The Life of the Waiting Soul in the Intermediate State | Page 4

gone to heaven. Of a little
child it would be said at his death, that he has become an angel in
heaven. But this would be quite untrue, because it contradicts the Bible.
The Bible teaches that there will at the end of the world be a day when
all the dead shall rise and stand before the Judgment Seat of Christ, to
be judged for the deeds done in the body, whether they be good, or
whether they be evil. But if a good man's soul goes straight to heaven at
death, without waiting for the Day of Judgment, he practically has no
Day of Judgment at all. He escapes it. The Bible also teaches that
before the Day of Judgment there will be a general Resurrection of all,
both of the just and of the unjust. {14} But how can one who is already
in heaven, while his body lies in the grave of corruption,--how can he,
being already glorified and even now beholding the vision of GOD, to
any intelligible purpose, or for any conceivable end, take part in the
general Resurrection? Why should he, as it were, come away from
heaven and rise from the dead, in order to be judged?
Thus the popular belief, that the souls of the righteous pass straight to
heaven, and the souls of the wicked go straight to hell, is against the
plain teaching of the Bible. But the Bible not only contradicts this
popular and careless fancy. It asserts what is directly contrary to it: it
asserts positively, I mean, that there is an age-long period between
death and the final state of happiness or misery, during which period
the soul is separate from the body and remains separate. We are,
according to the Bible, destined to undergo three great changes in the
mode and nature of our existence. In the first period, while we are here
in this our life on earth, the soul and spirit are united to a material and
tangible body of flesh and blood, suited to our life here. The second
stage begins at death, the name we give to the separation which then
takes place between this material fabric of the body and the incorporeal
part of us; and then the soul and spirit dwell disembodied for a time.
There follows at the Resurrection the third period, when the soul and
spirit are reunited with the body, but with the body now so spiritualized
and refined as to suit the heavenly existence. The second of these two
periods, coming between the first and the third, is therefore fitly called
the intermediate or middle state, the state in which the disembodied

soul dwells apart from its material tenement. {15}
What has the Bible then to say about this Intermediate State? I will not
ask you to listen to the comments or interpretations of the early
Christian writers, although, of course, very great respect is due to what
they say. I will only beg of you to pay common attention to what the
Bible itself says.
Now, first, I will point to the words which our Lord spoke from the
Cross, just before His Death, to the thief who was also slowly dying at
His side. "To-day," He said, "shalt thou be with Me in Paradise." So
then within a few hours,--it was then not yet mid-day--they were both
to be in Paradise. They both died before sunset, and at their death both
entered Paradise. Their dead bodies were left behind upon the Cross.
What then entered Paradise? Not their bodies, but the spiritual or
incorporeal part of them. Was Paradise then another name for heaven?
It cannot be; our Lord did not go to heaven until the day of His
Ascension, forty-three days after His death. For, after His Resurrection,
He said to S. Mary Magdalene, "I am not yet ascended to My Father."
{17} With His risen body, united again to His human soul and spirit,
He went to Heaven, His whole human nature now being, by His
Resurrection, again completely one. But into Paradise only part of His
human nature passed, the spiritual part of it, along with the spiritual
part of the thief's human nature. Our Lord's soul and spirit came back,
as we know, from Paradise on the third day. The soul and spirit of the
thief remain there still. So then this is what our Lord Himself teaches us
as to the state of the disembodied spirit, that at death a just man's spirit
does not go to heaven, but into a sphere of life which is called Paradise.
But, if this be so, why, it may be asked, did not our Lord speak in
plainer and more definite language? Such a truth, it may be urged, a
truth which