An Unholy “Holiness” Doctrine
By L. A. S.
A RECENT issue of the Gospel Trumpet, a “holiness” journal published in West Virginia, contains an argument of some length to prove that “the torments of hell will be unending.” The argument is based on the expression “forever and ever,” which occurs in certain Scripture passages which speak of the fate of Satan and the ungodly. The writer goes so far as to assert that “all teachers who teach an ending hell are Satan’s preachers, and are antichrists.” In this argument it is stated, however, that “there will be degrees of future punishment,” and texts are quoted which plainly teach that this will be so. God “will render to every man according to his deeds.” Rom. 2: 5, 6. The Pharisees, for their hypocrisy, were to receive the “greater damnation.” Matt. 23: 14. It is to be more tolerable for Sodom and Gomorrah in the day of judgment than for the cities of Galilee. Matt. 10: 14, 15; 11: 20-24. The servant who “knew not, and did commit things worthy of stripes,” is to receive “few stripes,” while others will receive “many stripes.” Luke 12: 47, 48. This fact of degrees of future punishment is fatal to the theory of endless torment. When the final judgment of the wicked takes place, the devil and all the ungodly—“whosoever was not found written in the book of life”—are cast into a lake of fire. And according to the argument of this “holiness” organ, all who are cast into the flames are to remain there, burning, yet alive, to all eternity. Is this being beaten with “few stripes”? Eternity is infinite. Eternal consciousness in hell fire would be infinite suffering, infinite punishment. Instead of some receiving but “few stripes” in hell, all would receive unending stripes. Jesus always spoke the truth. He did not say “few stripes” when he meant punishment and suffering infinitely great. If all the wicked are to burn endlessly in the lake of fire, all suffer alike. Those who have sinned but little suffer the same pain inflicted upon the greatest monsters of evil, and for the same length of time. Any attempt to show that there can be degrees of punishment in an endless consciousness in the lake of fire, must be built upon fancy purely. Such an idea is contrary to reason, and there is no hint of it in revelation. There is only one reasonable and Scriptural explanation of degrees of punishment, and that is in the idea of the limit of the duration of consciousness. Those who receive5“few stripes” for their sins are quickly consumed, and their suffering is quickly ended, though in a sense their punishment is eternal because they are deprived of eternal life in God’s kingdom. Those who receive “many stripes” have their consciousness and sufferings prolonged, until each shall have been rewarded according to his works, according to the deeds done in his probationary life. The doctrine that God will subject his creatures to an eternity of the most dreadful torture in a burning hell is the most God-dishonoring doctrine that could be invented, for it represents him as being worse than the devil. It has done more to drive people from God, to make infidels, atheists, and scoffers at Christianity, than any other doctrine, however false. The doctrines of true Christianity do not operate in this way. Every really Christian doctrine presents the Almighty as a God of love. It is Satan who represents him in a different light. How is it possible for any one to worship a being who he believes will cast his creatures into a place where they will suffer the most dreadful agony through never-ending ages of time? And what else could result from the worship of such a fearful being but that the worshipers should partake of the character of the one worshiped, and become themselves cruel and callous to human suffering? Is it any wonder that in past centuries, when men did believe this awful doctrine, they burned “heretics” at the stake to save men’s souls from an eternity of fire in the world to come? Is it any wonder that they callously inflicted on their victims all the inhuman tortures of the Inquisition? This doctrine of eternal torment has an evil record. It has borne evil fruit. The final end of the wicked is pictured in Revelation 20. They come up on the breadth of the earth, with Satan at their head, and surround the New Jerusalem, and fire comes down from God out of heaven and devours them. The city of God with the saved inside it is thus in the midst of the fire that devours the ungodly. There is no record that the city is removed to any other place. But it is declared that there is to be a new earth, and that the “first earth” is to pass away. Rev. 21: 1. The first earth is to be burned up in the fire which comes down out of heaven upon the wicked as they stand around the holy city. 2 Peter 3: 10. The old earth passes away in fire, and then the voice of the eternal One is heard saying, “Behold, I make all things new.” Rev. 21: 5. The new earth comes into the place of the old. The first world, that of Adam and his descendants down to Noah, was destroyed by a flood. It was overflowed with water, and “perished.” The world that was known after the flood was not the world that was known before the flood. The antediluvian world passed away. Its whole surface was changed; its arrangement of land and water, mountain and plain, was completely altered; for not only was there a fearful storm from heaven, with mountain waves sweeping over the submerged land, but the “fountains of the deep” were broken up; the waters under the earth burst their barriers, and there must have been a gigantic upheaval and displacement of the earth’s crust on all sides. It was a new and strange world upon which Noah and his family looked when they came forth from the ark. The righteous in that time of destruction and judgment upon the wicked were in the ark, in the midst of the storm of water which overwhelmed the ungodly. At the coming final destruction, likewise, the righteous will be in the holy city, in the midst of the storm of fire that overwhelms all whose names are not in the book of life. After that storm, will come forth new heavens, and a new earth, but the wicked will not be in it. They will be no more. God will have a clean universe. There will be a complete annihilation of sin.