Looking at death a different way

When a person dies they go through the act of dying or termination of life and enter into the state of being dead. Everyone will experience the act of dying but no one will ever experience the state of being dead because of Ecclesiastes 9:5-“For the living know that they shall die but the dead know not anything.

There is no consciousness in death but there is no consciousness of death either. “The living know that they shall die, but the dead know not anything.” Think about that statement, the living know..the dead know nothing. The dead don’t know they are dead. When you die, you will not know that you are dead. Not only will you never know that you are dead at some point in the future but from your perspective you never even lost consciousness. From our own perspectives we will never know anything but life and feelings and emotions and consciousness. From our perspective we will never know what it is like to be dead. We will probably die some day but we will never know we were dead, we will never know what it is to be dead, or to be unconscious. Others will know and feel sorrow (maybe?) that we are dead and gone but from our perspective we will never lose conscious reality and we will never experience being dead. We will experience dying but we will not experience death itself. It would be impossible for someone to experience the death state when there is no consciousness, there is no experience and no memory of death. Even if there were no such thing as resurrection from the dead the dead would never know that they died and would never know that they are dead. Why? Because the dead know nothing. There is no pain and no fear in death itself. No one who is presently dead is aware of it or experiencing it, being frightened by it or anything else. The scriptures don’t say that death is like sleep but death is sleep.

“And the Lord said unto Moses, behold, you shall sleep with your fathers” (Deut. 31:16)

David said “Consider and hear me, O Lord my God: lighten my eyes, lest I sleep the sleep of death”. (Psalm 13:3)

When Lazarus was dead (John 11:14) Jesus said: “Our friend Lazarus sleeps, but I go, that I may awake him out of sleep” (John 11:11)

Everyone that has died in Christ shall awake in the morning of resurrection and when we do we might remember dying, but we will not remember ever being dead. On two occasions I have had to be put to sleep. I remember what happened before and after I went to sleep but I have no memory of being unconscious but I know I was, but only after the fact, not during the time I was asleep. Could it be that the actual fact of death is no different from what I experienced?

Sleep is a way that God can set people aside for a little while as He works with our children and our children’s children. Centuries and millennia will pass for some but they will know not death, only consciousness. From our perspective we will never know anything but life and consciousness. Death won’t even be an illusion, it won’t be at all. That is because “the living know that they shall die, but the dead know nothing.”

Paul knew that once he died the next waking moment would be in the resurrection with a new body ( 1 Cor. 15:49) and although it would happen in an instant (from this life to the next life without missing a heart beat), but it would have to wait until “the last trump” (1 Cor. 15:51). From Paul’s perspective it would only be but a moment in time seeing that “the living know that they shall die, but the dead know not anything”.

“But now is Christ risen from the dead, and become the first fruits of them that slept” ( 1 Cor. 15:20)

Soon we too shall be like Him and see our Creator as He is:

“Beloved now are we the sons of God, but it does not yet appear what we shall be, be we know that when He shall appear, we shall be like him, for we shall see Him as He is. And every man that has this hope in Him purifies himself, even as He is pure” (1 John 3:2-3)

Make no mistake, death is an enemy, but it is “being abolished” (1 Cor. 15:26) by the One who has already had victory over it and although we will never experience being dead, we certainly experience the loss of our loved ones who have died, and they will experience loss when we die. So take courage, if you are reading the little article then you are alive, and that is all you will ever know…life!