...Paul... was convinced that there is a future state for believers, he was quite sure about it, and he believed it to be a future conscious state, which commenced the moment they died, and was beyond measure full of blessedness.
He did not believe in purgatorial fires through which believers’ souls must pass; much less did he believe the modern and detestable heresy which some have broached, that like the body the soul of the saint dies until the resurrection; but he was wont to speak of being “absent from the body and present with the Lord,” and here he speaks about departing not to sleep or to lie in the cold shade of oblivion till the trumpet should arouse him, but to depart and immediately to be with Christ, which is far better.
From a sermon by Charles Haddon Spurgeon entitled "For Ever With The Lord," delivered October 12, 1873. Image by mike138 on Flickr under Creative Commons License.
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