Heaven
Revelation 22:12-14 John 3:15-16 Romans 6:23 John 17:24 Ephesians 1:10 Psalm 115:16 Hebrews 9:27 II Corinthians 5:8 (KJV)
The New Testament teaches that the gift that repentant believers receive for their faith in Christ is the "eternal Life" of Christ Himself. This gift puts them into a special relationship with God. They become God's children, and enjoy a direct connection to the Life of God for all eternity. God will never, ever disown any of His children forever.
The New Testament nowhere teaches that every believer goes to heaven immediately following their physical death. John 17:24 and Ephesians 1:10 do teach that God will eventually gather all of His children to heaven, but not necessarily as immediately following physical death. Hebrews 9:27 teaches that that which does immediately follow every man's physical death is Christ's judgment. At this judgment, Christ enjoys great latitude in His judgments of the saved and unsaved alike. II Corinthians 5:8 does teach that "to be absent from the body" is "to be present with the Lord," but this presence is for judgment, not necessarily for entrance into heaven.
For example, when one of God's highly sanctified and obedient children dies, Jesus may allow that child to enter immediately into the City of God. Revelation 22:14 would seem to indicate this judgment. However, the Bible teaches that there are various levels of heaven. When one of God's ordinary children dies, then Christ may allow that child to enter into that level of heaven called "Paradise," but not into the City of God. Other children may be assigned to other levels of heaven depending on their degrees of sanctification and good works. When disobedient children die, or are Raptured, Jesus may assign them to a temporary, corrective punishment in that place called "outer darkness." Yet, even there they retain everlasting life because the Holy Spirit, who never leaves them, will still be inside of them to cause them to feel that terrible remorse for their disobedience which will be far worse than even the punishment of lost sinners in the lake of fire. Eventually though, God will recover His wayward children from this "outer darkness" and give them a place, probably, in the lowest level of heaven.
When unrepentant sinners die, Jesus will assign them temporary punishments according to how they lived. For example, those who tended to live in accordance with the goodness that God created within them may be assigned to "the sea," whatever that is. The ordinary lost sinners may be sent into "outer darkness" with the disobedient children of God. The most evil of lost sinners may be assigned to the temporary fires of hell, but no child of God will ever be sent there or any place like it.
Read Matthew 7:1-5. In any case, the Bible teaches that Christ is the Judge, and not man. As the Great Judge, Jesus can make whatever judgments that He deems best. When mere man tries to restrict God's judgments to only two directions, either heaven or hell, then they attempt to put themselves in the place of the Judge, and that is sin. Christians should leave all judgments to Christ, and simply try to conform their lives to the sanctification process.
Jesus will make all of His eternal judgments at the Great White Throne Judgment when God recreates the heaven and the earth, and when "I make all things new." Read Revelation 21:5. At this time, the "dead," who are lost sinners, will be cast into the lake of fire and reduced to the consciousnesses of worms. Then, in order to "make all things new," God will recover all of the good "things" that He created in the first place. All of His good "things" that have been misused in false combinations, God will recover to use to recreate a new race of men who will live on the earth forever, but who will never be allowed to go to heaven.
At this Judgment, God will literally return all of His "things" to His own creative purposes. All of His good systems which He will create at this time will serve His purposes, and He will leave no possibility that any false system can ever again be invented to cause agony and sorrow in the earth or heaven.
Now one may ask: Do not the recreated humans on the new earth gain eternal life? The answer is "no" because there exists a big difference between immortality and eternal life. The recreated humans will simply live immortal, but ordinary, lives on the earth, only without sin. In addition, each recreated human will forever lose a part, or even all, of their former individual personalities. The eternal lives of the children of God gives them an eternal connection to the Life of God Himself, and each one of them retains his or her own individual personality forever. Since the eternality of our God consists in an Infinity of beginnings and endings, then God must be planning to use His special children for some great, but unknown, future creative project.
Most of those who report a near death experience relate that their spirits move toward "the light." Since Jesus taught that He is "the light of the world," then evidently, every spirit moves toward Jesus but not necessarily to enter heaven. This movement to "the light" simply reaffirms Hebrews 9:27. Every departed spirit moves to "the light" that is Jesus in order to receive their individual temporary judgment from Him.
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