A Twofold Creation.
But there is more to this argument. God's works are two-fold, firstly spiritual, secondly temporal; and the most important part of creation is the spiritual part. Man and woman were made first as spirits, and the same is true of earth and all that it contains—beasts, birds, fishes, trees, plants and flowers; in short, all created things. (Moses 3:4-9.) Given bodies, they become souls—not all human souls, but souls nevertheless; for the spirit and the body constitute the soul. It is the soul that is redeemed and glorified. The spirit alone cannot advance that far; it can live without the body, but the body without the spirit is dead. Evidently, therefore, the spirit is the more important. What wonder? God created the spirit; but when it came to creating the body—bodies in general—He delegated to man that portion of His work. Man can make the body of man, and can destroy it, but cannot destroy the spirit; it is beyond his power.
Now the planet upon which we dwell has a spirit. Hence there is a Spirit World; and there the Gospel has been preached for ages, so that the dead, or the departed—for they are no more dead than we are—might have opportunity to embrace it and be "judged according to men in the flesh". (1 Peter 4:6.) And the withdrawal of the Gospel from the temporal world would not necessarily involve its withdrawal from the spiritual world. Thus the divine decree, that the Gospel should be in the world "until the end thereof," receives additional vindication. God's word cannot fail.