God decides where we go for eternity based on what we have done. Salvation exists through Christ, so we can be forgiven our sins. Even one time lying or one time being jealous has been a sin. We need salvation to get to heaven and we need to forgive to be forgiven for eternity. Matthew 6:14-15 For if you forgive others when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others their sins your heavenly Father will not forgive you.
A:There are at least 6 basic theories about what happens to us when we die:
- Materialism: Nothing survives. Death ends all of me. Seldom held before the 18th century, materialism is now a strong minority view in industrial nations. It is the natural accompaniment of Atheism.
- Paganism: A vague, shadowy semiself or ghost survives and goes to the place of the dead. This is a standard pagan belief. Traces of it can be found even in the Old Testament Jewish notion of sheol.
- Reincarnation: The individual soul survives and is reincarnated into another body.
- Pantheism: Death changes nothing, for what survives death is the same as what was real before death: only the one, changeless, eternal, perfect, spiritual, divine, all inclusive reality.
- Immortality: The individual soul survives death, but not the body. This soul eventually reaches its eternal destiny of heaven or hell, perhaps through intermediate stages, perhaps through reincarnation. but what survives is an individual, bodiless spirit. This is Platonism, often confused with Christianity.
- Resurrection: At death, the soul separates from the body and is reunited at the end of the world to its new, immortal, resurrected body by a divine miracle. This is the Christian view.
