Where Are the Dead? by C. P. BOLLMAN

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Oct 28, 1915

Where Are the Dead?

By C. P. BOLLMAN

C. P. BOLLMAN

THIS is a subject that has always been full of interest to mankind. When brought low by sore bodily affliction, the patriarch Job thus voiced the ages-long and often-recurring question: “Man dieth, and wasteth away: yea, man giveth up the ghost, and where is he?” Job 14:10.

To this ever-anxious inquiry many and varied answers are returned. The Egyptians, who, according to Herodotus (ii. 123), were “the first who propounded the theory that the human soul is immortal,” answer that “when the body of any one perishes, it [the soul] enters into some other creature that may be born ready to receive it, and that, when it has gone the round of all created forms on land, in water, and in air, then it once more enters a human body born for it; and this cycle of existence for the soul takes place in three thousand years.”—Encyclopedia Britannica, Vol. XVI, article “Metempsychosis.”

Others of the old pagans imagined a nether world, or underworld, divided into two parts, one for the righteous, the other for the wicked; and in this place the souls of the dead were thought to be confined, pending a general judgment. Some of the Jews in the time of our Lord’s earthly ministry seem to have held this fantastic idea of the abode of the dead. Taking advantage of this fact, our Lord made their conception of the underworld the basis of one of his parables,—the rich man and Lazarus,—in which he at once reproved the pride and covetousness of the rulers, and rebuked their neglect of the Scriptures, which, had they but believed, would have made impossible the acceptance of any such absurd and fanciful notion of the state of the dead.

This same pagan figment still survives in the Roman Catholic doctrine of purgatory, “an intermediate state, or place, where by expiatory suffering, souls are made fit for heaven.” Protestants reject the idea of purgatory, and generally hold that souls go immediately after death either to heaven or to hell.

But the Bible doctrine of the state of the dead is at variance with all these

views. According to the Scriptures the dead do not go either to heaven or to hell at death; they do not go to purgatory; their souls do not go into some other body, but the whole man, the entire entity, goes into the grave and remains there until the resurrection.

It may be asked, Is not this a gloomy doctrine? We reply, By no means: why should it be gloomy? The Bible speaks of death as a sleep. As in sound sleep there is no consciousness of passing time, so with the dead, time ceases. When Abel comes up in the resurrection, it will seem to him that deliverance came at the very moment of his dire need. Instead of waiting six thousand years for deliverance, he apparently enters at once upon his reward; and so, too, with all who have died. With the living, time seems to move upon leaden wings; but to the dead, centuries are but moments. One instant the brittle thread of life is snapped asunder, the next apparently, life is resumed.

It is the doctrine of purgatory that is gloomy; it is the doctrine of immortal souls going at once to an eternal hell that is terrible to contemplate. Even the more modern view—namely, that the souls of the dead watch over the living—is gloomy compared with the truth as it is revealed in the Bible. For by this theory the pious, God-fearing mother not only carries the burden of the sins of her children while she lives, but even after her death she must still carry the same load of care, and see all the evil that comes upon her children because of their waywardness. Her son may end his career in the gutter, or perchance upon the gallows, and his departed mother witnesses it all, according to the views held by some. This pagan idea, and not the truth taught in the Scriptures, is the gloomy doctrine.

According to the Scriptures, the way-worn Christian pilgrim falls asleep; he rests from his labors. The patriarch Job says, “His sons come to honor, and he knoweth it not; and they are brought low, but he perceiveth it not of them.” Job 14:21. To the same intent the psalmist says, “Put not your trust in princes, nor in the son of man, in whom there is no help. His breath goeth forth, he returneth to his earth; in that very day his thoughts perish.” Ps. 146: 3, 4. The preacher says, “Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might; for there is no work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom, in the grave, whither thou goest.” Eccl. 9: 10.

Coming down to the New Testament, we find our Saviour speaking of the dead, not as in heaven, nor in hell, but in their graves: “The hour is coming, in the which all that are in the graves shall hear his voice, and shall come forth.” The dead are not in the air, they are not conscious prisoners in the earth, they are not in purgatory; they are in the grave: and in the resurrection they are not called down from heaven, nor up from hell, nor out of purgatory, but they hear the voice of “the Son of man,” and come forth from the grave, just as Lazarus came forth, having been dead four days.

In 1 Cor. 15: 51-54 the apostle speaks of the dead as being asleep, and as being called from sleep at the resurrection; he says: “Behold, I show you a mystery; We shall not all sleep [that is, we shall not all die], but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed. For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality.”

Again, in his first letter to the Thessalonians, the apostle writes: “I would not have you to be ignorant, brethren, concerning them which are asleep, that ye sorrow not, even as others which have no hope. For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so them also which sleep in Jesus will God bring with him. For this we say unto you by the word of the Lord, that we which are alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord shall not prevent them which are asleep. For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first: then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord. Wherefore comfort one another with these words.” 1 Thess. 4: 13-18.

The dead are brought, not from heaven, but from death, or the grave. “The God of peace, who brought again from the dead [or from death] our Lord Jesus” (Heb. 13: 20) brings “with him” the righteous dead from the state or condition of death—“Christ the first fruits; afterward they that are Christ’s at his coming.” 1 Cor. 15: 23. The same thought exactly is expressed in a prophecy of Christ and his work recorded in Isa. 26: 19: “Thy dead men shall live, together with my dead body shall they arise. Awake and sing, ye that dwell in dust: for thy dew is as the dew of herbs, and the earth shall cast out the dead.”

Preaching on the day of Pentecost, the apostle Peter said: “Men and brethren, let me freely speak unto you of the patriarch David, that he is both dead and buried, and his sepulcher is with us unto this day. Therefore being a prophet, and knowing that God had sworn with an oath to him, that of the fruit of his loins, according to the flesh, he would raise up Christ to sit on his throne; he seeing this before spake of the resurrection of Christ, that his [Christ’s] soul was not left in hell [in this text, the grave], neither his flesh did see corruption. . . . For David is not ascended into the heavens.” Acts 2: 29-34.

If it could be shown that David’s soul, “the real David,” went to heaven upon the death of his body, the force would all be taken out of Peter’s argument. The prophecy was a prophecy of Christ and of his resurrection, and was not spoken of David. The proof of this was that David was left in the grave, and saw corruption. The modern doctrine that the real man is an immortal entity called the soul, and that this real being, the soul, goes to heaven at death, is utterly unreconcilable with Peter’s argument in support of the resurrection of Christ. But no one challenged the apostle’s conclusion; for while the Jews were at that time tinctured more or less with pagan ideas, their sacred writings, which we now call the Old Testament, contained no hint of any future life except by a resurrection of the body. The doctrine of natural, inherent immortality, eternal life apart from Christ, is altogether pagan, not Christian nor even Jewish.

The assurance, the comfort, given God’s ancient people was not that death was “only change, or transition,” that the real man did not die, but it was that that which died should live again.

After raising the question concerning the dead, “Where is he?” the patriarch Job says of himself, “If I wait, the grave is mine house.” Job 17: 13-16. And then, after being further reproached by Bildad, Job again expresses his confidence in God, saying:—

“Oh that my words were now written! oh that they were printed in a book! that they were graven with an iron pen and lead in the rock forever! For I know that my Redeemer liveth, and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth: and though after my skin worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God: whom I shall see for myself, and mine eyes shall behold, and not another; though my reins be consumed within me.” Job 19: 23-27.

Thus it is seen that Bible writers are agreed that the dead are in the grave, where they remain until called forth in the resurrection—the righteous to everlasting life, the wicked to suffer the second death.