The Final Enemy- Understanding Death through the Eyes of Experience

 

 

October 27, 2014. That day split our life in two. There was the life we lived before that day, and the one we’ve lived ever since. I remember sitting in that cold hospital waiting room, heart pounding, mind foggy, praying words I couldn’t even find. I didn’t know it at the time, but just down the hallway, Steve—my husband, my anchor, my Steve—was dying. Not once. But Four times. Four. The longest of those was forty minutes.

He flatlined. No breath. No heartbeat. No blinking. No awareness. The medical team was rushing, working with urgency to keep his body alive just long enough to insert two stents—one in each main artery. His heart had betrayed him, but God had not.

Now, Steve doesn’t remember any of it. And that’s what changed everything.

After he was revived, I asked him, “Do you remember anything? A light, a tunnel, floating above your body?” He looked at me with such calm and said, “No. Nothing. I wasn’t aware of anything at all. It was just like the deepest sleep I’ve ever had.”

And when he said that, Ecclesiastes 9:5 took on flesh and blood: “For the living know that they will die, but the dead know nothing.” Not “know something in a different realm,” not “float around watching,” but nothing.

In Hebrew, that word “know” is yadaʿ, which means to perceive, recognize, be aware, or experience. It doesn’t mean facts stored in a mental vault. It means to be consciously aware, involved, responsive. And Ecclesiastes says the dead don’t yadaʿ. Their senses? Silent. Their awareness? Gone. Their participation in time and space? Stopped.

The Bible never describes death as ongoing consciousness in another realm. Not once. It says, again and again, that death is sleep. Not just metaphorically, but functionally. Yashen, the Hebrew word for sleep, is often used of death, and always in a state of complete stillness. No thoughts. No emotions. No memories. Nothing happening until something wakes them.

The prophet Daniel wrote it straight in Daniel 12:2: “Many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt.” He didn’t say “many who are already in heaven or Gehenna.” He said they’re asleep in the dust. Yashen ʿad-ʿaphar—asleep in the ground. Oblivious until the resurrection.

When Steve was lying there, clinically dead, he wasn't floating around above the operating table or being led by angels into heaven. He was gone. The soul, which is not some floating ghost-like part of us, but the totality of the living person, had ceased functioning. Genesis 2:7 tells us what a soul is: “And YHWH Elohim formed the man from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.”

Not that he received a soul. He became one. The Hebrew is precise here: nephesh chayah—a living, breathing creature. Dust + breath = living being. Remove the breath (neshamah, or sometimes ruach) and you’re left with a corpse. No immortal soul floating off. Just silence.

Steve didn’t “go somewhere.” His breath returned to God—Ecclesiastes 12:7 says it best: “Then the dust returns to the earth as it was, and the spirit (ruach) returns to God who gave it.” That breath, that animating force, is not a conscious soul. It’s life itself. And when it leaves the body, the soul—nephesh—no longer exists. It’s asleep. Oblivion.

Psalm 146:4 says, “His breath goes forth, he returns to his earth; in that very day his thoughts perish.” The word for “thoughts” there is eshtonoth, meaning plans, intentions, consciousness. Gone. Perished. Just like Steve. Until the doctors brought him back, he had no idea he’d ever left.

We’ve been told so many ideas about death that just aren’t in Scripture. We’ve borrowed traditions, poetry, and pagan philosophy. But the Word says death is sleep. The Greek lines up perfectly too. In the New Testament, Jesus Himself uses the word koimaō, which means “to fall asleep.” He used it for Jairus’s daughter. For Lazarus. For all the dead. Paul picks it up and uses it repeatedly in 1 Corinthians 15. He even uses the phrase “we shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed.” (1 Corinthians 15:51)

We don’t stay asleep. That’s the difference. We’re not trapped in death. That’s why 1 Thessalonians 4:13-14 says we don’t sorrow like others who have no hope. Why? Because “those who sleep in Jesus will God bring with Him.” The dead in Christ will rise. Not float. Not linger in another realm. They will rise.

And that’s what gives all this meaning. Steve’s forty minutes of death taught us something that no theology class ever could. Death is nothingness. Oblivion. But it isn’t the end.

If Jesus had not been raised, Steve’s story would have ended in that hospital. That would’ve been the end of our marriage, his purpose, our time. But because Jesus rose, death is not a period. It’s a comma.

Paul called death “the last enemy” in 1 Corinthians 15:26. The Greek word there is eschatos echthros—the final, ultimate adversary. Not a friend. Not a peaceful passageway. An enemy. The one who robs and silences. The one that halts time and breath and memory.

But Jesus didn’t avoid death. He tasted it—for every one of us (Hebrews 2:9). He laid in that tomb as truly dead as Steve was on that table. But He didn’t stay there. He broke it open. Anastasis—resurrection—is what happened. Not floating. Not reappearing in spirit form. A bodily rising. Breath reentering dust. Life returning to the nephesh. Victory.

Revelation 1:18 has Jesus saying, “I am the Living One. I was dead, and behold I am alive forevermore. And I hold the keys of death and Hades.” He wasn’t pretending to be dead. He was dead. And He got up. He took those keys.

When Steve tells people now about those forty minutes, he says it was the best sleep he’s ever had. He didn’t float, didn’t dream, didn’t suffer. He just... rested. And when the doctors brought him back, it was as if no time had passed. That’s what death really is. Not torment. Not watching from the clouds. Just sleep. Just waiting.

And that lines up perfectly with everything we read in Scripture.

When Jesus returns, the graves will open. The dead will hear His voice (John 5:28–29). That doesn’t mean they’re already awake. It means they’re being woken by His voice. That’s when Steve, and everyone else in Christ, will rise, changed, immortal, with a body that cannot die.

So no, Steve wasn’t off playing a harp or tormented in fire. He wasn’t anything. Because the nephesh had ceased. His ruach had returned to the One who gave it. And if the resurrection hadn’t come, that’s where it would have ended.

But Jesus. Jesus swallowed death whole. And one day, He will say “Wake up” again. And when that happens, death will be no more. No more hospitals. No more waiting rooms. No more final breaths. Only life. Forever.

And that’s not my opinion. That’s the Word.