HOW WILL IT END? by Uriah Smith

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jul 31, 1900

HOW WILL IT END?

By Uriah Smith

There is a fascination in the contemplation of the end of evil. When that which annoys, troubles, and distresses us,—that which has fallen like a blight upon our lives, and which has rested with the weight of a deadly incubus upon all our efforts for freedom and progress,—comes to an end, with what relief we behold it lifted from the way! with what joy we behold it disappear!

The evil to which we refer is sin. Sin is the world's first and deadly malady. All earth's suffering and sorrow, its woes and disappointments and wrongs, its corruptions and evil passions,—pride, hatred, envy, and revenge,—find their origin, nourishment, and support in this one root of bitterness, this upas tree of sin.

Then, extending our view to the physical world, all earth's thorns, malaria, mildew, and desert wastes, its fairest and dearest hopes blighted and buried in the mold and darkness and terror of the tomb,—these, too, all spring from the same deadly root. The world is wrecked and ruined, so long as the virus of this deadly evil courses in the veins of men. The remedy, then, for this world's plague-stricken status is the removal of sin.

There are two points of transcendent interest to every believer, in his experience with sin; one is when he personally turns away from sin, renounces its service, discards its promptings and influence, and makes his separation from it complete; and the other is when sin, as a bodily and terrible entity, seeking to deceive and destroy, will be seized by the engines of divine wrath, and itself, and all its concomitants, root and branch, from its foul and venomous head to the tiniest fiber of its poisonous influence, all of which are of the utmost abhorrence to God, will be swept from the universe, and destroyed forever and ever.

For sin is not to exist throughout eternity; its victims and votaries are not to mar the peace and harmony of any part of God's new creation, with the terror and torture of endless conscious suffering. This is so because the time must come when “every creature [and that must take in all] which is in heaven, and on the earth, and under the earth, and such as are in the sea, and all that are in them, heard I saying, Blessing, and honor, and glory, and power, be unto him that sitteth upon the throne, and unto the Lamb forever and ever.” Rev. 5:13. This language covers the whole of the scene, and there are no exceptions.

The great burden resting upon the heart of the awakened sinner is, “Who shall deliver me from the body of this death?” Rom. 7:24. The terrible

force of the figure is seen when we contemplate, for a moment, the punishment visited upon hardened criminals in the time of the apostle, from which the figure is drawn. The condemned man was chained fast to a dead body, so that wherever he went he must drag about with him that loathsome, putrefying, decaying thing. There was no escape. With its effluvia of corruption, it must be his constant companion, till he, too, should sink down to the same terrible condition. In the illustration, sin is the dead body to which the sinner is fast chained, and must perish with it at last, unless released. But of himself he has no power to break the chain, and make his escape. When, therefore, he awakes to his situation, it is no wonder that he cries out, in anguish, Who, “who shall deliver me from the body of this death,” or, “from this dead body?” He finds Christ to be the one he needs; and in the joy of deliverance, his song is, “I thank God through Jesus Christ” “there is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus.” This question of becoming free from sin, and the process by which it is accomplished, as it is revealed in the gospel, has power to affect the heart of him who has accepted Christ, as no other question can.

With scarcely less interest we go forward to the other epoch mentioned, when the final disposal shall be made of sin, and it shall forever be put away, and, as a harrassing and troublesome feature of existence, shall be remembered no more forever.

In the process of putting away of sin, as revealed in the ancient sanctuary service, we trace it first from the sinner, by repentance and confession, to his sacrificial offering; from the offering, representing Christ, to the sanctuary; from the sanctuary to the scapegoat; and in the person of the scapegoat, which is banished into the wilderness, or a “land not inhabited,” to perish, the sins, too, upon him, perished also, and were thus put away from the camp of Israel. This illustrated by symbol the fact that the sins of God’s people are to be put away from them absolutely, and in fact, by the ministration of Christ.

But Christ is not the scapegoat. In the antitype, the office of the scapegoat is performed by Satan; Satan is the antitypical scapegoat. In the type, the sins for which atonement had been made in the sanctuary were borne out, and laid upon the head of the scapegoat. In the antitype, the sins which are atoned for in the ministry of Christ are borne out by him, and laid upon the head of the antitypical scapegoat, Satan, and with them he is sent away into the antitypical wilderness, or land not inhabited, even the “bottomless pit” (Rev. 20:2, 3), and, with the sins that are upon him, he perishes there, as it turns into the final lake of fire. Rev. 20:10-15.

And Satan is there the representative of all the sins of the redeemed, which have been laid upon him. Evil angels represent their own sins; wicked men represent their own; but the devil represents not only his own, but the sins of all the righteous, which have been forgiven them through the work of Christ in the sanctuary, and then are borne out and laid upon his head for their final destruction. Lev. 16:20-22. Thus, in the vehement flames of the lake of fire, every sin that has ever been committed in all the universe, from the original fall of Satan and his angels, down through the fall of this world by the sin of Adam and Eve, to that of the last sinner who shall open his mouth in blasphemy against God on account of the judgments of the seven last plagues (Rev. 16:21), will be represented, and punished. This is God's last bitter testimony against sin; and clean work will be made. All material, sin-touched things, in all their elements, melt with fervent heat, and raised, by the intensity of the heat of eternal fire, to a gaseous condition, will disappear, and seem to vanish away. Rev. 20:11.

But in such a field, it becomes us to pass no point without careful and particular consideration. Let us, then, notice a query that arises in some minds at this point. It is this: If Satan is punished for the sins of the righteous, are not those particular sins punished twice—once in the person of Christ, “who his own self bare our sins in his own body on the tree,” and suffered, “the just for the unjust” (1 Peter 2:24; 3:18); and again in the person of Satan, upon whom these sins are finally laid for destruction? This is a legitimate query, and is entitled to a candid answer. And the answer is that the sins of the righteous are no more punished twice than are the sins of the wicked; for Christ suffered and died for them the same as for the righteous, yet they suffer for their own sins at last.

What, then, about the declaration that Christ suffered for them? The trouble, we imagine, arises from a misconception of the part Christ acts as our substitute. Perhaps without due consideration of the subject, many entertain the idea that Christ, in suffering for the sins of the righteous, suffered all the punishment, in the sense of bodily torture, due to the sins which all the saved committed, and which they would have been obliged to endure if they had failed in their Christian experience and been lost. But then, again we ask, What about the cases of the wicked, for whom Christ suffered the same as he did for the righteous? And in either case, we will let the believer in eternal misery wrestle with this problem of Christ's suffering the penalty for sin, on his own ground.

No; the truth seems rather to be that Christ presented himself before his Father's law as an innocent victim, in behalf of man, his own creation, who had become guilty. He undertook to meet for man the divine and immutable sentence, “The soul that sinneth, it shall die.” His offering of himself was voluntary, and therefore involved no compulsion, nor injustice to anyone. It was from one who was above law; and therefore God could accept it in place of those who were bound by law, but had broken it. It was of such infinite merit that the law could honorably and justly relax its claims upon all who would accept of it, even if the whole world should do so; for he (Christ) was the creator of the whole world, and all that is therein. Col. 1:16. He therefore stood as a representative of them all, in whatever offering he might present to the law in their behalf.

But we learn from the type that the removal of sin from the repentant sinner did not cancel the sin itself, but only transferred it to another party, who was then held in place of the one who had sinned. The forgiveness, therefore, which the offering sinner obtained was not independent and absolute, but only relative; that is, as related to the sinner the sin was forgiven; but the sin in itself considered was still recognized as yet in existence, to be disposed of in some subsequent manner.

Now Christ has done for us, in fact and in absolute reality, just what the ancient typical offerings of the sanctuary did for the sinner then in figure; that is, he has provided a means through which sin, with its attendant guilt and threatened doom, may be removed from us, and transferred to another party. Thus we can be saved; and sin, our sin, still meet its just deserts, in some other quarter, and in some other agent. Let us, then, consider where this desert, in the case of the sinner, would naturally fall. Sin did not have its origin with mankind. They were not the original agents and promoters of this evil, but were seduced and led away under the powerful temptation of another. And this we apprehend to be the great fact that puts a determining difference between the moral standing of men and that of the devil and his angels. With the one, sin had its inception and birth; and an outbreak so terrible, and causeless, and unprovoked could have no forgiveness. It would not be safe to reinstate to favor and power those with whom such a movement could originate. With men, the case was different. Sin was an evil into which they were led by another party. Hence their wrong could be condoned, and provision be made for their restoration.

The practice of sin may therefore be represented as a partnership business. Satan is the original and senior partner; while the sinner is the junior. The latter, having been seduced into that relationship, is allowed, under certain conditions, to leave the company, and step out from under the obligations of the firm. Upon whom will the responsibilities and the obligations of the firm then fall? Mark well the situation, and the answer. The whole responsibility and corporate obligations of the partnership, so far as the sinner is concerned, will then rest upon the only remaining member of the firm, the originator and promoter of the whole evil business, the senior member, Satan. If the sinner chooses to maintain his partnership in that illegitimate business, he can do so, and receive in his own person at last the punishment of his deeds. But it is in his power, if he so desires, to change his present relation to, and connection with, that commerce of hell, unite himself to Christ, and leave his former business with him who is the head of the firm, and primarily responsible for it all.

And this is what the Scriptural doctrine of the scapegoat teaches us will be done. The sinner goes free, and Satan receives back upon his own head the sins he has incited the sinner to commit, to answer therefor in the settlement which he at last must meet. Viewing in this light the work of Satan among mankind, it is evident that he has a personal motive of the most powerful kind to induce him to hold persons in sin till their probation is past, and they have no further opportunity to repent; for then they will have to endure the punishment for their own sins, which he otherwise must suffer; and every one who escapes from his power, and secures salvation through Christ, adds an additional weight to his accumulating load of woe.

And it must strike every one as right and consistent that this should be so. The sinner has been seduced into sin; but he repents, and is converted. He now loathes and abhors his former life. But standing back of the scene, there is one who is the primary author and instigator of all his past wrongs, the inciting agent in every sinner's sinful deed; and when the transgressor awakes to the true nature of his course, and sees the enormity of his guilt, and wishes to return to allegiance to his Saviour, and put away his sins, what could be more fitting than that those sins should fall back upon the head of him who first gave birth to sin, and who has fostered the growth of every bitter branch from that baleful root?

In this the decision of every right-minded intelligence must be that God is just, and that Satan receives no more than his just deserts. Satan, having thus received upon himself the load of sins from which the righteous have been made free, and being confined to the bottomless pit, at that time this desolate earth, is reserved to the day of perdition. 2 Peter 2:9. The thousand years at length expire. The lake of fire, “prepared for the devil and his angels,” appears. These last-named parties are cast therein; and all the wicked, that is, those who are found in league with them, share the same fate. Then every sin ever committed is punished; and in the persons of wicked men, evil angels, and Satan, the whole abominable mass perishes forever.

And then is reached that point of transcendent interest when one of the most cheering prophecies in all the Bible can be fulfilled. For at this point, but never before, can that song of jubilee be raised to God, which the seer of Patmos describes in these inspiring words, which will bear repeating: “And every creature which is in heaven, and on the earth, and under the earth, and such as are in the sea, and all that are in them, heard I saying, Blessing, and honor, and glory, and power, be unto him that sitteth upon the throne, and unto the Lamb forever and ever.” Rev. 5:13.

The quenchless flames of the fiery lake have then just spent their force in consuming the rebel hosts. The earth is purified by the fervent heat. No sinner and no taint of sin are left. The new earth appears, to be the everlasting abode of the just. 2 Peter 3:12, 13. No room for Universalism here; for the wicked have all been destroyed. No place for an endless, burning hell to mar the landscape of eternity, nor for the agonizing wail of the unending, conscious misery of the greater part of the human family to bring discord into the universal song of joy; for all those who will be found worthy to be alive then will be only those who are in harmony with God's will, and who are filled with sympathetic joy and praise to him who has taken to him his great power, and begun his reign, and has established them in the home prepared for them “from the foundation of the world.” Thus, through Christ, our experience with sin will end. U. S.