Jews & Rapture
Issues Related To The Jews
Name: Amang
Comments: Do the Jews believe in a rapture of being taken up to heaven?
Name: Mordekai
Comments: Not the Christian Rapture, no. The Jewish concept of heaven is not a place where the souls of the righteous go to when they die, but the place where God holds his court and where the angels reside. Heaven is not a rest home for departed souls in Judaism, it is a vast dimensional palace and government office where the administration of the universe is held. The souls of dead humans all go to Sheol in Judaism, Jewish or non-Jewish, righteous or evil. It is a shadowy, underground place that is neither happy nor painful. It just is. In the World to Come, the final days when the descendant of David returns and leads the Jewish people and all the righteous of the world to a time of peace is said to have all the righteous, regardless of creed, resurrected into their physical bodies, and the PHYSICAL earth will be made free of death and suffering. But no-one will go to heaven. That more or less sums up Jewish eschatology in a nutshell, but of course, there will be different interpretations based upon whether you're talking to a Conservative Jew or an Orthodox Jew. Or a Hasidic Jew, for that matter.