In Defense of the Faith

Mr. Canright Quotes Josephus

In a desperate effort to find some support for this doctrine that people receive their reward at death, Mr. Canright departs from the Bible and quotes Josephus, the Jewish historian, as follows: DOF 253.1

“Of another Jewish sect,—the Essenes, he says: “They teach the immortality of souls.”—Antiqities, book 18, chap. 1. Further: ‘Their doctrine is that bodies are corruptible and that the matter they are made of is not permanent; but that the souls are immortal and continue forever; and that they come out of the most subtle air, and are united to their bodies as to prisons, into which they are drawn by a certain natural enticement. But that when they are set free from the ‘bonds of the flesh, they then, as released from a long bondage, rejoice and mount upwards.’”—Seventh-day Adventism Renounced, p. 396. DOF 253.2

Surely this reasoning is very profound! Souls are immortal. They come out of the air, and are enticed into human bodies. When they get in they discover that they are in prison. “When they are set free from the bonds of the flesh [at death], they then, as released from a long bondage, rejoice and mount upwards”! But the most tragic part of it all is that these poor liberated souls do not seem to realize, when they fly away so quickly and happily, that their release from the prison is only temporary. If they knew about the resurrection of the body, which is to take place at the coming of Christ, no doubt their rejoicing would be somewhat modified. What, we wonder, would happen if some of them were enjoying their liberty so well at the time of the resurrection that they refused to go back to the prison of the body? Would there then be some spirits without bodies and some bodies without spirits? DOF 253.3

Surely it is clear to everyone that this doctrine of a separate, intelligent, conscious existence of the soul apart from the body is contrary both to the gospel and to common sense. If there is to be a resurrection of the body, then the soul, or spirit, of man does not enter upon the enjoyment of its reward at death. DOF 254.1