Untitled article by Editor

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · February 11, 1868

Are the Dead Conscious? No. 7.

By Editor

Phil. 1, 23. “For I am in a strait betwixt two, having a desire to depart and be with Christ, which is far better.”

We are anxious to give all the passages adduced by those who advocate life in death, their true bearing, and all the force to which they are entitled. Truth is too strong to need prevarication. We therefore differ from our opponents only where we feel obliged to do so—where to follow them would be, to the best of our discernment, to adopt unsound principles of interpretation. In the present instance we can go with them in every particular except the conclusion. We concede, then, that the language of Paul in Phil. 1, 23, and the context, conveys the following meaning: first, that he had only two states in view, viz., life and death; as he says in verse 20, “So now, also, Christ shall be magnified in my body, whether it be by life or by death. For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain;” [not to me but to the cause of Christ]; that is, it would be equal gain to the cause of Christ whether he should live or die. Second, that he knew not which he should choose, provided it was placed before him as a matter of choice, for he had a desire to depart and be with Christ, but it was more needful for his brethren that he should remain. If he should consult his own personal desires, he would depart; he longed to go: but then the church could illy spare him; they had need of his presence and his labors. “To abide in the flesh,” says he, “is more needful for you.” Perhaps the apostle here had his eye upon the grievous wolves, of which he elsewhere speaks; and he knew it was needful that he should live to beat back those fell destroyers from the fold of Christ. Third, that by the expression, “to depart,” he meant death. Then, says the objector, you agree with us that when a saint dies he is immediately with Christ in Heaven? By no means, we reply. If you take this testimony to prove the conscious state, it is vulnerable still in its most vital point; for it does not state how long a time elapses between the departing and the being with Christ: it does not say that the being with Christ is immediate. But it would seem so, from the manner in which it is expressed, says one; and we reply, it would not be proper to express it in any other manner, since a person absolutely unconscious as in death, has no perception whatever of a lapse of time, and the next event of which he has any knowledge, is what opens to him beyond the resurrection. No perceptible time elapses to the dead between their death and the resurrection. When Abel shall come forth at the trump of God, it will seem to him but an instant before, that he was falling beneath the murderous hand of Cain.

Says Bishop Law, “The Scriptures, in speaking of the connection between our present and future being, do not take into the account our intermediate state in death; no more than we in describing the course of any man's actions, take into account the time he sleeps. Therefore, the Scriptures (to be consistent with themselves) must affirm an immediate connection between death and the judgment. Heb. ix, 27; 2 Cor. v, 6, 8.” It may be objected again, that Paul, according to this view, would gain nothing by departing, since he would not be with Christ any sooner than if he should remain in the flesh a while longer. Measuring the time absolutely, he would not, to be sure; but measuring it by his consciousness (his only means of measurement), and he would; just as much sooner as what time elapsed between the penning of that sentence and the day of his death. Paul, then, in Phil. i, 23, does not contradict what he elsewhere says, when speaking of the dead, he tells us plainly that they are asleep.—Ed.