The important inquiry now arises respecting the popular view, If the real being, the intelligent, responsible entity, ceases not its life and consciousness at death, but continues on in a more enlarged and perfect sphere of existence and activity, what need is there of the resurrection of the body? If the body is but a trammel, a clog to the operations of the soul, what need that it should come back and gather up its scattered particles from the silent tomb, and re-fetter itself with this material robe?
Wm. Tyndale, defending the doctrine of Martin Luther, that the dead sleep, addressed to his opponent the same pungent inquiry. He said:--
“And ye, in putting them [departed souls] in Heaven, hell, and purgatory, destroy the argument wherewith Christ and Paul prove the resurrection.... If the souls be in Heaven, tell me why they be not in as good case as the angels be? and then what cause is there of the resurrection?”
Andrew Carmichael (Theology of Scripture, vol. ii., p. 315) says:--
“It cannot be too often repeated: If there be an immortal soul there is no resurrection; and if there be any resurrection there is no immortal soul.”
Dr. Muller (Ch. Doc. of Sin, p. 318) says:--
“The Christian faith in immortality is indissolubly connected with a promise of a future resurrection of the dead.”
We now propose to show that the resurrection is a prominent doctrine of the Bible; and if this can be established, it follows, upon the judgment of these eminent men, that the immortality of the soul cannot be true. We need not stop to notice that impalpable and groundless theory which makes the resurrection take place immediately at death, by supposing it to be the rising of the soul from the earthly house of this tabernacle, and its entering at once into its spiritual house, this to be inhabited, and the former, abandoned, forever. For in this case there is no resurrection; since the soul lives right on, and does not die at all. The resurrection which the Bible brings to view is a resurrection of the dead. It cannot be applied to anything that continuously lives, however many changes it may pass through. A person must go down into a state of death before he can be raised from the dead. Hence this theory is no resurrection at all, and so is at war with all the Bible says about the resurrection of the dead. Moreover, it is utterly impossible to harmonize this with the many references to the general resurrection at the end of the world.
We return to the Bible doctrine of the resurrection of the dead, the literal resurrection and resuscitation of our natural bodies, and affirm that the Bible makes this resurrection necessary, by representing the dead to be in such a condition that without this event they can have no future existence.
1. Death is compared to sleep. There must, then, be some analogy between a state of sleep and a state of death, and this analogy must pertain to that which renders sleep a peculiar condition. Our condition in sleep differs from our condition when awake, simply in this, that when we are soundly asleep we are entirely unconscious. In this respect, then, death is like sleep; that is, the dead are unconscious. This figure is frequently used to represent the condition of the dead. Dan. 12:2: “Many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake.” Matt. 27:52: “Many bodies of the saints which slept arose.” Acts 7:60: After Stephen had beheld the vision of Christ and was stoned to death, the record says, he “fell asleep.” In 1 Cor. 15:20, Christ is called the first-fruits of them that slept; and in verse 57, Paul says, “We shall not all sleep.” Again Paul writes to the Thessalonians, 1 Thess. 4:13, 14, that he would not have them ignorant concerning them which are asleep. In verse 14, he speaks of them as asleep in Jesus, and explains what he means, in verse 16, by calling them “dead in Christ.” And the advocates of the conscious state cannot dispose of these expressions by saying that they apply to the body merely; for they do not hold that the consciousness which we have in life (which is what we lose in death) pertains to the body merely. Job plainly declares that they will not awake till the resurrection, at the last day. “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.” If, therefore, there is no resurrection, these dead are destined to sleep in unconsciousness forever.