Soul sleep is a doctrine that says, well, when you die, you're just completely unconscious,
you're just, like, you know how your body's just laying there, right?
Like you go to a funeral and the body's just laying there?
The soul sleep doctrine basically teaches that your spirit and soul are right there
with it, just laying there, just unconscious, just gone.
Let's see if that's consistent with what the Bible teaches in Philippians 1.21.
For to me to live is Christ and to die is gain, but if I live in the flesh, this is
the fruit of my labor.
Yet what I shall choose I want not, for I am in a strait betwixt two, having a desire
to depart and to be with Christ, which is far better, nevertheless to abide in the flesh
is more needful for you.
Now look, living here is being compared to abiding in the flesh, right?
I mean look at these scriptures, 21 through 24.
If you're alive, you're abiding in the flesh.
You're living in the flesh, right?
If you depart, that's death, because he said for me to live is Christ, to die is gain.
For the believer, death is a departure.
It's a departing to be with Christ.
Let me ask you this, is the body departing?
No, but the soul departs to be with Christ.
He didn't say, I have a desire to lay in the earth.
I want to lay in the earth sooner, because I'm just sick and tired of living.
I just want to lay there already.
Now you know, you need me here to abide in the flesh with you, but I just want to lay
in the earth already.
No, he said, I have a desire to depart to be with Christ, because departing is departing
what?
Departing the flesh, giving up the ghost, departing to be with Christ is far better
than living on this earth.
That's why to die for the believer is gain, because we'd rather depart the body, depart
the flesh, be with Christ, but he said, I need to abide in the flesh to help you.
Look, this is not what Ellen G. White taught.
It's not consistent with scripture.
Here's another scripture that defeats soul sleep, and there are many, I'm just showing
you a few.
2 Corinthians 5, turn to 2 Corinthians 5.
While you're turning there, I'll start to read it, verse 6, therefore we are always
confident knowing that whilst we are at home in the body, we are absent from the Lord.
Now look, is that saying, man, we're never going to be separated from this body?
No, while we're at home in the body, we're absent from the Lord, for we walk by faith
not by sight.
We are confident, I say, and willing rather to be absent from the body and to be present
with the Lord.
But look, how can we be absent from the body if their fundamental belief, number 7, says
that it can't be divided?
How are you absent from the body and present with the Lord?
Doesn't make any sense, because it's not biblical.
And he says, wherefore we labor, that whether present or absent, we may be accepted.