The Old Testament tells us that a glorious, sin-free, pain-free, tear-free, death-free, ‘afterlife’ is only possible because of the New Testament Jesus. The Old Testament lays the foundation for the good news of the gospel, which is revealed in the life, teachings, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
He says, “I am He who lives and was dead and behold, I am alive forevermore. Amen. I have the keys of Hades (the grave) and Death” (Revelation 1:18). Jesus has the key to the grave, and if we are faithful, He promises to open it for us, just as the grave was opened for Him. After the grave is opened for us by His resurrection power, then and only then, does the ‘afterlife’ begin. The Old Testament explains the origin of evil and death and the state of the dead. It gives us details of what occurs in that passage of time between the moment of death and the ‘afterlife’.
1. When and how did death enter the universe?
Death is foreign to the character and government of God. It is an intruder that was never meant to be. It entered because of sin and began its sorrow-filled journey of destruction and pain in a beautiful garden called Eden. A garden that God specially designed for the enjoyment of Adam and Eve.
Genesis 3:1-4 – “Now the serpent (Satan – Revelation 12:9) was more subtle (cunning) than any beast of the field which the LORD God had made. And he said unto the woman, ‘Has God indeed said, “You shall not eat of every tree of the garden”?’ And the woman said to the serpent, We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden; but of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God has said, “You shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest you die”. Then the serpent said to the woman, ‘You shall not surely die’.”
Satan has been telling people that same lie ever since. The idea that death is not really death but simply an entry point into heaven, hell, or someplace in between, or results in the transformation of the dead into some re-embodied being, is a fabrication of Satan. It did not come from God.
God has plainly stated that He alone has immortality or eternal life. “He is the blessed and only Potentate (Monarch), the King of kings, the Lord of lords, who alone has immortality” (1 Timothy 6:15-16).
2. What about the ‘soul’? Surely that part of us is immortal.
Nowhere in the Bible is the term ‘immortal soul’ found. Instead, we are told that ‘the soul that sins, it shall die’ (Ezekiel 18:4, 20), and that only God has ‘unconditional immortality’. So, what is a ‘soul’?
The term ‘soul’ in the Bible simply means a living human being. “The Lord God formed man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul” (Genesis 2:7 KJV). By combining the ‘dust of the earth’ with the ‘breath of life’ from God, man became a living, breathing, active being – a soul. Take away the breath, also translated as ‘spirit’, and life ceases to exist. The ‘spirit’ (Hebrew ‘ruach’ – breath) goes back to God when a person dies. Take away the breath, and the soul ceases to exist.
This process can be compared to what happens to light when we flick a switch. A bulb, plus an electric current, produces light. Switch off the current, and the light simply ceases to exist. It doesn’t go back down the wire and outside someplace. It just doesn’t exist anymore. It is the same with the body. Take away the breath, and life ceases to exist.
We do not have a soul, we are a soul. All life comes from God, so even animals have the same breath of life from God and are said to be ‘souls’.
Ecclesiastes 3:19-20 – “For what happens to the sons of men also happens to animals; one thing befalls them: as one dies, so dies the other. Surely they all have one breath; man has no advantage over animals . . . all go to the one place. All are from the dust, all return to dust”.
Revelation 16:3 (KJV) – “And the second angel poured out his vial upon the sea, and it became as the blood of a dead man: and every living soul died in the sea”. The word translated as ‘living creature’ or ‘living thing’ in the more contemporary versions of the Bible is translated as ‘soul’ in the earlier versions such as the KJV. It is written of both man and animals that, ‘as one dies, so dies the other’.
3. So then, what happens when we die?
Psalm 104:29 (KJV) – “Thou (God) takest away their breath, they die, and return to their dust”.
Ecclesiastes 12:7 – “Then the dust will return to the earth as it was, and the spirit (breath) will return to God who gave it”.
When a person dies he returns to the dust of the ground from which he came and his breath, or spirit, goes back to the God who gave it. At the resurrection, his spirit is once more united with his new, immortal body, and he becomes a fully functioning human being again.
4. After death, how much will we know and understand?
Ecclesiastes 9: 5-6, 10 (KJV) – “For the living know that they shall die: but the dead know not anything, neither have they any more a reward; for the memory of them is forgotten.
Also, their love, their hatred, and their envy have now perished; neither have they any more a portion forever in anything that is done under the sun. 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”.
The Old Testament is very clear about what happens after death. Once the breath of life departs the body and returns to the One who gave it, all conscious thought and emotion perish with the body. The consciousness, the intelligent part of man, only exists by combining the body and the breath.
Psalm 146:4 – “His spirit (‘ruach’- breath) departs, he returns to his earth; in that very day his plans (thoughts) perish”.
5. What is our experience while waiting for the afterlife which begins when our bodies are resurrected at the coming of the Lord Jesus?
Jesus calls the time between death and the ‘afterlife’ a sleep (John 11:11-14). It is an unconscious, dreamless state. There is no sense of the passage of time, just as there is no sense of the passing of time when we sleep soundly through the night. After death, the next conscience event a person experiences is his or her resurrection from the grave.
John 5:28-29 (KJV) – “Marvel not at this: for the hour is coming, in the which all that are in the graves shall hear His voice, and shall come forth; they that have done good, unto the resurrection of life; and they that have done evil, unto the resurrection of damnation”.
The prophet and patriarch Job knew exactly where he would be while waiting for his body to be resurrected and his breath to be returned to him.
Job 17:13 – “If I wait the grave is my house . . . I have made my bed in the darkness”.
Again, speaking of the grave Job exclaims – “So man lies down and does not rise, till the heavens are no more. They will not awake nor be roused from their sleep” (Job 14:12).
The prophet Daniel, in writing of the resurrection, declares, “And many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake” (Daniel 12:2).
More than 50 times in the Bible, death is called a ‘sleep’. In sound sleep one is wholly lost to consciousness, time goes by unmeasured, and mental activity is suspended for the time being.
Centuries may intercede between death and the ‘afterlife’, but to the one sleeping in the grave, it is just a moment in time. RIP – Rest in Peace – is the belief many Christians have held, and have recorded on the tombstones of dead loved ones since the Reformation of the 16th century.
5. What will be resurrection be like for the sleeping saints?
We need to go to the New Testament for the clearest description of the glories of the afterlife for the righteous dead.
Revelation 22:12 – “And behold, I am coming quickly, and My reward is with Me, to give to every one according to his work”.
1 Thessalonians 4:16-17 – “For the Lord Himself shall descend from heaven with a shout and with the voice of the archangel, and the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ shall rise (in the air) first. Then we who are alive and remain (the living saints) shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And thus we shall always be with the Lord”.
1 Corinthians 15:51-55 (KJV) – “Behold, I will tell you a mystery. We shall not all sleep (die), but we shall all be changed – in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible (no longer subject to death and decay), and we shall be changed. For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality. So when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and this mortal will have put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written, “Death is swallowed up in victory” (Isaiah 25:8).
“Death is swallowed up in victory” (Isaiah 25:8).
“O death, where is thy sting?
O grave, where is thy victory?”
The righteous saints are resurrected and given immortality when Jesus comes the second time. However, the wicked sleep on until after the millennium when they too will be resurrected, but not to eternal life, but to eternal damnation. At this time they receive their just reward for all the evil deeds they have not repented of. (See Revelation 20:11-12).
Revelation 22:20 – “He who testifies to these things says, “Surely I am coming quickly.” Amen. Even so, come, Lord Jesus”.
