PROBLEMS PEOPLE HAVE WITH THE INTERMEDIATE STATE

Problems People Have With the Intermediate State

 

 

• How do you interpret Old Testament texts picturing Sheol as the place of no knowledge?

Psalm 6:5 "In death no remembrance of me!"
Isa. 38:18 "For the grave cannot praise thee, death can not celebrate thee: they that go down into the pit cannot hope for thy truth"
Hezekiah, the Jew, thought of existence in terms of the present life.
Eccl. 9:10 "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, whither thou goest"
Materialistic view of the man under the sun. This statement is no more a divine revelation concerning the state of the dead than any other conclusion of "the Teacher" (Eccl. 1:1). No one would quote Eccl. 9:2 as a divine revelation. These reasoning of man apart from divine revelation are set down by inspiration just as the words of Satan (Gen 3:4; Job 2:4 - 5; etc.) are so recorded. But that life and consciousness continue between death and resurrection is directly affirmed in Scripture (Isa 14:9 - 11; Mat 22:32; Mark 9:43 - 48; Luke 16:19 - 31; 2 Cor 5:6 - 8; Phil 1:21 - 23; Rev 6:9 - 11).

• Why does the Bible speak of death as a "sleep"?

It is a euphemism for that which is a dreaded experience.
It is a word describing the fact that death is temporary.
There is a Resurrection for all dead.
In the New Testament a special word is used meaning cessation or rest (cf. John 11:13). "Howbeit Jesus spake of his death: but they thought that he had spoken of taking of rest in sleep."
Jer. 51:39 "In their heat I will make their feasts, and I will make them drunken, that they may rejoice, and sleep a perpetual sleep, and not wake, saith the LORD."

• Location of Sheol-Hades

A place as well as a state.
When Lazarus died the angels carried him away. They must have carried him some place.
Most theologians are afraid of this.
Yet majority of orthodox hold men go someplace at death.
Modernists ridicule a "geography of the nether world."

• Argument: Men shrink from locating Sheol in the heart of the earth

Bible makes definite statements on this point.
Gen. 37:35 "I will go down"
Isa. 5:14 "They shall descend" - not merely moral in sense.
Ezek. 32:18, 21 ARV "Down - nether parts of the earth."
Jonah 2:2 with 6 "I went down to the bottom of the mountains."
Matt. 12:38-40 "Heart of the earth"