Iv’e said it too many times before, but the night my father died, he appeared in my room, started with an apology for 25 years of deliberate, vindictive cruelty which destroyed my confidence, we argued and talked, and at the very end he gave this absolutely terrifying scream and disappeared. I think he’s in hell, going by the scream.
I suppose in one way what he saw coming and which terrified him so much was a “state of being”, insomuch as one could call the vision of hell given by Mary to the 3 children at Fatima a “state of being”.
“She opened Her hands once more, as She had done the two previous months. The rays [of light] appeared to penetrate the earth, and we saw, as it were, a vast sea of fire. Plunged in this fire, we saw the demons and the souls [of the damned]. The latter were like transparent burning embers, all blackened or burnished bronze, having human forms. They were floating about in that conflagration, now raised into the air by the flames which issued from within themselves, together with great clouds of smoke. Now they fell back on every side like sparks in huge fires, without weight or equilibrium, amid shrieks and groans of pain and despair, which horrified us and made us tremble with fright (it must have been this sight which caused me to cry out, as people say they heard me). The demons were distinguished [from the souls of the damned] by their terrifying and repellent likeness to frightful and unknown animals, black and transparent like burning coals. That vision only lasted for a moment, thanks to our good Heavenly Mother, Who at the first apparition had promised to take us to Heaven. Without that, I think that we would have died of terror and fear”.
When the temple curtain had been torn in two, and the earthquake hit at Christ’s death on the cross, we are informed that -
Matthew 27:52 NIV -
The tombs broke open and the bodies of many holy people who had died were raised to life.
From the time of Christ then, judgement is immediate after death, and we no longer just “sleep”.
As for resurrecting bodies, I think we’ll be given a new body altogether, and not something patched up out of the material of this world, otherwise a baby would remain a baby, a nonegenarian would still be in his wheelchair and so on. In any case, this universe is going to pass away at the Second Coming. It will disappear, so God’s not going to pull out bits of it just to resurrect a new body. There will be a new heaven and a new earth.
To my understanding then, judgement takes place immediately after death. Those condemned to Hell remain and are tormented in spiritual form only, since there is hardly any point in giving them a new body. Those in Purgatory will probably stay spiritual creatures only until they reach heaven. Only those in heaven will receive new bodies.
John 5:28 NIV
“Do not be amazed at this, for a time is coming when all who are in their graves will hear his voice, and come out–those who have done good will rise to live, and those who have done evil will rise to be condemned.”
Obviously the resurrection of the dead at Christ’s own death, with the torn curtain and massive earthquake, was the very beginning of that time, and it continues today. Hence my father could be apologising in my bedroom, probably within minutes or seconds of his own death, and then go to his eternal fate.
