"Not Dead But Asleep"

Just after a woman was healed of her relentless bleeding by touching the clothing of Jesus, he is told that the daughter of Jairus, the synagogue ruler, has died (Mark 5:35-36).  He visits the girl's house along with Peter, James, and John, insisting to the laughter of onlookers that "'The child is not dead but asleep'" (Mark 5:39).  Jesus then privately restores the girl of 12 years of age to life.  He says to her, "'Little girl, I say to you, get up!'" (5:41), and she awakens from the "sleep" of death.  Lazarus of John 11:11-13 is also said to be asleep after he dies prior to his own resurrection by Jesus. 

Jesus resurrects multiple people before his own death--and none of them mention a hellish or blissful experience after they died.  While the Bible teaches that there is a hell (Matthew 10:28) and a heaven, which have very different natures and purposes than many Christians have thought throughout history, it also teaches that the dead are asleep or nonexistent on the level of consciousness until their resurrection to eternal life or to judgment and eventual eternal death (Daniel 12:2, Revelation 20:11-15).  Jesus himself repeatedly refers to the dead he raises in the gospel accounts as asleep even though he clarifies at times that they really are dead.

1 Thessalonians 4:13 sees Paul also call dead Christians asleep in death, so, as if Job 3:1-19, Ecclesiastes 9:3-10, and Jesus were not already very clear that those who die are not conscious before God brings them back to bodily life at the general resurrections.  For clarification, Job 3 and Ecclesiastes 9 describe the immediate state after death as a total lack of perception.  It is not just that the Bible does not provide any details hinting at an elaborate process of torture or a foretaste of heaven before the final judgment, but it is also the case that the Bible very blatantly and repeatedly says that the dead are sleeping before resurrection.  They have no conscious experiences even if their minds still exist in the interim.

That Jesus tells the thief crucified beside him that he will see paradise that very day (Luke 23:43) and that Paul says that to biologically die is to be present with Christ (Philippians 1:22-24) do not contradict any of these other Biblical teachings.  For either a sleeping or nonexistent mind, there is no experience in between death and a later resurrection even if the latter came aeons later.  It would be perceived as if the mind in question was to blink and then be before God with its body.  This would also be true of the wicked or unsaved.  They would die, be raised in what might to them seem like an instantaneous transition, and be before God in bodies of their own, resurrected for the permanent second death because they are not given eternal life (John 3:16).

James 2:26 says that the body without the spirit is dead.  This is still true if the consciousness of a person literally dies until God revives them at the resurrection.  Billions of years could have passed, and they would experience nothing even if their mind existed in a dreamless sleep for that entire duration.  It is clear that there is no Biblical doctrine which actually contradicts the logical possibility of "soul sleep," as some call it, and that the Bible really does teach it just as it teaches that true justice for fallen humans is nonexistence (Ezekiel 18:4) and that heaven is not an immaterial place (Revelation 21-22).