Gone to Sleep

By Tony Goudie

The Afterlife is as big a subject as ever.

‘The deepest darkness of the 20th century’ is one description of the horrors of the Second World War.

An estimated 60 million on all sides lost their lives – about 3% of the 2 billion 1939 world’s population, along with the millions injured and deeply traumatised.

How dreadful and staggering is that?

So can there be an understanding that can help that raw and tragic statistic take on a new and even somehow an encouraging perspective as we celebrate the final outcome of eventual victory in Europe in 1945 – VE day?

I believe there is.

Let me explain with a personal example.

I spend about a third of my life in my bed which is more time than I spend in any other place.

I expect you’re about the same.

That is quite a long time, about 25 years of my own life...

So all last year I spent about four months mostly ‘unconscious’ and this of course happens to us all of us to one degree or another each and every year since our birth.

Just as well it wasn’t all at once!

(But we know that sometimes sleep does not honour us with its presence.)

We would certainly die without our sleep and yet we usually take it for granted.

It is said that we need sleep about three times more than we need our food.

Clearly then, to us our day’s activities are the realities, and if we dream then our dreams can seem like fantasies, unless the occasional nightmare makes them feel all too real.

But let’s turn things round for a moment:

What if this life is the dream and the actual reality itself lies after our death?

Some religions liken death to sleeping.

Islam refers to sleep as ‘The little death.’

“Each night, when I go to sleep, I die, and the next morning, when I wake up, I am reborn.”

Mahtma Gandhi.

Is Death the end? It wasn't for Jesus.

So I wonder whether waking up each day could be similar to our own future Resurrection?

What could we say about death if we were to use a Biblical parallel?

Can the Bible tell us anything about death, about life after death, and what might happen between the two events that could be both encouraging and helpful for us to mull over as we think, especially of the recent 70th year celebration of VE day?

When our sleep is sweet and much needed after a hard day those hours seem to skim by as if in a moment.

Here the Bible makes a case in point:

When Ecclesiastes says ‘The dead know not anything’ could we first say that this is from our own position and that the departed have been removed from our own waking experience of this life?

(Eccl 9.5)

So perhaps that is only from our experience and not the departed?

We’re clearly still in ‘Time and Space’ and the dead now appear no longer seen in our dimension.

Ecclesiastes also says that ‘Their spirit has gone back to God who gave it’ (God as Owner not geography), leaving behind only their body that served them in this life.

(Eccl 12.7)

It would seem clear that our loved ones have been removed from this physical universe and are not to be found in the same way as before except in our love, in our memory, and in their memorabilia.

Therefore could it be that only from our physical experience are the dead sleeping and that their Resurrection lies in the future, but that being only as we experience our own time and life?

With that possibility in mind let us consider secondly the immediate experience of those who have just ‘left us’.

Could it be that we are the ones who are ‘left behind’?

English pastor Tony Goudie driving his point home.

Could it be that just as we sleep with the passage of time seemingly altered (7-8 hours usually going by as if in a flash) that those who die, because they are no longer subject to our human constraints, have from their perspective have their instant consciousness in another realm, in another spiritual dimension away from ours?

Is it then possible that from their perception they have not ‘missed a beat’ rather like we when we awake from a good night’s sleep?

The third position for us to consider would be from God’s perspective.

We could ask the question has God ‘lost’ the dead?

Is He ‘waiting’ for the Resurrection?

It would seem that the answer would be quite clear:

Jesus said that God is the God of the living, not the God of the dead.

(Matt 22.32)

So if it is so that God has our loved ones alive with Him in another Realm, with those we have lost immediately alive to themselves outside the restraints of this life, where then does that leave us?

Certainly we are now clearly alive now in Time and Space (‘Einstein’s Universe’) with the arrow of time pointing forwards and the dead asleep – but only as we view them.

So could it be that we are the ones waiting – not yet removed to the brilliant Reality that the Bible indicates is for all who hope for it (however Mankind might understand the Resurrection and Heaven).

So I believe the Biblical view of sleep has helpful and encouraging words for us all concerning those we have loved and lost at this time of our lives.

VE day has brought mixed emotions to us all, certainly for those who survived the horror on all sides and returned safely, but especially for the agony of millions of deaths, each individual so very personal to their loved ones.

Would it not be so very comforting through the mystery of sleep to see God’s plan and purpose being worked out here below, both for us still alive and for those who have departed this life?

How encouraging would that be?

Just thinking.

Sleep well tonight...