Questions and Answers: With the Lord or Asleep Until Resurrection?

Ecclesiastes 9:5  •  2 min. read  •  grade level: 6
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QUESTION: I was taught by my parents that when we die, we go to be with the Lord. Now I am told by others that all go to sleep in death till the resurrection. If you can, please enlighten me about this. What does Eccl. 9:5 mean, "The dead know not anything"?
ANSWER: The death of the Christian is often spoken of as sleep. (See Matt. 27:52; Acts 7:60; John 11:11; 1 Cor. 11:30; 15:6, 18, 20, 51; 1 Thess. 4:13-15; 5:10.) But being asleep refers to the bodies, so that they know not anything; they are away from all that is going on here on earth. Ecclesiastes is wisdom under the sun. We need what the Lord Jesus and His apostles tell us, to know the full truth.
We find clear evidence from them that neither saved nor unsaved are unconscious as to the spirit. Death in Scripture is NEVER ceasing to exist. There is no death to the soul or spirit.
Man, the highest of the animal kingdom, is a responsible being, and his existence is for eternity. The body decays at death, but the soul or spirit has gone either to be with Christ in paradise, or to the prison under chains of darkness, awaiting the day when the body will be given again to stand at the Great White Throne to receive the sentence—the wages of the sins of which the person was guilty The saved are seen in Luke 16:23; 20:38; 23:43, 46; Acts 7:59; 2 Cor. 5:8; Phil. 1:21, 23; Rev. 14:13, and another picture of the martyrs in Rev. 6:9-11.
The unsaved are seen in Luke 16:23 and 12:5.
They are warned to "fear Him, which after He hath killed hath power to cast into hell." Notice it is after He has killed. We see the unsaved, who would not listen to Noah's preaching, are now in prison (1 Peter 3:19).
When the Lord Jesus comes for His own, the dead in Christ will rise first, then the living ones changed (Phil. 3:20, 21) will be caught up together to be with the Lord (1 Thess. 4:15-18). These will also stand at the judgment seat of Christ, now glorified in their resurrection bodies, to receive their reward, and be appointed to the place each one is to fill for Him.