Where do people go after they die?

Because no one has come back to our world after dying, it is not possible to know for sure what happens to people after death. Nearly all the religions of the world believe that some kind of existence continues after life on Earth stops, that a person’s soul or spirit continues to exist—in a way we can’t really imagine—even after his or her body is dead. In fact, a lot of religions teach the belief that our life on Earth is a stage or time of preparation (or a test by which we’re judged) that leads to a final, perfect state of existence that we will share with God in a spiritual realm after we die. Some people who don’t subscribe to religious beliefs about an afterlife think that people simply end when they die, that once the physical body has died, all awareness and existence ceases.