And the spirits of you who have died in righteousness shall live and rejoice, And their spirits shall not perish, nor their memorial from before the face of the Great One, Unto all the generations of the world. Wherefore, no longer fear their contumely. Woe to you sinners, when ye have died, If ye die in the wealth of your sins, And those who are like you, that say regarding you: “Blessed are the sinners, they have seen all their days; And now they have died in prosperity and in wealth, And have not seen tribulation or murder in their life; And they have died in honour, And judgement hath not been executed on them during their life.” Know ye, that their souls shall be made to descend into Sheol, And they shall be wretched in their great tribulation. And into darkness and chains, and a burning flame where there is grievous judgement shall your spirits enter; And the great judgement shall be for all the generations of the world. Woe to you, for ye shall have no peace. It will be noticed that in this passage it is only the spirit which is spoken of as living in the world to come, so that nothing more than the immortality of the spirit is taught; a teaching considerably in advance of the normal teaching of the Old Testament, but yet it does not go beyond belief in the immortality of the spirit. On the other hand, the passage contains expressions of a materialistic kind incompatible with purely spiritual conceptions; so that a reflective mind must sooner or later have been led to the fuller doctrine of the resurrection of the body if his teaching was to be logical. But here another element comes into consideration. Conceptions regarding the Messianic Kingdom varied, and the subject we are discussing was closely connected with those variations; for as long as the Messianic Kingdom was conceived of as existing on this earth the teaching on the life hereafter, i.e. within the Messianic Kingdom, was bound to tend towards a bodily existence then. But when the Kingdom came to be conceived of as existing in the heavens, materialistic ideas receded, and more spiritual ones found expression. There seem, therefore, to have been three stages of conception regarding the state of man’s nature in the future life: first of all a development of the Old Testament Sheol-conception which resulted in the belief of the immortality of the spirit[140]; then with the expectation of the Messianic Kingdom of eternal duration on this earth came the belief in the resurrection of the body; and, lastly, when the Kingdom of Heaven was conceived of as eternal in the Heavens above, it was the resurrection of the spirit that was taught.