Universalism by Editor

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Michigan · Aug 14, 1866

Universalism.

By Editor

A BROTHER sends us the report of a Universalist Conference taken from the Cleveland Leader, containing a synopsis of a Universalist sermon, which he suggests that we notice. The speaker's text was Prov. xi, 31: "Behold the righteous shall be recompensed in the earth, much more the wicked and the sinner."

There are many texts, of which this is one, which become invulnerable in the hands of Universalists, when the popular view of the conscious state of the dead, and the immortality of the soul, and the place of rewards and punishments is once granted. But let the scriptural view of these points be taken, and these fall from their hands as powerless as straws.

Take the text above quoted, and it is seen at once when and how it has its application, when we look at the scripture facts that rewards and punishments for the human race are all future; that the wicked receive their recompense or punishment when they are raised up on this earth at the end of the 1000 years, and come up around the camp of the saints, the New Jerusalem, which comes down from God out of Heaven to the earth, at that time, and fire comes down from heaven and devours them. Rev. xxi, 2, 3; xx, 5, 7–9; and the righteous take possession of the earth made new, which is their final and eternal inheritance and abode. 2 Pet. iii, 13; Dan. vii, 18, 27. Thus we see how both the righteous and the wicked are recompensed in the earth, without being obliged to resort to any of the absurdities of Universalism to explain the language.

There is perhaps no doctrine which undermines so many of the grave errors of Christendom, as the Bible view of the nature and destiny of man.