p. 6 | The Dead Know Not Anything

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D.C. · Oct 25, 1906

The Dead Know Not Anything

THE tenacity with which some will hold to the creed of the church regardless of the plain teaching of the Scriptures, and the ease with which they will discredit any portion of the Bible which does not harmonize with the creed, are both illustrated by a question and the answer to it which have been forwarded to us by one of our readers. A correspondent asked the editor of a religious paper this question:—

—Ministers tell us that the dead will know much that the living do not know; but is not that a direct contradiction of the Bible, which says, “The dead know not anything”?"

In his reply the editor says that much which the writer of the book of Ecclesiastes says “is not to be read as literal truth,” and concludes with this statement: “If you believe in a future life at all, you must conclude that those who have passed into it know many things that are hidden from the living.” In their anxiety to maintain the creed, religious teachers do not hesitate to undermine the confidence of the people in the plain statements of the Bible, apparently overlooking the fact that in so doing they are destroying the very foundations of Christianity, while they will appeal to human speculations as authority for claims which contradict the Scriptures. What does any one know about the condition of man in death and the future life except what is revealed in the Bible? Of what value are philosophy and speculation in settling such questions as these? Pagan dogmas and spiritualistic theories ought to be discarded once and forever in favor of the revelation from heaven concerning the things of the kingdom of God.