3098.-The Soul | AdventAI

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Apr 19, 1910

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 37, No. 15.

3098.—The Soul

When one dies, does the soul die, or does it sleep? L. F. K.

Both. What is to us literal death is to the Lord only a sleep. Jesus said of Lazarus, "Our friend Lazarus sleepeth;" and the saints are spoken of as those who have fallen asleep; yet to us they are dead, and without the resurrection would never live again. The great trouble with many is that they have a wrong conception of what the soul is. If we would but get the true idea that soul is but our physical life, common both to man and to beast, we would have no trouble whatever in settling many of these questions. The idea that the soul is a conscious, intelligent entity capable of existing separate from the body, in and of itself alone, has no ground of existence in the Word at all. The conception is purely mythical and pagan. The soul is the life, and the word is so rendered again and again in the Scripture; and when that life is taken, man falls unconscious, and in God's plan sleeps till the resurrection. He dies literally as far as nature is concerned, and if he has persisted in rejecting God's overtures of life and mercy he will finally die the second death; and then will be fulfilled the declaration, "The soul that sinneth, it shall die;" but from the first death the Lord will awaken all who sleep. This is the argument of the whole chapter of 1 Corinthians 15. Without the resurrection they that are fallen asleep in Christ are utterly perished.