heavens will be rolled back as a scroll at Christ's coming], they shall
not awake, nor be raised out of their sleep." Job 14:10-12.

This hope of the resurrection at the last day was no indistinct hope to
the believer in God's promises. The patriarch continued:

"If a man die, shall he live again? all the days of my appointed time
will I wait, till my change come. Thou shalt call, and I will answer
thee: Thou wilt have a desire to the work of Thine hands." Verses 14,
15.

Job tells us of the place of his waiting for the Life-giver's call: "If
I wait, the grave is mine house." Job 17:13. It is thence that Christ
will call His own when He comes. "The hour is coming, in the which all
that are in the graves shall hear His voice, and shall come forth." John
5:28, 29.

Death is an unconscious sleep. It must of necessity be so; for death is
the opposite of life. Therefore there is no consciousness of the passing
of time to those who sleep in the grave. It is as if the eyes closed in
death one instant, and the next instant, to the believer's
consciousness, he awakens to hear the animating voice of Jesus calling
him to glad immortality, and to see the angels catching up his loved
ones to meet Jesus in the air.

These scriptures, out of many, will suffice to show that man is not
conscious in death:

"His breath goeth forth, he returneth to his earth; in that very day his
thoughts perish." Ps. 146:4.

"The living know that they shall die: but the dead know not anything....
Also their love, and their hatred, and their envy, is now perished;
neither have they any more a portion forever in anything that is done
under the sun." Eccl. 9:5, 6.

Death is a sleep, which will continue until the resurrection. Then the
Lord will bring forth from the dust the same person who was laid away in
death.

Some have said that this Bible doctrine of the sleep of the dead until
the resurrection is a gloomy one. Popular tradition thinks of the
blessed dead as going at once to heaven, which, say some, is a beautiful
thought. But they forget that the same teaching consigns their
unbelieving friends to immediate torment--and that, too, while awaiting
the judgment of the last day.

No; the Bible teaching is the cheering doctrine, the "blessed hope." All
the faithful of all the ages are going into the kingdom together. This
blessed truth appeals to the spirit that loves to wait and share joys
and good things with loved ones. Of the faithful of