The Saints' Everlasting Rest - Richard Baxter

I have but one thing more to add, for the close of this chapter--that the
souls of believers do enjoy inconceivable blessedness and glory, even while
they remain separated from their bodies. What can be more plain than these
words of Paul: "We are always confident, knowing that whilst we are at
home," or rather sojourning, "in the body, we are absent from the Lord; for
we walk by faith, not by sight. We are confident, I say, and willing rather to
be absent from the body, and to be present with the Lord." Or these: "I am in
a strait betwixt two, having a desire to depart, and to be with Christ, which is
far better." If Paul had not expected to enjoy Christ till the resurrection, why
should he be in a strait, or desire to depart? Nay, should he not have been
loth to depart upon the very same grounds? for while he was in the flesh he
enjoyed something of Christ. Plain enough are the words of Christ to the
thief--"Today shalt thou be with me in paradise." In the parable of Dives and
Lazarus, it seems unlikely Christ would so evidently intimate and suppose
the soul's happiness or misery presently after death, if there were no such
thing. Our Lord's argument for the resurrection supposes, that, "God being
not the God of the dead, but of the living," therefore Abraham, Isaac and
Jacob were then living in the soul. If the "blessedness of the dead that die in
the Lord" were only in resting in the grave, then a beast or a stone were as
blessed; nay, it were evidently a curse, and not a blessing. For was not life a
great mercy? Was it not a greater mercy to serve God and to do good; to
enjoy all the comforts of life, the fellowship of saints, the comfort of
ordinances, and much of Christ in all, than to lie rotting in the grave?
Therefore some further blessedness is there promised. How else is it said,
"We are come to the spirits of just men made perfect?" Surely, at the
resurrection, the body will be made perfect as well as the spirit. The
Scriptures tell us, that Enoch and Elias are taken up already. And shall we
think they possess that glory alone? Did not Peter, James, and John see
Moses also with Christ on the mount? yet the Scripture saith, Moses died.
And is it likely that Christ deluded their senses in showing them Moses, if he
should not partake of that glory till the resurrection? And is not that of
Stephen as plain as we can desire? "Lord Jesus, receive my spirit." Surely, if
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