DATA-DOG: [ Uh?? Didn't they just say the spirit went back to GOD???]
Ideed. This apparently means that we were all once in Heaven (or first estate) and that we're now here (in our second estate). When we die, we return to God. That's why the Lord told Jeremiah, "Before you were born I knew you. And before you came from the womb I ordained you a prophet unto the nations." (Jeremiah 1:5) And it's why Jesus didn't correct the apostles when they said, "Rabbi, who did sin, this man or his parents that he was born blind?" (John 9:3)
Thus, if man lived before he came here, it makes sense that he would not cease to be when he departed this life, but would return from whence he came. Many near-death experiences recount people meeting people they knew before they came to mortality, but who lived at different times. That's why many people feel that, in death, they feel like they've come home.
The JWs, on one hand, say that Jesus had a premortal existence, but they say he didn't go to heaven when he died. They're partially right in that Jesus did not ascend unto his Father until after his resurrection, but the scripture says that he went and "preached to the spirits in prison." (See 1 Peter 3) These souls were disobedient in the days of Noah and in other ages where they didn't have a full opportunity to hear the gospel in its fulness. These miscreants were thus able to live as spirits, but to be judged as though they were in the flesh. (1 Peter 4) When we die, we will not be able to return to the Father until after our resurrections (like Christ). Until then, we live as spirits in Paradise, which is a holding area between death and the resurrection. As the church father Origen said, it's a place of learning, or school of the spirits, in which everything they did on Earth would be made clear to them.
