"is both
dead and buried, and his sepulcher is with us unto this day." "For David
is not ascended into the heavens."(966) The fact that David remains in the
grave until the resurrection, proves that the righteous do not go to
heaven at death. It is only through the resurrection, and by virtue of the
fact that Christ has risen, that David can at last sit at the right hand
of God.

And said Paul: "If the dead rise not, then is not Christ raised: and if
Christ be not raised, your faith is vain; ye are yet in your sins. Then
they also which are fallen asleep in Christ are perished."(967) If for
four thousand years the righteous had gone directly to heaven at death,
how could Paul have said that if there is no resurrection, "they which are
fallen asleep in Christ are perished"? No resurrection would be necessary.

The martyr Tyndale, referring to the state of the dead, declared: "I
confess openly, that I am not persuaded that they be already in the full
glory that Christ is in, or the elect angels of God are in. Neither is it
any article of my faith; for if it were so, I see not but then the
preaching of the resurrection of the flesh were a thing in vain."(968)

It is an undeniable fact that the hope of immortal blessedness at death
has led to wide-spread neglect of the Bible doctrine of the resurrection.
This tendency was remarked by Dr. Adam Clarke, who said: "The doctrine of
the resurrection appears to have been thought of much more consequence
among the primitive Christians than it is _now!_ How is this? The apostles
were continually insisting on it, and exciting the followers of God to
diligence, obedience, and cheerfulness through it. And their successors in
the present day seldom mention it! So apostles preached, and so primitive
Christians believed; so we preach, and so our hearers believe. There is
not a doctrine in the gospel on which more stress is laid; and there is
not a doctrine in the present system of preaching which is treated with
more neglect!"(969)

This has continued until the glorious truth of the resurrection has been
almost wholly obscured, and lost sight of by the Christian world. Thus a
leading religious writer, commenting on the words of Paul in 1 Thess.
4:13-18, says: "For all practical purposes of comfort the doctrine of the
blessed immortality of the righteous takes the place for us of any
doubtful doctrine of the Lord's second coming. At our death the Lord comes
for us. That is what we are t