What part of a person continues on into eternity when the body dies?
The part that continues is the immaterial inner person: the mind, the will, the emotions, and the personality. Scripture describes the body as a temporary earthly tent or tabernacle that dissolves, while the real person dwelling within it is eternal and goes on into eternity.
Les explains that 2 Corinthians chapter 5 answers the question of what happens when we die. The earthly house is described in the Greek more like a tent, a temporary dwelling place. The body is just a dwelling place for the real you and the real me. The real us, the part that is going to go on into eternity, is that invisible part: the mind, the will, and the emotions, the personality. It is simply dwelling in this earthly tabernacle. That earthly tabernacle will dissolve and go back into the earth from which it came, unless the rapture takes place, and then it will just be changed. But whether by death or rapture, this earthly tabernacle being dissolved is not going to stop us. We are eternal, and we have a building of God, not a tent, but something permanent for eternity, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.
For we know that if our earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved, we have a building of God, an house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.