They Are not Time-Keepers.
By A. C. Bourdeau
In the Scriptures, man in death is represented as sleeping, and in the resurrection, as awaking and rising. The period that man sleeps in death is compared to the shadow and darkness of night, in which they dwell in the dust, and the grave is their resting-place; and the time of the resurrection of the saints is compared to the morning and to the day dawn. The Lord then “turneth the shadow of death into the morning.” Many passages attest these facts. From their decease, the saints sleep in the narrow chambers of the dead till they wake in the morning of the first resurrection to receive the gift of immortality and to live eternally with the Lord in his kingdom. The wicked dead, who have not accepted salvation through Christ, continue to sleep until the redeemed of the Lord have lived and reigned with Christ a thousand years. Then they awake to receive their retribution, and to die the second death in the final conflagration. Again, while the Scriptures clearly substantiate the doctrine of the sleep of the dead, they also clearly represent that man in death is totally unconscious, and exercises no power of mind. “His breath goeth forth, he returneth to his earth; in that very day his thoughts perish.” Ps. 146: 4; Job 14: 20, 21; Eccl. 9: 5, 6, 10; Ps. 115: 17. This is reasonable and conclusive; for in sound sleep, thought is suspended, and we have no idea of anything that transpires under the sun. There is no light, no darkness, no disappointment, no lapse of time, no waiting through a long night, to those that sleep soundly. They are not time-keepers. And, knowing this to be a fact by repeated experience, we lie down to sleep for a whole night, as it were, for a little moment. Thus it is in regard to the sleep of the dead. In Phil. 1: 20–24, Paul understood that at the resurrection it will to him be precisely as though he departed to be with Christ the very moment he died. There is no waiting through long ages, to the dead. They are not time-keepers. A. C. BOURDEAU.