The Souls in Hades are Dead.
By R. F. Cottrell
By the term souls we understand persons. All that are in the state of death, whether buried in graves or in the ocean, or left unburied to mingle with the dust, are, in the Bible sense, in hades or sheol, the terms that are so frequently translated hell. But the faith most popular at the present time is, that hades, in the Greek and sheol in the Hebrew, is the place or receptacle of separate souls, i. e., of living, immortal souls separated by death from their mortal bodies. It is held that the body, at death, goes "down into silence" in the grave, but that the soul goes into hades alive—in full possession of its consciousness, all its faculties and all its knowledge. In Rev. xx, 13, we read, "And the sea gave up the dead which were in it; and death and hell (hades) gave up the dead which were in them." This testimony represents those in hades as being dead. To accommodate it to the popular faith it should represent death as delivering up the dead bodies, and hades as delivering up the living souls that were in it. But the testimony calls them dead. In the same chapter it is also said of the "souls of them that were beheaded for the witness of Jesus, and for the word of God," that "they lived and reigned with Christ a thousand years." But that "the rest of the dead lived not again until the thousand years were finished." This language fairly implies that these souls had been dead, but lived again, i. e., lived a second time. And if any language in the Bible represents souls as a separate entity from the body, it is found in the language of this text, viz., "the souls of them that were beheaded." But we have positive testimony concerning the state of things in hades or sheol, the place where all souls, both righteous and wicked, are represented as going at death. It is this: "There is no work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom, in the grave, (sheol or hades), whither thou goest." Eccl. ix, 10. Thus it is positively asserted that there is no knowledge in the place to which souls go at death, and from which they come forth at the resurrection. (See Ps. xvi, 10; Acts ii, 25-31.) Hence it is asserted in the same chapter that "the dead know not anything." Verse 5. Since it is positively asserted by the Spirit of inspiration, that there is no knowledge in sheol or hades, it follows as an unavoidable conclusion that the language of those passages which represent the inhabitants of that dark region of silence as living, speaking and suffering, is figurative, attributing life and speech to that which is dead and silent. Luke xvi, 23, 24; Eze. xxxii, 21, 27; Isa. xiv, 9, 10. The following are examples of this figure of speech: "The voice of thy brother's blood crieth unto me from the ground." Gen. iv, 10. "For the stone shall cry out of the wall and the beam out of the timber shall answer it." Hab. ii, 11. "Behold the hire of the laborers who have reaped down your fields, which is of you kept back by fraud, crieth." James v, 4. If we are to understand, from the parable of the rich man and Lazarus, that those who are in hades do, in reality, suffer torment there and talk with the blessed across the impassable gulf, then the Bible clearly contradicts itself—a thing which I shall not admit;—for, as we have seen, it is positively asserted that "there is no work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom," in that place.