Page:The New View of Hell.djvu/58

 those who deny that the Scripture everywhere contains a spiritual sense, would be consistent, they should restrict the meaning of both these words to the natural world—and to things without, not within the soul of man. For all good Biblical scholars know that neither heaven nor hell, according to the literal import of their equivalent Greek and Hebrew terms, conveys an idea of anything above the realm of nature.

But there is abundant Scripture evidence that these terms are not to be thus restricted in their meaning. There is evidence that they refer to states and conditions of two widely different classes of people in the spiritual world. Thus the seer of Patmos tells us of persons and things that he saw in heaven, when he was "in the spirit," or when "a door was opened" to him in heaven. Surely the myriads of angels whom he beheld, were not seen with his natural eyes, nor in that region of natural space above our earth. No: John's spiritual eyes were opened, and this enabled him to see the beings and objects of the spiritual world.

The Apostle Paul tells us that, on a certain occasion, he was "caught up to the third heaven," and heard there things which natural language cannot express. How "caught up"? Was the apostle's material body lifted through natural space into the upper regions of the air? No one, I presume, believes this. No one supposes that his corporeal part underwent any change of place. No doubt there was to the apostle the appearance