THE GOSPEL HOPE by J. N. Loughborough

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Oct 27, 1881

THE GOSPEL HOPE.

By J. N. Loughborough

BY J. N. LOUGHBOROUGH, SOUTHAMPTON, ENGLAND.

WE have learned from the Scriptures of the one gospel hope of an inheritance at last in the kingdom of God, to be received by those who are made immortal, at the resurrection of the righteous, at the second coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. We have noted many promises which speak of the reward of God's people and locate it at Christ's second coming.

In further proof on this subject, we call attention to the testimony of St. Paul to the Philippians, "For our conversation [literally, as the Greek word polituma signifies, our citizenship] is in Heaven; from whence also we look for the Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ; who shall change our vile body, that it may be fashioned like unto his glorious body." Phil. 3:20, 21.

Some persons, intent on sustaining their position of a consummation of the hope at death, have told us that Christ comes at death. There is no place in the entire Bible that calls death Christ's coming. Some have quoted, as proof of such a doctrine, the words of our Lord in Matt. 24:44. "Be ye also ready; for in such an hour as ye think not the son of man cometh." It is true death oftentimes overtakes men when they little expect it, but those words in St. Matthew relate to a time when Christ shall come in the glory of his Father with all the holy angels with him (verses 30, 31), an event which surely does not take place at death.

That the disciples of Christ did not understand him to mean death when he spake of his coming, is evident from their construction of the words of the Lord respecting St. John. "Then Peter, turning about, seeth the disciple whom Jesus loved following; which also leaned on his breast at supper, and said, Lord, which is he that betrayeth thee? Peter seeing him saith to Jesus, Lord, and what shall this man do? Jesus saith unto him, If I will that he tarry till I come, what is that to thee? follow thou me. Then went this saying abroad among the brethren, that that disciple should not die; yet Jesus said not unto him, He shall not die; but, If I will that he tarry till I come, what is that to thee?" St. John 21:20-23. If they had supposed that Christ's coming meant death, how should they conclude that St. John would not die? They had no such idea, neither did they cherish a hope of reward at death. St. Paul said of himself that he labored if by any means he "might attain unto the resurrection of the dead." Phil. 3:11.

Our Saviour's testimony to his disciples, when he was about to leave them, has an important bearing on the time of rewards. He said, "Little children, yet a little while I am with you, ye shall seek me; and as I said unto the Jews, whither I go, ye cannot come, so now say I unto you." St. John 13:33. By turning to chap. 7:33, 34, we see what he had said to the Jews. "Then said Jesus unto them, Yet a little while am I with you, and then I go unto him that sent me. Ye shall seek me, and shall not find me; and where I am, thither ye cannot come." The testimony of our Saviour that the disciples could not go with him caused St. Peter to inquire, "Lord, whither goest thou?" Jesus answered him, "Whither I go, thou canst not follow me now; but thou shalt follow me afterward. Peter said unto him, Lord, why cannot I follow thee now? I will lay down my life for thy sake. Jesus answered him, Wilt thou lay down thy life for my sake? Verily, Verily, I say unto thee, the cock shall not crow, till thou hast denied me thrice." St. John 13:36-38. This testimony of Christ troubled the mind of the disciples. He is going back to his Father, going to Heaven, but they cannot go. In the next words, recorded in the opening of the next chapter, he gives consolation to their troubled hearts. "Let not your hearts be troubled; ye believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father's house are many mansions; if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you, And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself, that where I am, there ye may be also." St. John 14:1-3. The text presents no hope of being with Christ until he comes again. "I will come again, and receive you unto myself."

With the above, harmonizes well the exhortation of St. James, "Be patient, therefore, brethren, unto the coming of the Lord. Behold the husbandman waiteth for the precious fruit of the earth, and hath long patience for it, until he receive the early and latter rain. Be ye also patient; stablish your hearts; for the coming of the Lord draweth nigh." St. James 5:7, 8.

With longing desire for that day, St. John, in reply to our Saviour's words, "I come quickly," responds, "Amen, even so, come, Lord Jesus." Rev. 22:20. So should every heart of God's people cry out, Come, and make an end of woe and sin. Come, and raise the righteous dead, and change the righteous living; bestow immortality to each. Come, thou righteous Judge, and take thy saints with thee to that blessed home prepared in Paradise, the city of God.

The advocates of reward at death assert that our Saviour teaches such a doctrine when he says, "Fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul; but rather fear him which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell." Matt. 10:28. It is claimed from this that man must be in possession of a part that still lives when the body is dead, or in other words, that it is immortal. Archdeacon Blackburn said of this text, "Our translators thought to avoid the contradiction in Matt. 10:28, by translating the word psuchee by the word soul. . . . It ought to have been translated life, and then in opposition to soma, which means in many places, the present life, it would only denote the future life, to which the whole person was to be restored at the resurrection." Man may take the life of the body, the present life, but the future, eternal life, the immortality to be given at the resurrection, he cannot take from us; but if we do not live in the fear of God, and obey him, he can and will cut us off from receiving that life, by destroying us in gehenna.

It is claimed, from the testimony of Solomon, "Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was and the spirit shall return unto God who gave it" (Eccl. 12:7), that there is some part of man that goes at death to receive its reward. Let it be borne in mind that the above text says nothing of a reward at death, but in chapter nine of this same book of Ecclesiastes we are plainly told that the dead are not being rewarded, and that there is no knowledge in sheol, whither they have gone. See Eccl. 9:3-6, 10. The whole question in this text turns upon the nature and meaning of the term spirit, as here used. It is the spirit that God gave that is to return to him, and as it is said to return to God when the body returns to the earth, we would suppose it to have reference to the spirit God gave to man when he formed him of the ground. If we turn to Gen. 2:6, 7, we read that God "breathed into his [man's] nostrils the breath of life." In Gen. 7:22, margin, this is called, "The breath of the spirit of life." This spirit is that life element contained in the atmosphere which supports life, whether in vegetation, animals, or man. The manifestation of this life is in accordance with the nature of the organism with which it is brought in contact. In the plant growth it is vegetable life. In the animal it is animal life with a manifestation of a low order of intelligence, by some writers called instinct. In the more refined brain organism of man, this life development is a higher grade of intelligence, with moral faculties and moral life resulting.

While this spirit or life principle is in man he thinks, reasons, reflects, wills, loves, adores, and praises his Maker, but there is no evidence that this spirit of life is an entity capable of maintaining these powers separated from the body. The evidence of Scripture and facts in human experience are just the reverse of all this. The dead are not only said to "know not anything," Eccl. 9:5, and to "praise not the Lord," Ps. 115:17, but in the day that man returns to his earth his very thoughts perish, Ps. 146:4, and we are pointed to the resurrection as the time when he who has made the Lord his hope shall be rewarded.

In confirmation of these Scripture statements, that there is no consciousness in death, we would instance the fact that even in life, injury to the brain, which is the organ of thought, reduces even a living man to a state of total unconsciousness.

I will first call attention to the case of Mr. William Humphrey, late of East Townsend, Huron Co., Ohio, U. S. A. In August, 1858, he said to me one evening, at the close of a discourse on the state of the dead, "Elder, you have explained tonight eighteen days of my life that I never knew what to do with before." Why, said I, how is that? He said, "When I was about eighteen years of age, I was working in a turning shop in the town of Goshen, Litchfield Co., Connecticut. I was engaged one day in turning a large wooden drum wheel for a shingle machine. I had nearly

finished the job, when a young lady who worked in the house of my employer, came in and asked, 'What are you doing, Bill?' I answered, Wait a minute, and I will show you. I was going to start the lathe and sand-paper off the drum, which completed the job. I carelessly hoisted the gate and let the water onto the water-wheel, but perceived I had too much motion on the lathe. I thought, I will go and shut the gate; but at that instant the drum burst into four pieces, and a piece weighing about sixty pounds struck me on the breast, shoulder, and head, dislocating my shoulder, breaking the collar bone twice, and crushing my right temple so that the skull bones were badly depressed upon the brain. I was taken into the house for dead. Physicians said it was useless to perform an operation on my skull, as I could not live. My skull was so badly fractured that they could not raise it from the brain. I lay unconscious of everything, yet taking some nourishment in the shape of gruel, which I swallowed when placed in my mouth. By the eighteenth day the edges of the skull had knit together, the inflammation had subsided, and consciousness returned, of which I had been deprived during this whole period. I called out, Shut that gate; for the last I remembered was starting to shut the gate. Since that time when I have heard it preached that the mind of man exists independent of the body, and never loses its consciousness, I would think of those eighteen days, and I could not harmonize the two. "But," said he, "It is all straight now."

Dr. Richmond mentions the case of a woman whose brain was exposed in consequence of the removal of a considerable portion of its bony covering by disease. He says, "I repeatedly made pressure on the brain, and each time suspended all feeling, and all intellect, which were immediately restored when the pressure was withdrawn." The same writer mentions another case. He says, "There was a man who had been trepanned, and who perceived his intellectual faculties failing, and his existence drawing to a close, every time the effused blood collected upon the brain so as to produce pressure."

Prof. Chapman, in one of his lectures says, "I saw an individual with his skull perforated, and the brain exposed, who was accustomed to submit his brain to be experimented upon by pressure, and who was exhibited by the late Prof. Weston to his class. His intellectual and moral faculties disappeared on the application of pressure to the brain. They were held under the thumb, as it were, and restored at pleasure to their full activity by discontinuing the pressure."

Of all facts, the following, related by Sir Astley Cooper, in his Surgical Lectures, is the most remarkable: "A man by the name of Jones received an injury on his head while on board a vessel in the Mediterranean, which rendered him insensible. The vessel soon after made Gibraltar, where Jones was placed in the hospital, and remained several months in the same insensible state. He was then carried on board the frigate Dolphin to Deptford, and from thence was sent to St. Thomas' Hospital, London. He lay constantly on his back, and breathed with difficulty. When hungry or thirsty, he moved his lips and tongue. Mr. Clyne, the surgeon, found a portion of the skull depressed, trepanned him, and removed the depressed portion. Immediately after this operation the motion of his fingers occasioned by the beating of the pulse ceased, and in three hours he sat up in bed, sensation and volition returned, and in four days he got up out of his bed and conversed. The last thing he remembered was the circumstance of taking a prize in the Mediterranean. From the moment of the accident, thirteen months and a few days, oblivion had come over him, and all recollection had ceased. Yet on removing a small portion of bone which pressed upon the brain, he was restored to the full possession of the powers of his mind and body."

The facts above quoted show that thought and consciousness are dependent upon the natural action of the brain. Shall we conclude that when the brain of man is consumed, and he turned again to dust, that he still thinks and remembers, when the Scriptures plainly tell us he does not think, and that he knows nothing?

A knowledge of these facts clearly show us why it is that the coming of Christ and the resurrection are presented as our only hope. We repeat, If there is no second coming of Christ there will be no resurrection of God's people, and if no resurrection, St. Paul says in writing to the Corinthians, our hope is all confined to this life. 1 Cor. 15:19. If no resurrection, he would adopt the saying of the Epicures (that saying was the motto, and the epitaph of Sardanapalus), "Let us eat and drink for to-morrow we die." Verse 32. If no resurrection, the saints of God already dead are perished, verse 18, i. e., there is an end of them and all their hopes.

There is a hope for God's people. It is the Father's will that the dead shall not be lost, but have eternal life; and to this end Christ our Lord will raise them up at the last day (St. John 6:40), and give them immortality, and the kingdom prepared from the foundation of the world.