Soul Sleep

Q

How would you form a rebuttal of the teaching that the body and soul are inseparable and no one has gone to heaven with exception to Enoch, Elijah, and Moses?

 

A

2 Cor. 5:6-8 says,

“Therefore we are always confident and know that as long as we are at home in the body we are away from the Lord. We live by faith, not by sight. We are confident, I say, and would prefer to be away from the body and at home with the Lord.”

Phil 1:23-24 says,

“I am torn between the two: I desire to depart and be with Christ, which is better by far; but it is more necessary for you that I remain in the body.”

Both verses make it clear. Being in the body is being away from the Lord. For believers, being away from the body is being with the Lord.

Soul Sleep is a concept developed before people understood the nature of time to explain what a dead person does while waiting for the Resurrection. We now know that time only exists for physical entities. Spiritual entities are not constrained by time. For the Spirit of a dead person there is no waiting because they’re freed from the time domain. They go immediately to be with the Lord, and then at the Resurrection receive bodies again so they can experience the full benefits of eternity.