All must concede that only these two conditions are brought to view, either his transportation bodily to paradise, or the ordinary condition of being in vision. If he went bodily to paradise, the instance has no bearing of course on the question of consciousness in death. And if it was an ordinary vision, how does this prove consciousness in death? The question is reduced to this one point; and the answer turns on the definition given to the expression, “out of the body.” Did Paul mean by it, what modern expositors wish us to understand by it? Paul meant by it, simply being in vision; the expositors aforesaid mean by it, the going out of the immortal spirit from the body, and its existence for a time in a separate conscious intelligent condition independent of the body. But let us look a little further, and see what this condition is. According to the common view, the separation of the soul from the body is death. This is what death is defined to mean. There can be no such thing as the separation of soul and body, and death not result. And the return of the soul to again inhabit the body, is a resurrection from the dead. This is what is claimed in the case of Rachel, whose soul departed, and she died, Gen. 35:18, and the widow’s son whom Elijah raised, whose soul came into him again, and he revived. 1 Kings 17:22. But does any one suppose that Paul meant to say that he did not know but that he died and had a resurrection? That is what he did say, if the words, “out of the body,” mean what some would have us understand by them. His soul went off to paradise, and his body lay here, we know not how long, a corpse upon the earth! And when his soul returned, he had a resurrection from the dead! A necessary conclusion so preposterous, must be sufficient to convince any one that Paul, by the expression, “out of the body,” does not mean a state of death. He simply means that he was in vision, a state in which the mind, controlled for the time by the Holy Ghost, is made to take cognizance of distant or future scenes, and the person seems to himself to be really and bodily present, viewing the scenes, and listening to the words that are spoken, before him. Dreams, which all have experienced, are doubtless good illustrations of how this can be, and the case of John, in the Revelation, furnishes a notable example; for he was carried forward far into the future, and seemed to be present and taking part in scenes that did not then exist, and at which he could not really have been present, even in his supposed immaterial immortal soul. Paul, then, had no reference whatever to a state of death in 2 Cor. 12:2-4. To suppose him to refer to that, according to the immaterialist view, runs us into the greatest absurdity. Hence his language affords no proof that there is a soul in man which can live on in a conscious intelligent state, while the mortal body crumbles back to dust.