Soul Sleep and the Importance of Sound Doctrine

"Be diligent to study yourself approved unto God, as Workers who do not need to be ashamed, handling accurately the Word of truth" (2 Timothy 2:15).


"If I profess with the loudest voice and clearest exposition every portion of the truth of God except precisely that little point which the world and the devil are at that moment attacking, I am not confessing Christ, however boldly I may be professing Christ.

"Wherever the battle rages, there the loyalty of the soldier is proved and to be steady on all the battlefield besides is mere flight and disgrace if he flinches at that one point."
- Martin Luther

Recently, I have been asked why "soul sleep" is, in my estimation, such a "pernicious" or destructive doctrine.

My response to this is that in our postmodern and propositionally bankrupt Western Culture, all doctrine is deemed abhorrent and irrelevant by secular society and this indifference to sound Biblical theology as greatly influenced the Evangelical Christian culture in America today as well.

Secular society's hatred of even the concept of absolute Biblical truth has greatly spread like a ideological virus throughout American Evangelicalism, to the point that attempting to defend the traditional Evangelical stance against temporal immortality and for the theological view that people are conscious before the resurrection, is deemed the height of futility and arrogant and repressive obstructionist. Yet, in my estimation, every jot and tittle of the Word of God is of vital importance since it was communicated by Almighty God for His Church to know propositionally. Therefore, I believe the concerned Evangelical believer should not give one iota or inch to the mindset of doctrinal relativism, but instead defend and proclaim every bit of the revealed Word of Almighty God, irrespective of how insignificant, mundane or trivial it might appear to those skeptical of such committed adherence to traditional Evangelical theology.

The issue of "soul sleep" is important because it is important to Almighty God the Sovereign Lord of the Universe, and if God saw fit within His providential will to address the issue related to the state between death and the resurrection, then it must be important to all those who love the Word of God in sincerity and in truth.

In an earlier era of American Evangelicalism, long before the inception of seeker sensitive and emergent church Christianity, the Evangelical Christian Church within the contiguous United States placed a tremendous emphasis on the study of and the vigorous adherence to sound Evangelical theology.

While the doctrine of "soul sleep" may not be as "pernicious" as any other false Biblical teaching that is contrary to the revealed Word of Almighty God ( Acts 7:58-60, 2 Corinthians 5:6-8 and Philippians 1:21-24 conclusively demonstrates the veracity of the tradtional Evangelical view that people are very much conscious after death and before their resurrection), the point is that no doctrine is unimportant and deserves anything less than full defense by the seasoned believers in the Lord Jesus Christ.

Anything less than a full defense of every aspect of the Word of God is to retreat from our calling to defend the faith once and for all delievered to the saints.