The Sinner's Wages by C. W. Stone

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Jan 12, 1882

The Sinner's Wages.

By C. W. Stone

"For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord." Rom. 6:23.

My dear friends: Did it ever occur to you that the sinner is at work for wages? This is what the text teaches. Every act of disobedience to God is to have its appropriate reward—"the wages of sin is death."

While it is conceded by all Bible students that the sinner is to be punished, the opinions of men as to the kind of punishment differ widely. It is my purpose to notice briefly the doctrine of eternal conscious suffering of the wicked, and then to place before you the plain teaching of the Bible on the final destiny of the wicked.

"The wages of sin is death." I can conceive of no proper definition of the word death that can make it convey the idea of eternal life in misery. Should the sinner live forever, though in torment unspeakable, he never would see death. Suffering is not death. No degree of torment is death, so long as its subject does not die. But the apostle declared the wages of sin to be death; and we know that we rightly understand the meaning of the word to be the cessation of life, the opposite of life, for the apostle speaks of it in contrast with eternal life. "The wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord." This gift of eternal life comes through Jesus, and will be given to those alone who "by patient continuance in well-doing" seek for it. Rom. 2:5-7. But the wicked do not seek for it, and receive no gift through Christ; therefore they cannot live forever, but must die.

Eternity! Finite mind cannot grasp the idea that is named by that word. The old man with hoary head can look back over his three score years and ten, and estimate the length of that period; but he cannot comprehend the duration of a thousand years. But we are told that the sinner is to be tormented in fire and brimstone not a thousand years only, but years without end, eternally. If it were a million years, which is one hundred and sixty times as long as the world has stood, if it were ten millions of years even, there would be a distant spark of light to cheer the horrible blackness of despair at spending the long, unending ages in unutterable anguish which nothing can alleviate, and which death is not permitted to end. Ten million years would end some time, but the years of eternity unceasingly roll on.

If it be claimed that the lost in hell are continually sinning by blaspheming God in their misery, thus adding to their guilt eternally, we reply, there is no scripture which teaches that the lost in hell are ever to be judged for deeds done there, consequently they can never be punished for them. They are to be punished only for the sins of this life. God permits sin to exist for a time, but he will not perpetuate it by working a continuous miracle, to keep forever alive the blaspheming hosts of hell.

Many of the advocates of the doctrine in question now deny the literal fire of hell, and state that the fire is a symbol of the terrible burning of a guilty conscience, which is to be the punishment eternal of the wicked. To this I object; firstly, because there is not a Bible text for it; secondly, because it is contrary to the Bible; and thirdly, because it will not bear even the feeble light of reason. If it be true that a guilty conscience is to be the source of the sinner's eternal misery, then the most hardened wretch will suffer least, and the man who dies "almost a saint" will endure the heaviest punishment of all. The little boy who steals or swears for the first time, feels very guilty, and is afraid and sorry whenever he thinks of what he has done; but after a while he will swear and not think of it, and rob a savingsbank without twinge of conscience. Sin hardens the conscience, until it becomes as callous and unfeeling as though "seared with a hot iron."

Again, these same persons teach us that men go at death into this lake of fire, or rather this place where their consciences may them to mourn and feel such anguish. They teach us that the devil and his angels are now enduring the same torment. Whatever the nature of the punishment of the wicked, that of the devil and his angels is of the same sort; for the wicked are commanded in that day to depart "into everlasting fire prepared for the devil and his angels." Matt. 25:41. Now, inasmuch as the devil is the originator of sin, he ought to suffer more than any human sinner. "The Lord shall reward the doer of evil according to his wickedness." 2 Samuel 3:39. Therefore it must be that as soon as the devil was cast into that place of punishment centuries ago, he began to be very sorrowful and the sense of his awful guilt has caused him to repent deeply of his sin, and to weep incessantly at his condition, and to feel unutterable sorrow as the wicked at times remind him that had it not been for him they would not now be in a like condition.

Cannot any one see that if this were the kind of punishment, the devil must long ago have ceased his work of tempting souls to sin? When a person is so conscience stricken over any wrong course he has pursued as to feel unutterable anguish day and night, we always expect to see him refrain immediately from such acts. Then all the wicked in torment would cease longer to curse God or do any wrong thing, and with loud weeping over their unchristian conduct in life they would send up one long, united wail of contrition and repentance. But one advocate of eternal torment says, that the lost in hell "utter as many blasphemies against God as the righteous shout hallelujahs to his praise."

Another phase of that doctrine is that the damned will forever be in sight of the saved, and that the "eternal sufferings of the lost will give the intelligent creation, as a whole, a higher knowledge and enjoyment of God." One writer says to the wicked, "When your godly parents have been in Heaven millions of years, they will not even then begin to pity you, but will praise God that their happiness is made perfect in your misery." To this slanderous sentiment we reply in the sarcastic language of Sylvanus Cobb, that we should "have a unanimous petition from the righteous to be disencumbered of that enormous surfeit of enjoyment which should be derived from the endless misery of others."

But what does the Bible say? It teaches us very plainly that there be a day of Judgment. God "hath appointed a day in the which he will judge the world." Acts 17:31. "He that rejecteth me . . . . the word that I have spoken shall judge him in the last day." The judgment is placed among the events of the end of the world. In Rev. 11:15-18 it is mentioned among the closing scenes of this world's history. I now ask, Of what use is a future judgment, if men have all gone to their punishment at death? No one can answer this; and the simple fact that there is to be a day of Judgment proves that none have yet gone to their punishment.

This point, however, is plainly proven by direct Scripture testimony. "The Lord knoweth how to deliver the godly out of temptations, and to reserve the unjust unto the day of Judgment to be punished." 2 Pet. 2:9. "Where are the dwelling-places of the wicked? Have ye not asked them that go by the way [them that walk in the road, the highway]? and do ye not know their tokens [have ye not observed the tombstones, the tokens of the dead], that the wicked is reserved to the day of destruction? They shall be brought forth to the day of wrath." Job 21:28-30. And in Rev. 11:18 we learn that "the time of the dead that they should be judged" is followed by the time to reward the prophets and to destroy the wicked. This, indeed, is so reasonable that it scarcely needs an argument. This is the way in which all law is executed. In no case does the executioner hang a man before he has had his trial in court; and if, perchance, a mob hang him before the time set for his trial or judgment, his trial would never take place.

This principle being established, we go farther, and state that even the fallen angels with Satan at their head are not yet receiving their punishment. "And the angels which kept not their first estate, but left their own habitation, he hath reserved in everlasting chains under darkness unto the judgment of the great day." Jude 6. "They are reserved unto the day of Judgement, when they will receive their sentence, and be punished. When the Saviour met the two mediums under the "possession" or "control" of devils, the devils said to him, "Art thou come to torment us before the time?" Matt. 8:29. This text shows that the devils were not then in torment, and also that they really know that at some future time they are to be punished. At present the devil is "going to and fro in the earth," and "walking up and down in it." Job 1:7. His business is to lead men down to destruction. As a roaring lion he seeketh his prey. 1 Pet. 5:8. (Concluded next week.)