Let us now look at a few considerations which show that it is impossible to harmonize the popular view of consciousness in death, with the statements which the apostle here makes. It is claimed that the house which we have eternal in the Heavens is the immortal soul with which we immediately enter into Heaven when the earthly house is dissolved. Granting that this is so, let us go forward a little and mark the difficulty in which this view is involved. The time comes when the mortal body is raised from the dead and made immortal. In these redeemed bodies we are to live in the kingdom of God to all eternity. This is finally our eternal house. But when we take possession of this, what becomes of our house that we occupied between death and the resurrection? If we pass from our mortal bodies at death immediately into a spiritual body prepared for us, which is the house we have in Heaven, and in which we live till the resurrection, when our natural bodies are redeemed, and we take possession of them, it necessarily follows that we vacate that second house which we had occupied in Heaven. Then what becomes of that house? Moreover this view introduces something before us of which Paul has made no mention; for here we have three houses, but Paul’s language allows of only two; and one of these three houses, on the view before us, has to be abandoned, to go to ruin, when we take possession of our redeemed bodies. All this is unscriptural and absurd. Such a view is an impossibility. Again, Paul affirms in verse 5 that God hath wrought us for this self-same thing, that is, created man for such a state of being as we shall enjoy, when clothed upon with our house from Heaven. Is this condition the separate existence of an immortal soul? No; for if man had never sinned, he would have reached that state without seeing death, and the idea of an immortal soul would never have had an existence. The whole doctrine is the offspring of sin, for it is the result of the fall. It is the second falsehood which the devil found necessary to sustain his first one, “Ye shall not surely die.” For when all that is outward, tangible, and visible of man does fall in death, his untruth would be very apparent unless he could make them believe that there is an invisible medium through which they still continue to live. Paul, therefore, in the scripture under notice, does not have any reference to an intermediate state.