What is the state of the soul
Until the resurrection?

Our Lord answered the question when he faced the death of a beloved friend. Asking His disciples to go with Him to the village where Lazarus lived, Jesus said, "Our friend Lazarus sleepeth" (John 11:11). In describing death as sleep, Jesus was not being poetical. He was echoing the words He had inspired the Old Testament writers to record. Wrote the psalmist: "Lighten mine eyes, lest I sleep the sleep of death" (Psalm 13:3). Said Job: "So man lieth down, and riseth not: till the heavens be no more, they shall not awake, nor be raised out of their sleep" (Job 14:12). Nearly sixty-six times in seventeen books, the Bible uses sleep as the figure of speech to describe the phenomenon of death. In so describing, the Word of God teaches:
  1. Like sleep, death is rest from all activities. "for there is no work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom, in the grave" (Ecclesiastes 9:10).
  2. Like sleep, death is a state of unconsciousness. "The dead know not any thing" (Ecclesiastes 9:5).
  3. Like sleep, death continues until one awakens. "So man lieth down, and riseth not: till the heavens be no more, they shall not awake, nor be raised out of their sleep" (Job 14:12).
  4. Like sleep, death prevents participation in the activities of those who are awake or living. "Neither have they any more a portion for ever in any thing that is done under the sun" (Ecclesiastes 9:6).

Such is the testimony of the Scriptures. From what we have seen thus far, four factors clearly emerge: (1) man is mortal and is subject to death; (2) the soul is not a separate entity that survives death. The soul is man, and when man dies, the soul simply ceases to exist; (3) resurrection is the Christian answer to the problem of death, and the hope of immortality is found only in Jesus Christ; (4) until the resurrection event, the dead are in a state of sleep, a state of unconsciousness.

If the testimony of the Scriptures is such, why do so many Christian churches teach the doctrine of the immortality of the soul? What is the explanation for the almost universal belief that the soul survives death?

Email: Creation Ministries