Untitled article by Editor

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Third-day, February 4, 1868

FromAdvent Review and Sabbath Herald, Vol. XXXI, No. 8

Are the Dead Conscious? No. 6.

By Editor

2 Cor. v, 8. We are confident, I say, and willing rather to be absent from the body, and to be present with the Lord.

THIS is the only real expression in this chapter from which an argument for the conscious state can be drawn. But we hold it to be wrong to take an isolated expression, and build upon it a great doctrine, without taking into consideration the general tenor of the context with which it stands connected. And what is the intent of Paul's discourse here? He is contrasting the temporal and eternal states. See previous chapter, verses 17, 18. “The things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal.” “Our earthly house of this tabernacle;” and the “building of God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens,” of the first verse of chapter v, bring to view the same things. “For in this [in this state] we groan earnestly,” says he, “desiring to be clothed upon with our house from Heaven.” And this being clothed upon is explained in verse 4, to be the swallowing up of mortality in life. The same scene is brought to view in Rom. viii, 22, 23: “For we know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now. And not only they, but ourselves also, which have the first fruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves [almost the same expression], waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body.” Such are the scenes brought to view in 2 Cor. v, 1-10; but when they take place, or when it is that mortality is to be swallowed up of life, we are not informed. Paul elsewhere, however, tells us [see chapter xv of the first epistle to these same Corinthians]: “For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality.” Verse 53. When? “At the last trump; for the trumpet shall sound and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed.” Verse 52. Then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written; “Death is swallowed up in victory” [or mortality is swallowed up of life]. Verse 54.

But what is meant by the “body” from which Paul desires to be absent? We answer, that, judging from the tenor of the whole argument, it must be a term to represent this mortal, groaning, travailing state. From this, to be sure, we are released by death; for the dead “rest from their labors;” but we cannot be present with the Lord till clothed upon with incorruption, as already shown. Ed.