ETERNAL MISERY by C. A. Adams

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Mar 20, 1879

ETERNAL MISERY.

By C. A. Adams

My former article on this subject, signed “A Hearer,” has moved the Congregational church of this place to withdraw its fellowship from me, because I have advocated and published my views upon the subject of eternal misery. I could have been in good standing if I had only kept still. John the Baptist would not have been beheaded if he had only kept still; Christ, Peter, Stephen, and Paul would have been let alone if they had only been silent; hosts of martyrs would have been spared a terrible fate if they had kept back the truth.

I united with the Congregational Church about two years ago. I had a private interview with the pastor, C. O. Brown, and told him that I did not hold the doctrine of the immortality of the soul and eternal misery. I told him that I held that the lost were punished with eternal death in the sense of extinction of life; that they sinned and suffered no more. He did not ask me to surrender my right to hold and publish my own views on this or any other subject. Not one in the church asked it. I never did, and never mean to be guilty of any such suicide.

If, to belong to a Congregational church, I must seal my lips and drop my pen as regards what I think is the truth, then I no more belong to or sanction such a church. To yield my right to publish all abroad my views of Bible truth, is to barter away my birthright to liberty, and to renounce my allegiance to truth. Does any church ask me to do this? If so, that church must be as barren of true religion as an iceberg. No person can unite with such a church knowingly, unless extremely ignorant or dishonest.

They bring no charge against me, except holding and publicly advocating heretical views. I claim that my views are Bible views, and that there is a mass of Scripture to support them. The Bible declares that man is made of the dust of the ground; that he is dust and shall turn to dust again. There have been millions of demonstrations of this. The Bible does not say that man is an immortal spirit,—that he shall never die. The devil and orthodoxy say this, but not God. I prefer to believe God, and not the devil. God says that he will destroy the persistent and irreclaimable sinner. (See 37th psalm.) The wicked must be punished with death, extinction of life, or rebellion must go on forever, and there can be no end of sin, and the demands of justice can never be satisfied. If the sinner is so punished for sinning that he still continues to sin, then the penalty of the law can never be fully inflicted. Queer penalty that, which an infinite God, with infinite power and resources, can never inflict in full.

Such a view of God and justice is stark nonsense and entitled to no respect from any intelligent being. I prefer to be free, and obey God rather than man. I most heartily exhort all that read this to take the same position.

The worst heresy is that which denies us the right to think, speak, and publish what we conscientiously believe to be the truth.

—C. A. Adams, in The Sun (Rochester, Mich.)