This is the vulnerable point in the popular argument on this text. It is assumed that the being with Christ takes place immediately on the departure. But, while the text asserts nothing of this kind, multitudes of other texts affirm that the point when we gain immortality and the presence of Christ, is a point in the future beyond the resurrection. And, unless some necessary connection can be shown between the departing and the being with Christ, and the hosts of texts which make our entrance into Christ’s presence a future event can be harmonized therewith, any attempt to prove consciousness in death from this text is an utter failure. Landis seems to feel the weakness of his side in this respect, and spends the strength of his argument, pp. 224-229, in trying to make the inference appear necessary that the being with Christ must be immediate on the departure. He would have us think it utterly absurd and nonsensical to suppose a moment to elapse between the two events. Let us then see if there is anything in Paul’s language which contradicts the idea that a period of utter unconsciousness, of greater or less length, intervenes between death and our entrance into the future life. In the first place, if the unconsciousness is absolute, as we suppose, the space passed over in the individual’s experience is an utter blank. There is not the least perception, with such person, of the lapse of a moment of time. When consciousness returns, the line of thought is taken up at the very point where it ceased, without the consciousness of a moment’s interruption. This fact is often proved by actual experience. Persons have been known to become utterly unconscious by a fracture of the skull, and a portion of it being depressed upon the brain, suspending its action. Perhaps when the accident happened they were in the act of issuing an order, or giving directions to those about them. They have lain unconscious for months, and then been relieved by a surgical operation; and when the brain began again to act, and consciousness returned, they have immediately spoken and completed the sentence they were in the act of uttering when they were struck down, months before. This shows that to these persons there was no consciousness of any time intervening, more than what passes between the words of a sentence which we are speaking. It was all the same to them as if they had at once completed the sentence they commenced to utter, instead of having weeks and months of unconsciousness thrown in between the words of which that sentence was composed.