"I Will Come Back And Take You To Be With Me"

John 3:16, for all of its renown, is misunderstood horrendously by many people.  They think that it teaches that epistemological assumptions/faith are requirements for salvation and that the experience of the damned in hell is unending, when the Greek word for believe means commitment (a rational deity would never demand assumptions of anyone whether or not Christianity is true) and the verse clearly says that those who do not have eternal life, which is contingent for sinful humans on salvation, is to perish, to cease to exist.  John 14:2-3 is similar in a way.  It is fairly famous among Christians and perhaps philosophical outsiders (not that most Christians are anywhere near true knowledge of Biblical Christian philosophy!) and is still glaringly misunderstood.

This is where Jesus states that there are many rooms in his Father's house, adding that he will leave to prepare a place for his disciples, come back to them, and bring them to himself.  Jesus does not say "When you die, you will be with me, and then I will return"; he very clearly says that he will return and then, because of or at his coming, the disciples will be brought back to him, so that where he is, they will be also.  His return is what he says comes first.  This is consistent with what the Bible really teaches about the state of the dead before their resurrections.  The popular idea that anyone is in heaven or hell right now is thoroughly unbiblical.

Jesus cannot reunite the disciples with himself or bring other Christians to him upon his return if they immediately go to be with him after death, unless it is immediate only in the sense that whatever potentially enormous amount of time has passed seems like a moment to a nonexistent or unconscious.  This is exactly what the dead are described as--nonexistent or unconscious on the level of the mind (Ecclesiastes 9:5-10, Job 3:11-19, Psalm 6:5, 88:10-12).  People sleep in death either in a literal sense or in the sense of nonexistence (Daniel 12:2), of oblivion of conscious experience (again, see Psalm 88:10-12).

The righteous or saved dead are restored to bodily life and conscious perception at their resurrection, that of the righteous being preceded by a trumpet (1 Corinthians 15:50-55, 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18) at the return of Christ (Revelation 20:4-6).  This is the first resurrection and is received by only those who are already righteous or restored to Yahweh through repentance and commitment.  The rest of the dead are resurrected after a reign of Christ alongside the righteous, and theirs, unless there is some possible final offer of salvation extended which they accept, is the second death (Revelation 20:11-15).  No one is in hell until this point, and before the first resurrection, there is no one in heaven.

No one went to heaven before Christ came to Earth (John 3:13).  Until the resurrection, the dead sleep, as Paul (see 1 Corinthians 15 and 1 Thessalonians 4 again), Jesus (Mark 5:35-40, John 11:11-15), Job (see Job 3 again), and Daniel (Daniel 12:2) say, with Ecclesiastes saying that there is no emotion, desire, knowledge, or perception in Sheol because no one experiences anything at all (Ecclesiastes 9:5-10).  Combined, these texts teach that there is unconsciousness if the soul exists, though it might not exist whatsoever, between death and the resurrection.  Upon the return of Jesus, the righteous or repentant will begin their eternal life and are raised in imperishable bodies (1 Corinthians 15:52-53).