Does the Soul Exist Apart from the Body after Death?

Paul evidently looked forward to such a condition when he said that he was willing to be absent from the body and present with the Lord (II Cor. 5:8). He refers to the subject again in I Thess. 4:14, when he speaks of Christ bringing with him before the resurrection them who sleep in him. John saw (Rev. 6:10) the souls of the martyrs under the altar, clearly without their bodies. The parable of Dives and Lazarus (Luke 16:19-31) implies that the resurrection had not taken place when Dives made his petition to Abraham, inasmuch as the five brothers were still living. The corrected translation of the well-known passage in Job 19:26, makes it read, "Yet without my flesh shall I see God." These are a few of the passages directly implying the doctrine, though there are teachers, very sincere in their belief, who put another construction on the passages, and others making them harmonize with the doctrine that the soul has no separate existence.

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