"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 past ages the
apostle says:

"These all, having obtained a good report through faith, received not
the promise: God having provided some better thing for us, that they
without us should not be made perfect." Heb. 11:39, 40.

They are waiting, that all together the saved may enter in. And the time
of waiting is but an instant to those who "sleep in Jesus."