Dead and not Dead by R. F. Cottrell

California Conference of Seventh-day Adventists · Oakland, Cal. · Dec 3, 1874

Dead and not Dead.

By R. F. Cottrell

Two young men that were brothers lie side by side in the graveyard. They died the same year, 1872, one in September, and the other in October. The bereaved parents have erected head stones at their graves. On one is this couplet:

"Go home, dear friends, dry up your tears; I must lie here till Christ appears."

On the other, this:

"Do not mourn, my parents dear, I am not dead, but sleeping here."

Here is a seeming contradiction. How is it to be reconciled? Not by supposing that the soul is immortal, and is elsewhere; for the I that is not dead is sleeping here, that is, in the grave. But because of the hope of the resurrection at the appearing of Christ we say, by a figure of speech, The dead are not dead; for they shall rise again—they shall be awakened out of their sleep. In this sense Jesus said of the dead child, "She is not dead, but sleepeth." He was about to raise her from the dead. He said also of Lazarus, "Our friend Lazarus sleepeth, but I go, that I may awake him out of sleep." The awaking out of sleep is the resurrection. So with the hope of the resurrection to eternal life at the appearing of Christ we may say, The dead are not dead; for they shall soon live again. Death is but a temporary sleep. The slumber of the saints of God shall soon be broken; so that life, and not death, is their inheritance.

R. F. COTTRELL.