What Happens When We Die?

Why this doctrine is such a big deal has always been a mystery to me. Specifically speaking what happens to us after we die, but before the dead in Christ rise (1 Thess 4:16). I've heard two main schools on this subject taught in our group: 1. Soul sleep and 2. Moving out a live soul. I'm not an expert on either of these two doctrines nor am I aware of all of the variations of each of them, so I'm forced to speak about each of them in generalities, or layman's terms if you will.

Soul sleep infers that when you die, it's as if someone out there hit the pause button of your existence. The rest of the world goes on without you, but you are not conscious in any way of anything that is going on until the resurrection. As an example, I've been listening to the camp meeting archives on my computer at work when I can, and the length of the services necessitate that I pause them frequently. One service may take me a couple days to get through, and often I will even leave the service paused overnight only to come back the next morning and pick up right where I left off. This is a good analogy to understand what is meant by soul sleep. The length of time that I leave this paused is irrelevant to the playing of the service.

Moving out a live soul has been taught in our churches as when you die, you immediately jump ahead to the resurrection. The best analogy I can think of is the "Go to Jail" card in the game Monopoly. Stick with me here for a second, but when you land on chance and get this card, you go directly to jail, you skip everything else. Moving out a live soul can almost be though of as landing on chance and getting a "Rise to meet Him in the air" card, do not go to the grave or wait around for something else to happen. The thought is that when you die, you are immediately skipped ahead without any tedious waiting.

There is another doctrine popular in the non-protestant denominations. Purgatory is, for lack of a better term, God's waiting room. This is like the time that you spend between taking a test at school and when your professor finally gets around to posting your score. The only sources for this doctrine are extra-Biblical, so it simply exists as a curious fiction to me.

So much seems to be made of this doctrine and I guess that is because people are concerned about what happens to them when they die. I've always just held to the thought that if God is in control of my life, he doesn't cease to be in control when I die. There is a tendency we have to assume that God is bound to the limitations that we are bound with. This could not be farther from the truth. God isn't restricted in how He does things. We worry about what happens with the intervening time, as if God somehow isn't up to the challenge. It is a limited understanding and a lack of faith on our part that caused us to need these doctrines. They function as a pacifier, and if you really need one of those, I guess that's OK, but the point is we shouldn't need them. To me this is a doctrine of lesser importance than many of the other doctrines that we teach, but still much division and controversy seems to be placed between these two schools, so that's why I am addressing it.

I'll start by asking the following question: On a personal level, what is the difference between soul sleep where you are not aware of the passage of time until the resurrection or moving out a live soul where you skip over the intervening time and just show up at the resurrection. In both teachings the next moment of awareness that you experience after you die is when you are resurrected. In that manner, both beliefs are right.

Bro. William Waters taught this doctrine in a different way. He stated that time is like a box, only applicable to human existence. When we end our human existence, we are taken out of that box and time no longer applies. On initial inspection I'm sure that this can sound strange. This is a well thought out argument and worthy of consideration. Simply put, the way God works isn't hampered by time the way we are. I agree with the thought that time is a limited thing and that it will be done away with, this just applies that on a personal level.

Going back to the personal level, how does this differ from either of the two main schools. It still remains that the next moment of awareness that you experience after you die is when you are resurrected. So far this seems to be a matter of semantics.

I've spent some time on this though and this time after you die and before you rise isn't really a mystery. I've experienced something like this already, in fact everyone has. Tell me about the time before you were born. You might say something like, "I wasn't alive yet, how can I tell you about that time?" Same here. The state of not being alive is pretty irrelevant to me. So here's how I put this together: After I die, but am not risen in Christ yet, I figure that I'm not alive. So if you put it that way and just say that any time that I'm not alive is irrelevant, then this whole doctrine becomes irrelevant.

So there you have it. Soul sleep, moving out a live soul, leaving time, or just plain irrelevant, those are the options you have for this doctrine. To me your life and life after death are so much more important that it's hardly worth going into this discussion in any depth at all. I hope you see why I feel that way.