Do the Scriptures Teach the Annihilation of the Wicked or Finally Impenitent?
By S. S. Griswold
If the annihilation of the wicked be a fact in the eschatology of mankind, the evidence of such fact must be drawn almost, if not entirely, from revelation in the Bible. The almost, if not quite universal instincts, intuitions, consciousness, and beliefs of mankind, have ever been in the direction of the opposite, viz., that mankind have endless existence. The endless misery of the wicked, or their final restoration, has been the almost universal belief of mankind. As mankind have almost universally believed in the existence of God, and atheists have ever been but a small fraction of mankind, so mankind have as universally believed in their endless existence, and annihilation has ever been as small a fraction of belief. It is pertinent to inquire, Why have men so universally believed in their endless existence, and so few in annihilationism? Nor is the answer equivocal. It is because the human mind was so constructed by the Creator that it could not, without perversion, believe otherwise. Such a belief, as consciousness, intuition, or instinct, was therefore necessitated; except when the mind by false reasoning perverted its own inherent consciousness or intuitions. The normal belief of mankind is in endless existence; the abnormal, annihilation. Now I ask, Would the Creator have so constructed the human mind as to make it so universally believe a falsehood? For if annihilationism be true, and if the human mind is so constituted as to almost universally believe the contrary, then has not the Creator made man to believe that which is not true in fact. The intuitive beliefs of mankind are not to be lightly set aside. Any supposed revelation that sets aside those laws of being which are written on the heart must be closely questioned. Melanchthon says: “Those precepts which learned men have committed to the common reason and common feelings of human nature, are to be accounted as not less divine than those contained in the tables given to Moses; and that it could not be the intention of our Maker to supersede, by a law graven on stone, that which is written by his own finger on the table of the heart.” The question now is, Has God revealed in the Scriptures the annihilation of the wicked when he has so universally revealed the contrary in the intuitive consciousness of the human mind? Has God contradicted himself? The Scriptures affirm that man was made in the image of God. Man must then have been a partaker of the divine nature which is immortal, incapable of annihilation. This, of itself, is proof irrefutable that the wicked are not annihilated. But should we concede this fact (which we by no means do) and admit that death and annihilation were synonymous, the apostle Paul positively affirms that as in “Adam all die, so in Christ all shall be made alive.” Hence if death was annihilation, all are made to revive. Nor is this reviving conditional. For to the same extent (whatever that is) that men die in Adam, to the same extent are they made alive by Christ. Now put what meaning one pleases to death, from that death all men are made alive. If death by the first Adam means annihilation, then life from the second Adam (Christ) is a resurrection or reliving from that annihilation. But is not the “second death” annihilation? The wicked, we are told by the revelator, were cast alive into a lake of fire burning with brimstone, and with the devil are to be tormented day and night forever and ever. That is the second death. Now whatever may be the import of the figures or symbols there used, annihilation is not one. But there is one feature of annihilationism which seems most abhorrent, so abhorrent that all true ideas of justice, goodness, mercy, or love, seem to forbid its being true, viz., that the wicked are restored to life for the sole purpose of punishing them, and that, too, in a manner that must ever shock every benevolent mind. For, according to the annihilationist theory, the wicked become unconscious or cease to exist at death, and would ever thus continue unconscious, except the divine power of God restores them to life again. And why are they restored to life? Not that they may repent and be saved, but simply and alone that they may be tormented again, and again made to endure the agonies of dying by the slow process of pain the most intolerable, and in cases of great sinners, of almost infinite duration, where the incorrigible ones will writhe and shriek and blaspheme the name of that being who awoke them from unconsciousness for the very purpose of thus subjecting them to the unmitigated sufferings of being tormented while being consumed by inches. And this is said to be a more merciful doom than the orthodox one of endless misery. Admitting the orthodox hell to be a fact (which I do not), it would be a heaven compared with this feature of annihilationism, as far as either the justice or mercy of the divine character is concerned. But the Scriptures teach neither the one nor the other; but that the final punishment of the wicked is consecutive as well as retributive, that our future life is the continuance of this in such a way as that there we reap what we sowed here. “For whatsoever a man soweth that shall he also reap.” Some annihilationists deny that there is any resurrection or reliving of the wicked, in order to get rid of the awful view above referred to. In his conversation with the Sadducees concerning the woman of seven husbands, Christ denies annihilationism by affirming that mankind become like angels in the future state, indestructible, and that such cannot die any more. The apostle most explicitly affirmed the resurrection or future state of both the wicked and the righteous. The use of the terms, life and death, by annihilationists as meaning existence and non-existence, find no authority in the Scriptures. The limits prescribed me in these articles forbid the examining, at length, those terms. I can say, that those words, life and death, are never used in Scripture to denote simply existence and its opposite, but as representing the moral effects of sin and salvation from it. Ezekiel 3:18–21, and 18:4–24, we have the true import of the terms live and die, where it is said, if a righteous man turn from his righteousness, he shall die, and if a wicked man turn from his wickedness he shall live, and yet, the natural death of neither of them was effected therefor. Hence the words die and live refer to a moral condition. Stress is laid upon the word “destruction” as being synonymous with annihilation, but whoever will examine the use of the word in the Scriptures will see that it has no such meaning. In fact, annihilation is never used in the Bible as referring to the final condition of the wicked, if it is ever used at all. Annihilationists have coined a word to teach this doctrine, as the Scriptures utterly fail to give them one. This of itself is suspicious of the unscriptural support of this doctrine. The Bible doctrine of a future life, as believed by the Jews and as taught by Christ and his apostles, and universally accepted and believed by the Christians of the first, second, and third centuries, was that mankind at death immediately entered upon a conscious existence in the underworld, or the place of the dead, called by the Hebrew, sheol, and by the New-Testament writers, hades. These were not the grave or place of the sepulcher for the body, but the place of departed spirits. Into this condition or place of the unseen world all souls or spirits of the dead immediately entered at death. In the 14th of Isaiah we have a most graphic description of the entrance of the king of Babylon to these regions. Thus the Jews said respecting the death of their friends, “They were gathered to their fathers;” thus Jacob went down to sheol to meet his son whom he supposed to be dead and gone there. It was into this region, hades, that Christ went after his death, and previous to his resurrection, which was a coming up out from the dead, the spirits of the departed to whom he had been preaching, during his sojourn there, and it was the vast multitude of the righteous dead who had long been in that world, in hades, who accompanied him in his resurrection or ascension out from among dead ones, joined his grand triumph over hades, and ascension to glory, by which he abolished death, or the hades region, and brought life, eternal joy and glory to light. The Catholic doctrine of purgatory is the corruption of this once cardinal doctrine of the Bible: but which has almost been annihilated by modern Christianity. And not until the church returns to the faith once delivered to the saints upon the doctrine of the future life, will she eliminate the errors of annihilationism, and other errors which have lead to it. The doctrine of the personal return of Christ to this earth, the unconscious state of the dead, the annihilation of the wicked, the literal resurrection or reconstruction of the body, the burning of the world, and the return of the saints to re-inhabit this world, involve such a similar exegesis, that they will stand or fall together. The inherent immortality which man had given him by creation will necessitate an unending existence to the race. If this immortality of which Bro. G. speaks is anywhere declared in the Bible to be the natural possession of man, all we have to do is to receive it. But no such fact is revealed. The statement that he was made in the image of God, no more proves his immortality than it proves his omnipotence, his omniscience, or his infallibility. That expression does not involve any such attributes of the deity. The universal belief of mankind does not prove it. While God has implanted in every heart something of a sense of moral obligation, a distinction between right and wrong, which Paul calls the “work of the law written in their hearts,” it is a singular idea that God has also written there the great truths of the revelation he had to make to man. If we may go to the heart for doctrines, the revealed will of God as contained in his word is a superfluity. But what is the nature of the heart as a source of authority? From Eden the majority of the race has been apostate. They “became vain in their imaginations and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing themselves to be wise they became fools, and changed the glory of the incorruptible God, into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and four-footed beasts, and creeping things.” Of the thirteen hundred millions of the human race, over one thousand millions believe in, and practice in some shape the worship of images. Why? Because the “inherent intuition” of their darkened and foolish minds teaches them that it is the right way to worship the deity. We venture to say that this is, and has been, more universal than the doctrine of the immortality of the soul. Is it therefore true? It is under the same cloud of darkness, superstition and error that the dogma of the immortality of the soul has flourished. The pedigree of this doctrine, it is not difficult to trace. It is the cause of all the woe and ruin that sin has wrought in this world. It was the first thing that disturbed the peace of Eden. The devil first proposed it as an article of faith to Eve. She was unfortunate enough to accept it and act accordingly. Its illustrious father found congenial soil for the same theological tenet in the masses of heathendom. From them it was received into that mixture of heathenism and Christianity, the papal church; and unfortunately the reformed churches that have come out from that communion have not been careful to leave behind that ingredient of the wine of her fornication. Not long after the doctrine was announced in Eden, “Ye shall not surely die,” the experience of the race apparently gave it the lie; for death actually came into the world. The devil could then save his reputation only by making the living believe that what they saw was not death, but that the real man, invisible, intangible, unrecognizable, far removed from the province of any and all of our senses, lived right on in a higher and larger sphere. (“Ye shall be as gods.”) And, strange to say, he saved his first assertion by finding many to receive the second. And notwithstanding the daily sight of our eyes, multitudes sinking cold and stark and stiff into the silence of death, and the corruption of the grave, men still believe and assert that there is no death. The devil bewitched Adam and Eve out of all proper faith in God and his word; he has bewitched their descendants out of their very senses. That Adam and Eve in their new experience, might be made to believe that they could not die, may not be so strange; but that men can now be made to believe that so plain a fulfillment of the sentence as death really is, is no death but really a higher life, is one of the anomalies of this present state which baffles explanation. But while this doctrine has been received by many, that it has been so universal as Bro. G. asserts appears not to be a fact. This point in his argument we meet with an unqualified denial, and refer for proof of our assertion to a work published at this Office, entitled, “History of the Doctrine of the Immortality of the Soul.” But that God should raise the wicked to punish them—how horrible! On this point we cannot answer Bro. G. as he keeps his own position in the dark; but as he thinks that the orthodox hell (which he repudiates) is Heaven in comparison with our view, all we can do is to look at them a moment together. Why, according to the popular view, are the wicked at death turned into the fiery regions of hell, to sin and suffer in its burning flame, their load of guilt accumulating, and their torment augmenting, forever and ever? It is the punishment for their sins. What sins? Those simply of this life? No, those are soon expiated. But the sinner sins more grievously in hell than in this life; and for these sins he is continually punished. So then the Judge when he sentences the sinner to hell, pronounces sentence not upon his past sins merely, but upon those which, by his sentence, he is doomed to commit in the future to all eternity, and in comparison with which his sins in this life will eventually be but as a drop in the ocean. The same as if a judge in an earthly court should pronounce upon a criminal a sentence a thousand fold more severe than his crime demanded and then excuse it by saying that the excess in the sentence was for sins the criminal would be sure to commit after he went to jail. This is consistency with a vengeance! But to return to eternal misery. The continual and uninterrupted torment of the sinner to the full extent of the capacities of his being, to all eternity, is declared to be Heaven in comparison with the same tribulation and anguish continued only for such a length of time, as to make the punishment adequate to the different degrees of guilt incurred by a life of sin here upon earth. Surely the mind that can reason thus, must be laboring under the influence of some strange infatuation. But why should the sinner having been once unconscious in the grave, be raised to suffer for his sins? Strange to say, many seem to find great difficulty in this matter. But the answer is easy. It is because God has ordained that every one shall answer at the Judgment seat of Christ for the deeds done in the body; 2 Cor. 5:10; and in case of the dead this can only be done by a resurrection. And this, in reference to the wicked, is neither vindictive, nor unjust, nor abhorrent to reason or mercy. Look at the circumstances. Adam sinned and the sentence of death was passed upon him and his posterity. And had no redemption been provided this would have been the end of the race—all perished through Adam’s sin. But Christ interposes to relieve the whole race irrespective of character, from the death which, irrespective of character, they die in Adam. This is how and why all that die in Adam are made alive in Christ. And this is done so that all may answer for their own actions, and the eternal destiny of every individual may be determined by his own course of life. This is all mercy even to the sinner. It is a mercy that we have this life of probation granted us here by which eternal life is placed within our reach. It is a mercy that all are to be released from the Adamic penalty. Mercy attends the sinner all the way up to the Judgment seat. And when there all that can be done is that the threatenings which are a part of the means by which God would restrain us from sin here, should be carried out in the cases of the unrepentant. This is all just and consistent. And however much any man may now profess to be shocked by such treatment, he will one day acknowledge it. Those who in the future are equal unto the angels and can die no more, are “the children of God,” not the wicked. Luke 20:35, 36. Bro. G. admits that the region of the dead is called in Hebrew sheol, and in the Greek, hades. And what does Solomon say of the condition of those in sheol? “The living know that they shall die, but the dead know not anything.” “For there is no work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom in the grave (sheol) whither thou goest.” Eccl. 9:5, 10. On Isa. 14 we inquire, Has he ever heard of the figure of personification by which trees talk, stones cry out, beams answer, hills skip, the forests clap their hands, and the unconscious inmates of sheol and hades are represented as endowed with life and activity? Does he really suppose that the inhabitants of hades are on thrones and that the king of Babylon went in before them covered with worms, and that they rose up in mock obeisance and taunted him with becoming weak as they? And does he suppose the dead carry their weapons of war with them into hades? See Eze. 32:27, &c. He says there is no instance in the Bible where the terms life and death mean existence and loss of existence: an assertion which we entirely overthrow and nullify by another declaration equally good, thus: There is no instance in the Bible where the terms life and death mean simply happiness and misery. What a man sows he shall reap. And Paul tells us what the sinner reaps: “He that soweth to the flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption; but he that soweth to the Spirit shall of the Spirit reap life everlasting.” Gal. 6:8. Paul says again that corruption doth not inherit incorruption. 1 Cor. 15:50. Corruption and everlasting existence either in hell-fire, or anywhere else, cannot go together. Every expression is used in regard to the wicked that can be used to denote utter loss of existence. They are given to destruction, to slaughter, to be destroyed, consumed, cut off, rooted out of the land of the living, blotted out of the book of life. They are spoken of as slain, and as carcasses. They are compared to the broken fragments of a potter’s vessel, a passing whirlwind, moth-eaten garments, scattered thistle-down, vanished waters, chaff, tares, withered branches, and bad fish cast away to corruption. It is said that they shall consume away like the fat of lambs, into smoke and ashes, melt like wax, burn like tow, and consume like thorns and chaff. If these can all be made to harmonize with the idea of an eternal incorruptible existence, then let the dictionary of our language be revised, or the writers of the Bible be taught how to use it. If evil is to be eternal, Satan has succeeded in forever marring the work of God. If it shall come to an end in the persons of its author and its victims, his rebellion is a failure, the lesson of the development and punishment of sin is equally good, and the universe is clean at last. Rev. 5:13.