Untitled article by R. F. COTTRELL

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Third-day, July 16, 1867

Elder Cottrell's Thirteenth Reply.

By R. F. COTTRELL

ELD. N. V. HULL:

Dear Brother,—I accept your apology for the delay, and sympathize with you in your cares and afflictions; while I gladly resume our correspondence. I only regret that you do not yet see the truth on our question as I think the Bible teaches. To convince you and our unconvinced readers, is worth a persevering effort.

I honor your admission, that aion—everlasting, forever—“is limited by its connections.” It is not to be limited by my theory, nor extended by yours. To be tormented forever, is to be tormented as long as consciousness of torment exists. When consciousness and life fail—when the wicked die, as the Bible assures us they will—everlasting torment reaches its utmost limit, and comes to an end, according to your own admission. The fallacy of your argument consists in foisting the “future state” into the place of the subject of the torment, or the torment itself, presuming that the reader will admit the eternity of the future state, and assuming that the wicked will go into a state of endless torment, which is the very point to be proved. It is simply begging the question, reasoning in a circle, or attempting to make your proposition prove itself. It is like saying: The wicked will have endless life, because they are to be tormented as long as they live; and their torment will be endless, because they have endless life.

It is your first business to prove that the sinner is to have eternal conscious existence—that his future state is to be one of eternal consciousness of pain; then his everlasting torment will be unlimited or eternal. But you try to make the term aion, forever, limited, and admitted on all hands, by its subject, prove both propositions: that the wicked will be tormented as long as they consciously exist, and that they will thus exist eternally. It is difficult to make one dollar pay two debts of one dollar each. You may promise the dollar to each, but when you have paid it to one, you will still owe it to the other. You may borrow it of the first and pay it to the second, but still you owe just one dollar. Now what you owe in this discussion is the proof that the wicked are to have eternal conscious existence. This proof cannot be found in the use of a word, which of itself only signifies “duration indefinite,” a word always limited by the subject to which it is applied. From other testimony show that the subject is unlimited, then “forever” will imply unlimited duration. You thus assume the point you seek to prove. “Lifetime” is one of the definitions of aion, as given by Greenfield. Hence, to be tormented forever, is to be tormented as long as one lives. Now give us the text that proves that the wicked will live eternally, and your work is done; for they will be tormented as long as they live. This is all that these your strongest texts prove. But on my part, I assume nothing; for I have the most positive proofs that the wicked will be cut off, lose their life, die, be consumed, be devoured, be no more, be as though they had not been, &c. Hence, everlasting torment is necessarily limited to the period of their conscious existence.

Your effort to make my rule of interpretation “destroy the idea of endless happiness in the case of the righteous,” is a failure, because it is expressly revealed, that the righteous shall be raised from the dead incorruptible, that then they shall receive eternal life in the world to come: while there is no such promise to the wicked.

You say my attempt to limit the meaning of aion “by connecting it with mortal man, would be of force if our question concerned man in this life, because mortality is affirmed of him here, but not of him hereafter.” Will man certainly become immortal hereafter, because mortality is affirmed of him but once? This is like the argument for the abolition of the Sabbath, from the fact that the commandment is not repeated in the New Testament. You and I hold that the commandment stands fast until it is reversed. So man once mortal will remain mortal until immortality is given him. This the Scriptures do not promise the wicked, neither in this world, nor in that which is to come. It is true, mortality is affirmed of all men in this life, and the fact that immortality is promised as the reward of the righteous in the future world, is a convincing proof that the wicked will not have it.

But mortality is affirmed of the wicked in the future, at the time they receive their punishment. 2 Peter ii, 12—“But these, as natural brute beasts, made to be taken and destroyed, speak evil of the things that they understand not; and shall utterly perish in their own corruption.” The next verse calls this “the reward of unrighteousness.” No stronger language could be used to prove the mortality and the utter destruction of the wicked; and it is as strong in the Greek as in the English. We have seen, that your conclusion is not warranted, were your premises true; but your premise, that mortality is not affirmed of the wicked hereafter, is not true.

I am not particular whether Paul's “everlasting destruction” be interpreted by Christ's “everlasting punishment,” or the reverse. I admit that “the person who is everlastingly punished is most emphatically destroyed,” provided the punishment be destruction; but unconsuming pain or torment is not destruction, in any sense of the word, as found in Webster's Unabridged. I have quoted his definitions of destroy entire. Which will you have? Destruction is not in any sense preservation. A thing cannot be destroyed and preserved at the same time. By the figure of metonymy, which puts effect for cause, or cause for effect, &c., we may say of a sound living man, that he is destroyed, or dead. In this case, by anticipation, the effect or consequence, is put for the cause, sin being the cause, and destruction the consequence. We mean that the course of sin will end in destruction. But to say that the sentence of destruction is already executed upon a sound, living man, is false. When you admit that men are not rewarded or punished before the judgment and the resurrection, you virtually admit, that in the text, “O Israel, thou hast destroyed thyself,” destruction is affirmed by anticipation; the time has not yet come for its execution; there yet is help; Israel may be saved, and not destroyed. But when a person is destroyed in fact, as sinners will be in Gehenna, there is no help or salvation for him. How absurd then to argue, that the sinner in this life is destroyed in the same sense that he will be after being raised from the dead and cast into the lake of fire.

The language you quote from Murry, is fine and smooth, and is probably as well calculated to explain a theory which rests solely upon what exists in the mind of God, and is not revealed in his Word, as any could be. Our discussion is concerning what is revealed. Revelation is progressive, but not contradictory. When God said, “The seventh day is the Sabbath,” I have no idea that the first-day as the “Christian Sabbath” was in his mind. And when he defined death to be the returning of man to the earth whence he was taken, I cannot believe he intended that progression should reverse it, and make it eternal life in misery. It is the boasted progression of this degenerate age, which says, The Scriptures do not mean what they say, or, if they do, they are not to be believed.

Is the “great and dreadful day of the Lord,” prophesied of by Malachi, already in the past? Is that burning “day of the Lord,” in which Peter said the elements and the earth itself should melt with fervent heat, long since gone by? Then may scoffers boldly say, Where is the promise of his coming? All things continue as they were.

When it is said that all the wicked shall be burned up; that it “shall leave them neither root nor branch;” that as the fat of lambs they shall consume, into smoke shall they consume away; that as the tares are gathered and burned in the fire, so shall it be with the wicked in the end of the world—is it enough to say, that these Scriptures do not mean what they say? Where is the evidence that Jesus was not teaching the manner of the punishment, but the certainty and terribleness of it?—that the as and the so do not refer to the mode of future punishment? Is the true meaning of these texts the very opposite? Is it, that as fat, chaff, and tares are consumed in the fire, so the wicked shall be eternally preserved, either in the fire or out of it? Are these things really comparisons, or contrasts? Were these Scriptures intended to instruct, or deceive us? Are they intended to frighten sinners with the “certainty and terribleness” of a punishment altogether of another kind, and to which these things bear no resemblance? If this is the key to revelation, we may believe what we please, only be sure and not believe what the Bible says.

Where are the wicked to be punished? I answer, On the earth. Prov. xi, 31. 2 Pet. iii, 7. Rev. xx, 9. Here, while day and night continue, the smoke of their torment will ascend up forever and ever. Isa. xxiv, 1, 2, 8–10. Rev. xiv, 10, 11; xviii, 8, 9, 18; xix, 19–21; xx, 10. When the rebellion of earth is put down, the rebels will not be transported from earth to defile some other portion of the fair creation of God. The fire of Gehenna will be here; no Scripture locates it any where else. But the earth is to be renewed, and the righteous are to inhabit it, when the curse is no more. Isa. lxv, 17. 2 Pet. iii, 13. Rev. xxii, 1–5; xxii, 3. “And there shall be no night there; and they need no candle, neither light of the sun; for the Lord God giveth them light; and they shall reign forever and ever.” When this is the case with the righteous, the everlasting torment of the wicked, which was on this earth, will have come to an end. “And every creature which is in heaven, and on the earth, and under the earth”—the whole vast creation of God—will be heard saying, “Blessing, and honor, and glory, and power, be unto him that sitteth upon the throne, and unto the Lamb, forever and ever.”—Rev. v, 13. When this is the case, the wailings of the damned will have died away forever, and there will be no sin, pain, death, or curse, in all the vast universe of God. May you and I, dear brother, unite with all the redeemed in that song of praise?

As ever yours, R. F. COTTRELL.