Helder,
If I remember correctly, you subscribe to the concept that humans, while living in the biological sense, are inhabited by an immortal soul. Do I understand correctly?” I believe that humans are souls versus that they have souls. Nothing much happens after death until the resurrection. Sleep versus hanging out in the cosmos. So, you can see how the idea of judgment seems integral and ordinary to me.

“Passerby,
I am most comfortable with understanding my unseen self as spirit since I understand we all are created in Her image, and She is Spirit, as Rabbi Jesus said. So…if I may, one takeaway from my own experience of literal death and being then raised literally is the realization that while alive, our spirit is entirely one with our body of flesh and is entirely responsible for its animation, including its brain function. Attempts to isolate one from the other are futile. Seen and unseen together is the nature of all creation. When our spirit is permanently removed from our body, it dies. The Creator Spirit does not shun or despise our flesh but rejoices in it. She made it.

I think ‘inhabit’ since you understood me to say that is a lack of clarity on my part. Mia Copa! My body is not inhabited by my spirit but one with it, inseparable from it, so long as my body of flesh breathes. (But please allow me to say that I have experienced my spirit apart from my body, not in death but in order to accomplish Her specific purposes. Other stories for another time, perhaps.) While my body is entirely dependent on the presence of my spirit for its existence, my spirit is not dependent on the functionality of my body for its well-being. When my body is done, my spirit continues its journey home.

• • •

For your second part, I hear in your question your Adventist training. I have a very dear friend who used to provide the piano leadership for our Sunday service with the Veterans who was an Adventist. Big on Sleep until the resurrection after her husband died, and I hear your preference. If you are comforted by that understanding, go with it. I can’t feel the comfort in it. In my view, texts referring to death as sleep, like 2 Cor 15:20, are cultural idioms like speaking of dying as ‘crossing over,’ ‘passed on,’ or ‘kicking the bucket,’ and ought not to be taken literally.

My experience informs me that the full unity that will occur at the time of my death with the Creator Spirit includes my uninterrupted consciousness, intact memory, and will. The consummation of the relationship that we all are created for. Rabbi Jesus taught very little about life after life, but as Paul wrote,

“What we see now is like a dim image in a mirror; then we shall see face-to-face. What I know now is only partial; then it will be complete—as complete as God’s knowledge of me.”

—1 Corrinthians 13:12

That doesn’t sound like me asleep. That sounds like me wide awake! And that sounds like me being healed of the hurts of this life. I do not anticipate “hanging out in the cosmos.” However, I will be glad to be where She is, whatever that glorious context might be, that I will share with all who have gone before, and I am certain I will not be disappointed.

Regarding Judgment, I have forwarded a couple of stories from my writing.

The Peace of the Lord be with you, Passerby!”