Terrible Results from Believing in the Literal Destruction of Sinners.
By John Matteson
The following is from a learned treatise called “Life and Death Eternal,” by S. C. Bartlett, D. D., Professor in Chicago Theological Seminary, Page 353. Trying to show the grossness of our theory on this point, and what terrible fruits it will produce, he says:— “Why should they who talk of a literal grinding to powder and burning to ashes, and recognize no other soul or spirit than the life of the body, stop short of a kind of Mohammedan paradise? Why are they not in a state of readiness to receive a heavenly city of literal gold and precious stones, with streams and trees and luscious fruits, and feasting with Abraham, and drinking wine with the Saviour in his kingdom?” Indeed we are trying to get ready to receive this heavenly city, and we believe also that Jesus is preparing mansions there, wherein he will receive us. John 14:2. Was it Mohammed or Christ who taught of the golden city with its precious stones, the river of life, and the tree of life yielding twelve manner of fruits? Rev. 21 and 22. Who promised to his disciples that they should drink the new wine with him in his Father’s kingdom? Matt. 26:29. Who has introduced the doctrine that in the new earth God’s people shall plant vineyards and eat the fruit of them? Isa. 65:17, 21. Who made Adam “very good,” placed him in the garden of Eden, and told him to freely eat of the trees, the tree of life not excepted? Gen. 2:16. Was not Christ himself a literal person with flesh and bones, who could eat and drink after his resurrection, when he possessed a glorified, spiritual body, and had become a quickening spirit? Luke 24:39–43. (Verse 37, the word rendered spirit is pneuma in Greenfield, but the reading adopted into the text by Griesbach is phantasma: apparition, specter, ghost.) 1 Cor. 15:45. And shall not we be made like him at his appearing, and see him as he is? 1 John 3:2. Indeed, the popular theory is too fanciful for the doctrine of Christ, and the doctrine of Christ appears gross to those who do not believe it, but who accept the speculations of heathen philosophers as an interpretation of the Bible on these points. Has not God made the spirit, as well as the body? And was not the body of Adam just as good as his spirit? And if in our fallen state one part should be counted more sinful than another, is it not the spirit or mind from which the evil desires proceed? But the Scriptures do not teach that one part of man is more responsible than another. The whole man is responsible. 2 Cor. 5:10. And the body can and must be made just as holy as the spirit. Rom. 12:1; 1 Thess. 5:23. But did not Grecian and Roman philosophers, and afterward Catholic monks cherish and advocate the idea that the body alone is gross, and the seat of all that is fleshly or sinful, and that the spirit emancipated from the body would be free from all this grossness? And has not this same leaven worked into the popular theology of our day, and caused its adherents to consider everything which is literal or in bodily form as gross and absurd, while it leaves them rejoicing in shadows of exceedingly thin and very immaterial substance? After the reverend doctor has made a meaningless thrust about “free-love,” he proceeds: “Accordingly, we learn that already this influence is unfolding itself. A writer in the Independent of Aug. 10, 1865 (Rev. Marcellus Church, D. D.), informs us that he has encountered the doctrine in this gross form, except the free-love element. In a remote settlement of the West (in the State of Michigan), he found a body of men who hold that the wicked are annihilated, their bodies being literally burnt up in the fires of the final conflagration, and becoming ashes under the feet of the righteous. They have gone backward so far in their Judaizing and materializing, as to take Saturday for the sacred day. Their religion is ‘wholly materialistic,’ and ‘Heaven is reduced to a scene of material delights. These people have their camp-meetings, continuing them for days or weeks; and the fervor with which they sing, pray, exhort, and preach, about the trees, brooks, animals, and various delectations of their material Heaven, and of the conflagration and resurrection with which it is to be introduced, is most inspiring and seductive to an imaginative auditory.’” Here is at least some testimony in our favor even from our opponents. JOHN MATTESON.