Christ judges the souls and spirits of every human immediately following their physical deaths. Hebrews 9:27. Christ is the only Judge. Christ allows the souls and spirits of those saved by grace to go to heaven. Christ consigns all those not saved by grace, called by the Bible "the dead," to one of three regions of the dead called the Sea, Death, or Hell. Revelation 20:13. Although these judgments belong solely to Christ and whatever He decides is right, one could speculate that moral unbelievers He will consign to the region of least punishment called the Sea. Christ could consign the immoral to the middle region of punishment called Death. But the cruel and the atheists, He could consign to the fires of Hell.
At the end of the world, God will effect a general resurrection of all the dead from their graves, and their souls and spirits from all three regions of the dead. God will separate the living part of each dead person which He created in His image to be recreated into new, righteous humans to live on His recreated earth. John 5:28-29; Revelation 20:5; Revelation 21:5. God will then consign the separated dead to the lake of fire forever. Revelation 20:15. God will also destroy Hell and Death by casting them into the lake of fire. Revelation 20:14. God will also eliminate the Sea by a means not specified. Revelation 21:1.
Jesus preached about this Sea when He walked the earth. He also sometimes used the Sea of Galilee as a symbolic reference to this region of the dead.
The first reference to this Sea occurs in Micah 7:18-19. These scriptures teach that God will forgive the sins of a group of Hebrews called "the remnant" and will cast their sins into "the depths of the Sea." The Old Testament term "the remnant" always refers to that group of Old Testament saints who will possess some faith that their coming Messiah will in some way suffer for them to take away their sins. When these Old Testament saints died, God consigned their souls and spirits to a place called Paradise next to Hell under the earth. They waited there until Jesus descended into Hell to preach the gospel to them. At that time, they believed in Jesus and were saved by His grace. The moment they believed, Jesus washed their sins away by His shed blood into this Sea. Jesus then raised them from the dead when He resurrected and transported them all, and Paradise itself, to heaven when He ascended to live there with Him forever. Luke 23:42-43; Matthew 27:52-53; Ephesians 4:7-10. Christ separates all His believers from their sins by washing them away with His blood into this Sea. Having been thoroughly cleansed by Jesus' blood, His believers are then fit to be filled with the perfect righteousness of Christ by means of which God can accept them into heaven. II Corinthians 5:21.
Jesus' walk on the Sea of Galilee symbolized His power over all sin contained within the Sea of separation from God. Peter demonstrated his faith in Jesus when he walked on the sea. But when he became afraid and began to sink, he cried out to Jesus to save him. This event symbolized salvation by grace. When a repentant sinner cries out to Christ for salvation from separation from God, believing that only Christ can save him, then Christ lifts him above the Sea of separation from God and leaves his sins of doubt and fear behind in the Sea. Matthew 14:22-33; Romans 10:13.
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