Untitled article by Editor

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Third-day, January 21, 1868

Are the Dead Conscious? No. 5.

By Editor

Acts vii, 59. And they stoned Stephen, calling upon God, and saying, Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.

ON this passage it is claimed that Stephen called upon God to receive his conscious, intelligent soul, when he should fall in death. Christ used a similar expression in Luke xxiii, 46: “Into thy hands I commend my spirit.” The expression seems to be borrowed from Ps. xxxi, 5; which Psalm declares how David puts his trust in the Lord against those who “devised to take away his life.” But, we inquire, if the soul lives right along in one uninterrupted course of existence, where would be the propriety of committing it at the hour of death into the hands of our Maker, any more than at any other time? There would be none. The expression bears upon the very face of it evidence that those making use of it desired to commit something into the care of their Maker which was about to pass out of their possession; to commit something into his hands for safe keeping while they should fall back from the plane of life into unconsciousness. What was this? Answer, their pneuma. Now let us look at Robinson’s second definition of this word, as follows: “The spirit of man, i. e., the vital spirit, life, soul [animal soul—Greenfield]; Latin, anima, the principle of life residing in the breath, breathed into man from God, and again returning to God.” This, then, is what Stephen commended to his God, to be bestowed upon him again at that time when they who for Christ’s sake lose their life, shall find it. Matt. x, 39.—Ed.