To Correspondents by Editor

Publishing Committee · Battle Creek, Mich. · Nov 25, 1858

To Correspondents.

By Editor

J. Bostwick: For an explanation of Rev. vi, 9-11, we refer you to an article on that scripture, from Bro. Loughborough in No. 23, Vol. xi. Concerning 2 Cor. xii, 2-4, we see not how your friends can make much of a stand on that for the conscious existence of the dead. If we mistake not, something of a burden of proof rests upon them before they can make that scripture support that doctrine. Mark the Apostle's subject, verse 1. It is visions and revelations. He goes on to relate a view he had had of Paradise, and states that he is in doubt whether he was taken up bodily into Paradise or not. If he was not, he was, of course, according to his subject, in vision. All must admit that these two conditions are the only ones brought to view by the Apostle: either being carried bodily into Paradise, or viewing it in vision. All the Apostle means, then, by the phrase, "out of the body," is merely to be in vision. Before this scripture, therefore, can prove what is claimed for it, it must be shown that man is in possession of a separate, immaterial, intelligent entity called the soul; second, that this can exist independent of the living organism; and third, that for a person to have a vision it is necessary for this soul to be separated from the body and carried to the objects to be presented before it; neither of which can be shown.