Information Related to "Christ and Biblical Writers Compare Death to Sleep"
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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, Ecclesiastes 9 states, "For the living know that they will die; but the dead know nothing . . . For there is no work or device or knowledge or wisdom in the grave where you are going" (verses 5,10).
Daniel 12:2 describes the dead as "those who sleep in the dust of the earth," who later "shall awake" through being resurrected.
Job speaks 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.
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Table of Contents that includes "Christ and Biblical Writers Compare Death to Sleep"
Lazarus:
