State of the Dead & HellCheat Sheet

Read it slowly: God formed man of dust, breathed in “the breath of life”, “and man became a living soul” (Genesis 2:7). Adam was not given a soul; he became one. Dust plus breath equals a living person. The same Hebrew phrase, nephesh chayyah, is used of the animals (“living creature,” Genesis 1:20, 24), and Revelation speaks of “every living soul” in the sea dying (Revelation 16:3). See side note 4 →

Finish the verse: “fear him which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell.” The soul can be destroyed — by God. The Greek psychē here means life: men can take this life, but only God can take away the life to come, which He will restore at the resurrection to all who are His. Luke’s account of the same saying has no soul language at all: “Fear him, which after he hath killed hath power to cast into hell” (Luke 12:5).

Paul contrasts three conditions: clothed in this mortal body, “unclothed” (dead), and “clothed upon” with the resurrection body. And he says plainly which he wants: “not for that we would be unclothed, but clothed upon, that mortality might be swallowed up of life” (v. 4). That swallowing up happens at the last trumpet (1 Corinthians 15:51-54). Verse 8 states his preference, not a timetable — and two verses earlier he places the meeting at the resurrection: “he which raised up the Lord Jesus shall raise up us also by Jesus, and shall present us with you” (2 Corinthians 4:14).

Paul states his desire, not what happens in between. For the one who dies, the next conscious moment is the resurrection, so departing and being with Christ feel immediate. Paul’s own timeline is clear elsewhere: the crown is laid up “which the Lord, the righteous judge, shall give me at that day: and not to me only, but unto all them also that love his appearing” (2 Timothy 4:8), and he looks for the Saviour who “shall change our vile body” at His coming (Philippians 3:20-21).

The “spirit” (ruach) is the breath of life God gave — Job calls it “the spirit of God … in my nostrils” (Job 27:3). Animals have the same: “they have all one breath” (Ecclesiastes 3:19). And it returns to God from the wicked as well as the righteous, so it cannot be a conscious person going to heaven. Genesis 2:7 runs in reverse: the dust goes back to the earth, the breath goes back to God, and the living soul ceases — “in that very day his thoughts perish” (Psalm 146:4).

“As her soul was in departing, (for she died)” — her life was leaving her. When Elijah prayed for the widow’s son, “the soul of the child came into him again, and he revived” (1 Kings 17:22). He came back to life; he did not come back from somewhere, and he brought no report of another world.

Read the next three verses: “the dead in Christ shall rise first: Then we which are alive … shall be caught up together with them … to meet the Lord in the air” (vv. 16-17). God brings them with Jesus by raising them as He raised Jesus. Paul calls them “them also which sleep in Jesus” (v. 14) and “them which are asleep” (v. 15) — and he gives this, not a heavenly soul, as the comfort: “so shall we ever be with the Lord” (v. 17).

The passage begins “But ye are come unto mount Sion” (v. 22) — it describes what living believers on earth have come to by faith, not a roll call of the dead. One chapter earlier, the same writer says the faithful dead “received not the promise … that they without us should not be made perfect” (Hebrews 11:39-40). Their perfecting is still future; it comes when all the saved are raised together.

The image of God is real — we bear His likeness in form and character, as Seth bore Adam’s (Genesis 5:3). But Scripture never lists immortality as part of that image. God “only hath immortality” (1 Timothy 6:16); we are told to “seek for … immortality” (Romans 2:7). After the fall God barred the tree of life “lest he … eat, and live for ever” (Genesis 3:22). There are no immortal sinners.

Jesus quoted Psalm 31:5 — “Into thine hand I commit my spirit” — a prayer David prayed while very much alive. It entrusts one’s life to God for safe keeping. And notice how Luke ends Stephen’s story: after he prayed, “he fell asleep” (Acts 7:60).

This was a vision during Paul’s lifetime — he introduces it as “visions and revelations of the Lord” (v. 1) — not an account of death. And Paul twice says he does not know which it was: “whether in the body, I cannot tell; or whether out of the body, I cannot tell: God knoweth” (v. 2). A text that leaves the question open cannot settle it.

They did think so — it was the popular belief of the day. And Jesus corrected it, not confirmed it: “Behold my hands and my feet, that it is I myself: handle me, and see; for a spirit hath not flesh and bones, as ye see me have” (Luke 24:39). The risen Christ proved He was not a disembodied spirit; the hope He showed them was a body raised from the grave.

Those who say so usually quote Ecclesiastes 12:7 from the same book. And the same teaching runs through the Psalms, Job, and Isaiah: “in death there is no remembrance of thee” (Psalm 6:5); “The dead praise not the LORD” (Psalm 115:17); “the grave cannot praise thee” (Isaiah 38:18); “So man lieth down, and riseth not … nor be raised out of their sleep” until the heavens be no more (Job 14:12). “Under the sun” is simply the realm of earthly life — the very thing the dead no longer share (Ecclesiastes 9:6).

It comes in a run of stories Jesus told to the Pharisees (Luke 15:3; 16:1), and read literally it cannot work: the “souls” have eyes, a tongue, and a finger; heaven and hell are within talking distance; Abraham’s bosom holds everyone saved; a drop of water would cool a man in flame. More importantly, it would contradict Jesus Himself on timing: the reward comes “when the Son of man shall come … and then he shall reward every man” (Matthew 16:27); the dead come out of their graves at His voice (John 5:28-29); God knows how “to reserve the unjust unto the day of judgment to be punished” (2 Peter 2:9).

Jesus used a picture His hearers knew to make a moral point: riches and religious privilege are no guarantee, the reversal is final, and “If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded, though one rose from the dead” (v. 31). Moses and the prophets teach that the dead know nothing. And Jesus then raised a real Lazarus — and the leaders plotted to kill him too (John 12:10).

Jesus did not go to paradise that day. He lay in the tomb, and on Sunday morning He said, “I am not yet ascended to my Father” (John 20:17). Paradise is where the tree of life is, “in the midst of the paradise of God” (Revelation 2:7). And the thief had asked about a future time: “remember me when thou comest into thy kingdom” (v. 42).

The original Greek had no punctuation; the comma is the translators’. Read “Verily I say unto thee to day, shalt thou be with me in paradise,” and the promise fits everything else: on the darkest day, when Jesus looked least like a king, He gave His word. Scripture uses the same emphatic “this day” elsewhere: “I denounce unto you this day” (Deuteronomy 30:18).

This is a symbolic vision. The blood of sacrifices was poured out “at the bottom of the altar” (Leviticus 4:7), and the martyrs’ lives were poured out the same way. Their crying is like Abel’s: “the voice of thy brother’s blood crieth unto me from the ground” (Genesis 4:10). And they are told to “rest yet for a little season” (Revelation 6:11) — not enjoying heaven, but waiting for justice.

Neither visitor was a disembodied soul. Elijah was taken up without dying (2 Kings 2:11). Moses died — but Michael disputed with the devil “about the body of Moses” (Jude 9) — a dispute over his body that points to his resurrection. The Transfiguration shows the two ways into the kingdom: resurrection and translation.

God had already refused to answer Saul “neither by dreams, nor by Urim, nor by prophets” (v. 6) — He would not then answer through a medium He had forbidden. Saul saw nothing; the woman saw “gods ascending out of the earth” (v. 13) — up from below, not down from heaven. The “Samuel” said Saul and his sons would be “with me” tomorrow (v. 19): the wicked king and the prophet in the same place — the grave. Scripture records that Saul died “for asking counsel of one that had a familiar spirit” (1 Chronicles 10:13).

Read the next verse: the spirits were those “which sometime were disobedient, when once the longsuffering of God waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was a preparing” (v. 20). Christ preached to them then, by His Spirit through Noah, “a preacher of righteousness” (2 Peter 2:5) — the same “Spirit of Christ” that spoke in the prophets (1 Peter 1:11). Scripture calls people bound by sin prisoners (Isaiah 61:1). Nothing here describes Christ touring an underworld between His death and resurrection.

Preached to them while they lived, and they are now dead. The verse before speaks of God judging “the quick and the dead” (v. 5) — those alive at His coming and those who have died. No second chance after death is in view.

Look at what Jesus was proving: “Now that the dead are raised, even Moses shewed at the bush” (Luke 20:37). The argument is for the resurrection, against the Sadducees who denied it. If Abraham were already alive in heaven, the argument would prove nothing about a resurrection. To God the dead are as good as alive because He will raise them — He “calleth those things which be not as though they were” (Romans 4:17).

They did — bodily, without dying. “Enoch was translated that he should not see death” (Hebrews 11:5). These are exceptions that prove the rule: when Scripture describes someone in heaven, it is a whole person with a body, never a soul set loose by death.

Revelation shows scenes of the future as though present — the redeemed after the resurrection, in robes washed white. Of those who die now, the same book says “Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord … that they may rest from their labours” (Revelation 14:13).

The “witnesses” are the heroes of Hebrews 11, and they witness by their testimony, not by watching from the stands. The chapter says of them, “These all died in faith, not having received the promises” (Hebrews 11:13).

Isaiah calls the passage a “proverb against the king of Babylon” (v. 4) — a taunt song. In the same song the fir trees and cedars speak (v. 8). It is vivid poetry, personifying the grave, not a report on the afterlife.

In the same breath He said, “he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live” (v. 25). Believers do die; they will never die the second death, from which there is no return (Revelation 2:11). In the same chapter Jesus called Lazarus’s death sleep — “Our friend Lazarus sleepeth” — then said plainly, “Lazarus is dead” (vv. 11, 14), and Martha placed the hope “in the resurrection at the last day” (v. 24).

David uses the same phrase of the womb: “curiously wrought in the lowest parts of the earth” (Psalm 139:15). Christ came down — into our flesh, and into the grave — and ascended. Peter explains that His soul was not left in hell (Hades, the grave), “neither his flesh did see corruption” (Acts 2:31): His body did not decay in the tomb.

The verse gives the order of events, not the timing: first death, then judgment. When is the judgment? God “hath appointed a day, in the which he will judge the world” (Acts 17:31), and Christ judges “the quick and the dead at his appearing” (2 Timothy 4:1).

They did — “the graves were opened; and many bodies of the saints which slept arose”. Notice the words: their bodies slept, and they were raised bodily. The passage is evidence for the resurrection, not for souls living apart from bodies.

The punishment is everlasting; the question is what the punishment is. Scripture answers: “the wages of sin is death” (Romans 6:23); “everlasting destruction” (2 Thessalonians 1:9). A death that is never reversed is an everlasting punishment. The New Testament speaks the same way of “eternal judgment” (Hebrews 6:2) and “eternal redemption” (Hebrews 9:12) — eternal in result, not a process that never ends. Life forever and death forever stand side by side in the verse, equally final.

The fire is everlasting in its effect, like Sodom’s “eternal fire”, which is no longer burning (Jude 7). See objection 6 → And the devil it was prepared for is not to be kept alive in it: Christ died “that through death he might destroy him that had the power of death, that is, the devil” (Hebrews 2:14).

Jesus is quoting Isaiah’s last verse, and Isaiah describes “the carcases of the men that have transgressed against me” (Isaiah 66:24) — dead bodies, not living souls. Worms and fire consume what is dead. An unquenchable fire is one nobody can put out, not one that never goes out: God warned He would kindle in Jerusalem “a fire … and it shall not be quenched” (Jeremiah 17:27). It burned the city (2 Chronicles 36:19) — and it is not burning today.

John is borrowing Isaiah’s words about Edom: “It shall not be quenched night nor day; the smoke thereof shall go up for ever” (Isaiah 34:10). Yet the next verses have owls, ravens, and wild beasts living in Edom’s ruins (34:11-15). The smoke is the lasting memorial of a finished judgment. Revelation does the same with Babylon: she is “found no more at all” (18:21), and still “her smoke rose up for ever and ever” (19:3).

This is the hardest text, and it deserves an honest answer. It is in the most symbolic book of the Bible, and two of the three cast in — the beast and the false prophet — are symbols of systems, not individual persons. The same chapter defines the lake of fire: “This is the second death” (v. 14). The “day and night … for ever” language echoes Isaiah 34, whose fire ended in ruins. See objection 4 →

And the rest of Scripture describes the end: of the covering cherub God says, “I will bring thee to ashes upon the earth … and never shalt thou be any more” (Ezekiel 28:18-19). Two chapters later Revelation says “there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain” (Revelation 21:4) — no corner of creation left burning.

Sodom is the example, and Peter tells us what the example looks like: God turned “the cities of Sodom and Gomorrha into ashes … making them an ensample unto those that after should live ungodly” (2 Peter 2:6). Sodom was “overthrown as in a moment” (Lamentations 4:6). Its fire was eternal in its result; it is not burning today.

The Hebrew word for “contempt” appears only one other time — in Isaiah’s last verse, where the carcases “shall be an abhorring unto all flesh” (Isaiah 66:24). The contempt is what others feel toward what is left, forever; it is not a sensation the dead feel.

Read the verb: He will “burn up the chaff”. Chaff in an unquenchable fire does not last forever; it is consumed. Of another such fire Isaiah says, “there shall not be a coal to warm at, nor fire to sit before it” (Isaiah 47:14). The day “shall burn them up … that it shall leave them neither root nor branch” (Malachi 4:1).

Read the whole phrase: “punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord”. The punishment named is destruction. And the Psalms describe the same presence consuming the wicked: “as wax melteth before the fire, so let the wicked perish at the presence of God” (Psalm 68:2).

Jesus tells when it happens: “when ye shall see Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, and all the prophets, in the kingdom of God, and you yourselves thrust out” (Luke 13:28). Gnashing of teeth in Scripture is rage — the wicked “gnasheth upon him with his teeth” (Psalm 37:12); Stephen’s accusers “gnashed on him with their teeth” (Acts 7:54). It describes the moment of loss and judgment, not an endless state.

Not in Scripture’s own usage. “For ever” lasts as long as the subject can last. A servant whose ear was bored would “serve him for ever” (Exodus 21:6) — for life. Hannah brought Samuel to the temple to “abide for ever” (1 Samuel 1:22) — for his life. Jonah said “the earth with her bars was about me for ever” (Jonah 2:6) — three days. Phinehas received “an everlasting priesthood” (Numbers 25:13), and the Levitical priesthood has ended. When God’s own life is meant, it is endless; when a fire on the wicked is meant, it lasts until its work is done.

Read the answer in the next verse: “He that walketh righteously, and speaketh uprightly” (Isaiah 33:15). The everlasting burnings are God Himself — “our God is a consuming fire” (Hebrews 12:29) — and the righteous are the ones who can dwell with Him. The verse is not about the lost at all.

Scripture puts the fire in the future: God knows how “to reserve the unjust unto the day of judgment to be punished” (2 Peter 2:9); the heavens and earth are “reserved unto fire against the day of judgment and perdition of ungodly men” (2 Peter 3:7). When it comes, it comes on the earth: “the righteous shall be recompensed in the earth: much more the wicked and the sinner” (Proverbs 11:31); fire “came down from God out of heaven, and devoured them” (Revelation 20:9).

The word here is tartarus, used only once in the Bible, and Peter explains it: “delivered them into chains of darkness, to be reserved unto judgment”. It describes restraint awaiting a future judgment — no flames are mentioned. Jude says the same: “reserved in everlasting chains under darkness unto the judgment of the great day” (Jude 6).

The punishment is real and it is just: the dead are judged “every man according to their works” (Revelation 20:13), and some are “beaten with many stripes”, others with few (Luke 12:47-48). Then comes the loss of everything: “what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?” (Matthew 16:26). And fear was never meant to be the reason to be good: “the goodness of God leadeth thee to repentance” (Romans 2:4).

Scripture measures punishment by deeds, not by a formula about infinity. And it shows what the penalty for sin is by what Christ paid: He “poured out his soul unto death” (Isaiah 53:12); He tasted “death for every man” (Hebrews 2:9); “Christ died for our sins” (1 Corinthians 15:3). If the penalty were endless conscious torment, the Son did not pay it. If the penalty is death, He paid it in full.

God tells us how He feels about it: “I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked; but that the wicked turn from his way and live” (Ezekiel 33:11); “he doth not afflict willingly” (Lamentations 3:33). Judgment is His “strange work … his strange act” (Isaiah 28:21). A God who kept billions alive forever in order to torment them would not be the God Scripture describes.

How repugnant to every emotion of love and mercy, and even to our sense of justice, is the doctrine that the wicked dead are tormented with fire and brimstone in an eternally burning hell; that for the sins of a brief earthly life they are to suffer torture as long as God shall live.

For judgment in the open. Jesus spoke of two resurrections: “they that have done good, unto the resurrection of life; and they that have done evil, unto the resurrection of damnation” (John 5:29). Every case is opened before all of God’s creatures, and “every knee” bows and confesses that He is just (Philippians 2:10-11) before sin is ended for good.

Not by count. The word gehenna appears twelve times in the New Testament — eleven on Jesus’ lips and once in James — while He spoke of the kingdom of heaven and the kingdom of God constantly. And when He did speak of gehenna, He spoke of destruction: “destroy both soul and body in hell” (Matthew 10:28). See side note 12 →

Agreement is not proof; it may point to a common source. The first sermon on the soul that cannot die was preached in Eden: “Ye shall not surely die” (Genesis 3:4). The one who preached it “deceiveth the whole world” (Revelation 12:9). The Bible’s hope is different from all the others: not a soul that escapes the body, but the dead raised. The Three Signs of a False Religion traces that first lie through the world’s religions.

It is a Bible teaching, and Christians of many traditions have held it — from early writers in the second century to respected evangelical scholars today. The test is not who else believes it but what Scripture says: “the wicked shall perish … into smoke shall they consume away” (Psalm 37:20); “they shall be as though they had not been” (Obadiah 16). See history 5 →

God is love, and love does not force itself on anyone. Scripture is plain that not all will accept it: “he that believeth not the Son shall not see life” (John 3:36); the unbelieving and the abominable “shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone: which is the second death” (Revelation 21:8). The Bible’s answer to endless torment is not that everyone is saved; it is that the lost are not kept alive in agony forever.

Only God “hath immortality” (1 Timothy 6:16); every creature lives because He sustains it. Christ came “that through death he might destroy … the devil” (Hebrews 2:14), and of the covering cherub God says, “never shalt thou be any more” (Ezekiel 28:19).

“The blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin” (1 John 1:7) — nothing is left for a fire after death to finish. 1 Corinthians 3 describes a man’s works being tried on “the day” of judgment (v. 13), not souls being purged in the meantime. The main text for praying the dead out of their sins is 2 Maccabees 12, which is not part of the Hebrew Scriptures (see What About the Apocrypha?).

David prayed and fasted while his child was alive, and stopped when he died: “now he is dead, wherefore should I fast? can I bring him back again? I shall go to him, but he shall not return to me” (2 Samuel 12:23). The dead have no more portion in anything done under the sun (Ecclesiastes 9:6); our prayers are for the living.

“There is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus” (1 Timothy 2:5), who “ever liveth to make intercession for them” (Hebrews 7:25). The dead “know not any thing” (Ecclesiastes 9:5). The “prayers of saints” offered in Revelation 5:8 are the prayers of God’s people on earth.

Nearly dying is not dying; a brain in crisis can experience many things. Lazarus was dead four days and brought back no report of heaven (John 11). And Scripture warns that “Satan himself is transformed into an angel of light” (2 Corinthians 11:14). An experience that contradicts “the dead know not any thing” must yield to the Word.

Grief is real, and so is this danger. If the dead know nothing, then whatever appears in their likeness is not them. Scripture names the source: “the spirits of devils, working miracles” (Revelation 16:14). That is why God forbade consulting the dead (Deuteronomy 18:10-12): “should not a people seek unto their God? for the living to the dead? To the law and to the testimony” (Isaiah 8:19-20). The truth about death is a shield for the grieving.

“It is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment” (Hebrews 9:27). “He that goeth down to the grave shall come up no more. He shall return no more to his house” (Job 7:9-10) — until the resurrection. When the disciples asked whether a man was born blind for his own sin, Jesus answered, “Neither hath this man sinned, nor his parents” (John 9:3).

The angel explained in what sense: John would go “in the spirit and power of Elias” (Luke 1:17) — with the same mission and boldness. Asked directly, “Art thou Elias?”, John answered, “I am not” (John 1:21).

The body returns to dust, the breath of life returns to God, and the person rests in the grave — “the grave is mine house” (Job 17:13) — until the voice of Christ: “all that are in the graves shall hear his voice, and shall come forth” (John 5:28-29). For the believer, the next thing they know is the resurrection morning, “in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye” (1 Corinthians 15:52).

Sheol (Hebrew) is the grave, where righteous and wicked alike go — Jacob expected to go there mourning for Joseph (Genesis 37:35). Hades (Greek) is the same word in the New Testament; Christ’s soul was not left in it, His flesh did not decay (Acts 2:31). Gehenna is the Valley of Hinnom outside Jerusalem, where children had been burned to idols and which Jeremiah called “the valley of slaughter”, full of carcases (Jeremiah 7:31-33) — the picture of the final fire on the wicked. Tartarus, once only, is the restraint of fallen angels awaiting judgment (2 Peter 2:4). See side note 12 →

From Greek philosophy. Plato has Socrates conclude on the day of his death:

Then, Cebes, beyond question the soul is immortal and imperishable, and our souls will truly exist in another world!

A standard Jewish reference work traces the belief the same way:

The belief that the soul continues its existence after the dissolution of the body is a matter of philosophical or theological speculation rather than of simple faith, and is accordingly nowhere expressly taught in Holy Scripture. … The belief in the immortality of the soul came to the Jews from contact with Greek thought and chiefly through the philosophy of Plato, its principal exponent.

The doctrine of natural immortality, first borrowed from the pagan philosophy, and in the darkness of the great apostasy incorporated into the Christian faith, has supplanted the truth, so plainly taught in Scripture, that “the dead know not anything.”

Not at first. Around A.D. 155 Justin Martyr warned against people who replaced the resurrection with souls going to heaven:

…who say there is no resurrection of the dead, and that their souls, when they die, are taken to heaven; do not imagine that they are Christians.

(In fairness, Justin believed souls waited somewhere until the judgment; but he taught that the soul lives only because God wills it to live — not by nature — and he would not let anything replace the resurrection.) A generation later, Tertullian openly reached for Plato:

I may use, therefore, the opinion of a Plato, when he declares, Every soul is immortal.

And some still held that the lost are finally consumed:

For they are cast in, and being annihilated, pass away vainly in everlasting destruction.

It became fixed in official teaching over centuries. In 1513 the Fifth Lateran Council, answering philosophers who were questioning it, declared:

…we condemn and reject all those who insist that the intellectual soul is mortal … For the soul … is also immortal.

Rome teaches it today, together with an eternal hell that begins at death:

The Church teaches that every spiritual soul is created immediately by God … and also that it is immortal: it does not perish when it separates from the body at death.

Immediately after death the souls of those who die in a state of mortal sin descend into hell, where they suffer the punishments of hell, ‘eternal fire.’

Not all. When Thomas More charged that Tyndale taught souls “sleep till doomsday,” Tyndale answered:

And ye, in putting them in heaven, hell, and purgatory, destroy the arguments wherewith Christ and Paul prove the resurrection. … The heathen philosophers, denying that, did put that the souls did ever live. And the pope joineth the spiritual doctrine of Christ and the fleshly doctrine of philosophers together. … And again, if the souls be in heaven, tell me why they be not in as good case as the angels be? And then what cause is there of the resurrection?

Martin Luther, lecturing on Ecclesiastes 9, said:

Solomon therefore held that the dead sleep entirely and feel nothing at all. The dead lie there, not counting days or years, but when awakened they will seem to themselves to have slept scarcely a moment.

(Luther was not consistent — in later lectures he described the soul as awake — but he repeatedly called death a sleep, and he called Ecclesiastes 9:5 the strongest text against praying to the saints and against purgatory.)

Many have doubted it. One of the best-known evangelical leaders of the twentieth century, John Stott, wrote:

Well, emotionally, I find the concept intolerable and do not understand how people can live with it without either cauterizing their feelings or cracking under the strain. … I also believe that the ultimate annihilation of the wicked should at least be accepted as a legitimate, biblically founded alternative to their eternal conscious torment.

(He held the view tentatively, and said so.) And the New Testament scholar Oscar Cullmann set the Greek and biblical pictures of death side by side:

With sublime calm Socrates drinks the hemlock; but Jesus … cries: ‘My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?’ … Whoever paints a pretty death can paint no resurrection.

The Westminster Confession (1646) does say so:

The bodies of men, after death, return to dust, and see corruption; but their souls (which neither die nor sleep), having an immortal subsistence, immediately return to God who gave them.

But a confession is only as strong as its texts. Scripture says the opposite in so many words: “the dead know not any thing” (Ecclesiastes 9:5); “David is not ascended into the heavens” (Acts 2:34). The Reformers’ own rule — the Bible only — carried all the way through, leads back to the sleep of death and the hope of the resurrection.