Him" in an indefinite present. I say indefinite, because Jesus, in his discourse with the Sadducees, did not define the time of their resurrection, but simply affirmed "they all live to Him." But, can it be inferred when? Truly yes; when he becomes their Elohim; so that, as Paul says, "Deity, who makes the dead ones living, calls the things not existing, as though existing—τα μη οντα, ως οντα"—(Rom. iv. 17).
David, one of the prophets, speaks copiously of resurrection in the Psalms. The word is not found there, but the thing itself very frequently is. He treats of the resurrection of his descendant, the Christ, from among the dead; to the end that He may reign King in Zion as the sovereign ruler of the world. He teaches this in the second Psalm. "In death," he says, "there is no remembrance of the Deity" (Psalm vi. 5), and "the dead praise not the Lord, neither any that go down into silence" (Psalm cxv. 17); "the living know that they shall die, but the dead know not anything: their love, and their hatred, and their envy, are now perished:" hence, "there is no work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom in Sheol, whither thou goest" (Eccles. ix. 5, 6, 10). This Sheol is styled in Job x. 22, "the land of darkness;" and in Psalm lxxxviii. 12, "the land of forgetfulness;" and in Psalm xxx. 3, and many other places, "the grave."
Thus the Scriptures speak of the Death-State into which all go when they depart from among the living. While "in death" they are said to sleep. From this sleep some never awake; which is equivalent to saying that they are never the subject of resurrection. This is evident from Jer. li. 57, where, speaking of the princes, wise men, captains, rulers, and mighty ones of Babylon, the Eternal Spirit saith "they shall sleep a perpetual sleep, and not wake": and Isaiah speaking of the same class, says, "They are dead, they shall not live; they arc deceased, they shall not rise; therefore, hast Thou visited and destroyed them, and made all their memory to perish" (xxvi. 14); so that "the man that wandereth out of the way of understanding shall remain in the congregation of the dead" (Prov. xxi. 16): a decree of very extensive application.
But all dead ones in the grave shall not sleep the sleep of death perpetually. "The wicked shall be turned unto sheol, all the nations that forget God; but the needy shall not always be forgotten; the expectation of the poor shall not perish for ever" (Psalm ix. 17–18). These poor and needy are those dead ones, who, while living, "obtained a good report through that faith, which is the full assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen" (Heb. xi. 1, 39, 40). These are they styled by David in the
