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that lives on somewhere else. When someone is dead, he is truly dead. To be dead does not mean that he is alive somewhere else in a different plane or with a different kind of life. At the beginning when God gave the breath that made Adam alive, he moved and walked and thought and talked and reasoned and made choices and felt emotion. He ate and drank and reproduced. After 930 years Adam died. The breath that came into him went out of him. Life and breath was a gift from God to His creation and it belongs to God who is the Maker and Giver of life.
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The spirit of God hath made me and the breath of the Almighty hath given me life. Job 33:4
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| The spirit or breath is the thing that gave us life; it is not an entity within us that lives on, independently after our death. The breath of the Almighty is what makes us alive. In Bible poetry when two things are mentioned in the same sentence, e.g. spirit and breath, it means they are one and the same thing. It is called parallelism. Here is a verse, which demonstrates this sentence construction. It is like a voice and its echo. Very often this helps us to understand the Bible better as we can see from the words the writer chose what he means. In a way it amplifies the sense to the reader. |
For in death there is no remembrance of thee; in the grave who shall give thee thanks. Psalm 6:5
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| To emphasise the Bible teaching that breath and life are connected, here is an excerpt from a sermon given by Paul in Acts 17:24-28. |
God that made the world and all things that are therein, seeing that he is Lord of heaven and earth, dwelleth not in temples made with hands; neither is worshipped with men's hands, as though He needeth anything seeing He giveth to all life, and breath and all things … for in Him we live and move and have our being.
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| The dead, good and bad, are in a land of forgetfulness; they are in silence; they are in the grave. The Bible uses such expressions as a candle put out, or chaff blown away, and the dead are described as never seeing the light. The wicked are said to perish as their own dung. One further verse to complete this section speaks of the time when God decides that our lives should end - |
If he set his heart upon man, if he gather unto himself his spirit and his breath, all flesh shall perish together and men shall turn again unto dust. Job 34:14, 15.
These words are totally plain in their understanding of death. They talk about all people, not just the wicked or the righteous.
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| What is happening to those who have died? The Bible tells us they are sleeping. This is the same for good people and bad people. Both die and sleep in their graves. The good and the bad, the righteous and the wicked, the saved and the lost - they are all sleeping together in their graves. They all return to dust, because they have all stopped breathing. Their breath has gone from them. We have to bury people, or cremate people, because the process of returning to dust starts very quickly after death. |
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| Death is represented as rest and the grave as the resting-place. We use the expression that some one has gone to their last resting-place. This is based on Bible verses. |
Why died I not from the womb? Why did I not give up the ghost when I come out of the belly? For now should I have lain still and been quiet. I should have slept and then had I been at rest.' Job 3:11-13.
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| Do we not sometimes put on graves - ‘Rest in Peace’ R.I.P? The verses continue by mentioning all kinds of people from all walks of life. They all lie in the grave together resting - the kings and counsellors, with the princes, with those who had died in a miscarriage, along with the wicked and the weary. The prisoners are now at peace from the oppressors, and they lie together with the small and great of this world. In death all are equal. In death all rest in the grave. Job 3:11-19 |
