My sister was put on in-home Hospice last week. When the nurse visited her for the first time death or dying was a topic she thought should be discussed before they went any further.
My sister and I were both brought up going to church. After high school graduation, our parents told us that we were allowed to make our own decisions, but they were there for us if we needed any advice or just needed to talk about anything. I decided to continue going to church and still do today, plus I say prayers every morning and evening. What’s the old adage: “Old habits are hard to break?”
When the Hospice nurse started her talk to my sister, she agreed to allow me to sit in on her visit, but don’t interrupt, which is hard for me to do, but I was able to get through the first visit without interrupting. The nurse spoke about what happens the moment we die. She told my sister if we go to church we may have been told something different, but this is what people who have died for a few minutes before being resuscitated back to life and the stories she was told by these people are fairly relatable with one another.
She said the moment we die, our soul is taken by angels to neither Heaven or Hell to a place to await for judgment from God. Of course, I was never told that in church or Sunday School. BTW, I only went to Sunday School until I returned from Vietnam and then I only went to church. When my wife and I had children, we started going to Sunday School with them (different classes, of course) until they were 18 and then we stopped going, but remained going to church. My sister and I are 16 months apart. When we turned 3, we started going to Sunday School, so I was always a bit behind her.
When the nurse had finished, she didn’t ask for questions, but I waited at my sister’s house until she was leaving and I walked her to her car and then I asked her if I could ask a question and she said “Sure.” I asked her when our souls go to “the place” to wait for judgement, do we wait until Judgement Day or does God make his decision before that. Her answer was, “That’s a great question. The people who died and experienced the angels that took them to the place to await for judgement never got to the part where they were judged, so I don’t know.”
I didn’t accept that answer, so this past Sunday, I stayed over after church and told our Pastor this story and asked him what he thought. He told me what I have been taught in church is what he believes. We were always taught that we were judged at the moment of death. He did add that it is possible that the Angels may escort our souls into Heaven. No one really has an answer about that part, but if you believe in Angels, then yes, it is possible for that to happen. BTW, Faith plays a big part in what we believe. There should be no doubt that God exists and only He passes judgement.
I apologize for the length of this post, but I tried not to leave anything out.
