(Ver 1.4) This is a serious Bible lesson on the important Bible subject of understanding death.  Today I will discuss a very basic foundational subject but also an extremely important Bible truth in an attempt to make a potentially complex subject as simple as possible.  I always like to emphasize that the Bible is a highly complex spiritual book of information that the natural human mind is incapable of understanding.  This is the greatest and number one problem with why people read the Bible and do not understand what it says.  God is the most intelligent being in both the Spiritual and Natural realms.  God designed the Bible in an intelligent spiritual manner to give man the right to be wrong in everything that they believe.  There is really no clear evidence for anything in the Bible, because people can put their own interpretations upon every verse and ignore all the other verses that do not fit with what they want to believe and thus they come to the conclusions that they desire to hold on to.   That is a pretty stupid way of interpreting the Bible, but people do it every day.  By not being consistent and by not taking every related verse into account they have concluded some vastly erroneous teachings.  Today’s lesson surrounds what the Bible says about “Is there Life after Death?”  This is obviously a highly controversial subject with a wide variety of opinions to the possible outcomes.  Here is the difficulty that most of us face, none of us have died and come back to tell what happened to us after we died.  The majority of dead people on the earth are dead and have not been able to return form the dead to tell anyone about the after life experiences.  And if anyone did die and come back would anybody believe them, since they would hold no evidence or pictures to convince anyone of what they were trying to tell the rest of the world?  Our experience of death would only help to motivate us personally and would not have a real effect on most other people, especially to those who do not believe like we do.

So what then do we do?  I believe that we are given a Bible by God for the basis for all of our knowledge and for what we believe in our faith.  If what you believe is not based upon what the Bible says, then you really have no ability to be confident of anything that you believe in.  Faith is believing in something that we have no physical proof or evidence of possessing.  The Bible also informs us that our faith is based upon the Word of God.  So a Christian should be most concerned with what does the Bible say and reveal to me on the subject of death and the afterlife experience.   Here is why I am addressing this subject today.  I had a very deceived individual who believes that when people die, they go into a state of sleep, until wakened for judgment day.  These types of believers do not believe in the existence of hell or eternal damnation or punishment.  They want to believe that after this life there are no consequences for what we do here on the earth, how we believe, or whether we make Jesus our Lord and Savior or not.  According to them those that are not saved by God are eliminated from future existence, they will have no consciousness of ever having been here on the earth or for ever existing at any time on this planet.    This type of teaching is one that I have heard proclaimed for many years.  It is called a doctrine of “Soul Sleep” or a “Spirit Sleep” theology.  They claim that everyone who dies goes to sleep until God chooses for the time of judgment.  These people have many Bible verses that they believe that they can stand on and I do not deny that these verses exist.  However, I do deny their weak erroneous interpretations of them and how they have twisted them to determine how they use and apply them with their natural minds to drive others into believing the lie of an eternal solution for an end of natural life with no eternal consequences.  This is a classic example of ignorance being combined with stupidity going to seed and being multiplied into deception.  God says in Hosea 4:6 “My people are destroyed for a lack of knowledge”.  Therefore what you don’t know will end up killing you and sending you to hell.  You better make sure you know the truth before you believe something someone tells you is the truth.  The only way you can be insured is for you to read the whole Bible and make sure there are no other verses that conflict with what someone is telling you is the truth.

So rather than telling you about all of the verses that they have misinterpreted, I want to focus mostly in on verses in the Bible that will put holes in their theological erroneous teachings.  These are the verses that they purposely ignore or are forced to explain away so that they can hold on to their fantasies.    Let’s look at some of these verses about death and life after death today and you can be the judge and see what the Bible is saying for yourself.

Deu 34:5  So Moses the servant of the LORD died there in the land of Moab, according to the word of the LORD.

This verse in the Bible is very plain.  Moses we are told died a physical death exactly like every other human on this planet in our history has done also.  I guess I should clarify that last statement, because there are two men in the O.T. that did not experience death and the Bible says God took them and these were Enoch and Elijah.   The Bible says it is appointed unto man, once to die and then comes the judgment  (Heb. 9:27).  This is where people like to believe that the in between natural death and the time of judgment is a state of nothingness, because the Bible says there is nothing or does it?  People need to realize that God does not tell you everything in any one place anywhere in the Bible.  You MUST put the puzzle pieces together correctly in order to have a valid interpretation of the Word of God.  Let’s confirm that Moses died before we go any further:

Deu 34:7  And Moses was an hundred and twenty years old when he died: his eye was not dim, nor his natural force abated.

We can again clearly see that God says Moses lived a 120 years on the earth when he died a natural death.  I find that it is very interesting what this verse says.  It does not say Moses died of any illness, weakness, infirmity or even any natural cause does it?  It says that Moses was physically strong and had good eye sight.  Oh well, I guess I won’t go there and create any more controversy.   Can we at least agree that Moses died?  So then according to many people who believe in Soul Sleep, Moses is now in spiritual “la, la land” of non-existence.   I assume that this is a state of blissful nirvana or an unconscious state of rest according to what they want to believe occurs after death.    I hope that you can see this is pretty crazy to believe this way, you have to ignore so much of the Bible to believe wrong.  Here is the main reason that I call this an erroneous teaching.  Please read this carefully:

Luk 9:28  And it came to pass about an eight days after these sayings, he took Peter and John and James, and went up into a mountain to pray.

Here we have an account written by God in the New Testament that declares that Jesus went up on a mountain to pray.  He took with Him, Peter James and John.  So we have 3 key witnesses to what is about to happen next.  Is this a real story?  You bet it is a real story.  God is not a liar.   So Jesus is praying and what happens?

Luk 9:30  And, behold, there talked with him two men, which were Moses and Elias:

Uh oh?  Moses is there with Jesus on top of the mountain and he is supposed to be asleep somewhere in la, la land.  I really thought he was supposed to be sleeping until judgment day according to what these people care to try to teach us.  Do you understand how wrong some people’s teaching can beceom?  Here Moses died at least 1500 years before Jesus came along and he appears with Elijah to talk to Jesus.  I guess God must have awakened them from their sleep?   Maybe God sent a princess to kiss Moses so that she could awaken him from deep spiritual sleep?  Do you understand what happens when you deviate from the Bible?  You have to start making stuff up and your lie is then as good as anyone else’s lie.   Let’s stop here and think about this logically.  If Moses and Elijah were asleep for the last 1500 years or so, and do not remember their life on the earth and were just awakened for some quick purpose of God, what would they have to talk about with Jesus?  Do you think that Jesus was the only one talking here and they were just getting filled in on the updates of the last 1500 years?   You see there are certainly ways to explain away what the Bible says if you do not wish to embrace it.  However, it is so obvious to me that since Moses and Elijah were present with Jesus on the mountain top, they were clearly not asleep and could remember things to talk about.  It would be a very far stretch to say that they were ever spiritually asleep either.  So you believe whatever you want to believe, I’ll still stay with the truth.

So let me approach this subject of Soul Sleep from a different angle now.   When you are asleep naturally speaking, are you ever aware of anything that happens?  What about your dreams?  Do dreams ever happen, do you ever remember them?  Are there accounts in the Bible of anybody dreaming?  You should probably understand if you have ever read the Bible that there are many people who have heard from God in a dream.  Do you understand this?  You have the story of Joseph in Genesis 37:5.  Then in Matthew 1:20 we have another man named Joseph who heard from God in a dream about marrying the virgin Mary.  So people do have dreams and people can remember them and hear from God even when they are physically asleep.   So what is the problem?  How do you ever remember a dream?  After all you were sleeping.  That is a million dollar question to ponder.  You see your spirit inside your body never sleeps.  Even when your body is asleep your spirit is awake and capable of hearing from God.  Interesting isn’t it?  The Bible says in Psalms 121:4 that God neither slumbers nor sleeps.  This tells us very clearly God does not get tired.  A spiritual being never needs a nap, to rest up or regain spiritual strength.  The problem with most people, they think that man is somehow different from God and this is their downfall.  Because they think naturally, they come to the wrong conclusions concerning spiritual truths.  This is the most significant way that God keeps people from seeing what the Bible really says.  In their minds they have the wrong basis of reference or the wrong perspective on things that were written.  If you are driving in a car, when you start out going in the wrong direction, it is sometimes very difficult to get to the right destination.  So it is with Bible interpretation.  So people forget that the Bible says that Adam was made in the image and likeness of God.  God said “Let US make man in our image after our likeness…”.   When you don’t believe what the Bible says in one spot it makes it doubly easier to disbelieve another spot.  So my point is if God (who is a Spirit) does not sleep or nap, the spirit of man does not sleep or nap either, because we were made in the image and likeness of God.  If you want to see what the Bible really says, sometimes you have to change your perspective.  Sometimes this requires you seeing things like God sees them.  Sometimes it requires you to see things the way others see them around you.  This is just part of the complexity of understanding the Bible.  So why did I go through the explanation of dreams while you are in a natural sleep?  It was only to show you that your spirit never sleeps and that is the only way that you would remember what you dreamed.  So you decide what you want to believe, I’m still going to stay with what the Bible actually says.

So those who teach fictitious “Soul Sleep” have a predicament , we can clearly see that Moses died literally hundreds and hundreds of years before Jesus came along and yet there he was appearing with Jesus to talk about spiritual subjects with the transfigured Lord.  We also should know that Judgment Day is not coming for many more hundreds of years in the future when this event occurs.  Where has Moses been previously and where will Moses wait until the Day of Judgment finally comes.  Think about it, where is Moses during all of this past and future time?  You first have to understand that Moses is a triune being.   That just means that Moses is a spirit being that has a soul that lives in a body.   When his body died his spirit and soul left his body.  We know this from other Bible verses like this one:

Jas 2:26  For as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is dead also.

As you can see the Bible says that man is a spirit.  The absence of the spirit from the body deems the body to be dead.  The death of the body means that the spirit is no longer present in the body.  Either way there is a clear separation of the two.  When you go to a funeral and look in the casket you are not looking at the person, just the body that this person used to lived in.  So as you look into the casket do they appear to be awake or asleep?  If you are bright at all you have to say they look asleep.  So all of the Bible verses in the Bible that “Soul Sleep” teachers like to grab hold of and use are from our perspective on what death is and looks like.   The body is asleep and the spirit has departed and gone somewhere else.  The spirit must still exist and must be awake because it is made in the image of God.   So let’s look at another lesson of what God used Paul to tell us:

Php 1:23  For I am in a strait betwixt two, having a desire to depart, and to be with Christ; which is far better:

People who choose to believe in a “Soul Sleep” ignore verses like this one in the Bible.  Here is Paul writing to the Philippian Church and he is speaking of a decision that he is trying to make.  He is trying to determine if he should stay here in his body and help them or to leave his body and go be with Christ.  Uh oh?  That is a pretty strong indication that there is no sleep time in between death and what occurs afterwards.  Paul calls death for a Christian something that is a “FAR BETTER” thing than staying here physically and living on the earth.  So what would make death far better for anyone that would only go to sleep until judgment day?  Sleep is not better than being awake, alert, aware and conscious, is it?  If you think it is you are a vastly deceived individual.  Christians, who die according to what Paul just said, leave their bodies and go into the spiritual realm of heaven to be with Christ.  That is what would be far better than being here.  You walking on the streets of gold, you beholding the face of the one that died for you, you standing before the throne of the living God and you surrounded by all of the angels, and your Christian relatives and friends that have gone before you.  That is the definition of a “FAR BETTER” time if you ask me.  That is the only explanation of this verse that makes any sense to me.  Seeing my earthly father again, seeing my son again, seeing my Heavenly Father for the first time, seeing Jesus Christ and the nail prints in his hands and feet, that is what gives me hope.  Spiritual sleep is not hope, it is nothing to look forward to, it is nothing that you can call better even a little bit.  What is FAR BETTER to you?  How do you define “FAR BETTER”?  It could make all the difference in the world.

So I could go on and give you many other Bible verses, that talk about death, heaven, hell and other related subjects, but I have gone long enough for today.  I pray that you will take the truth of God’s word and hold fast to it so that no man will deceive you with lies from the enemy.  I have found that some people are not capable of being helped.  No matter how much you try to show them.  These are what I call “Concrete Christians”; they are thoroughly mixed up and firmly set in their ways.  They do not read the Bible with an open mind to allow the Spirit of God to teach them anything.  They do not wish to see the truth, because they are happy with their perception of reality.  They have extreme tunnel vision and only see what they want to see.  Whatever you do, do not become as one of these types of people.  Always stay open to change, but always base your change upon the Bible only.   It saddens my heart tremendously when I encounter people like this if they are that easily deceived then they are open to other deception as well.  The Bible says that there will be many in that day that come before Christ and say Lord, didn’t we do this and that in your name and Jesus will look at them and say depart from me for I never knew you.  Do not be one of these!  May God Bless you and help you to see the truth of His glorious Word!