In Hebrew the abode of the dead is called Sheol (). The word Sheol has the same root as sh'elah , the word for "question" -- perhaps because the abode of the dead is The Big Question. Where are the dead? Or to word the question another way, Are the dead? That is, do the dead still exist in some state in the spiritual realm? Or do the dead simply cease to exist until the Return of the Lord, when they will be brought back into existence at the resurrection? Most Sunday Christians believe the former. Most 7th-day Sabbath-keeping Christians believe the latter. I am a Sabbath-keeper, but I believe the former. I do not believe that the righteous cease to exist when their bodies die. I am persuaded that the spirits of the righteous continue to live on in the presence of the Lord after the body dies.
  The question of the state of the dead should not be something that divides believers, because it makes no difference to the dead which view is correct. Either way, when the righteous die, their next conscious moment will be in the presence of the Lord, whether it happens the instant the body dies, or whether they have had to wait hundreds or thousands of years.
  Even though I am persuaded that the spirits of the righteous dead are still living, I can fellowship with believers who hold the opposite view. I do not insist that others embrace my view of this issue, because I do not consider it an essential to the faith. Unfortunately, some Sabbath-keepers who hold the opposite view do regard this question as an essential issue. They consider it a dangerous heresy to believe that the spirits of the righteous are now in the presence of the Lord, and they consider it their duty to persuade others to embrace their view.
  Why do so many Sabbath-keepers view this subject as something so vital to the faith? I am not sure, but I suspect it may be at least partly due to the writings of Ellen G. White, whose influence reaches into the Sabbath-keeping community beyond the boundaries of the SDA Church that claims her as its prophetess. Ellen White viewed this doctrine as one of "the two great errors" in Christianity. In her popular book The Great Controversy, she wrote: "Through the two great errors, the immortality of the soul and Sunday sacredness, Satan will bring the people under his deceptions. While the former lays the foundation for spiritualism, the latter creates a bond of sympathy with Rome" (pg. 588).
  Ellen White's concern about the doctrine of the immortality of the soul was directly linked to her concern about spiritualism. Spiritualism (also called necromancy) is an attempt by the living to contact the dead. This belief goes back to ancient times, of course. We have the account in the Bible of King Saul asking the witch of Endor to bring up the spirit ofSamuel from the dead. A revival of spiritualism came about in the mid-1800s, during the lifetime of Ellen G. White. Funk & Wagnalls New Encyclopedia, under "Spiritualism," says this: "About 1848 in the U.S., an alleged child medium, Margaret Fox (1833-93), was exploited by her sister and father and aroused sensational news stories that spurred the creation of a cult of spiritualism." The popularity of modern spiritualism grew and reached its peak in the United States during the years of Ellen G. White's ministry, which probably explains why she viewed belief in "the immortality of the soul" as one of "the two great errors" in Christianity.
  Spiritualism was deceiving many professing Christians in Ellen White's day. One way to deal with the problem was to teach Christians that the Bible condemns the practice. Ellen White and others went further, and said that communication with the dead is impossible because death is, in Ellen White's words, "the utter extinction of life" (The Great Controversy, pg. 533). This teaching thus pulled "the foundation for spiritualism" out from under those who were tempted to try to contact the dead.
  No doubt Ellen White and others had good intentions, but what they did was similar to what the rabbis did when they built a fence around the Torah -- going beyond what the Scripture says in order to protect the people from even getting close to sin. Spiritualism is sinful, of course, but the belief that the spirits of the dead are alive is not spiritualism, nor does it necessarily lead to spiritualism. There are multitudes of Bible-believing Protestants who believe in the immortality of the soul, yet these Christians make no attempt to communicate with the spirits of the dead, because they know the Bible condemns the practice. (Roman Catholics are another matter.)
  The fact that a belief or doctrine can be twisted and misused for evil is not a reason to reject that belief. Nor is the fact that pagans held a certain belief a reason to necessarily reject that belief. The pagan belief in the immortality of the soul is often put forth as a reason to reject the idea. While the pagans were wrong about many things, we cannot assume that they were wrong about every single thing they believed.
  This statement in Luke 20 certainly declares that the three Patriarchs are dead in a physical sense and await the resurrection of the body. However, these same verses also tell us that the three Patriarchs must now be living in some sense as well. If Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob were consigned to "the utter extinction of life" in every way, and were completely dead, spiritually as well as physically, then how could Yeshua say that the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob "is not a God of the dead, but of the living"? If He is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, then Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob obviously have to be "living" in some sense, even though their bodies are dead. When Yeshua ended His statement with the words "for all live [present tense; now] unto Him," to whom could He be referring except to "the [physically] dead," including Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob?

  The only legitimate reason to reject a belief or doctrine is because it contradicts what the Scriptures teach. And before some readers send me articles and books to try to persuade me that my view does contradict what the Scriptures teach, let me say this: I have already read and studied the arguments that SDAs and others put forth, and I am familiar with all the Scriptures they use in their arguments. I have nothing personal to gain or lose by holding one view or the other, so I think I have studied the arguments with an open mind. Yet they fail to convince me.
  I do not have space to address every single flaw in all the arguments I have read, nor do I feel that the subject is so important that I need to persuade everyone to embrace my view. I do want to briefly present my primary reason (though certainly not my only reason) for believing as I do. It is not necessarily my most convincing reason, but I am not trying to convince people to change their views. I just want my fellow Sabbath-keeping brethren to see that there are legitimate reasons to believe in the view that I hold. I am not trying to convince people to change their doctrine, but I am trying to convince people to allow for some liberty in how this subject is viewed.
  My primary reason for believing as I do rests on the definitions of "life" and "eternal life" (or, "everlasting life"). There is mere "life," possessed by all humans, which starts at birth and ends at the grave. Then there is eternal life, which is not synonymous with mere life. The Scriptures make it very clear that eternal life is something that we can now possess, before the Return of the Lord and the resurrection of the body. In John's Gospel there are several statements made by Yeshua which speak about people having eternal (or everlasting) life, and the verb "have" is in the present tense. Likewise in 1 John 5:11-13 it is clear that we can now, in this present age, possess eternal life: "And this is the record, that God hath given [past tense; it's already done] to us eternal life, and this life is in His Son. He that hath the Son hath [present tense; now] eternal life; and he that hath not the Son hath not life. These things have I written unto you that believe in the name of the Son of God; that ye may know that ye have [present tense; now] eternal life...."
  The above verses (and other passages) show that we do not have to wait until the Return of the Lord and the resurrection of our bodies to receive and possess eternal life. Our physical body dies, of course, and it will remain dead until the resurrection, because our physical body is not the part of our being that receives eternal life in this age. But that inward part of my being that has already received eternal life, and now possesses eternal life, cannot die. If that were the case, then the so-called "eternal life" that I now possess would not really be eternal. It would be temporary. To believe that physical death means "the utter extinction of life" is to believe that God gives us eternal life until our body dies, then takes away that so-called eternal life and withholds it from us until the Second Coming and the age to come. If the eternal life that I now possess is truly eternal, then it cannot end at physical death.
  What about Ecclesiastes 9:5, "the dead know not anything"? This is probably the one verse most often quoted by those who hold the opposite view. This verse is not a problem for me, though, because if my view is correct, then the only part of me that will ever be "dead" is my body -- and Ecclesiastes 9:5 is true, for my outer physical body won't know anything, for it will have experienced "the utter extinction of life" until the resurrection. The inward part of me that now has eternal life, however, will not be dead, and that part of me will know. If it is only the body that is "dead," then it is only the body that will "know not anything."
  This short article only touches the surface of this subject. We have not even gotten into the rich man and Lazarus (Lk. 16), which many want to dismiss as "just a parable." Even if we concede that the rich man and Lazarus were fictional characters in a parable, we still have in this story the most detailed description of the after-life to be found anywhere in the Scriptures, and this description came from the lips of our Lord. Whether the story is a parable or not, it contains Yeshua's vivid description of what happens to the righteous and to the unrighteous at death. If Yeshua's description is not a true picture of the after-life, then it would seem that He was misleading His listeners, and us as well.
  I do not wish to belabor the point. Let me close with this final thought. A few years ago I was having a good-natured discussion about this topic with a friend who disagrees with my view. I brought up Luke 20:37f: "Now that the dead are raised, even Moses shewed at the bush, when he calleth the Lord the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. For He is not a God of the dead, but of the living: for all live unto Him." "Are Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob dead or alive?" I asked. "We know that their bodies are dead and will remain dead until the resurrection, but are they, themselves, completely dead in every way?"