and Elias were wrapped in as profound insensibility as the dust with which their bodies mingled, then it could not have been Moses and Elias who conversed with Jesus any more than if they had never had an existence.  Perhaps it may be said that, as it is called a vision by Matthew, it might have been nothing real.  But as the word horama means a sight as well as vision, and as the other Evangelists do represent it as an actual appearance and nothing visionary, it is to be taken in this sense.  Was it not a reality that the three disciples saw Jesus transfigured, and though in that condition was it not still their identical Lord?  Certainly.  Then the vision was so far real, and I see no ground on which the other personages can be considered phantoms.  Mark says, “he charged them that they should tell no man what things they had seen,” &c.  See also Luke ix. 36.  Here it is made certain that it was not an appearance in a dream, but a real and visible sight of three persons whose names are given.  Consequently Moses and Elias were there as certain as was Jesus Christ.  If so, they must have been raised from the dead, for man can have no conscious existence hereafter in a disembodied state.  The scriptures teach that the resurrection is our only hope of a future conscious state of being.  As to the translation of Elijah we shall not here notice it.

Phil. i. 23, 24. “For I am in a strait betwixt two, having a desire to depart and be with Christ which is far better; nevertheless to abide in the flesh is more needful for you.”  To depart and be with Christ must, I conceive, mean in the resurrection world, for in no other sense could he be with Christ so as to render his condition “far better.”  Nothing can be good or bad for a man in a state of perfect insensibility, any more than for a man unborn—­Neither could he be with Christ in such a State, any more than before he existed.  Between the condition of a man in non-existence [pardon the expression] and in life, no comparison as to enjoyment or suffering can possibly be drawn.  The apostle therefore draws a comparison between his present condition of conscious existence with his brethren, and his future condition of conscious existence with Christ which was far better.

That Paul has reference, in the above, to an immortal existence in the resurrection, is evident from 2 Cor. v. 1, 2, 3, 4.

“For we know that if our earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved, we have a building of God, a house not made with hands eternal in the heavens.  For in this we groan, earnestly desiring to be clothed upon with our house which is from heaven.  If so be that being clothed we shall not be found naked.  For we that are in this tabernacle do groan, being burdened, not for that we would be unclothed, but clothed upon, that mortality might be swallowed up of life.”