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Our Imperishable Inheritance

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Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Apr 29, 1909

FromReview and Herald, Vol. 86, No. 17.

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Our Imperishable Inheritance

By C. M. S.

The Doom of the Disobedient

God said to man, “In the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.” Satan said, “Ye shall not surely die: . . . ye shall be as God.” God is immortal—the only being who is. 1 Tim. 6:16. God was predicting death—mortality—for the disobedient. Satan was predicting for the disobedient the attribute of God himself—freedom from death, immortality.
God’s statement was plain both to Adam and to Satan. The penalty God pronounced meant for man dissolution, the cessation of life. When warning man of the penalty for disobedience, the Lord gave him no intimation of a deathless entity within the body structure, no intimation of an immortal soul in man; nor has he given such intimation to any who have lived since Adam. There is no word in the pronouncement of the penalty that would lead man to suppose that the curse pronounced meant an eternity in misery. There was much involved in man’s receiving at the outset of his career a perfect understanding of God’s purpose and of the consequences of disobedience as well as of obedience.
Therefore we should expect the Creator to use plain language at such a time if he was ever to use plain language at any time in communicating with man. “Ye shall surely die,” is plain language. “Dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return,” is also plain language. A course in theology is not necessary in order to understand what it means. It meant corruption, dissolution, a return to the elements of which the being was composed, a cessation of being—in a word, death.
Man, at the moment when God thus addressed him, had life. The penalty for disobedience as God pronounced it, and as Adam and Eve understood it, was that they were to lose what they then had—life. Their condition after disobedience was to be the opposite of what it was before disobedience. There were two rewards before them. They could have only one. It was either obedience and life or disobedience and death. It would be accusing God of insincerity in the use of language to assert that when he said, “Ye shall surely die,” he meant, “Ye shall spend eternity in torment.” In that case, Satan would have told the truth, and could have proved it; for to be in torment throughout eternity would necessarily be to live throughout eternity, as Satan declared. It is contrary to all rules for judging the meaning of words to hold that while meaning life when he speaks of life, God also means life when he speaks of death, the difference being that in the first case God means life in happiness, and in the second case he means life in misery. To reason thus is to make language a medium for obscuring thought rather than for expressing thought.
We can not suppose that God uses the word death to mean one condition in one place and an entirely different condition in another place. Men, in attempting to deceive one another, have frequently juggled with words. We can not conceive of the Almighty doing so, especially when instructing his creatures with reference to the things of eternity. We must trust him to give us his meaning in the plainest language that it is possible for divinity to use in addressing humanity. As if to illustrate what the word to die means, the Creator declares that men would return to the dust whence they were taken. If a further divine comment or explanation of the word were needed, we have it later in these words: “The living know that they shall die; but the dead know not anything. . . . As well their love, as their hatred and their envy, is perished long ago; neither have they any more a portion forever in anything that is done under the sun.”
... There is no work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom, in sheol [the grave] whither thou goest.” Eccl. 9:5-10.
The being who knows “not anything,” whose love and hatred and envy are perished, who takes part in nothing that “is done under the sun,” and who is gone to a place where there is neither work, device, knowledge, nor wisdom, could hardly be enduring torture or experiencing the joys of eternal life in heaven. This text teaches that conscious existence entirely ceases the moment death claims any human being. Nevertheless, God has not forgotten them, and their record will endure until the final adjustment of rewards and punishments. Says the same writer: “Fear God, and keep his commandments; for this is the whole duty of man. For God will bring every work into judgment, with every hidden thing, whether it be good, or whether it be evil.” Eccl. 12:13, 14.
And we have this further testimony concerning the condition of man in death: “His breath goeth forth, he returneth to his earth; in that very day his thoughts perish.” Ps. 146:4. Life and death do not reign in the same human tenement at the same time. When death enters, life departs. On the other hand, when the great resurrection morning comes, death is forced to give up its dominion over man, and life tenants again the form that once was man. So the redeemed can then sing: “O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?”
Still further to teach that in death there is no continuance of conscious existence. Inspiration declares: “In death there is no remembrance of thee: in sheol [the grave] who shall give thee thanks?” Ps. 6:5.
Though many other scriptures might be given whose import is the same as those here quoted, it is unnecessary to the argument. One statement of Inspiration upon any point makes the proof as strong as a hundred could make it. When Jehovah utters a truth, a thousand repetitions could not make it more true. So, from the scriptures cited there is no escaping the conclusion that the punishment pronounced upon man was a complete cessation of conscious existence. It was not continued existence with a change of environment, not immortality in misery, but death, the antithesis of life. The one gift that makes it possible to enjoy any other gift is life. By depriving man of that, God would sweep away all others in its train. So the loss of that gift of all gifts was to be the penalty for disobedience.
There were held before man two ways of achieving immortality. God did not deny to man the right to come to the tree of life and partake of its fruit. He had access to that tree before the fall, and if obedient, would have lived forever by virtue of partaking of the fruit of that tree, even if no pronouncement of immortality were ever made.
But it was in the purpose of God finally to make man immortal. This is shown in the fact that Christ, who came to “destroy the works of the devil” and to restore all things, has brought “life and immortality to light through the gospel.” When that work has been accomplished, and mortality has been “swallowed up of life,” God’s original purpose concerning man will have been wrought out. But when man sinned, the Creator took precautions to insure that man should not live forever. “And Jehovah God said, Behold, the man has become as one of us, to know good and evil; and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live forever—therefore Jehovah God sent him forth from the garden of Eden.” Gen. 3:22, 23. Man’s continued existence was dependent upon his obedience. The Lord himself set before man that way of attaining to immortality.
The other way of attaining that attribute was set before man by the father of deception. It was to make immortal gods of men, and that through disobedience to the only One possessing immortality, and the only One who could confer it upon any. To the guileless pair in Eden the deceiver’s plan seemed the shorter and easier way. The promise was greater, and seemed nearer of fulfilment. The glamour of being gods outshone the quiet virtue of obedience. It was when called to account by his Creator, that man began to realize fully what his disobedience was to cost him and his posterity. It is summed up by Paul in these words: “As through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin; and so death passed unto all men, for that all sinned.” Rom. 5:12. He found, as Inspiration later expresses it, that “the wages of sin is death.” Adam could then look down through the long history of this earth and see the swift reaping of Death’s sickle through succeeding generations. He had given up life for death, and in his punishment all his posterity must share.
Infidels have made much of “the injustice of the Creator” in pronouncing death upon Adam “for eating an apple.” To state the case in such a way is to show an utter blindness to every moral principle involved. In Adam’s course there was every element of anarchy. The law of the Ruler of the universe was set at naught, and the fallen angel, Satan, had brought under his power the one whom God had made the ruler of the earth. Heaven could not look with indifference upon such a condition.
When man disobeyed God, the earth, of which he was ruler, was in rebellion against the government of heaven. It was as if the governor of a state should refuse allegiance to the nation of which the state was a part. No nation could exist with its smaller divisions in rebellion against it. For God to permit man to go unpunished for his disobedience, would be to condone similar conditions in any part of the universe where they might arise, and finally to destroy all government in all parts of the universe, and bring ruin to all concerned. Can God consistently continue to give life to those who will use it in opposition to his purpose and contrary to their own best interests? To ask such a question is to answer it. God in his wisdom took the only course he could take and be just to all concerned. Therefore he gave the warning of death as the punishment for transgression, and carried the warning into execution when the transgression took place. “So death passed unto all men,” and to-day and every day we see carried out that divine mandate: “The soul that sinneth, it shall die.” Mortality has become the heritage of men; but we are not left without hope. There is another Adam given to the race. “As in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive.” 1 Cor. 15:22. The doom of death rests heavily on the world, but a way has been found out of that prison-house, of which all may avail themselves who will.
C. M. S.