GEORGE STORRS VS. NON-RESURRECTIONISM by John H. Waggoner

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jun 22, 1869

GEORGE STORRS VS. NON-RESURRECTIONISM.

By John H. Waggoner

In a recent number of the Herald of Life, a correspondent relates that a friend called on him and read an article in the World’s Crisis, against the doctrine of the non-resurrection of the wicked, asking his opinion of it. He replied that it was written by some one ignorant of their views, and was then told that it was written by George Storrs. But that correspondent still insisted that it was written by Mr. Storrs in the days of his ignorance, before he had become acquainted with the arguments against the resurrection of the wicked. Then follow remarks by the editor of the Herald of Life, Mr. Storrs, in which he denounces in strong terms the republication of his former writings against his present faith, as an act of injustice to himself.

We cannot see it in that light. We know that we have no prejudice against Eld. Storrs—nothing but feelings of kindness and respect. If he has written forcible words against the theory in times past, must they necessarily be withheld from the public because he has changed his views? By their publication he gave them to the public; and if they contain argument strong enough to condemn his present faith, his opponents have the same right to use them that they have the writings of any other person. On the contrary, if they are feeble, they cannot harm him in his present position, so long as his present position is well understood. We desire to let the reader judge of the merits of the article in question, and copy from the Crisis of April 21, 1869. Eld. Storrs says:

“We have no intention of spending our time for a year and a half in discussing so fruitless a topic, and one which we are clearly satisfied is opposed both to the spirit and letter of the Bible. If any man can give us as plain a text that men are immortal by creation as we have that ‘all that are in the graves . . . shall come forth, . . . they that have done good . . . and they that have done evil,’ then we will confess our error in ever having preached or printed the ‘Six Sermons.’ Here we leave the topic of the non-resurrection of wicked men and little children; for the theory we oppose denies the resurrection of infants, except possibly the infants of believers. According to it, there is a bare possibility, nothing more, that our sleeping children ‘shall come again from the land of the enemy;’ and it is quite uncertain whether, to them, ‘Jesus is the resurrection and the life.’ The method of interpreting Scripture on which this theory depends, unsettles all faith in the Bible, and saps the foundation of Christianity. Prophetic Scripture is made by it to speak of events past at the time. Because the prophets speak as if God had already done what he will finally do, it is inferred there shall be no resurrection of the wicked. For example, the Psalmist says, ‘Thou hast destroyed all them that go astray from thee.’ W. says, ‘There is no intimation of a resurrection, . . . for the characters are utterly consumed and destroyed.’”

“The question here all turns on time. When are ‘all that go astray destroyed?’ If he is correct in his theory, David lived in a happy time; all the wicked had been destroyed—not one was then left; for David says, ‘Thou hast’ done it; not, Thou wilt do it. Thus the truth of God is turned into a fable, and Christianity is a falsehood. Do you ask how so? We answer, Several centuries before the birth of Jesus of Nazareth, Isaiah said, ‘Unto us a child is born, . . . the government shall be upon his shoulder,’ etc. Now says the Jew, ‘It is plain the Messiah was born long before Jesus of Nazareth; Jesus cannot, therefore, be the Messiah of God.’ Again the same prophet said of Messiah, seven hundred years before the birth of Jesus, ‘He is despised, . . . we did esteem him smitten of God, . . . with his stripes we are healed, . . . the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all, . . . he was oppressed,’ etc. Hence it is as plain a matter of fact, to a Jew, that Jesus cannot be the Messiah, as it is to the author of ‘Anastasis’ that the wicked will have no resurrection, from such texts as that in which David said, ‘Thou hast destroyed all them that go astray from thee.’ And we think the argument of the Jew is as well founded and as forcible as that of him who contends that there is no resurrection of the wicked because their future and final destination is spoken of as already past. To us it seems clear that ‘blindness in part has happened to’ the authors of such interpretations. ‘God calls things that be not as though they were,’ on account of the certainty of the accomplishment of his purposes; thus he said, ‘I have made thee a father of many nations,’ when as yet he had no child.

“This principle, understood and applied, subverts all the fine-spun theory of no-resurrection of the wicked, and shows that what is spoken on the subject of their being destroyed, and not rising, in the various texts relied upon to support the Pharisaic doctrine of the non-resurrection of the wicked, relate to their final destruction after the ‘Judgment of the great day,’ unto which the wicked are ‘reserved;’ when, as Job says, ‘The wicked shall be brought forth to the day of wrath;’ and he affirms, they are ‘reserved to the day of destruction,’ Job xxi, 30; and Jesus Christ says, they ‘shall come forth from the graves’ to condemnation or ‘damnation;’ after which the testimony of John the apostle is, they shall be ‘cast into the lake of fire;’ surely that is ‘the day of destruction.’ Let men beware of deluding their souls with the vain fancy that they will lie in their graves in a state of insensibility to the Judgment and the awful execution of the sentence that is to follow; vain hope; strong delusion.

“We have called the doctrine of the non-resurrection of the wicked ‘a Pharisaic doctrine.’ Our authority for this assertion is Josephus and the ‘Cyclopedia of Biblical Literature, by John Kitto, D. D., F. S. A.,’ an English work of great research. The Pharisees maintained that ‘those who had lived virtuously,’ and they ‘only, have power to ‘revive and live again.’ This fact is worthy of serious attention, as the advocates of the non-resurrection of the wicked, who have recently come up, try hard not only to destroy the force of Christ’s words (John v, 28, 29), but to make Paul’s words (Acts xxiv, 15) to mean only that the Pharisees allowed there would be a resurrection of the just and unjust, while the apostle did not. The truth is, the Pharisees allowed there would be a resurrection of the dead, but denied that it embraced the ‘unjust.’ Paul affirms his expectation—for that is all the Greek word elpida, translated hope, in this text necessarily means—that there shall be a resurrection of the dead, both of the just and of the unjust; thus agreeing with the testimony of Jesus, that all in the graves shall come forth—good and evil; and the ‘two witnesses’ strike down the Pharisaic doctrine of the just only being raised from the dead.

“We have said much more than we intended when we commenced this notice; and we have done so, that all might understand that we have no fear to meet all that can be said, however subtle the argument may be managed. A Jew called on us, not long since, to prove to us from the Scriptures that it was impossible that Jesus could be the Messiah; and his argument was full as strong as the argument by which it is attempted to establish a limited resurrection; and, as we have before remarked, they both have one principle in interpreting the Scriptures.”—Bible Examiner, Vol. v., pp. 43, 44.

We have read Mr. Storrs’ later writings on this subject, especially his book entitled, “Life from the Dead,” with close attention; and read it many times over; and we are firmly convinced that he has never written anything on the same subject, since his change of views, that will compare with the above quotation, in clear, forcible argument. And we think the strong charges contained in this quotation are strictly just against all that he has written in favor of the Non-resurrection theory. It exactly expresses the convictions which pressed upon our mind while reading his book:

Mr. Storrs stands as the real representative of this doctrine, having written the only book of any note yet produced on the subject. We cannot say that we are charmed with the strength or consistency of this, the only exponent of Non-resurrectionism, and must express our opinion that it could never have been written in the days of his full mental strength and vigor. But let the book be what it may, so long as he occupies the position he does, he need not be surprised, nor should he complain, if those of the opposite faith use his former writings to the best possible advantage. J. H. WAGGONER.