June 4th: The Intermediate State
Speaker: Chris Laws
What precisely happens to body and soul - of unbelievers and believers - at death? Is it true the soul sleeps?
Belief in immortality of the soul nearly universal. Eccles 3.11 “God has set the world [eternity] in their heart so that no man can find out the work that God maketh...”
Heb = concealed, “vanishing point”, of unknown duration. 'Eternity' in almost all other versions.
100s times translated everlasting, eternal etc, 4x 'world' (something so huge that we can never find out all about it).
Men sense things go on after death. Conscience tells them of judgement.
They see many abilities never fully developed in this life – cut short. We are made for more than this brief span.
WHAT HAPPENS AFTER DEATH?
Men cannot see beyond grave, a “vanishing point” which seizes their curiosity. Concealed. Human ideas abound.
RC purgatory – people paid fortunes to deliver departed souls. Basis – one passage in Apocrypha. Not Bible.
Near-death experiences. Interest in occult. All guesswork.
But we are privileged to know rather than guess. God has revealed what happens.
BODY AND SOUL
Man is made of two parts, body and soul.
1. At birth a body and a soul combine to form a human being.
Genesis 2.7 “And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.”
God forms the body from dust; but the soul comes direct from God.
Not said of animals. The soul breathed into man is unique to man – intellect, emotions, etc.
He differs from the angels, because his soul is made to exist with a body.
2. At death body and soul are separated.
Ecclesiastes 12.7 “Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was; and the spirit shall return unto God who gave it.”
Souls take their flight into eternity. BCF speaks of “souls separated from their bodies”.
3. At the end of time, the Last Judgement, body and soul will be re-joined, and consigned to Heaven or hell.
John 5.28 “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 evil.”
For believers it will be a glorified body.
Philippians 3.21 “Who shall change our vile body, that it may be fashioned like unto his glorious body.”
What happens between death and resurrection? The intermediate state.
The body decomposes; but what of the soul?
SHEOL
Sheol = “the world of the dead”. Translated grave or hell about 50:50 in AV.
Some think the OT teaches all go to a common place of the dead.
Became a popular opinion – everybody goes to Sheol (or Hades NT).
It was supposedly borrowed from the Greek idea of the underworld – a dreary world of shades.
Ecclesiastes 3.19 “For that which befalleth the sons of men befalleth beasts…as the one dieth, so dieth the other; yea, they all have one breath; so that a man hath no preeminence above a beast. All go unto one place.”
The verse cannot mean there is a common place to which all souls go at death.
Animals do not have a soul, hence this verse is about the body.
Fall of man means physical death is our destination like the animals.
Saved and unsaved outwardly suffer the same fate; the body goes to the grave.
So, what about the soul?
IN SCRIPTURE DEATH IS DESCRIBED AS SLEEP
The Bible seems to teach the soul sleeps at death (said only of believers).
Deuteronomy 31.16 “The Lord said unto Moses, Behold thou shalt sleep with thy fathers.”
Acts 7.60 Stephen “fell asleep”.
1 Thessalonians 4.13 “I would not have you ignorant, brethren, concerning them that are asleep, that ye sorrow not...”
Are they unconscious? Ecclesiastes 9.5 “For the living know that they shall die; but the dead know not anything.”
But read on: Ecclesiastes 9.5 “Neither have they any more a portion for ever in any thing that is done under the sun.”
This verse means they are divorced from everything that is happening on Earth. Know nothing about it.
Are the souls of believers sleeping?
Luke 25.43 “Today shalt thou be with me in paradise.” Enjoying fellowship with Christ, not sleeping.
Revelation 6.9-10 “I saw under the altar the souls of them that were slain for the word of God, and for the testimony which they held: And they cried with a loud voice, saying, How long?” Not asleep.
Luke 16: “Send Lazarus to my father's house...” His soul was conscious whilst his brothers were still alive.
2 Corinthians 5.6 “Whilst we are at home in the body, we are absent from the Lord.” In Christ’s presence.
So what does “sleep” mean? What of those who “sleep in Jesus” (1 Thess 4.14)?
A picture –
(1) Body has rest from labour when it dies. Rest from pain, illness.
(2) Soul rests from temptation, toil, sin, heartache.
(3) Sleep is a temporary state, we wake; the disembodied soul is in a temporary intermediate state.
WHERE DO SOULS GO?
Disembodied saved souls are “with Christ which is far better”, hence in Heaven where He reigns.
Saved souls go straight to Heaven. So paradise = Heaven, not another place.
For saved souls death becomes the doorkeeper to Heaven.
Unbelieving souls go straight to hell at death, the “prison house of the lost” awaiting final judgement.
Luke 16.23 “the rich man also died, and was buried; and in hell he lift up his eyes...”
Sheol/Hades means the grave, but for the unbelieving it means hell also.
BCF 31.1: “The bodies of men after death return to dust, and undergo corruption, but their souls, which neither die nor sleep, having an immortal subsistence, immediately return to God who gave them. The souls of the righteous are then made perfect in holiness, are received into paradise where they are with Christ…the souls of the wicked are cast into hell…The Scripture acknowledges no other state than these two for souls separated from their bodies.”
WHY IS THERE NO DIFFERENCE OUTWARDLY AT DEATH?
1 Corinthians 15.26 “The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death.” The physical benefits of Calvary have yet to come.
Believers have to face sickness and death:
1. So no one wants salvation just to escape sickness, suffering and death.
2. For sanctification. To make us look up to our inheritance.
STATE OF SAVED DISEMBODIED SOULS
1. They rest; live; see Christ's face; hear; gladly serve like the angels; rejoice.
2. They cannot see us – taught nowhere, or hear our prayers, nor can we contact them.
Not spectators: “...compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses” (Heb 12.1) just means they are examples.
3. They will know each other. In Luke 16 the rich man recognises Lazarus.
4. Is there time in Paradise? Revelation 10.6 “And the angel…sware…that time should be no longer.”
“Time” = delay. Time is up for planet earth!
Revelation 6.11 “How long?” Told “they should rest yet for a little season”.
Different time scale? “yet for a little season”. 2000 years so far!
5. Do they have memory? The rich man remembered his brothers. Saints remember salvation, and sing the new song.
Won't we be sad then at the unsaved missing in Heaven?
No – our true relations and friends with us. Christ will wipe away all tears.
6. A second chance? No. “It is appointed unto men once to die and after this the judgement” (Hebrews 9.27).
The great gulf fixed of Luke 16.
ENDS WITH REDEMPTION OF THE BODY
Greeks taught death is release of soul from prison of body.
Bible teaches opposite: the human soul is constructed to indwell a body, and will do so everlastingly.
The new body is the “house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens” (2 Corinthians 5.14).
What of those alive when Christ returns? 1 Thessalonians 4.16-17 “the dead in Christ shall rise first. Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air and so shall we ever be with the Lord.”
They will miss the intermediate state.
1 Corinthians 15.51 “We shall not all sleep [physically die], but we shall all be changed.”
The infinite value of the soul !
