MEMORY VERSE: ‘Howbeit Jesus spake of his death: but they thought that He had spoken of taking of rest in sleep.’ John 11:13.
LESSON AIM: To show that the Bible often speaks of death as sleep.
‘The sleep of the dead is often designated a gloomy doctrine. To many it is chilling, repulsive, forbidding. But the immortality of the soul, and the reward of the saints at death, this is declared to be a great joy, the fruition of the “blessed hope.” But stop, friends, a few moments. Be not too hasty. Wait long enough to try the justice of this objection in the balances of reason. You say that the doctrine is full of gloom, and that the departed saints would experience a bitter disappointment in being consigned to the grave for long ages, instead of being received into glory at death. You think the idea full of gloom to the living, and dreadful to the dead. But you forget that, if the doctrine be true, there is no chill, no gloom, no darkness, no disappointment, no lapse of time, no waiting through long ages, to the dead. The interval between their decease and their resurrection will be to them no time at all. The twinkling of an eye, in which the righteous will be changed to immortality, will be as long to them as the whole period during which righteous Abel has slept in death will be to him. And to him, so far as his own knowledge of the case is concerned, it will be precisely as if he entered heaven at the very moment he was slain.’ J. N. Andrews: Thoughts for the Candid, page 2.
1. How does the Bible frequently speak of death? 1 Kings 2:10; 1 Kings 11:43; 1 Kings 14:20.
Compiler’s Note: Thirty-six times, in chronicling the lives of the kings of Israel and Judah, the report of their deaths is worded in this same way, that he ‘slept with his fathers.’
NOTE: The following is taken from S. N. Haskell: Bible Handbook, page 99.
‘Psalm 13:3. The psalmist calls death a sleep.
1 Thessalonians 4:15. The dead are asleep.
Matthew 27:52. They sleep in their graves.
Acts 13:36. When David died, he went to sleep.
1 Corinthians 15:51. Paul calls death a sleep.
1 Thessalonians 4:14. The righteous dead sleep in Jesus.
1 Kings 11:43. More than twenty-five times the expression, “Slept with his fathers,” is used when recording deaths of kings in the Old Testament. We give one sample text.
John 11:11-14. Jesus calls death a sleep.’
2. When sleeping in death, is the person conscious of what is going on in the world? Job 14:12, 21.
NOTE: ‘The Bible declares, “The dead know not anything” (Ecclesiastes 9:5); and that “his sons come to honour, and he knoweth it not” (Job 14:21); that “his breath goeth forth, he returned to his earth; in that very day his thoughts perish” (Psalm 146:4); but popular theology teaches, that the dead are conscious in heaven beckoning to their friends on the earth’. A. T. Jones: American Sentinel, July 5, 1894.