Posted: 10/04/06

Soul Sleep or Present with the Lord?

What will happen the moment after we die?

-by Patrick Burwell

Jesus said the dead are but [i] "sleeping" as He referred to this death of the body. Jesus said [ii] Lazarus, his friend, was dead, and not just sleeping, Jesus had referred to his friend's condition from our present perception, which he was sharing with us. Jesus was not making a point about time perspectives, however, but was explaining that from Christ's perspective Lazarus wasn't really "dead" at all.

Scriptures show our perception of life, called "time," is unique to this existence. Jesus is [iii] eternally present, while we, in this body, are subject to the verities of [iv] time. So let's look at some points to see if we can understand better these two perspectives and see where they can be useful in understanding scripture:

The scripture, [v] "Absent from the body, present with the Lord" can be understood when we remember God's perspective of time. God is not subject to time, and neither shall we be once we are [vi] "asleep." Scriptural [vii] evidence is that God, the angels, and we are not subject to time, really. Our present perspective is within the deceptive constraints of time, but we shall all be before the Lord on Judgment Day immediately upon death of the body, either as a sinner or as a saint. One moment after death when you are absent from the body you are, literally, present with the Lord. The perspective of Matthew 27:52 is from those who are still within Time, not of those who have left those constraints of the body. Can it be the same as when we sleep at night we have no perception of time passing? Maybe, but I suspect the matter of death is more than just sleeping.

The [viii] story of the poor man Lazarus, and the fate of the rich man who did not help him, did not indicate anything about the sequence after death other than to relate their relative circumstances from their lives: Lazarus was in "Abraham's bosom," and the rich man suffered in the torment of Hell. The story of Lazarus, the beggar, was of where the two men find themselves. The Rich man appeared to know that if Lazarus could go to his brethren he could do so even though they were speaking after the Judgment had already taken place. The eternal [ix] are not bound by time out of the body.

Scripture shows the Christian will be present with the Lord at His return, whereas the unrepentant faces the [x] Judgment and the Second Death, yet these have a differentiation of 1000 years. Paul said [xi] we who are yet alive will not precede those who have "fallen asleep" in Christ. And the unbeliever's next moment of awareness is to the Judgment of the Dead at the end of the 1000 year reign, called the [xii] Last Day.  

Whenever I have a quandary with the differences between subjects like Election vs. Free Will, asleep vs. "with Jesus," remembering God's perspective is eternally present and ours is subject to time, while in this body on this earth, clears up the issues quickly. I have not as yet understood fully the issues of time differentiations between the Lost and the Brethren, but this conclusion of time perspectives does fit and seems to clear up a lot of my questions concerning death, Hell, Judgment, timelines, etc. Until I know of a scriptural explanation to the contrary, I can only say this is gleaned from an apparent scriptural leaning. I have, however, accepted this explains how Election and Free Will can both be true. The apparent contradiction of these two in scripture, sometimes in the same sentence, had previously given me pause. So when such apparent conflicts are viewed from the different perspectives of time, vis-ŕ-vis man being finite and YAHWEH being the [xiii] everlasting God, we then get some clarity.

So I give you this as an apparent:
"Soul sleep" is from the perspective of those still bound by Time.

In conclusion, then, we had better be in a right standing with Yahweh beforehand, as we will not have a moment to catch our breath before we face the destination drawn from our lives. May these words from Jesus speed your revelation to life eternal:

John 11:25
Yeshua said to her, "I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will still live, even if he dies. Whoever lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?"

"Do you believe this?" - Now that is the right question.

Patrick J Burwell
OnlyJesusSaves.com

Footnotes:

^[i] Matthew 9:24, Mark 5:39, Luke 8:52, John 11:11, Acts 7:60

^[ii] John 11:14 So Jesus then said to them plainly, "Lazarus is dead...

^[iii] John 1:1, Isaiah 9:6 ...And His name will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Eternal Father, Prince of Peace.

^[iv] Job 14:1 Man, who is born of woman, is short-lived and full of turmoil.

^[v] 2 Corinthians 5:8 We are confident, I say, and willing rather to be absent from the body, and to be present with the Lord.

^[vi] Matthew 27:52 The tombs were opened, and many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised;

^[vii] Deuteronomy 33:27, Psalm 93:2, Isaiah 26:4, 2 Corinthians 4:18, Romans 1:20

^[viii] Luke 16:23 "In Sheol, he lifted up his eyes, being in torment, and saw Abraham far off, and Lazarus at his bosom.

^[ix] Ecclesiastes 12:5, Psalms 102:12, Matthew 25:46, Romans 1:20, 2 Corinthians 4:18

^[x] Zephaniah 1:14-16, Proverbs 11:4, Matthew 12:36, 2 Peter 2:9, 1 John 4:17

^[xi] 1Thessalonians 4:15

^[xii]  John 12:48 He who rejects Me and does not receive My sayings, has one who judges him; the word I spoke is what will judge him at the last day.

^[xiii] Genesis 12:33 "Abraham…called… on the name of YAHWEH, the everlasting God."

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