What is death? What happens to the soul of the believer and of the unbeliever between death and the resurrection? These are questions that every Christian must be prepared to answer — both for his own comfort and for the comfort of those he loves. In this three-part series, Shaun Willcock works carefully through the Scriptures to establish what the Bible actually teaches about the intermediate state.
Part I lays the foundation: the certainty of death, the tripartite nature of man (spirit, soul, and body), and why a proper understanding of life is necessary before we can understand death. Parts II and III address the state of the soul of the believer and unbeliever respectively, refuting soul sleep, purgatory, and the false notion that Old Testament saints waited in a separate compartment before entering heaven. The series closes with a survey of what ends the intermediate state — the resurrection of the body and the final judgment.
Willcock opens with the certainty and universality of death, the gospel warning it carries, and the purpose of the series — to address the intermediate state which so many Christians understand poorly. He then grounds the discussion in a study of the nature of man as spirit, soul, and body, and the meaning of life as given in Genesis 2:7.
Where does the soul of the believer go at death? Willcock examines Abraham’s bosom in Luke 16, refutes the idea that Old Testament saints awaited a separate resting place, and dismantles both the Roman Catholic doctrine of purgatory and the Adventist teaching of soul sleep. The soul of the believer enters immediately into the very presence of the Lord.
The final part turns to the solemn state of the unbeliever’s soul at death — immediate, conscious torment in hell from the moment of death. Willcock draws out five features of hell from Luke 16, addresses the gospel imperative this truth creates, and concludes with the resurrection that ends the intermediate state for both the righteous and the wicked.