The caption of this article is one of the remarkable, descriptive sentences in the Bible, where the condition and appearance of the spiritually dead are held up to view and consideration under the figure of an assembly of corpses. Death is the often-repeated simile used in the Word of God to illustrate the moral state of the soul that is without God and salvation. In one passage, we are told that the unsaved man is “dead in trespasses and in sins.” In another place, the words “quickened” and “risen” are used to show what happened when the soul came forth from the region of sin and darkness and entered upon God’s kingdom of light and life.

When a child of God backslides, the Scripture teaches that he has gone back to the old death. The vision, which Ezekiel had of the Valley of Dry Bones, proves this. The long lines of skeletons that covered the surrounding hillsides clearly argue a previous life, and that the life had been lost. The skeletons make invincible logic here. While the statement of Heaven allows no dispute in the matter, as the words are uttered, “Son of Man, these bones are the whole house of Israel.”

[Editor’s Note: Paul also argued as to how, when one had truly seen the light, they could walk away. There is a way to harmonize the “Once saved, always saved” ideal with the “Lost salvation” ideal. These are extremes of a balance we find within scripture if only we read it for what it says.]

A crowning image of horror is in the sentence, “The congregation of the dead.” Here is not a vision of bones but of corpses, and the dead bodies with lusterless eyes, expressionless faces and rigid forms seem to be arranged in rank and file somewhere on earth or in the Pit. They may be sitting in rows on cushioned seats in pews of walnut and mahogany in our own land and country. These crescendo figures carry an increasing horror with them. As a valley full of human bones is a more ghastly view than the spectacle of one dead man, so the sight of a great congregation of dead men and women filling a large building, pulseless, breathless, motionless, lifeless, sitting with glazed, vacant eyes, staring in one direction. This would be unspeakably the most dreadful vision of all. Yet all these ghastly metaphors and illustrations are used by the Spirit of God to properly portray the unconverted individual, the backslidden church and finally a congregation made up of sinner’s and backsliders, all alike spiritually dead.

The congregation of the dead seems to be the terminal station of the backslidden and those not truly saved in the midst of churchianity, because the whole verse reads, “He that wandereth from the way of understanding shall remain in the congregation of the dead.” It seems to be a proper dumping ground, not to say home, of the man who backslides from light, as well as the one who falls from grace itself. According to the whole verse, there is not much danger of any breaking up of this meeting. The strange, still audience will not be worried by the footsteps of any of their number leaving, for the passage says that the one who joins them will remain in the congregation of the dead. The man who had life enough to come and seek such a frightful fellowship, turning from the living to abide with the dead, will be allowed to remain in this unspeakably dreadful cemetery. When a person is physically dead, we know that something is gone that took note once of physical objects. We are powerless with earnest gesticulation and loud cries to make such an one see and understand anything. The face remains rigid, the eye glassy and the heart cold. Everything said and done with the hope of eliciting some kind of recognition or response is doomed to complete and utter failure. Corpses do not hear us!

Of course, many try in the agony of bereavement to make their dead hear them. They cry, weep, wring their hands, fall down before the dead and call most heartbreakingly upon them, but the dead hear not anything. By and by, the living cease to make any more efforts that way and let the undertaker remove still another pulseless form to join the congregation of the white-faced sleepers in the grave yard. In a still more startling manner, we are made aware of the presence of the spiritually dead in our midst. Such people have physical life and intellectual life, but the spirit made in the image of God, created to know and enjoy God, is in the sleep of death. Such persons are wide-awake and responsive to every appeal made to the mind and body, but seem to hear and grasp nothing on the soul side. They become intensely interested when approached on purely intellectual lines, and do not deny the animal nature a single legitimate enjoyment. They are deeply concerned in what they shall eat, what they shall drink, what they shall put on the body, where they will take it next summer, and where they will carry it next winter. All this seems perfectly right, sensible, obligatory, and essential to them, but the instant we speak of and appeal to the spiritual nature within them, we discover to our wonder and horror that we are talking to dead people.

Look at the vacant, lusterless eye! Mark the unkindling, expressionless, dead face! Note the silence that follows the illustration, explanation or exhortation of the servant of God. No icy form in the coffin is more unresponsive to the physical around him, bending over him, crying about and calling upon him, than the being we are describing is insensible and immovable to the spiritual teaching and appeal that is given him. What husband does not remember trying to awaken such a dead wife, and after the clearest statements of truth and directions as to the way of life and full salvation, be met with the chilling silence and the cold, dead gaze of a spiritual corpse? How many have gone down in despair by the side of such a strange, sad coffin in her house, and her husband in that coffin? What father and mother have not wrung their hands and wept scalding tears over the spiritually lifeless son or daughter, who were so dead that they could not see how they were breaking the hearts of those who gave them their physical being? Transfer the scene to the church and watch a faithful minister or a Spirit-filled evangelist trying to reach the hearing and attract the sight of the souls that lie hidden and buried back somewhere in the forms of the impassive-faced, cold-featured, richly-dressed and respectable audience before him. Now it is that we find out, if we never knew before, that the soul has a hearing as well as the body; and that it is possible to reach the latter and not the former. “He that hath ears to hear, let him hear,” said Christ. All have physical ears, but He was referring to that inner ear through which the soul hearkens to God and receives the message of salvation. This hearing does not seem to be reached in the congregation of the dead.

All could have heard once. Some did hear at one time, but now do so no more. So the minister is left waving his hand, calling aloud upon the moral sleepers, and is seen to have signaled and cried out in vain. We have even beheld the man of God weep as well as agonize and plead in the midst of a great cathedral morgue, and there was no response, nor movement whatsoever. The cold, dead stare was fixed upon the speaker. His tears pattered upon the faces of spiritual corpses, and like corpses they remained in their coffins. There was no answering sigh or tear or moan. There could not be. The servant of God was in the presence of a congregation of the dead. Of course, there are Elishas here and there who stretch themselves upon the face and form of some of these beings, and, after much prayer, great agonizing and repeated going back to the corpse and calling upon God, we see now and then the dead arise, come forth, and walk. Jesus is still able to bring a man up from the bier and out of the grave, though he had been dead four days, forty days or forty years! There are many dead people in the land and many congregations of the dead. The heartbreaking thing about it all is that the vast majority prefers to remain dead. Christ said once to the people, “Ye will not come to me that ye might have life.” In another place He said, “Your sin now remaineth in you,” and in still another passage uttered the fearful words, “Ye shall die in your sins.” This dying in sin necessarily perpetuates the congregation of the dead in eternity.

William Tennant, in his autobiography, gives a most frightful description of lost souls in hell. He gave it as the dream of a drunkard, who, all horror stricken, related it to him in his study. The doomed man, in his narrative, said that when he entered the abode of the lost, he looked around him and saw long lines of tables stretching away in a divergent fashion in the dim distance. On both sides of these tables sat men with cloaks wrapped or buttoned close to their throats and with high peaked hats on their heads, the broad brim being drawn down low so as to cover all the upper part of the countenance. All were silent. The poor, visiting dreamer, fancying it looked like a convivial scene, said to the Devil, who was standing near, “Hell is not such a terrible place after all!” When, horror upon horror, suddenly as he spoke the words, every face was lifted and turned towards him. Instead of eyes, there were flames of fire in the sockets! Then, each lost man threw back the front of his cloak and in every breast was a roaring furnace! Both visions of fire in the eye and breast are figures of intense mental and spiritual suffering, and are very dreadful. To the writer, the most awe inspiring, bloodcurdling conception and picture of Hell is found in the words of God Himself, who viewing the place in its eternal, moral and spiritual ruin, looks upon the vast assembly gathered there and calls it the congregation of the dead!

For the congregation of the dead in Hell, there is no hope. Cut off from God -- the life of the soul -- they remain undone forever. In probationary time, there can be awakening, life and abundant life possible for every individual, church, community and nation on the face of the whole earth. Some Elisha may come around and stretching himself upon the poor, lifeless sinner, agonize for and with him until he opens his eyes and is restored to the rejoicing arms of a household that had despaired of his recovery. An Ezekiel, all unintimidated at the spectacle of a Valley of Dry Bones in a church or city, may prophesy to the winds of Heaven and call on the Spirit of God to breathe once and then again upon the moral skeletons all around him, and at the Second Breath, see an army of converts and fully saved people spring to their feet to live and work for God and humanity.

Greater and higher than all is the One who not only raised the sleeping maiden, called the young man from his bier, and brought the dead Lazarus back alive from the tomb --whose voice, at the last day, will depopulate every graveyard and empty all the cemeteries of this big world. This same Christ, if men would call upon Him, could fill every withered soul with a rush of delightful, overflowing life, and change every congregation of the spiritually dead into shining faced companies and cohorts of salvation. This same Jesus, if His people would let Him, would so transform, transfigure and fill the people with power that the church of God would become as fair as the moon, as glorious as the sun and as terrible as an army with banners.

Please feel free to send feedback concerning this article. Also, please include the title of this article in your feedback. Thank you for visiting Central Truth Ministries.