The Intermediate State of the Dead.
By S. S. Griswold
Do THE Scriptures teach the sleep of the soul, or the unconscious state of the dead, previous to the resurrection and the day of Judgment? There are few questions in eschatology of deeper interest than whether man exists as a conscious being after death, independently of his resurrected or reconstructed former body. For, if it be a fact that death so annihilates man as that he ceases to be a conscious, thinking being, man has no future state, and this life is all there is. Death is the eternal sleep, “that sleep that knows no waking.” The assumption that the resurrection of his former earthly body will constitute his future life—a reliving again of the same personality, is a fallacy. Such a resurrection might be the commencement of a new race, but it would not be a reliving of a former one. For in what respect would such a resurrection differ from the creation of Adam out of the dust of the earth? And as Adam had no consciousness of having existed previous to his waking from the earth, so neither would the resurrected ones possess a consciousness of ever having lived before. Hence, whatever may be their condition of either happiness or misery, they could not recognize it as one of rewards and punishments for a former life. Hence such a condition of being could not be a future life of a former race, however it might be the creation or beginning of a new one. Such I believe is the inevitable consequence of that materialism which denies man's consciousness after death. Such is the dark future which the system of materialism presents to mankind. Into the dark abyss of unconscious nonentity it consigns the most sacred instincts, the most sacred hopes, the most sacred aspirations and expectations of the human heart, implanted by the Creator. But such is not the gloomy, awful future of our race. Man is born for immortality; created an heir of endless existence; an image of his Maker, and made to possess so much of the divine indestructibility as that he will survive “the wreck of matter and the crash of worlds.” As man's future state can only be predicated on the fact of his possessing a spiritual nature, it must follow, of course, that if he does exist in a future state he possesses such a spiritual nature. That man has such a future existence the Scriptures abundantly show; and hence it follows that the Scriptures must teach the doctrine of man's spiritual nature. That the Bible does thus teach, may be proven from almost every page. In fact, man would be incapable of inspiration, were it not that he has a spiritual nature, which only can be receptive of the divine Spirit, in the sense in which man has been and still is inspired. It is by this spiritual nature not only man exists after death, but he is thereby rendered capable of recognizing the spiritual world and its inhabitants. For it was by the couching of man's spiritual senses that he has had open vision of the spirit world. Thus men have seen angels, heard their music, held converse with them. In the same way, the departed dead have been seen, heard, recognized. It was in this way, the prophet's servant saw the horses and chariots of fire—that Elisha saw the horses and chariot which conveyed Elijah up to glory—that the prophet saw Jehovah sitting on a throne high and lifted up, surrounded with the august retinue of the heavenly court—that the three disciples saw Christ during his transfiguration, and Moses and Elijah—that Paul was caught up into the third heavens—that John of Patmos saw and heard the visions, as recorded—and that Christ was seen after his resurrection, and at his ascension. Thus do the Scriptures, indirectly at least, teach that man continues his existence after death. The case of the rich man and Lazarus is proof positive that men exist immediately after death. And Christ assured the penitent thief while dying that he would be with him that day, in paradise. But the fact of demonical possessions which were so abundant during Christ's earth-life, is certain evidence of the conscious state of men after death. For those demons were the spirits of the departed, who so possessed their victims as to make them do their bidding. For a demon was the spirit of a dead man. Here we have a proof of the existence of men after death, that cannot be successfully controverted, without undermining the whole system of materialism. Ridicule about spirit-beings—as being nonentities—nothings, will not avail here. These spirit-demons, or spirits of the dead, were real personalities, as much so as those whom they possessed. To deny the existence of spiritual beings is to erase from the Bible a large portion of its revelations; and to deny the existence of intelligent beings, who possess no physical organism would be to deny the teachings of divine revelation. Yea, it denies the existence of God himself, except as a material, organized being, which in fact has been admitted by materialists. A prominent Adventist in Rhode Island admitted before a large assembly where I was present, that God ate and drank. A Mormon priest with whom I held a public discussion while residing in Allegany County, N. Y., said plainly that God ate veal and mutton. In fact, Mormonism holds that God himself was once a man who lived on the earth, and that all good men, especially Mormons, will also become Gods. I trust my Advent brethren do not hold so gross a materialism as that which necessitates such a Deity. But why must they not, if there can be no thought, no intellection, no love, no hatred, no conscience, and no nothing of intellectuality except as the result of a personal organism. But if I have understood my reviewer, he has ridiculed the idea of spiritual existence. “God is a Spirit.” Has he a physical organization? But the Scriptures as positively teach that man is a spirit, or has a spirit, as that God is a Spirit. Now if angels and God can and do exist as spirits, and in a spiritual world or universe, of course, why may not man likewise. I sincerely believe that to deny the existence of man as a spirit, will necessitate the denial of the existence of God, except as an organized being. I am well aware that my reviewer will undertake to show that the terms used by the sacred writers to represent man, are the same as used to represent brutes; such as soul, spirit, breath, life, &c. But if, because the words soul, spirit, breath, life, &c., are used to represent brutes, therefore they must be so understood when applied to man, then by the same process, it can be shown, that God himself is only a human being; yea, farther, that he is nothing more than wind. “God is Spirit.” Greek—God is wind; also that there is a plurality of Gods. “In the beginning, God [Hebrew, Gods] created the heavens and the earth.” In 1 Cor. 3:1, 12, 14, the apostle as definitely teaches that man is a spiritual being, as he does that God is. In the creative act of man, we are told that “God breathed into man the breath of life [Hebrew, lives], and man became a living soul.” Much stress is laid on the term soul, because it is sometimes used to denote brutal animal life, and hence that it is limited here to mean nothing more than what is commonly called life. But what does breath mean, where it is said God breathed into man the breath of life? Does God inhale atmospheric air, and did he then exhale it from his lungs and thus inflate the lungs of Adam? Will my reviewer maintain that, and defend the consequences of such a position? Did the Creator descend to earth on the sixth day of his creative energy, and literally take some dust, and, after moistening it like a potter, mold it into the human form, and then, like the prophet, when restoring life to a child, prostrate himself on that earthy form, and through his mouth and nose expel the air from his lungs, and impel it into the earth lungs of that first man? Let them believe it who can. Whatever was the divine procedure in the act of creation, we are expressly told that by that act man became an image of his Maker—hence, immortal, and it was by the divine inflatus that man's immortality was constituted. Hence death, which is only the destruction of that earthy organism through which the true, real, spiritual man acted, and by which he was put in connection with this world, cannot effect that divine element of our natures which was thus given man. Hence man must have a conscious existence after death. John of the Apocalypse says he was in the Spirit; that is, his consciousness was in his real self, his spiritual nature: his spiritual senses were opened, and he was thus in the spirit world or present in the spiritual world. And he has told us in the Revelation what he saw and heard in the world of spirits. He says he saw there vast multitudes of spiritual beings, and when he asked his celestial guide what they were, and from whence they came, he was told that they had come up out of great tribulation, and had washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. One spirit said that he (himself) was one of the prophets. They were all John's brethren, persons who once had been inhabitants of earth, but had died, and were then living in the world of spirits. I will simply add that the phrase “the dead,” as used in Scripture, almost, if not always, means the spirits of those who have died, and not their defunct and decomposed bodies. Thus do the Scriptures most emphatically teach the conscious state of the dead prior to the resurrection of their bodies. When Christ was upon earth he found it necessary to say to a certain class who opposed him on the subject of the resurrection, “Ye do err, not knowing the Scriptures, nor the power of God.” Perhaps were he now on earth, he would repeat the same language to certain ones on the same subject. Bro. G. thinks that if a man ever ceases to exist as a conscious being, he can never have a future existence, for the re-formation of the matter of which he was composed would be a new creation, but not a resurrection. That continued consciousness is not necessary to preserve identity of being, is proved by nearly every member of the human family every day. Did Bro. G. ever enjoy a period of sound, unconscious sleep? If so, when he awoke, how did he know that he was the same individual he was before? How does any one know, after a good night's sleep, that he is the same person that retired to rest the night before? Simply because his organization is the same on awaking that it was when he became unconscious in sleep. Now suppose that during this period of unconsciousness, the body of a person could be cut up into innumerable fragments, the bones ground to powder, the flesh dissolved in acids, and the being entirely destroyed. After remaining in this condition a little time, suppose all those particles could be put back again exactly as they were before, the arrangement of the matter, especially of the brain, the organ of the mind, being identically what it was, and life being imparted to it again, the person be allowed to sleep on till morning: when he woke, would he be conscious of any break in the line of his existence? Any one must see that he would not. Being organized just as before, his mind would resume its consciousness just as if nothing had happened. So with the dissolution of death. After its period of unconsciousness is passed over, in the resurrection the particles of the body are re-united, re-organized, and arranged exactly as they were at the moment of death, and re-animated; then the line of life is taken up, and the current of thought resumed just where it was laid down in death, it matters not how many thousands of years before. This, the power of God can do; and to deny this is to “err, not knowing the Scriptures, nor the power of God.” In this way, we can have a true and proper resurrection, a living again of the whole person, as the Bible affirms. On the supposition of continued consciousness, this is impossible; for in this case the real man lives right on, the body, which the Bible makes of so much importance, being only the garment with which it was temporarily clothed. The popular view makes the Bible as inconsistent on the subject of man as it would be for a historian to give the history of some celebrated man's coat, and call it the history of the man himself. The spiritual nature in man is supposed to be proof of his consciousness in death. How? Disturb that divine cerebral organism with which man is endowed, and which places him at the head of this lower creation, and what becomes of his spiritual nature? Take out his brains, and how much is there left of a spiritual or any other nature? The case of the rich man and Lazarus does not prove consciousness in death; for (1) the place where the rich man is represented as in torment is hades; but this is not the place of future punishment. That is Gehenna. Mark 9:43, 45, 47. (2) It says nothing of the soul of the rich man or Lazarus, but of the persons themselves. The rich man had eyes which he lifted up, and a tongue to be cooled. If these were the organs of his spirit, where were they, when he was upon earth using the eyes and tongue of his body? (3) If this is a literal transaction, the scene is not located in the intermediate state, but beyond the coming of Christ and the resurrection; for Lazarus was carried by the angels into Abraham's bosom, before the rich man lifted up his eyes and saw him there. But the angels do not carry the righteous into the world of bliss till the second coming of Christ. Matt. 24:30, 31; 1 Thess. 4:13–17. (4) But the whole representation is evidently a parable, in which the unconscious inhabitants of hades are represented as speaking and acting, in order to bring some great truth forcibly to bear on the minds of the living. In this case it was to impress upon the people the importance of heeding Moses and the prophets, and to rebuke the covetousness of the Pharisees, who took riches to be a mark of the divine favor. If they would not hear Moses and the prophets, they would not be persuaded—not though somebody's immortal soul came back from the seventh sphere, but—though “one rose from the dead,” Luke 16:31. Instances in which the unconscious dead are thus personified, and represented as acting, are common in the Old Testament. See Isa. 14:9–20; Eze. 31:15–18; 32:17–32; Jer. 31:15–17. Christ's language to the thief on the cross, does not prove consciousness in death; for Christ did not go to paradise, the day he died; consequently the thief could not have been there with him. Therefore the language must not be understood as asserting any such thing. This is proved by the fact that three days after his crucifixion Christ declared that he had not yet ascended to his Father, John 20:17, paradise being where the Father is. 2 Cor. 12:2, 4; Rev. 2:7; 22:1–5. Demons, it is said, mean the departed spirits of the dead. Liddell and Scott, Greenfield, Robinson, and Parkhurst, all unite in saying that this word is used in the N. T. only for an evil spirit, a fallen angel, a devil. The ancient heathen applied it to their departed heroes whom they deified; but this is no reason why we should do the same. We go not to heathenism, nor to that mongrel production of heathenism and Christianity, Roman Catholicism, for our belief. We are accused of ridiculing the idea of spiritual beings or spiritual existence. We do not. What we ridicule, is the idea of an immaterial, intangible, indivisible, undefinable, impersonal, sublimated, nonentity! which has intelligence without any organs of mind, and can act without any bodily members. No reference to any such thing can be found in all the Bible, and all efforts to form a conception of it, end only in the blankest vacuity. Respecting God, we believe what the Scriptures reveal, and further than that do not feel called upon to speculate. He is a person; for so Heb. 1:3, asserts; he has a form. Phil. 2:6. He gave Moses to understand that he had a face and hands, and other bodily parts; and while no man was ever permitted to see his face, he told Moses that some portions of his body might be seen. Ex. 33:20–23. And when seen in vision, he has been represented as a personal, organized being. Dan. 7:9, 10. No liberty has anywhere been given us to conceive of him as different in any respect from these representations. In regard to the words soul, spirit, breath, &c., our use of them does not destroy the existence of God. Those who endeavor to controvert our views of the mortality of man, seem very desirous to have us take the ground that these words have just one solitary and inflexible meaning, and so force us to the ridiculous position that “God is wind.” But all such attempts, are simply efforts at perversion. What we do say respecting these words, is, that they have a variety of meanings; that they are applied indiscriminately to animals of all grades, to brutes as well as to men, and to the higher spiritual beings, angels, Christ and God; that while they have this latitude of meaning, and are applied to the lower animals, their application to man, does not prove any distinctive attribute or privilege for him. Beasts, birds and creeping things have the breath of life, or breath of lives, as well as man, and it is in their nostrils, where man's is. Gen. 7:22. The term living soul is also applied to them. Gen. 1:20, 21, 24, 30, margin; Rev. 16:3. The fact that he was made in the image of God, no more proves that he possesses one of the attributes of God, immortality, than it proves that he possesses all the others, like omnipotence, omniscience, &c. God breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; in what manner it matters not to inquire. There is the record. We are not to reject it on the ground that we imagine it to involve an absurdity. The trouble may be with our imagination. And as all other animals had the breath of life in their nostrils, it is evident that God breathed it into them, as well as into man. The angel that came to John, Rev. 22:9, was not one of the old prophets, come back in his disembodied state. He simply states that he is a servant, with John and the prophets who had gone before him, of the God of Heaven. They were all servants together of God. The Greek makes this plain: “I am the fellow-servant of you and of your brethren the prophets.” He was not one of the prophets. He was now serving John, as he had before served the prophets; and all were fellow servants of God. In the sentence pronounced upon Adam, Gen. 3:19, it was said to him, “Dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.” What was this “thou,” that was to go back to dust? Longfellow says this “was not spoken of the soul.” What then? Did it mean the body merely? It is decided by the prevailing theology of our day, that this personal pronoun, thou, five times used in this sentence upon Adam, meant the body merely. Turning from this scene, we take our stand at the foot of the cross. Christ says to the thief, “Thou shalt be with me in paradise.” What does this “thou” refer to, the thief's body or his soul? Oh, his soul, of course! It is only by thus arbitrarily shifting the interpretation to suit the circumstances of the case, that the popular theory is maintained.