"They shall go down to the bars of the pit

WHEN OUR REST TOGETHER IS IN THE DUST."

Isaiah 26:19 says,

"The dead men shall live;

together with my dead body shall they arise.

AWAKE AND SING, YE THAT DWELL IN THE DUST!"

There is a reason that the Bible writers so often spoke of death as sleep. "Sleep" is a perfect description of the state of the dead. When a tired person lies down at night he is soon wrapped in sleep. As far as he is concerned, from his perspective, the very next moment the rising sun awakens him. He is totally unconscious of anything that transpired while he slept. So it is with the sleep of death.

The most explicit proof of this comes from Jesus Himself, when Lazarus had died in John 11:11-14. The disciples only knew that Lazarus was very ill and did not know that he had died yet. Jesus, knowing all things, told His disciples,

"Our friend Lazarus SLEEPETH,

but I go that I may AWAKEN HIM OUT OF SLEEP.

Then said His disciples, Lord, if he sleepeth he shall do well.

Howbeit Jesus spake of his DEATH, but they thought that He

had spoken of taking rest in sleep.

Then Jesus said unto them plainly: Lazarus is DEAD."

Now, who will be the first in line to accuse Jesus of teaching heresy? Nobody? I thought not. This is a classic example of the true biblical teaching about death. It was Lucifer who said that we would not die. God said we would. The terror of death - the horror of the punishment which was decreed upon Adam and Eve for their defiance of God’s law - is that death is the state of non-existence. God brought us into existence and disobedience took us right back out of existence. The whole purpose of Christ’s death and resurrection is so that He would be able to BRING US BACK from non-existence. He could not simply call us back to existence, because His own law dictates that sin must be punished by death. Therefore, to appease His own law, the perfect and sinless Son of God surrendered His own life – HE CEASED TO EXIST – for three days. Jesus Himself said on the cross to the Father and to the Holy Spirit, "My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?" When the sins of the world were placed on Jesus while He hung on that cross, the Father and the Holy Spirit BY HIS LAW had to literally separate, or disconnect, themselves from Jesus. Jesus, being a part of the Godhead, was MADE SIN for us, and since sin cannot be with God, Jesus was excised from the Godhead on our behalf for three days, during which time He – the Creator of the Universe – ceased His existence for His people. Then by the power of God, when the time was fulfilled and death was defeated, He RESURRECTED – He returned to existence! And it is upon the belief in THAT DOCTRINE that He will resurrect us when He returns. What God is there who is like our God, to do such a mind boggling, breathtaking and courageous act! What love! What unspeakable glory! THAT is the act of a REAL God! Those that dare say that we do not die, that our souls are immortal, that we go on after death, are no more than the children of the father of lies; for they deny all the Wonder that Christ has done.

So Jesus had called death "sleep". Later, as he stood by the tomb of Lazarus, He cried out, "Lazarus, come forth!" He did not say, "Lazarus, come DOWN!" Like King David, Lazarus was not up in heaven, nor anywhere else but inside the cage of his tomb. In response to the call of Jesus, the Author of Life, Lazarus awoke from his sleep of death and walked out into the sunlight.

Many exaggerated tales have circulated about people who "come back from the dead", but this story and a few others like it in the Bible are the only authentic and legitimate stories on record. There is no doubt that Lazarus had been dead for four days. Jesus Himself had wept at his death, and Martha, the sister of Lazarus, had protested when Jesus ordered the stone to be removed from the door to the tomb, saying, "Lord, by this time he stinketh!"

It is vital to understand why Jesus waited four whole days after Lazarus’ death to come to resurrect him. Jesus had received word that Lazarus was ill and near to death, but Jesus’ response was to go somewhere else and delay. Why? Why would He do that? Because there was a sickening doctrine going around Israel in those days which crept in from the surrounding pagan nations. That doctrine said that a soul hovers around a body for three days, trying to get back into the body; if it failed, it would then depart to some netherworld, or "Purgatory", as the Babylonian sorcerers called it. By waiting four days, the resurrection of Lazarus proved that God alone had absolute authority and control over matters of life and death.

Many accounts of patients who resuscitate from, say, heart failure include dramatic recitals of glorious views of heaven. But here we have BIBLICAL PROOF of someone coming back from the dead. And what did Lazarus have to say about his four days of death. Did he report visions of heavenly reward? Did he speak of a tunnel of light, or of the glories of heaven, or of visitations from departed loved ones? He said not one word of such things. And why would he? He had been asleep, just as Jesus had said! It had been a moment of oblivion for him.

By the way, it is begged to be asked, if Lazarus was indeed in heaven, what kind of unspeakable terror would it have been for him to be ripped from the glory of the Father’s presence and brought back into this dark world again? Surely he would have pleaded to return, had he truly been there. A resumption of earthly life would have been worse than the horror of hell in comparison to 96 hours in Paradise! Certainly the Lord of all mercy would never play such a cruel and despicable trick on the friend He had only moments ago wept for.

You have come almost halfway into this book. You will either have agreed with its content by now or you will be thinking that it is just a load of dingo’s kidneys. Maybe you are borderline on the issue and just aren’t quite sure. Regardless of your persuasion, let me give you a verse that will knock your socks off. A verse that confounds and refutes all doubt. A verse that is so profound that there is nothing you can do but agree with it or collapse in to relativism and say it can’t be so. That verse is John 3:13, from the mouth of Jesus Himself. It says (are you ready….?),

"NO MAN HATH ASCENDED UP TO HEAVEN

BUT HE THAT CAME DOWN FROM HEAVEN,

EVEN THE SON OF MAN, WHICH IS IN HEAVEN."

No matter what your views, no matter your doctrine, no matter what your parent, pastor, priest, elder, or pope has told you, no matter what books you’ve read or what guru you have sought out – NO ONE HAS ASCENDED UP TO HEAVEN but Jesus. Period. End of debate. God Himself has spoken it and no one can contest it.

But I must sigh heavily here and explain that even this is not enough for some people who have filled themselves with doubt, rather than with the faith that God’s Word is true. Some will say that they still don’t believe it because they have other verses that they think proves this verse to be a lie (for, after all, this verse is as straight forward as you can get, so therefore, if someone claims that there is something else that refutes this verse, they can do nothing less than call this verse a plain lie). So, let us continue and discuss these supposed contentious verses, shall we?

Why do we find it so hard to believe the very simple terminology that the Bible writers use in describing death? Certainly we have no problem understanding the nature of sleep. Suppose a man lies fast asleep on a park bench. So soundly does he sleep that he is totally unaware of the stealthy approach of an attacker. In another moment the sleeping man lies dead in a pool of blood. Now, according to the traditional view of death, this man, who knew nothing while sleeping, suddenly knows everything as his soul floats away from his body like a helium balloon. But how can this be since the Bible says that it is - not the soul, in which lies the consciousness of man - but the SPIRIT which returns to God? If the man knew nothing while sleeping on that bench, he most certainly could not know anything more if he died in that sleep. He is dead, and therefore there is nothing for him to know further in this world until the Resurrection at the end of time when he will be returned to existence. He has perished, his mind and thoughts along with him, just as it is declared in Psalm 146:4,

"His breath goeth forth, he returns to the earth:

IN THAT VERY DAY HIS THOUGHTS PERISH."

Once again the Bible defies the traditional view. The wise King Solomon spreads these incredible words of wisdom and light upon us in Ecclesiastes 9:5-6&10,

"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, hatred, and envy is NOW PERISHED.

Neither have they any more a portion 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 WITHER THOU GOEST."

If one deliberately tried to produce stronger words to support a totally dreamless sleep in death, one would be hard pressed to match the words of Solomon, whom the Bible says is the wisest man to ever live AND that his wisdom came directly from God Himself.

Suppose for a moment that the same forceful statement was made to assert CONSCIOUSNESS after death. In other words, suppose Solomon had instead said, "Their love, hatred and envy will CONTINUE…for there IS work, there IS device, there IS knowledge, there IS wisdom in the grave." Such a statement would silence this author and would be the total end of the issue. Such a statement would prove that there is in fact consciousness after death. But, not only does the Bible say no such thing, it repeatedly says the exact opposite. Isaiah, who gave us more prophecies about Jesus than any other single prophet, wrote in 38:18-19,

"For the grave CANNOT praise Thee,

death CANNOT celebrate Thee;

they that go down to the pit CANNOT hope for Thy truth.

The living! The living! HE shall praise Thee, as I do this day!"

Would not the righteous dead praise God if they were truly ushered into heaven at death? The great king David answers in Psalm 115:17,

"The dead PRAISE NOT the Lord,

neither ANY that go down to the pit."

And in Psalm 6:5 King David says,

"For in death there is NO remembrance of Thee,

In the grave, who shall give Thee thanks?"

Yet again David says in Psalm 30:9,

"What profit is there in my blood when I go down to the pit?

Shall the dust praise Thee? Shall it give Thee thanks?"

There are many that sincerely believe that they have physical, eye witness proof that the dead appeared to them. They have the witness of their senses that they have actually conversed with departed loved ones. They can give the place, date and hour they were confronted by dead loved ones who are often reported to appear in the same form as when they were alive. What can be said about these manifestations?

First, let us imagine that the traditional life-after-death story is true, and we will see how contradictions nullify the possibility of it being reality. Under that doctrine, if a loved one which "appears" had received salvation from Christ, they would be worshipping at the feet of God and enjoying the bliss of heaven. If they had not received salvation, they would be burning in the fires of hell. Neither would be making deathbed cameo appearances. And since when has God stopped using His "ten thousand times ten thousand and thousands of thousands of angels" to deliver messages on behalf of God to the living? There is not so much as one incident in the Bible of God sending a dead person to speak to the living. That duty is reserved for the ministering angels of God.

And note these important verses in 1^st John 4:2-3 and 2:22, which say,

"Hereby know ye the spirit of God:

Every spirit which confesseth that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is of God;

and every spirit which confesseth not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh

is not of God,

for this is the spirit of antichrist whereof ye have heard that it should come

and even now already is it in the world….

Who is a liar but he who denies that Jesus is the Christ;

he is antichrist which denieth the Father and the Son."

Rarely, if ever, is it claimed that departed loved ones spoke of Jesus Christ and salvation by Him. Although there are some that do turn to spiritualism and religion after seeing a vision, the apparition is never reported to have bared witness of Jesus to the dying person, and never have they fulfilled the requirement stated in the above verses. Therefore they cannot be whom they claim to be, and more importantly, they cannot be of God.

Should we discount all such psychic appearances as mental apparitions of emotional and unstable individuals? Hardly. Sometimes forms DO appear and they have been verified countless times. In September of 1998, the worldwide pseudo-Christian TV network TBN (Trinity Broadcasting Network), issued an entire book filled to the brim with these near-death experiences with departed loved ones as a "love gift" for sending them money ("send us money and we’ll love you"). But on the true and infallible Witness of God – the Holy Scriptures – we can categorically reject those stories as legitimate encounters between the living and the souls or spirits of the dead. King Solomon already told us earlier, "The dead know not anything, neither have they a portion for ever in anything that is done under the sun." The issue isn’t whether or not someone actually encountered a vision; visions do occur! The issue is over WHO is appearing in those visions.

Then who is appearing and making lying claims in the name of the innocent dead? From the biblical evidence, it could be only one of three things: angelic, demonic, or self-induced.

The angels of God certainly would not waste their time impersonating the dead, and they wouldn’t lie about it and say that they were someone from among the dead. Angels in the Bible from time to time appeared as humans to living men to give them a message or mission from God, but they never take on the form of the person’s departed friends or family. More often than not, angels appear in the Bible in natural form – which is anything but human. Nor were angels once human, and neither do humans become angels when they die, as a surprising number of people actually believe. Angels are separate creations of God which have great powers from God, powers that Man cannot understand, and one of those powers is the ability to take on other forms and appearances, especially that of Man. But angels who serve the Lord are not deceivers.

On the other hand, Lucifer and his fallen angels delight in deceiving Man through shape shifting and are described in Scripture as appearing in many guises such as a serpent, a cherub, an angel of light, a wolf, a lion, a whirlwind, a flood, a dragon, the Antichrist, and many other things to either mislead us or attack us. Who else but the Father of Lies would do such a thing, who built his first deception around the issue of death in the guise of a serpent. He boldly and defiantly contradicted Jesus, saying to the woman, "Ye shall NOT surely die." And if that old snake could deceive the perfect Adam and Eve, how much more will fallen Man be deceived by him! When death did follow, Satan made Adam’s descendents believe that it was just an illusion. By impersonating the dead, Satan has convinced Man that he was right and God was wrong. He certainly tricked King Saul when he appeared as the High Priest Samuel (1 Samuel 28:7-20), giving the God-forsaken king the idea that witches, mediums and necromancers have power to call up the dead – and not just ANY dead, but the saints of the Almighty!

Rest assured that Satan will pay for his treachery against the Word of God, but I fear that We the Church will have to answer to God for spreading Satan’s lies. Beware of anything that comes to you and claims to be from the dead! It is written that Jesus alone holds the keys to the grave and death; and to have keys to the grave and death implies that the grave and death is LOCKED. And now we also know that they will not be UNLOCKED until the resurrection. Jesus said in Revelation 1:18 & 3:7,

"I Am He that liveth and was dead; and behold, I Am alive for evermore, Amen!

And I have the Keys of Hell [the grave] and of Death….

…He that openeth and no man shutteth; and shutteth, and no man openeth."

There are some other factors to consider as well, such as the high probability that an apparition is self-induced. Many people who have "Near Death Experiences" claim to have wondrous visions of the other side. But as a colleague of mine once said, "Being NEAR Chicago isn’t the same as being IN Chicago." If you are NEAR death, you aren’t dead. If you were completely dead, your spirit would have departed from you, as it is clearly written, and therefore your body would have no conscious memory or thought, because there would be no mind there for you to even perceive such a vision. Remember we read earlier that King David said of the dead, "In that very day their thoughts perish," and King Solomon said, "The dead know not anything." So just what are these visions and apparitions?

Most people who revive on their deathbeds, who claim to have had visions, aren’t gone very long. A doctor may declare you to be dead, but you may not necessarily be totally dead. Your brain and body can still be working off bits of oxygen it received when the heart stopped, like a car running on fumes when it runs out of gas. A stopped heart does not necessarily a dead person make, else they couldn’t be revived to tell us of these "Near Death Experiences"! If you can be revived, that means that your spirit has not yet left you, which in turn means that you are not dead and you are still a living soul.

In a distressed condition, medical research has proven time and again that the mind can imagine anything. Usually this is a defensive act of the body under extreme trauma. The sleep that we take every night is a shadow of death, a daily reminder of our mortality; and just as we dream up images that we cannot control while we sleep, so too may we envision things when we are comatose and moving toward the gates of death. Brain scans cannot be 100% effective in determining whether someone is dead because death is only half-physical. Death is also a spiritual event, and there is no tool on earth to measure that.

Some people who have been jolted suddenly and without warning by a threat of death (such as a near miss by a car), will often say that their whole life flashed before their eyes. Instantly every memory of importance leaps to the forefront of their conscious mind at the same time as though it were trying to escape through their ear and rescue itself, like a log buoy containing a ship’s historical records which is jettisoned from a ship when there is eminent threat of destruction. Other people claim to see a tunnel of light or a tunnel with light at the end of it. This is often explained away as a person passing from this world into heaven. Thanks to both the Scriptures and to modern medical science (for Christ is the Chief Physician), we now know this to be merely an effect of the mind.

So, though the visions and apparitions could easily be demonic, it could just as easily be self-induced. But either way, don’t blame the dead; they are resting peacefully in their graves awaiting the Resurrection. Now here is an incredible but true story as told by a minister…

"A woman who served with her husband as missionaries in Africa for many years was living in an isolated Mission Station. A fatal tropical disease killed their three-year-old daughter, and they buried her on the hillside across from the station. A few days later, the mother was sitting in the kitchen when suddenly the door burst open and her little girl ran across the room to throw herself into her mother’s arms."

Can you imagine yourself under that kind of traumatic horror? To make matters worse, the child cried out, "Mommy! I’m not dead! I’m not dead!" Fortunately that Christian mother knew the truth about death, and God gave her the extraordinary strength and power to pray instantly for deliverance from that satanic masquerade. When she called upon the name of the Lord Jesus, the form disappeared.

It is instances such as this that the Bible warns us about when it commands us not to be ignorant of Satan’s devices. We must recognize his ability to manipulate the minds of men and women with deceit. God has given us a weapon against him – a Sword, which is the Word of God, the Bible. Jesus and the prophets and apostles used the Scriptures in all instances when contending with the Devil because it is the Power of the Almighty, against which Satan is powerless. Satan knows this. We should not and cannot be a disgraceful soldier of Christ, with a rusty sword and armor. Satan’s loophole into your life is based on your ignorance of God’s Word. Knowledge of God’s Word is mandatory for your safety and sanity.

There are certain, specific doctrines that are the foundation of our faith as Christians. Part of that foundation is the doctrine concerning death, because death is at the very heart of the whole message of the Scriptures. The whole purpose of why Jesus came was to defeat death and the power of Satan. All of eternity hinges on the issue of life and death. This is why it is so important to properly understand what death is. True, if you let it, the subject of death could appear to be a rather morbid and depressing one. But once you have solidly set your feet upon the Living Rock, death will appear rather puny. It is pain, not death, that people are usually afraid of; but once you have the Word of God reigning in your heart, you will be able to separate the fear of pain from the reality of death and you will realize that death, while not a good thing, is actually powerless over you, in the eternal sense, because Jesus Christ has conquered it and brought it into subjection. And if Christ has total power over death and it is subject to Him, so much so that He holds the keys to its doors, what then is there for a believer to fear?

A dark tunnel is scary because you cannot see inside of it, you do not know what you will find in it, you do not know where the exit on the other side is, and you do not know where that exit will lead. But if the owner of the tunnel bears light with him as he traverses the entire length of it and then emerges with the assurance that you will be safe inside from all harm, then you know that you have nothing to fear when you enter it and that you will be completely safe while you sleep inside it. So it is with death; for Christ descended into it, conquered its darkness, and has come out of it alive with victory and power and ownership over it. To the wicked, that dark place of death will exit out into the condemnation of an eternal living death in the Lake of Fire. But for the righteous, the Lord will come and stand at the other side of death and call to you, and you will hear His voice and come out into the eternal presence of the Lord who will personally greet you when you emerge from it. THAT is the experience of the Resurrection. That is the true "light at the end of the tunnel."

But understand now more fully the purpose of death. Death does more than just put an end to one’s life; it also puts an end to SINNING. Death is not merely the end result of sin, it is the end of sin. The end of sins is the purpose for death’s existence, and when sin and sinners are finally wiped from creation, death itself will meet it’s end. When man sins, sin must be crushed along with its vessel. As it is written in the law, when a person sinned they had to be brought outside the camp of Israel and put to death so as not to contaminate the People of God and the camp. They are "cut off from among the people".

God will not tolerate sin in His presence, and if He is to dwell with us then there can be no sin permitted among us either. But man is born in sin as the offspring of sinners, and therefore all men must die. There is nothing that can stop it. There is none that can escape it, from the most wretched sinner to the holiest man of God. But the gift of eternal life through faith in the atoning death and resurrection of Jesus then guarantees us birth from death. Even as Jesus is called "The first born from the dead," so too shall we be born from death, called out of oblivion by God Himself never to sin or be defiled again, in our regenerated body which cannot be corrupted and therefore can never die, as prophesied by Job 19:26,

"And though after my skin worms destroy this body,

yet in my flesh shall I see God, whom I shall see for myself,

and mine eyes shall behold, and not another,

though my reigns be consumed within me."

But if man must die because of sin in accordance with the law of God, how then can man obtain eternal life in his own body, even if it is transformed to be