"We are confident, [I say], and willing rather to be absent from the body, and to be present with the Lord" (2 Cor. 5.8).

Carnal Christians and false Christians deludedly think this verse means that a Christian when he dies automatically goes to heaven. It is not so. Moreover, this passage does not say absent from the body is immediately to be with the Lord, only that Paul would rather be absent from and be with...

Compare Gen. 2.17 which reads, "But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die."

Did Adam literally die the day he ate of the tree of knowledge of good and evil? No, of course not. He lived on for hundreds of years more. What is meant by this passage is that his spirit has lost its sensitivity and communication with God which over time brings about the death of the body. He could have been translated if he ate of the tree of life, but he chose not to.

In similar fashion when a person dies physically, time is again a factor, because 1 Thess. 4.16-18 says "For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the ["last trumpet", c.f. 1 Cor. 15.52] trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first: Then we which are alive [and] remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord. Wherefore comfort one another with these words."

I for one am comforted by the fact the saints will be resurrected together (some at the 1st trumpet but most at the start of the 7th trumpet) and not some have gone up beforehand. That seems fair. And that no human being can be in heaven naked without a resurrected body.

From now to when the last trumpet occurs, a person asleep in hades waits to be resurrected just as a person who died in his spirit to God waits for years before he dies physically.

Consider some negative implications of the false teaching of when someone dies they automatically go to heaven or hell rather than waiting to be resurrected together of those like kind.