Plato or Paul- Whom Will You Believe?

"Furthermore, the Kingdom of Heaven is like a net that was let down into the lake and gathered fish of every kind. When it was filled, they dragged it up on the shore, and they sat down and gathered the good fish into containers, but the bad they threw away. So, it will be at the end of the age. The angels will come out and separate the wicked from the midst of the righteous and will throw them into the furnace of fire where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth."

So... if Jesus says the wicked will be thrown into the furnace of fire at the end of the age, where did you get the idea that when a wicked person dies, their "soul" immediately leaves their body and goes to "hell"? Where, for that matter, did you get the idea that a believer's "soul" immediately goes to heaven upon their death?

Is it possible that you have bought into the Platonic influence as the church did in the third century? Do you believe that man has a body that contains a soul or that the soul is the entire man? At death, does that soul pop out of the body and float away somewhere, awaiting the second coming? If so, what is the purpose of the bodily resurrection when Christ returns? You know, "the dead in Christ will rise first." Are you trapped into believing that the disembodied soul waits in heaven or hell only to be reunited with the resurrected body when it is raised? You will not find that anywhere in the scripture, so why would you believe it? Because that is what your Bishops told you?

"The far-reaching effects of Greek philosophy on the Christian faith are described also by G.A.F. Knight in his book, Law and Grace (pp. 78, 19):

“Many people today, even believing people, are far from understanding the basis of their faith… quite unwittingly they depend upon the philosophy of the Greeks rather than upon the Word of God for an understanding of the world live in! An instance of this is the prevailing belief amongst Christians in the immortality of the soul. Many believers despair of this world; they despair of any meaning in a world where suffering and frustration seemed to rule. And so they look for release for their souls from the weight of the flesh, and they hope for an entry into the “world of the spirit,” as they call it, a place where their souls will find blessedness they cannot discover in the flesh… The Old Testament, which was of course the Scriptures of the early church, has no word at all for the modern or ancient Greek idea of “soul.” We have no right to read this modern word into Saint Paul's Greek word psyche, for by it he was not expressing what Plato had meant by the word; he was expressing what Isaiah and what Jesus meant by it… there is one thing sure we can say at this point and that is that the popular doctrine of the soul's immortality cannot be traced back to a Biblical teaching.”

It remains an astonishing fact that the messages of comfort heard constantly at Funeral services in which the souls of the departed are said to be already in heaven reaffirm a central tenet of Greek philosophy which cannot truthfully be called Christian at all.” (Sir Anthony Buzzard- What Happens When We Die?)