Resurrection of the Saints
Is death the end?
Ancient Judaism posited that the dead are asleep, not experiencing anything, and the Old Testament Scriptures agree.
Martin Luther
Sleep of the Dead
What happens when we die?
God tells Adam in the book of Genesis that after he becomes mortal, his fate is to return to dust. 1 But during the time period between the Old and New Testaments, a new belief about the afterlife began to take hold: some Jews began to believe that people are composed of an eternal, immortal soul and a mortal body. According to this belief, the soul both preexists the physical body and remains after the body has died.
Hellenism and Christianity, Part 4: Purgatory and Preexistence
Purgatory
The idea of purgatory as a physical place that people could enter after death became a Roman Catholic doctrine in the late 11th century. Medieval theologians concluded that the purgatorial punishments consisted of literal fire. The Roman Catholic Church purports ...
