People born before Christ were sent where? Heaven? Hell?

Hades.

They lost out. Sucks to be them.

Well it depends on what one did…

In my opinion, the same thing happened to them that happens to everyone when they die, whatever that may be.

I remember asking a priest this question in CCD class as a kid. The answer was “Limbo”, which is between heaven and hell, sort of like the waiting room.

Well there’s been lots of ways over the years to dispose of dead bodys, natural decomposition plays a vital part, either that or burning, we all return to the earth, one way or another…Have done for all the years past. As for heaven & hell, they simply don’t exist :-/
(imo)

Detention?

Heaven, if a heaven exists. Jesus just helps to smooth the ride.

They were just sent to a kind of waiting room, in between heaven and hell, where Jesus, upon his death, visited them and gave them the same opportunities or redemption as he had given to those alive on earth.

As a Christian, I can tell you safely that they are dead and unconscious, just like those who have died since. There is no such place as hell, and the dead will all be resurrected at once at the second coming of Jesus.

Limbo
Opps, Missed what @Barnaclebill wrote.

There are five levels beneath the earth which has been established by death to house the dead. Death has the power to such because of the light of the children of God which it uses to estblish his kingdom.

There is one called Paradise is which house those which belong to life eternal .
These levels are being systematically destroyed in and of their ownselves.
Their complete destruction will be seen when death and hell is upon earth itself, when men will desire to die but cannot.

There is no difference from before Christ or after Christ until after the First ressurection is over. Everyone that has lived in this world is still right here on this world.

I have heard conflicting viewpoints on this. Some fundamentalist Christians have told me that Jesus went to Hell and forgave all the sinners their sins because they could not know him or else they may have accepted and loved him thus not going to Hell at all. I have also heard that while Jesus’ time on earth is measurable, his time in existence is not able to be measured because he always has been and he always will be and those people who dies before he came to earth would “know” in some way or another about him and thus be judged accordingly.

Just to clarify, I’m not Christian and have asked this question several times before with, as you can tell, mixed results.

We have all always been and will always be this is a very elementary existing place for us and we in our progression are in infancy. There is not a hell fire and damnation place of existence. What being would place anybody in an existence where you burned and suffered through eternity? There is such a being. The God of this world is limited to the laws of the Universe as all beings are. Those that merit the evolutionary change that is coming will move on to a higher plain of existence and those who do not will do this over again.

After our deaths, our constituent atoms will make new things. We will no longer exist, except in other people’s memories.

Limbo was ’abolished’ a few years ago.

No we live on.

As we know, the turtle was the original creator, and the Earth rests upon its back, according to Hindu tradition.
http://www.squidoo.com/turtle_gifts
So before Christ, people were brought before the great turtle for judgment.

@JustmeAman Do you have any evidence for that assertion?

Yes I do I have talked with quite a few who have passed and I passed myself and was brought back.

@JustmeAman How can you be sure that this really happened and wasn’t a figment of your imagination, a hallucination, a dream?

How can you be sure it was. I was there and was not asleep nor on any drugs. I had a friend come to me when he died during the deer hunt. I led the police to his body because he told me where it was and then left a message for his wife.

I think that if Heaven and Hell exist, then they have always existed and will exist forever more—even after the heat death of the universe. Heaven and Hell have a special kind of existence, which is outside of reality as we know it. Therefore they are undetectable through science. However humans—some humans—have the capability of detecting heaven and hell, usually in near-death experiences.

Heaven and Hell are self-regulating and self-determining—kind of like artificial intelligence. They actually do the judging on behalf of whatever deity is being invoked at the time. They use sophisticated algorithms that our computers could not begin to invoke. Just too complex. Those algorithms require more computing power than would be available if the whole universe were to turn into a computer. Given that complexity, it is no wonder they seem like magic to us.

This information is based on theories of a rebel physicist, who ended up tied to his bed for the last few years of his life. Even so, he managed to write down the equations on small slips of paper, which were smuggled from the asylum by a young nephew of his, who has self-published the entire theory in a chapbook, which has been circulated among the members of a secret society—most his mates from Yale,

This group has been slowly working their way up the ranks of the DIA, the CIA, and other, “black” organizations, delicately pushing a program designed to unlock the gates of both Heaven and Hell. They believe the equations of that rogue physicist might give them those capabilities.

Even as we speak, they are manipulating the economy and the political process in order to gain support for this project. The Republican takeover signals the start of their project, for they are now confident of the funding they need.

Be warned, people. The End of Days is near!

@wundayatta

Agreed to a point. I would say the End of Days as we know them now.

@JustmeAman Come on, dude. Grant me just a little artistic license, please.

@wundayatta You got it and some lurve. :)

Sheoul, which had a partition (dubbed “Abraham’s Bosom”) for those on good terms with God. It got folded into the present system.

@wundayatta: I can never tell if your serious or not and I love it!

Reminds me of a great anecdote about a missionary in Africa. He tells the bushman about Christ and about the dangers of Hell. The bushman asks, “My elders, who knew nothing of this Jesus, will they go to Heaven or Hell?”

“To heaven,” the missionary assures him, “They did not have the chance to know of Christ.”

The bushman thinks about it for a second and responds, “Well why the hell did you tell me about it?”

Well strictly speaking from a biblical point of view, their souls don’t go anywhere until the “rapture.”

@KatawaGrey ”I can never tell if your serious or not and I love it!”

Mmmm. I love that! That’s the confusion I hope to generate—at least on questions like these. It’s even more satisfying on general questions.

There is a method to my madness which I would be happy to share if you like.

It depends on who you’re asking. I think the same thing happened to them that happens to us, because I don’t believe in Heaven or Hell – so, decomposed, Ii guess, energy dispersed into the universe.

Nowhere. There’s no logical reason beyond personal desire to even consider life after death.

Not one person has mentioned Xenu and his intergalactic spaceship armada.

The good and pious among them were sent to work for Santa at the North Pole and various shopping centers while the rest were made to work for the United States Postal Service.

I knew it.

@AstroChuck Surely there was some mistake in your case?

Before Christ, I believe your salvation depended more on your deeds and adherence to ceremony (such as your animal sacrifices and whatnot).

Here is a response to the question from a Christian minister friend:

“Biblically there is no distinction between the soul and the body. That’s why the Apostles Creed talks about the resurrection of the body. So, no limbo, but, sleep until we all go in together. Of course we never say that at funerals because people want to hear something different.”
I love that last bit.

Jersey.

thank you folks, i’ll be here all week

New Jersey: It’s free to enter, but you have to pay to leave…

Additional response from the minsister friend:
“Well yes there is a difference in that in the Old Testiment there’s not much talk of heaven. They talk more about Sheol or the Abode of the Dead. More a limbo kind of idea. Heaven is a notion that evolves in latter years and is much more of a New Testiment idea.”

I asked the similar question a month? ago. obviously I didn’t word it right.

Yes, no more limbo, Pope Benedict XVI closed up shop 2007.

@KatawaGrey and @maxwellmachine and @faye and anyone else who isn’t tire of me:-). I’m not a Christian either, but Christianity is not some sort of theological and doctrinal monolith, and because of that, anyone who ever asks this question, or any number of questions regarding doctrine, is going to end up with “mixed results”. In terms of Christian theology and doctrine and depending on whether or not any individual Christian fully believes the doctrine of his or her individual denomination, there is no one answer to this or a whole lot of other doctrinal questions.

Even if you just slowly scroll through Wikipedia’s List of Christian Denominations, you don’t even have to delve any deeper into the beliefs of any one of them for this exercise, you will see that there is a just a god awful lot of them (pun intended). Some of the theological and doctrinal differences are fairly significant and some are very minor, though, apparently not minor enough for that group, whatever that group might be, to have felt the need to break off and form their own denonmination.

The variety of answers that you get, from Christians themselves are the result of Christians, depending on the tradition and their denomination, simply believeing different things. And this question, the question of salvation, is at the very heart, is the very core of some of these divisions. The dispute between Martin Luther and the Catholic Church, what caused the Reformation, was among other things, a doctrinal dispute about this core issue. Faith vs. Works, salvation by grace, etc. it all gets very complicated. If you want to twist your brain all up in a knot, and then take your knotted brain into a funhouse of smoke and mirrors, then study the doctrinal disputes and doctrinal variations between all the Christian groups and denominations.

Anyway, the basic point is that Christians themselves can’t agree on what the answer to this question is. No one is ever going to get a definitve answer on this one from Christians because isn’t one. There is no one answer. It doesn’t exist. Not a doctrinal one. Other than that, it’s just everyone’s personal opinion, I think.

@Blondesjon and @HungryGuy South Jersey is fuckin awesome. Its friggin north jersey that gives us the ad name :(

@uberbatman I have to come to your defense. South Jersey is way cooler than the shows would lead you to believe.

@uberbatman . . . I’VE NEVER BEEN THERE IT’S A FUCKING JOKE CHILL THE FUCK OUT!!!

sorry bro, that’s the salvia talkin’

Don’t fuck with Texas Jersey!

@Blondesjon yeaa sorry to hear about that :P

When I lived in New Jersey a few years ago, I bought a tee shirt with a photo of a highway sign that says:

Welcome to New Jersey
Now Go Home

BTW: I actully liked living in Jersey!

Pittsburgh

I have an English professor that always has this to say about New Jersey: “I’m from New York. We tend to think of New Jersey as the place that we send our garbage.”

New Jersey is the parking lot for tourists visiting NYC.

Take the question to its logical conclusion. Start with “What happened to people born before Christianity was even a glimmer in anyone’s eyes?” and move on through the older religions until you get to “What happened to people born when our ancestors were not self-conscious enough to bury their dead/ make up stories about what happened to their dead after death?”

That’s what always has happened and will continue to happen to people who die.

GA @Rhodentette my thoughts exactly.