2. The dead are in a condition as though they had not been. So Job testifies; for he affirms that if he could have died in earliest infancy, like a hidden, untimely birth, he would not have been; and in this respect he declared he would have been like kings, counsellors, and princes of the earth who built costly tombs in which to enshrine their bodies when dead. To that condition he applies the expression which has since been so often quoted, “There the wicked cease from troubling, and there the weary be at rest.” Job 3:11-18. If, then, a person when dead is as though he had not been, without a resurrection to release him from this state, he will never be, or exist, again.
3. The dead have no knowledge. Speaking of the dead man, Job says (14:21), “His sons come to honor, and he knoweth it not; and they are brought low, and he perceiveth it not of them.” Ps. 146:4. “His breath goeth forth, he returneth to his earth; in that very day his thoughts perish.” Solomon was inspired to speak to the same effect as his father David: Eccl. 9:5, 6: “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.” Verse 10: “There is no work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom, in the grave whither thou goest.” Evidence like this can neither be mistaken nor evaded. It is vain for the immaterialist to claim that it applies to the body in distinction from an immortal soul; for they do not hold that the thoughts (διαλογισμός, thought, reasoning,) which David says perish in death, belong to the body, but to the soul. And according to Solomon, that which knows when the man is living, does not know when he is dead. Without a resurrection, therefore, the dead will forever remain without knowledge.
4. The dead are not in Heaven nor in hell, but in the dust of the earth. Job 17:13-16: “If I wait, the grave is mine house.” In chap. 14:14, he said, “All the days of my appointed time will I wait, till my change come.” The change referred to, must therefore be the resurrection, and he describes his condition till that time, in the following language: “I have made my bed in the darkness. I have said to corruption, Thou art my father; to the worm, Thou art my mother and my sister, ... when our rest together is in the dust.” Isa. 26:19: “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.” Is it possible that the phraseology of this text can be misunderstood? It speaks of the living again of dead men, of the arising of dead bodies, and of the earth’s casting out the dead. And the command is addressed to them thus: “Awake and sing.” Who? Ye who are still conscious, basking in the bliss of Heaven and chanting the high praises of God? No; but, “Ye who dwell in dust;” ye who are in your graves. If the dead are conscious, Isaiah talked nonsense. If we believe his testimony we must look into the graves for the dead; and if there is no resurrection, there they will forever lie mingled with the clods of the valley.
5. The dead, even the most holy and righteous, have no remembrance of God, and cannot, while in that condition, render him any praise and thanksgiving. Ps. 6:5: “For in death there is no remembrance of thee: in the grave who shall give thee thanks?” Ps. 115:17: “The dead praise not the Lord, neither any that go down into silence.” Good King Hezekiah, when praising the Lord for adding to his days fifteen years, gives this as the reason why he thus rejoiced: Isa. 38:18, 19: “For the grave cannot praise thee, death cannot celebrate thee; they that go down into the pit cannot hope for thy truth. The living, the living, he shall praise thee, as I do this day; the father to the children shall make known thy truth.” Modern doctors of divinity have Hezekiah in Heaven praising God. He declared that when he was dead he could not do this. Whose testimony is the more worthy of credit, that of the inspired king of Israel, or that of the theologians of subsequent ages of error and confusion? If we can believe Hezekiah, unless there is to be a resurrection, the righteous dead are never more to praise their Maker.
6. The dead, even the righteous, are not ascended to the Heavens. So Peter testifies respecting the patriarch David: Acts 2:29, 34, 35: “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: but he saith himself, The Lord said unto my Lord, Sit thou on my right hand, until I make thy foes thy footstool.” We call the especial attention of the reader to the whole argument presented by Peter, beginning with verse 24. Peter undertakes to prove from a prophecy recorded in the Psalms, the resurrection of Christ. He says, verse 31, “He, seeing this before, spake of the resurrection of Christ, that his soul was not left in hell [hades, the grave], neither did his flesh see corruption.” And how does he prove that David speaks of Christ, and not of himself? He proves it from the fact that David’s soul was left in hades and his flesh did see corruption; and his sepulcher was with them to that day. For David, he says, has not ascended into the Heavens. Now if David’s soul did live right on in consciousness; if it was not left in hades, no man can show that David, in that psalm, did not speak of himself instead of Christ; and then Peter’s argument for the resurrection of Christ would be entirely destroyed. But Peter, especially when speaking as he was on this occasion under the influence of the Holy Ghost, knew how to reason; and his argument entirely destroys the dogma of the immortality of the soul. But if David has not yet ascended into the Heavens, how is he ever to get there? There is no other way but by a resurrection of the dead. So he himself says, Ps. 17:15: “I shall be satisfied when I awake [from the sleep of death], with Thy likeness.”
7. And finally, Paul, in his masterly argument in 1 Cor. 15, states explicitly the conclusion which is necessary from every one of the texts which we have quoted, that if there is no resurrection, then all the dead, even those who have fallen asleep in Christ, are perished. Verses 16-18. “For if the dead rise not, then is not Christ raised. And if Christ be not raised, your faith is vain; ye are yet in your sins. Then they also which are fallen asleep in Christ are PERISHED.”
As we read this testimony, we pause in utter amazement that any who profess to believe the Bible should cling with tenacity to the doctrine of the immortality of the soul which so directly contradicts it. If the souls of the dead live right on, are they perished? What! perished? and yet living in a larger sphere? Perished? and yet enjoying the attendant blessings of everlasting life in Heaven? Perished? and yet at God’s right hand where there is fullness of joy, and pleasures forevermore? Perish, amid the ruins of the heathen mythology from which it springs, that theory which thus lifts its dead men on high, contrary to the teachings of the word of God!
Paul speaks of the whole being. As in Adam we die, so in Christ shall we be made alive. Is it conceivable that Paul drops out of sight the real man, the soul which soars away to realms of light, and frames all this argument, and talks thus seriously about the cast-off shell, the body, merely? The idea is preposterous to the last degree.
After stating that if there is no resurrection we perish, he assures us that Christ is risen and that there is a resurrection for all; then he takes up the resurrection of those who sleep in Christ, and tells us when that resurrection shall be. It is to take place, not by the rising from this mortal coil of an ethereal, immaterial essence when we die, but it is to be at the great day when the last trump shall shatter this decrepid earth from center to circumference.
The testimony on this point is well summed up by Bishop Law, who speaks as follows:--