Are the Dead Conscious? by L. D. Santee

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Oct 26, 1911

Are the Dead Conscious?

By L. D. Santee

L. D. SANTEE

I do not wish to believe that the dead are conscious between death and the resurrection. That theory brings in so many unhappy features that I, with all my heart, thank Him who has said, “The dead know not anything.” Eccl. 9:5. He has assured us in his Word of their unconsciousness.

Those who find comfort in the belief that the dead are conscious and retain their faculties, have not considered all that it involves. Ever since my earliest memory, friends have been dropping out of my life. Like broken urns, they strew the pathway of the years. “God’s acre” holds them, and I mourn the loss. Some died Christians, but by far the greater number were pleasure-loving and unconverted. I do not wish to think that they are now in unutterable pain, that their nerves of feeling are quivering in untold agony; that while life is sweet to me, their condition is one of horror that would drive to insanity, of suffering that language can not tell or heart imagine.

The larger part of my friends were not Christians. Is not your experience the same? Go out into the graveyard, and visit the familiar mounds. Affection has chiseled their names on the marble. Love calls them up, one by one; but while fond memory fills the eyes with tears, you know, of the most of them, that they are now peacefully sleeping and unconscious, or that they are in torment. While you hope that your friends are in heaven, you think only of those that are saved, and forget the condition of the rest. Would you not rather that Christ should say of them, as he said of Lazarus, “Our friend . . . sleepeth”? John 11:11.

Have you thought of the real condition of even those who you hope are in heaven? In heaven joy is supreme. “In thy presence is fulness of joy; at thy right hand there are pleasures forevermore.” Ps. 16:11. My imagination shows me the battlements of heaven lined with the blessed, their beautiful eyes dark with the shadow of an infinite sorrow, as they look earthward. The mother who has toiled for her children until the vital cord was loosed, sees from on high her lessons forgotten, while neglect, degradation, and evil influences are ruining those for whom she gave her life. Other little ones suffer from cruelty and brutality, while the mother is in heaven, seeing it all. Such a condition can not be. The woes of earth would darken heaven if the dead were conscious, and knew what was taking place on earth. Thank God, this picture will never be realized.

I think that I have drawn the two pictures fairly,— the unsaved wild with anguish now, and without hope; the saved, with hearts aching with an anxious solicitude. How much better is God’s way! “He giveth his beloved sleep.” Ps. 127:2. Job speaks of those that are in their graves: “There the wicked cease from troubling; and there the weary be at rest.” Job 3:17.

Inspiration generally speaks of death as a sleep. Job is supposed to be the first book written by inspiration, and it speaks of death in these words: “They shall not awake, nor be raised out of their sleep.” Job 14:12. The Lord said to Moses, “Behold, thou shalt sleep with thy fathers.” Deut. 31:16. “And Solomon slept with his fathers.” 1 Kings 11:43. “And Rehoboam slept with his fathers.” 1 Kings 14:31. Daniel uses the same expression in chapter 12:2 of that book: “And many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake.” Read the New Testament account of the death of Stephen: “And when he had said this, he fell asleep.” Acts 7:60. Again we repeat the words of the Saviour: “Our friend Lazarus sleepeth.”

The fifteenth chapter of 1 Corinthians says much about the sleep of the dead and the resurrection. “But some are fallen asleep.” Verse 6. “Then they also which are fallen asleep in Christ are perished.” Verse 18. “But now is Christ risen from the dead, and become the first-fruits of them that slept.” Verse 20. In verse 51 Paul speaks of the translation of the righteous: “Behold, I show you a mystery; We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed.” “But 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.” 1 Thess. 4:13. Further proof is unnecessary. If it is not already plain, language can not teach it. At death, we, like Stephen, fall “asleep.”

What becomes of the mind, or intelligence? “In that very day his thoughts perish.” Ps. 146:4. “Their love, and their hatred, and their envy, is now perished.” Eccl. 9:6. The preceding verse declares that “the dead know not anything.” When I walk in the quiet cemetery, I think, Of all who lie buried here, not one is suffering; they are sleeping till God shall awaken them in the resurrection. The psalmist says: “I shall be satisfied, when I awake, with thy likeness.” Ps. 17:15. Truly, God’s way is best.

Moline, Ill.