall into on this subject. One is the Gnostic idea that we enter an eternal anti-physical paradise for eternity after we die. The other extreme is called “soul-sleep,” which defines death as a resting state without consciousness until the resurrection.
The truth is somewhere in the middle of these two dichotomies. A truth unveiled by studying Second Temple period literature, such as the Book of Enoch.
The Book of Enoch is a strange book, one that gives an origin to Mount Hermon—a veritable mountain in the Middle East. The reason it is called Mount Hermon is that 200 Watchers, a class of angels, took an oath bound by curses to sleep with human women and teach mankind secrets they were not meant to know.
This questions the common notion of angels being only bodiless beings. The Bible never portrays angels as without corporeality. To put it bluntly, angels have semen that can impregnate women on Earth.
This is the true reason for the global flood that wiped out a corrupted humanity. And it is also where demons originate from, which are the spirits left behind after the Nephilim were destroyed. Demons and fallen angels are separate beings, despite common notions of them being congruent concepts.
That’s beside the point of this post, however.
The Book of Enoch, a book quoted word-for-word by Jude in the New Testament (meaning we can’t just dismiss it outright), says the dead go to an underworld before the ultimate world to come.
All sinners, the righteous, and everyone in between, go to Sheol without exception.
Throughout Enoch, he describes the underworld as partitioned into four chambers (see 1 Enoch 22:8-10).
The chamber of the righteous is where righteous souls rest underneath a bright light and living water. This is where believers who are worthy of the world to come end up. This is what would commonly be taught as heaven, incorrectly.
The second partition is where those who were murdered wrongly cry out before their cases are heard by the courts of heaven. This is parallel to Revelation 6, where the souls of the martyrs of the Great Tribulation cry out for justice. Interesting parallel if the Book of Enoch is not to be studied.
The third partition is for those who sinned and were wicked but received just punishments in life.
The last partition is a place devoid of all light for the truly wicked and unrepentant. These will certainly be tossed into the Lake of Fire along with Azazel and his angels.
This is not the binary ending we are taught in churches.
The Book of Enoch describes accurate astronomy, black holes (describing them as dark objects with rings of fiery light around them that connect different galaxies), a correct calendar-year count of days, the origins of the occult, and so much more.
This book also says it is meant for the distant, last generation, not for Enoch’s contemporaries. Those who will be alive during the Great Tribulation at the end of history.
I mention these points to show it is an interesting book, but not that it is canon.
Though with Jude quoting it, it warrants our attention.
There is an afterlife when we pass on. Whether this underworld is ruled by a certain Grim Reaper or Hades himself is beside the point. It is most certainly not ruled by Satan, who is a heavenly being that still has access to the heavens.
The more one studies what the Bible and other texts actually say about different subjects, the more one sees how far the Church has fallen from the truth.
Death is our ultimate end, but it is not our final destination. We will be resurrected into glory on a new Earth and explore the rest of the universe alongside our loving God.
Blessings and shalom to you!
