Condition of Man in Death—Positive Testimony
LIFE AND IMMORTALITY. No. 9.
Condition of Man in Death—Positive Testimony.
NOT alone do the judgment, the resurrection, and the second coming of Christ show, as told in our last, that the real man dies, but the positive testimony of the Word of God declares the same. When man dies, he is unconscious unless bidden to consciousness again by a power mightier than man. There are two classes of evidences which clearly show this: 1. Death is likened to a sleep. Now sleep, normal sleep of the perfectly healthy, is dreamless. Unconsciousness wraps the sleeper in its folds, and he has no knowledge of the lapse of time. He lies down at night, falls asleep, and with the exception of a sense of refreshment on awakening, the time of the night has been but a moment. So it is and will be with those who sleep in death. The lapse of time between death and the resurrection is but a moment to the silent, unconscious sleeper. Below are some of the scriptures which show the use of this beautiful and striking simile to death:— "But man dieth, and wasteth away; yea, man giveth up the ghost, and where is he? As the waters fail from the sea, and the flood decayeth and drieth up; so man lieth down, and riseth not; till the heavens be no more, they shall not awake, nor be raised out of their sleep." Job 14: 10-12. "O Lord my God: lighten my eyes, lest I sleep the sleep of death." Ps. 13: 3. "Thou carriest them away as with a flood; they are as a sleep." Ps. 90: 5. "Many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake." Dan. 12: 2. "Our friend Lazarus sleepeth. . . . Howbeit Jesus spake of His death. . . . Then said Jesus unto them plainly, Lazarus is dead." John 11: 11-13. "David . . . fell on sleep, and was laid unto his fathers, and saw corruption." Acts 13: 36. As death is called a sleep, the resurrection is properly designated the waking time, the moving of the everlasting day. "Thy dead men shall live, together with my dead body shall they arise. Awake and sing, ye that dwell in dust; for thy dew is as the dew of herbs, and the earth shall cast out the dead." Isa. 26: 19. "Our friend Lazarus sleepeth ["is dead," verse 14]; but I go, that I may awake him out of sleep." John 11: 11. "Many bodies of the saints which slept arose, and came out of the graves after His resurrection." Matt. 27: 52, 53. "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. For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so them also which sleep in Jesus will God bring with Him [that is, with Christ, from the dead, Heb. 13: 20]. . . . For the Lord Himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God; and the dead in Christ shall rise first. Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air; and so shall we ever be with the Lord. Wherefore comfort one another with these words." 1 Thess. 4: 13-18. God's words of comfort to the mourning ones are not that the dead are conscious with God, or looking down upon the sorrowing ones, or basking in the light of paradise, but that there will be a resurrection. The dead will live again. "Weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning." Ps. 30: 5. 2. The Positive Testimony of the Word is that the dead are unconscious, that intelligence in thought and act is suspended, and that so far as man is concerned death ends all, and the grave covers all. Read what Inspiration says:— "For in death there is no remembrance of Thee; in the grave who shall give Thee thanks?" Ps. 6: 5. "Let the wicked be ashamed, and let them be silent in the grave." Ps. 31: 17. "Shall the dead arise and praise Thee? Shall Thy loving-kindness be declared in the grave? or Thy faithfulness in destruction? Shall Thy wonders be known in the dark? and thy righteousness in the land of forgetfulness?" Ps. 88: 10-12. "The dead praise not the Lord, neither any that go down into silence." Ps. 115: 17. "Put not your trust in princes, nor in the son of man, in whom there is no help. His breath goeth forth, he returneth to his earth; in that very day his thoughts perish." Ps. 146: 3, 4. "For the living know that they shall die; but the dead know not anything. . . . Also their love, and their hatred, and their envy, is now perished; neither have they any more a portion forever in anything that is done under the sun." Eccl. 9: 5, 6. "Men and brethren, let me freely speak unto you of the patriarch David, that he is both dead and buried, and his sepulcher is with us unto this day." "For David is not ascended into the heavens." Acts 2: 29, 34. Now all these refer to the real person. It would be a mere begging of the question to affirm that the remembrance, the thanks, the praise, the forgetfulness, the silence, the thoughts, the love, the hatred, the envy, pertained to the body; for when according to the immortal-soul theory did the body ever remember, give thanks, praise God, or think, hate, love, or envy? All these things are spoken of the thinking, hating, loving, envying, remembering, praising man. They refer to the whole man, of whom the Bible ever treats, and of whom soul and body are essentials. Separate the soul from man, and you have naught but dust, which soon molders back to earth. Separate the body from man, and you have simply life, but not an individual entity. It takes all man's constituent parts to make the whole responsible man, and it is with the whole responsible man that God deals. The real responsible whole man sinned and died. He sleeps till the resurrection day; for "there shall be a resurrection of the dead, both of the just and unjust." Acts 24: 15. The unjust will be raised at the close of the thousand years; but those who bore at death Christ's righteousness, who went into the grave forgiven of God, will be raised at Christ's second coming. They can no more be holden of death and the grave than was Christ. Acts 2: 24. "For righteousness is life." For a little while the tired pilgrim may sleep. Satan and unbelief may count him eternally dead. Man may call in vain to awaken him. But Christ is coming—"the Resurrection and the Life." He will speak again as He spoke to Jairus' daughter, as He spoke to the son of the widow of Nain, as He spoke to Lazarus, and all the sleepers shall rise. "Christ the first-fruits; afterward they that are Christ's at His coming." 1 Cor. 15: 23. "Then He shall reward every man according to his works."