"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 [the heavens will be rolled back as a scroll at Christ's coming], they shall not awake, nor be raised out of their sleep." Job 14:10-12.
This hope of the resurrection at the last day was no indistinct hope to the believer in God's promises. The patriarch continued:
"If a man die, shall he live again? all the days of my appointed time will I wait, till my change come. Thou shalt call, and I will answer thee: Thou wilt have a desire to the work of Thine hands." Verses 14, 15.
Job tells us of the place of his waiting for the Life-giver's call: "If I wait, the grave is mine house." Job 17:13. It is thence that Christ will call His own when He comes. "The hour is coming, in the which all that are in the graves shall hear His voice, and shall come forth." John 5:28, 29.
Death is an unconscious sleep. It must of necessity be so; for death is the opposite of life. Therefore there is no consciousness of the passing of time to those who sleep in the grave. It is as if the eyes closed in death one instant, and the next instant, to the believer's consciousness, he awakens to hear the animating voice of Jesus calling him to glad immortality, and to see the angels catching up his loved ones to meet Jesus in the air.
These scriptures, out of many, will suffice to show that man is not conscious in death:
"His breath goeth forth, he returneth to his earth; in that very day his thoughts perish." Ps. 146:4.
"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." Eccl. 9:5, 6.
Death is a sleep, which will continue until the resurrection. Then the Lord will bring forth from the dust the same person who was laid away in death.
Some have said that this Bible doctrine of the sleep of the dead until the resurrection is a gloomy one. Popular tradition thinks of the blessed dead as going at once to heaven, which, say some, is a beautiful thought. But they forget that the same teaching consigns their unbelieving friends to immediate torment—and that, too, while awaiting the judgment of the last day.