Answering scriptures that support soul sleep

In this blog, we will be addressing scriptures that soul sleep proponents typically use to justify their position. Instead of addressing each scripture individually, which would be extremely time-consuming, we will focus on three broad categories that they fit in.

1) Death = Unconsciousness (No Thought, Awareness, or Activity)

Ecclesiastes 9:5: For the living know that they will die; But the dead know nothing, And they have no more reward, For the memory of them is forgotten.

Ecclesiastes 9:10: Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with your might; for there is no work or device or knowledge or wisdom in the grave where you are going.

Psalm 146:4: His spirit departs, he returns to his earth; In that very day his plans perish.

Other scriptures cited: Psalm 6:5, Psalm 115:17, Isaiah 38:18–19, Job 14:10–12, Ecclesiastes 3:19–20

Core Argument: When a person dies, conscious experience stops completely.

Response: There are several ways we can respond to this argument:

A. Unconsciousness should not be conflated with death. A person can be asleep or sedated and unconscious, yet still very much alive. One should ponder where consciousness (the mind) goes in that state. Obviously, it's still there, just subdued. This would suggest that the conscious mind can exist in different states, but I digress.

B. Death does not always refer to physical death. There can also be spiritual death as the result of sin, which leads to eternal death, also called the second death (Rev 2:1). From God's perspective, death is separation from God, and life is connection with God. Paradoxically then, it's possible to be both dead and alive at the same time (see 1 Ti 5:6, Eph 2:1).

C. In some instances, death is presented from a secular viewpoint. This is certainly true in the Book of Ecclesiastes, which was written purely from an earthly, human perspective of all things "under the sun." From our earthly vantage, death looks final, but looks can be deceiving. Our earthly perspective is very limited. We can only see one side of death, but there's another side that we don't see.

D. If you notice, most soul sleep proponents will focus on Old Testament verses to support their position, as OT  writers presented a more negative or neutral attitude toward death. There are two primary reasons for this. One, they had a limited revelation about the spiritual world/afterlife. And two, there was no way for them to ascend to heaven after death because Christ had not yet atoned for their sins. All that was waiting for them after death was Sheol, but Sheol wasn't just the grave; it was the realm where the dead were still aware. For example:

Isaiah 14:9 “Hell (Sheol) from beneath is excited about you, To meet you at your coming; It stirs up the dead for you, All the chief ones of the earth; It has raised up from their thrones All the kings of the nations.

Isaiah 14:10 They all shall speak and say to you: ‘Have you also become as weak as we? Have you become like us?

Here, the king of Babylon goes to Sheol, where the dead rulers of the earth greet him. This could be dismissed as mere poetic language, but the King of Babylon was an actual person. Regardless, it clearly depicts Sheol not merely as the grave but as an underworld of the dead. In Ezekiel, Egypt and others were consigned to the pit and are depicted speaking to one another:

Ezekiel 32:21 The strong among the mighty Shall speak to him out of the midst of hell (Sheol) With those who help him: ‘They have gone down, They lie with the uncircumcised, slain by the sword.’

Perhaps a little-known reference to Sheol, but highly relevant, is found in the Book of Jonah. Everyone knows the story: a giant fish swallows Jonah, and he spends three days and nights in the belly of the fish until he is spit out. What is missed is that while Jonah's body was in the belly of the fish, his soul was in Sheol:

Jon 2:1 Then Jonah prayed to the LORD his God from the belly of the fish,

Jon 2:2 saying, “I called out to the LORD, out of my distress, and he answered me; out of the belly of Sheol I cried, and you heard my voice.

The viewpoint is that the dead in Sheol are still conscious is also confirmed in other ancient Near Eastern imagery of the afterlife as well as intertestamental Jewish writings (i.e., The Book of Enoch, Dead Sea Scrolls, etc.).

2) Death Is Literally “Sleep” Until Resurrection

Daniel 12:2 – “sleep in the dust”

John 11:11–14 – Lazarus “asleep”

1 Thessalonians 4:13–15 – “those who sleep”

1 Corinthians 15:51–52 – “we shall not all sleep”

Other scriptures cited: Matthew 27:52, 2 Peter 3:4

Core Argument: The consistent metaphor reflects a real state (unconsciousness), not just poetic language

Response: The reference to death as sleep is most certainly a metaphor. How do we know this? Because all the main Jewish religious groups in the first century AD believed the soul survived death, including the Pharisees, Christians, and Essenes. The only one that didn't was the Sadducees, but they didn't believe in a resurrection or a spirit world either. In fact, across much of the Near East (Mesopotamia, Levant, Egypt), the belief in an afterlife was almost universal. The doctrine of soul sleep didn't arise until the third century.

Jesus is the most prominent figure that referred to death as sleep, but then in the story of the rich man and Lazarus, he depicts the soul continuing after death. This is often dismissed as a mere parable, but it doesn't explain why he included it in his sermon, especially if it was of a supposed pagan origin. If Jesus literally believed the soul slept, why include such a falsehood at all? Certainly, he would have known what the Greeks believed about the soul, but he never denounced it. Nowhere in the Bible is the concept of the immortal soul denounced in any way. So, which makes more sense: he literally believed the soul sleep but included foreign pagan imagery in his sermon anyway for no apparent reason, or that he used sleep as a metaphor and believed the soul continued after death? I think it's the latter, and there are other verses that would support it.

The Apostle Paul referred to death as sleep more than anyone, and yet many of his writings strongly suggest a distinction between the body and soul (inner self) and an uninterpreted continued existence after physical death including 2 Corinthians 5:1–8, Philippians 1:21–24, 2 Corinthians 12:2–4, Romans 7:22–23, 1 Thessalonians 5:23, 1 Corinthians 2:11, and 1 Corinthians 15:42–44 among others.

3) No Conscious Life Until the Resurrection (No One Has Yet Gone to Heaven)

Acts 2:34 – David did not ascend

John 3:13 – no one has ascended to heaven

Other scriptures cited: John 5:28–29, 1 Corinthians 15:22–23, Genesis 3:19, Ecclesiastes 12:7

Core argument: The dead are not consciously in heaven or hell, they await resurrection

Response: There are scriptures that do speak of the righteous dead in heaven if taken literally. For the sake of brevity, we will focus on just three. In Revelation 6 and 20, the deceased souls of those killed by the antichrist are depicted conscious and alert in heaven as they cry out to God to atone for their murders:

Rev 6:9 When He opened the fifth seal, I saw under the altar the souls of those who had been slain for the word of God and for the testimony which they held.

Rev 20:4 And I saw thrones, and they sat on them, and judgment was committed to them. Then I saw the souls of those who had been beheaded for their witness to Jesus and for the word of God, who had not worshiped the beast or his image, and had not received his mark on their foreheads or on their hands. And they lived and reigned with Christ for a thousand years.

These scriptures are often dismissed as visions, but that is only an argument of convenience.

Jude 1:14 Now Enoch, the seventh from Adam, prophesied about these men also, saying, “Behold, the Lord comes with ten thousands of His saints,

In Jude 1:14, Jesus returns to earth with His saints. Who are the saints? They are believers in Christ, whether physically alive or physically dead. How do we know this? Because the New Testament usage of "saints" consistently refers to human believers, not angels or anyone else. Occasionally, angels are called "saints" in the Old Testament, but this is a matter of translation. More modern translations usually say "holy ones" so as to not confuse angels with humans. More than likely, however, it will be a mix of angels and glorified humans returning as part of Jesus' entourage.

Here's an important point that cannot be missed. No one could ascend to heaven prior to the resurrection of Jesus Christ. It was only after Jesus ascended to heaven and shed his blood on the mercy seat in heaven to atone for the sins of humanity could humans enter heaven. So, when John 3:13 says no one has ascended to heaven, that was true at that time, prior to the resurrection. This gets into the concept of Abraham's bosom, which you can read about here. For more counter-scriptures to soul sleep, see here.