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FREE Booklet What Happens After Death?

Christ and Biblical Writers Compare Death to Sleep

What happens to a person when he dies? The Bible compares death to a state of sleep. It is not a normal "sleep," of course. It is a sleep in which there is no thought, brain activity or life whatsoever. Passages throughout the Bible show this to be the case.

For example, Job spoke of the state of the dead on more than one occasion. "Why did I not die at birth? Why did I not perish when I came from the womb? ... For now I would have lain still and been quiet, I would have been asleep; then I would have been at rest ... There the wicked cease from troubling, and there the weary are at rest" (Job 3:11, 13, 17).

Many centuries later the biblical account of the death of Lazarus, a friend of Jesus, illustrates death to be a sleeplike state. "Now a certain man was sick, Lazarus of Bethany" (John 11:1). Jesus decided to go to him, but, so He could perform a miracle to strengthen His disciples' faith, He waited until Lazarus died.

Before going to Bethany, Jesus discussed the condition of Lazarus with His disciples. He told them Lazarus was asleep and that He was going to awaken him (John 11:11-14). The disciples responded that sleep was good because it would help him get well (verse 12). Jesus then plainly told them, "Lazarus is dead" (verse 14). Notice that Jesus stated emphatically that Lazarus was dead, but at the same time He described death as a condition like sleep.

When the time came for Jesus to act, "He cried with a loud voice, 'Lazarus come forth!' And he who had died came out bound hand and foot with graveclothes ... Jesus said to them, 'Loose him, and let him go'" (verses 43-44).

Lazarus had not gone to heaven or hell. He had been entombed, where he "slept" until Jesus called him out of the grave.

God performed a special miracle by resurrecting Lazarus from the dead, but everyone enters a figurative state of sleep at death. The dead are unconscious. The common belief is that at death the body goes to the grave and the soul remains conscious and goes either to heaven or hell. Yet, as we have seen, this belief is not biblical.

In another reference that describes the state of the dead, Paul refers to the righteous dead who will be resurrected to meet Christ in the air as being "asleep."

"For this we say to you by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive and remain until the coming of the Lord will by no means precede those who are asleep. For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of an archangel, and with the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive and remain 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 Thessalonians 4:15-17).

So those who are in their graves will be resurrected, rising to meet the returning Messiah along with those in Christ who are yet alive. They all will be caught up in the air to meet Christ in the first resurrection. They will then return to the earth to reign with Him in the Kingdom of God.

That the dead are figuratively in a state of sleep, awaiting the resurrection, "was the prevalent opinion until as late as the 5th century" (The Decline of Hell, p. 35). The change away from the biblical teaching occurred several centuries after Christ. The plain teaching of the Bible is that the dead are unconscious, waiting in the grave. They are, as Jesus and Paul put it, sleeping. They will not awake until the resurrection.

Eventually all will arise—some to eternal life in the first resurrection and others to physical life in another resurrection 1,000 years later. As Jesus said, the hour is coming "in which all who are in the graves will hear His voice and come forth" (John 5:28-29). This is the comforting and encouraging truth revealed in the Scriptures.