“When Christ descends from heaven with a shout, He will begin by summoning to Himself “those who are asleep” The word used to describe “asleep” is important for every believer today. Paul said they had fallen asleep. For the word translated asleep, he used the Greek word koimao, which has as one of its meanings, “to sleep in death.” The same word is used to describe the deaths of Lazarus (John 11:11), Stephen (Acts 7:60), David (Acts 13:36), and Jesus Christ (1 Cor. 15:20). 

This concept of death is emphasized in the wonderful word early Christians adopted for the burying places of their loved ones. It was the Greek word koimeterion, which means “a rest house for strangers, a sleeping place.” It is the word from which we get our English word cemetery. In Paul’s day, this word was used for inns or what we would call a hotel or motel. We check in at a Hilton Hotel or a Ramada Inn, expecting to spend the night in sleep before we wake up in the morning refreshed and raring to go. That is exactly the thought Paul expressed in words such as koimao and koimeterion. When Christians die, it’s as if they are slumbering peacefully in a place of rest, ready to be awakened at the return of the Lord. The words have great import, for they convey the Christian concept of death not as a tragic finality, but as a temporary sleep. 

The Bible teaches that those who are sleeping in Jesus will not be left out of the Rapture. In fact, they will have the prominent place when Jesus comes in the skies: “We who are alive and remain until the coming of the Lord will by no means precede those who are asleep. . . . The dead in Christ will rise first” (1 Thess. 4:15–16). 

“Nineteenth-century Bible teacher A. T. Pierson made this interesting observation about these things: 
It is a remarkable fact that in the New Testament, so far as I remember, it is never once said, after Christ’s resurrection, that a disciple died—that is, without some qualification: Stephen fell asleep. David, after he had served his own generation by the will of God fell asleep and was laid with his father. Peter says, “Knowing that I must shortly put off this my tabernacle as the Lord showed me.” Paul says, “the time of my departure is at hand.” (The figure here is taken from a vessel that, as she leaves a dock, throws the cables off the fastenings, and opens her sails to the wind to depart for the haven) . . . The only time where the word “dead” is used, it is with qualification: “the dead in Christ,” “the dead which die in the Lord.” 

As Pierson implies, Christ abolished death so completely that even the term death is no longer appropriate for believers. That is why Paul wrote that we should comfort one another with reminders that for Christians, what we call death is nothing more than a temporary sleep before we are called into our uninterrupted relationship with Christ forever. 

The above information was taken from a book by Dr. David Jeremiah. What is significant about this observation is that sleep is known to be a temporary state while death is permanent. Yet no true Christian is going to suffer permanent death (hell). 

Consider a surgical procedure: you are in the operating room with a flurry of activity around you. Suddenly you are being asked to count backward from 100, and the next thing you are consciousnof is waking up in the recovery room. There is no recollection of the time you were unconscious. I believe this to be the same for the believer who falls asleep in Christ: we will go to sleep and the next conscious thought will be of awakening in the presence of Jesus Himself as He calls us forth! We will not linger or suffer anywhere. We will not be in darkness. We will sleep, and awaken to glory! 

1 Corinthians 15:55-57 
O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory? 
The sting of death is sin; and the strength of sin is the law. 
But thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.