The Dead Cannot Return by B. A. Stephens

Pacific Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Oakland, California · Jul 17, 1879

The Dead Cannot Return.

By B. A. Stephens

SPIRITUALISM affirms that the dead can return and communicate with the living. This the Bible denies. See Job 7:9, 10: "As the cloud is consumed and vanisheth away; so he that goeth down to the grave shall come up no more. He shall return no more to his house, neither shall his place know him any more." There can be no dodging this Scripture by saying it refers to the body’s going down to the grave, for the original word here for the grave is sheol in the Hebrew, or hades in the Greek. Says the Cottage Bible, in commenting on Job 14:13, "Sheol is alike used for the repository of dead bodies, and the receptacle of departed souls." The soul goes into sheol as well as the body. The reason why they cannot return is given in Eccl. 9:10: "Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might, for there is no work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom, in the grave, whither thou goest." Here, again, the word grave is from sheol.

The dead are all there, unconscious "body and soul" until "death and hades shall deliver up the dead which are in them." But this will not occur until the day of judgment. Rev. 20:13. The Bible nowhere affirms the soul to be immortal, but expressly declares that "God only hath immortality." 1 Tim. 6:16. Therefore, if men have immortal souls which are conscious after death, they can return to the places that once knew them. But the fact that the soul of man is not immortal, and that he is asleep in sheol, Job 14:13, makes it impossible for him to leave there in order to visit the living. Here is where this doctrine, sometimes called "soul-sleeping," undermines an important pillar in the synagogue of Satan. The truth upon this point will prove a shield and buckler against all the wiles of the devil to deceive the elect with great signs and wonders, in the phenomena of Spiritualism. Matt. 24:24; 2 Thess. 2:9-12; Rev. 16:13-15. May the Lord in his mercy save us amid the perils of these last days. 2 Tim. 3:1-9. B. A. STEPHENS.