HOW MANY TIMES DID PAUL DIE?
A foolish question, you will say; and we agree with you; but yet it is one which is made necessary by the position taken by the advocates of the immortal-soul theory. One of our exchanges is quoting from the Millennial Harbinger, Extra, a series of articles from A. Campbell, on the question of “Life and Death.” We had occasion to notice a short time since the little pamphlet on this subject from this writer who for unfair reasoning, illogical conclusions, and transparent sophistries, deserves a conspicuous place. On 2 Cor. 12:1-4, he says: “‘I knew a man in Christ, some fourteen years ago, caught away to paradise; whether in the body or out of the body, I cannot tell, God knoweth.’” After this remarkably accurate quotation he comments as follows: “Had it been impossible for a man to live out of the body, or for a spirit to exist in a separate state, I presume all but those intoxicated with a new theory of man, will agree with me, that Paul could not, as a man of truth, much less as an apostle of Christ, say that he could not tell whether he ‘was in the body or out of the body.’” We suppose every one will admit that the “man” to whom Paul refers is no other than himself; and we suppose further that every one will admit, as he must from the statement of verse 1, that the experience to which the apostle refers, is his receiving “visions and revelations of the Lord.” Then the conclusion necessarily follows that he was taken away bodily to paradise to behold the things he saw there, or that they were presented to him in vision. If he went there bodily, he was not, of course, “out of the body;” if they were shown him in visions, he was in that condition which he represents as “out of the body;” but that, Mr. Campbell says, is the existence of the spirit in a separate state. But the separation of the spirit from the body, according to his and the common view, is death. Therefore in every vision Paul had, he was either taken away bodily, or he died, and when he came out of vision, had a resurrection!! Now our question comes in fairly and legitimately, How many times did Paul die and have a resurrection? for he says that he had “abundance of revelations.” Let Mr. Campbell and all his swallowers answer this, before trying further to prove an immortal, conscious, disembodied spirit from Paul’s experience. But does any one suppose that every time Paul had a vision he possibly died and had a resurrection? No man of common sense—no one who has not labored so hard to prove this “out of the body” theory as to get “out of his head.” Why, then, will men write and publish such despicable attempts at argument? We give one more specimen of Mr. Campbell’s reasoning: “‘Whosoever liveth and believeth on [in] me shall never die.’ [John 11:26]. . . My eleventh argument, then, is that if he that believes in Christ shall never die, and as Christians actually die so far as their bodies are contemplated, their souls must certainly survive their bodies, else the Lord has deceived us. I hold this to be as evident as any proposition can be—an argument I humbly think irrefragable. It bears equally against soul-sleeping as against soul-dying. For if death is compared to a sleep, as some contend, in all respects, then the sleep of death, is wholly repudiated in the words ‘he shall never die,’ that is, he shall never pass into a state of unconscious existence.” It is unnecessary to remind the reader that the controversy over this question of “Life and Death” is not concerning the righteous at all, in themselves considered. But the questions to be settled are, What is the nature of man, as a race? and, What is the doom of the wicked, out of Christ? The text in John 11 speaks of those who believe in Christ, and of those only. Now if any special promises are made to those who believe in Christ, it follows that those who do not believe in him are not entitled to them. Hence whatever this text may affirm concerning the righteous, it makes no declaration concerning the wicked, on whose cases the whole weight of this controversy hangs, that they shall never die. And if we should concede that when a person believes in Christ, he receives a new principle of life, which will continuously live despite the death of the body, which is the broadest claim that can be based upon the text, still absolutely nothing is proved respecting the real questions at issue, the condition of man by nature, and the destiny of the wicked. Thus Mr. C. quotes a text and frames an argument representing a class not involved in the controversy, under the pretense that it is the clearest evidence respecting that class which are the subjects of controversy, though the text says nothing of them whatever. The reader will not care for a more extended notice of such kind of reasoning.