Eternal Torment | AdventAI

Pacific Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Oakland, California · Mar 16, 1876

Eternal Torment.

Why the God of mercy and justice should consign poor sinners to an endless life in an eternally burning hell, as a punishment for the sins committed during a few short years in this life, is a great mystery to many minds, and we might say one great cause of so much infidelity in the land. The following lines by Ralph Erskine, describing the perpetuity of the sinners' sufferings according to popular theology, are very comprehensive:

“Infinite years in torments shall I spend, And never, never, never, have an end? Ah! must I live in torturing despair As many years as atoms in the air? When these are spent, as many thousands more As grains of sand that crowd the ebbing shore. When these are done, as many yet behind As leaves of forest shaken with the wind. When these are gone, as many to ensue As blades of grass on hills and dales that grew. When these run out, as many on the march As starry lamps that gild the spangled arch. When these expire, as many millions more As moments in the millions passed before. When all these doleful years are spent in pain, And multiplied by myriads yet again Till numbers drown the thought, could I suppose That then my wretched years would have a close, This would afford some ease; but oh! I shiver, To think upon the dreadful sound for EVER; The burning gulf where I blaspheming lie Is time no more, but vast eternity.”

Who that reads these lines can truly believe that they justly represent the God of love? How much more in harmony with the infinite mercy of the divine nature would be the belief that sinners, after receiving their just amount of punishment, will be utterly destroyed and the remembrance of them cut off from the earth. Why not believe the Bible when it says that all they who “do wickedly shall be stubble; and the day that cometh shall burn them up, that it shall leave them neither root nor branch,” or, as expressed in Obadiah, that “they shall be as though they had not been”?