Brief Reply to a Few Objections.
By WM. PENNIMAN
A BROTHER gave me a letter to read which he received from a young preacher containing some objections to our faith. You say you are “fully convinced that in the Advents there is doctrine not taught in the Bible.” No doubt you feel fully convinced that you are right and that we are wrong; but does it follow that Adventists (not Advents) teach erroneous doctrines because you do not believe them? You may say and believe that there is a railroad in the moon, but does it follow that there is? We must have the evidence. “To the law and to the testimony; if they speak not according to this word, it is because there is no light in them.” Isa. 8:20. Please study this text. He then adds, “Do you believe when you die that there is no more of you than a hog or a horse till the resurrection?” It seems that you have misinterpreted the meaning of what you have read in the REVIEW, or in the writings of S. D. Adventists. When you lie down to sleep and are entirely unconscious, which is often the case with a person, are you not just as much the same person as when awake? So it is with those who “sleep in Jesus.” God preserves their identity, and brings them up in the resurrection. So we have reason to believe that there is something more of a man even in the unconscious state than there is of a hog or a horse. The unconscious state between death and the resurrection is like a night’s sleep, and it will seem no longer to one who died before the flood than to one who may die just before the resurrection. God only hath immortality. 1 Tim. 6:16. God will reward the righteous at the resurrection of the just. Luke 14:14. Read 1 Cor. 15, and you will learn when this mortal puts on immortality. Again, he wishes to know if his friend believes that the wicked will be annihilated. You can call it what you please; you can use his language of Ashdod or that of the Bible. We prefer Bible language. When God says, “The soul that sinneth it shall die,” Eze. 18:4, we believe he means what he says. No construction of language can make the sense of the words quoted plainer. Death is death, and life is life. What do we understand by the extinction of animal life? We understand it to mean cessation of being or existence. This is just what is meant by the words, “The soul that sinneth it shall die.” It means an extinction of life. You can with just as much propriety talk about the life that never lives as the death that never dies. We are taught in the last chapter of Malachi what will become of the wicked. Notice particularly the third verse, “And ye shall tread down the wicked, and they shall be ashes under the soles of your feet, in the day that I shall do this, saith the Lord.” But you may say the word wicked means their bodies. Very true; yet it means something more; and all that makes the man. “The righteous shall be recompensed in the earth, much more the wicked and the sinner.” In this passage, if it means simply the body, then it is not the wicked, but their bodies, which are punished. This idea of the passage destroys the sense. In harmony with the text last quoted, are the following words: “Fear not him who after he hath killed the body hath no more that he can do, but rather fear Him who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell.” Matt. 10:28. This proves that God has the power to destroy both soul and body in hell, and the text quoted from Malachi proves that he will destroy the wicked. “They shall be as though they had not been.” Obad. 16. If this text does not prove the destruction of the wicked, then there is no meaning in language. Many more texts might be quoted, but we have enough to establish the point. In reference to John 5:28, the objector says, “How can that which is not in existence hear and come forth?” To understand how this is done, read Ezekiel’s vision of the dry bones. Eze. 37:1–14. Notice particularly the 3d, 4th, and 13th verses. “And he said unto me, Son of man, can these bones live? And I answered, O Lord God, thou knowest. Again he said unto me, Prophesy upon these bones, and say unto them,” etc. Thus the Lord speaks to the dead, and tells them to hear, and the dead will have the power of hearing. “And ye shall know that I am the Lord, O my people, when I have opened your graves.” This language implies that they did not know that there was a “God in Israel” when they were dead; it therefore clearly proves that they were unconscious. Lastly, the eternal-torment doctrine, which is becoming so hard for many modern divines to believe, is indorsed. There are “one hundred and twenty-two texts which explicitly declare that the wicked shall die, be destroyed, perish, go to perdition, be consumed, devoured by fire, slain, come to an end, rooted out, cut off, burned up. On the other hand, there are nine texts relied on to prove eternal misery.” Now the objector must consider the one hundred and twenty-two all figurative, and the nine he relies upon all literal. Is this consistent reasoning? By the word of God we must stand or fall. Let us prove all things, and hold fast that which is good. 1 Thess. 5:21. WM. PENNIMAN.