I still do not see how that relates to what Paul said here:
"Now he that hath wrought us for the selfsame thing is God, who also hath given unto us the earnest of the Spirit. Therefore we are always confident, knowing that, whilst we are at home in the body, we are absent from the Lord...We are confident, I say, and willing rather to be absent from the body, and to be present with the Lord" (2 Cor.5:6,8).
What I understand here is that a person will either be alive physically in his own body or he will be present with the Lord in heaven. I do not see anything that even hints of an intermediate state. Either one or the other but no in between.
What do you say about that?
You are correct--there's no hint of an intermediate state in those two verses. But there are dozens of passages about a sleep state. Those are the ones you are ignoring. Put the two types together, and come up with a model that accounts for both. (By the way, [MENTION=14521]God's Truth[/MENTION] doesn't have the same problem as her model says the body is the part of us that sleeps, while the spirit is awake. I'll handle this a bit more below, but it shows more consistency than your model.)
Here is an example:
[1Co 15:51 KJV] Behold, I shew you a mystery; We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed,
So while we shall not
all sleep,
some will. Can you sleep while you're awake? You are saying there is no time of sleep at all.
Let's compare the two passages, both from Paul, both to the Corinthians. 2 Cor 5:8 says that we are willing to be absent from the body and to be present with the Lord. This says nothing about whether there might be some other state or even several other states--it doesn't confirm it, nor does it rule it out. It's silent on other states.
1 Cor 15:51 speaks of three states, just in that one verse. Alive (those who shall not sleep), dead (asleep), and changed (a final state for either of the other two). While your verse doesn't rule out a sleep (unawareness), my verse insists on it. Thus, whatever your model is, to be biblically consistent, it has to include a sleep state.
We still have to define what that sleep state entails, and that is where we're likely to go different paths, but if you say there's no gap between present in the body and absent from the body, what do you think the sleep state is?
A big question in determining what that sleep state entails is determining what part of us is the important part. If we say the body is the important part, then the ones who sleep would refer to the bodies that are dead. But since the bodies decay, it seems like the important part is the spirit--that's the part of us that is aware, and what we usually mean when we say someone is in heaven with Jesus immediately after he dies. So if Paul is talking about the dead as if they are asleep, it seems like he would more likely be talking about the spirit, don't you think? and if it's the spirit, when does the spirit sleep in your model?
Your chapter also talks about different states in terms of the clothing metaphor. And there are three states mentioned there--clothed in an earthly house, clothed in a heavenly house, and naked. These three states do not necessarily associate directly with the three in 1 Cor 15:51. The naked state is the one that is of interest. We're not sure what it means, but it seems to me that it means not having a body, either earthly or heavenly. Since you insist that our "presence with the Lord" (1 Cor 5:8) is when we are in heaven without a body, it seems to align with the heavenly state prior to Christ's coming (I think this is your position). But that sounds like a blissful time, a time we would long for. But Paul explicitly says we do not long for that state:
[2Co 5:4 NKJV] For we who are in [this] tent groan, being burdened, not because we want to be unclothed, but further clothed, that mortality may be swallowed up by life.
