The next step — Various religions explain beliefs about afterlife

Where does a person go immediately after death?

While most Christians believe some sort of heaven or hell is the ultimate eternal residence, beliefs on the transition between death and the resurrection vary.

There appear to be at least three basic types of beliefs on where those who die end up: (1) Go directly to God's presence; (2) Travel to a spirit world existence; (3) Go into a sleep or unconscious existence until the resurrection, when they will awaken.

Here's a sampling of seven churches and their beliefs:

Pastor Steve Goodier of Christ United Methodist Church, Salt Lake City, said there's no firm belief in his faith regarding the dead. However, he said the average church member believes that once the spirit separates from the body in death, the spirit goes to be with God.

"Most call this heaven; it's a spiritual realm," he said.

He believes we will be reunited with loved ones there, although that isn't a specific biblical doctrine, he says.

Pastor Goodier said United Methodists focus more on living their lives as well as they can, rather than worrying about where they will go immediately after death.

"The Bible states we step into the presence of God," Pastor Terry Long of Calvary Chapel of Salt Lake said.

How we handle that visit depends on our relationship with God, he said. How righteous we are in this life is critical to staying in God's presence in the afterlife.

Richard Wolf, an elder in the North Salt Lake congregation of Jehovah's Witnesses, said that his faith believes we sleep in the grave after death, like Lazarus did during Jesus' ministry.

We rest in death, the Witnesses explain in their "What Does the Bible Really Teach" book — "in a deep sleep without dreams," and the dead do not hear, think or suffer (Ecclesiastes 9:5 and John 11:11).

They believe the sleeping dead await the resurrection, where the righteous will live forever on a paradise earth with loved ones.

That's similar to the basic beliefs of Seventh-day Adventists. Their official Web site states: "The wages of sin is death. But God, who alone is immortal, will grant eternal life to His redeemed. Until that day, death is an unconscious state for all people. When Christ, who is our life, appears, the resurrected righteous and the living righteous will be glorified and caught up to meet their Lord. The second resurrection, the resurrection of the unrighteous, will take place a thousand years later."