What does the Bible means when it states God so loved the world He gave His only begotten Son that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life? What does it mean to perish? What does it mean to have eternal life?

We think the Lord may be referring to the physical body.

There are verses that have troubled me for years. I had always been taught that if we believe in Christ we will go to Heaven when we die but if we do not we will go to Hell.

I firmly believe from the Scriptures that there is a literal Heaven and a literal Hell. I believe further that the wicked go to the fiery Hell when they die, just as did the selfish rich man.

Paul was caught up to the third Heaven, to Paradise. As I understand it, the third Heaven is the location of God, Christ at God's right hand, and the saints and holy angels.

But if you will look carefully at John 3:16 the issue Jesus is presenting is not residence in Hell (I will qualify this later) or Heaven but perishing and living. It seems to me that the Evangelical churches need to look again at John 3:16, for we may have departed from the Scriptures by assuming Jesus did not mean exactly what He was saying.

It is definitely true that Heaven and eternal life are not the same thing. Hell and perishing are more equivalent than are Heaven and eternal life, as we will note as we proceed. Heaven and Hell are actual places in the spirit realm. Living and perishing are things that happen to us.

Our inward, spiritual nature, our soul, cannot perish. It could be in Hell or the Lake of fire for millions of years but we believe it cannot perish. Our spirit and soul cannot cease their existence, to the best of our knowledge. They can be tormented but they cannot perish in the sense of extinction.

Our physical body can rot away in the ground or be blown to bits in an explosion. In this sense it can perish. But it shall be raised again. After it has been raised it can perish in that it no longer is allowed to move about in the creation of God, but there is evidence in the Scripture that it also, along with our inward nature, will not finally cease to exist.

Heaven and eternal life are not the same thing. Eternal life is the Presence of God in Christ entering our personality so we begin to live by the Spirit of God rather than by our flesh and blood.

If Heaven and eternal life were the same thing, Christ would have lost His eternal life by coming to earth. We could not have eternal life while living on the earth if Heaven and eternal life were the same thing.

I do not believe it can be maintained that eternal life is the same as going to Heaven. Perishing and Hell, however, may be closely associated.

If John 3:16 is not speaking of going to Heaven, to what then is the verse referring?

To be continued.