Again and again, the Old Testament predicts a resurrection of the dead, something that all people are said to eventually partake in. Daniel 12:2 says that both the righteous and wicked will rise again, but only the righteous to eternal life. Verse 13 then says that Daniel himself will be among those who sleep in the dust, joining the multitude in Sheol whom are unconscious and asleep according to the Teacher of Ecclesiastes and Job (Ecclesiastes 9:5-10, Job 3:11-19), before he himself is resurrected in the eschatological future to be given his "allotted inheritance." Moreover, Job says he will once again live on the same earth (19:25-27), though he longs for the peace of unconsciousness in Sheol in the meantime, for God will call for the creature his hands made (Job 14:10-15). Isaiah 26:19 additionally promises a bodily resurrection for people who will shout with joy. This is the true afterlife taught in the Bible, one that comes after both death and resurrection. Besides use of methods like sorcery (see 1 Samuel 28), there is no intermediate consciousness taught anywhere.
Paul later affirms the future resurrection of the dead in Acts 24:15 before Felix, which he also touches upon, regarding the restoration to life of the righteous or redeemed specifically, in 1 Corinthians 15 and 1 Thessalonians 4. In turn, this resurrection of the upright or saved is mentioned in Revelation 20:4-6. Jesus occasionally includes the resurrection in his teachings, such as in John 5:24-29, where he says that the righteous will rise to receive life and the wicked to receive condemnation. This parallels what Daniel 12:2 says. The righteous will be resurrected to obtain eternal life, and the wicked or unrepentant, in contrast, are denied this life. Theirs is shame and contempt from God or the morally superior. Repeatedly, a resurrection is referenced in the Old Testament and then again in the New Testament.
If everyone is resurrected as Daniel 12:2 and John 5:24-29 teach, along with many other verses, then those who are worthy of living in the age to come, according to Jesus, (Luke 20:35) would be the righteous, for the wicked are resurrected despite their unworthiness of life, much less eternal life. Also, Jesus says that the resurrected dead he is speaking of are God's children (20:36). They cannot die, he teaches, for theirs is the eternal life he mentions over and over in John and which Daniel speaks of in the aforementioned second verse of chapter 12. Life is not meant to be experienced without end for the unrighteous, or else God would not have barred the fallen first humans from the tree of life in Genesis 3. The Biblical position is that the righteous will live forever, the few who walk the narrow path (Matthew 7:13-14).
It is not so with the wicked. Lacking eternal life (Romans 2:6-7, 6:23), they will perish (John 3:16), reserved for the second death of hell (Revelation 20:6, 15) where God kills the wicked once and for all; he will bring an end to their conscious existence in a death by fire (Matthew 10:28, 2 Peter 2:6), and the wicked will be like a dream after someone awakens: they will no longer be a part of reality after the second death overtakes them (Psalm 73:1-20). Their resurrection bodies do not transcend death like the ones Jesus addresses in Luke 20. Indeed, death is precisely what their bodies are prepared for! Once they die this time, the Bible teaches, there is no resurrection to follow, no opportunity for repentance or pleasure of any sort. Forever, they are excluded from eternal life, and in this sense, their punishment is absolutely eternal (Matthew 25:46) although the utmost injustice of eternal torture has nothing to do with it (Deuteronomy 25:1-3). Death is what they deserve (Ezekiel 18:4).
Consciousness of all non-divine beings, according to the Bible, initially originated from God (Genesis 2:7, 7:17-23) and is sustained by God (Acts 17:25, 28), and no conscious being has eternal life except what God permits to it since only he is immortal by default (1 Timothy 6:16), and even then, only after the resurrection. The resurrection of Jesus is a foreshadowing, the "firstfruits" of the coming awakening of the Christian dead (1 Corinthians 15:20-23) to eternal life. Resurrection to everlasting bliss and freedom in God and resurrection to damnation and the subsequent second death, a literal death in hell without any hope for another resurrection, are major doctrines of the Bible, tied to everything from moral uprightness to soteriology to eschatology to cosmic justice. Their real Biblical relationship to the likes of Sheol, hell, and New Jerusalem are also very misunderstood by many, who think the Bible says all will receive eternal life for either heaven or hell or that there is a conscious afterlife before the resurrection.
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