Is David in Heaven?—Immortal Life Inseparably Connected with the Resurrection
By LUCAS A. REED
IT is never a pleasant task to teach along lines where prejudice is apt to control people's understanding. Under the subject of this article, we have the disagreeable task of telling something that many people do not like to know; yet it is absolutely necessary that these things be told, regardless of who believes or disbelieves.
The watchman is told to give the warning, whether the people will hear or not. The truth must be told.
With reference to the question of man's immortality, there is almost universally one belief, and that is that “death is the gateway of life”—that at death, man does not cease consciousness, that he enters into a more ecstatic or a more terrible state of existence, depending upon his life here. This belief is held by the great majority of Christians, without warrant from the Bible. This teaching lays the foundation for spiritualism.
In order to get at the matter definitely, we will allow a well-known minister to state this doctrine of life after death. But before we do so, let us place the following responsibility before the reader: In the Bible, most serious warning is given against spiritualism. Among the Israelites, that any should seek to familiar spirits, or attempt to communicate with the dead, was absolutely forbidden. In the book of Revelation, the warning is plainly given that in the last days, spirits of devils will work miracles to deceive, going forth to “the kings of the earth and of the whole world,” to mislead them. Rev. 13: 13, 14; and 16: 12-16.
The Christian churches, almost without exception, believe, or have believed, that it was wrong to dabble in any way with spiritualism, or to attempt to talk with the dead. There is over it all a glamour of suspicion and doubt. Yet if the dead are alive, why should they not visit the earth?
Laying the Foundation of Spiritualism
WE will now quote from one of many ministers who have taught that the dead could communicate with the living; who helped—perhaps unwittingly and unintentionally—to lay the foundation upon which spiritualism will rear its terrible fabric of deception for the last days. The quotation follows:
“Often the glories of heaven have struck the dying pillow, and the departing man has said he saw and heard those who had gone away from him. How often it is, in the dying moments, parents see their departed children, and children see their departed parents! I came down to the banks of the Mohawk River. It was evening, and I wanted to go over the river; and so I waved my hat and shouted, and after a while I saw some one waving on the opposite bank, and I heard him shout, and the boat came across, and I got in and was transported. And so I suppose it will be in the evening of our life. We will come down to the river of death, and give a signal to our friends on the other shore, and they will give a signal back to us, and the boat comes, and our departed kindred are the oarsmen, the fires of the setting day tinging the tops of the paddles.
“Oh, have you never sat by such a deathbed? In that hour, you hear the departing soul cry, ‘Hark! Look!’ You hearkened and you looked. A little child pining away because of the death of its mother, getting weaker and weaker every day, was taken into the room where hung the picture of her mother. She seemed to enjoy looking at it, and then was taken away, and after a while died. In the last moment, that wan and wasted little one lifted her hands, while her face lighted up with the glory of the next world, and cried out, ‘Mother!’ You tell me she did not see her mother? She did.”—Dr. Talmage, sermon, “Shall We Know Each Other There?”
Do the Spirits Return?
IN his sermon on the death of Thomas Guard, a noted preacher of Baltimore, Mr. Talmage said:
“This man of God has only moved on and moved up. He passed out of a room where the air was heavy with opiates into an atmosphere exhilarant, and from a body pain-struck into conditions rubicund with health immortal. He has become one of the athletes of heaven—deathless as God is deathless, never to know pain or sickness or suffering or sorrow except as a vivid reminiscence. His mission is widened out. He has come to higher appointment, not to this church or to that church, or this denomination or that denomination, or this city or that city, or this world or that world. He has the universe to range in. What velocities! What circuits! What momentum! What orbits in which the star shall be as silvery as before the occultation, and the sun shall be as radiant as before the eclipse!
“You could not understand thoroughly Thomas Guard here, you cannot understand Thomas Guard there. More difference than between an eagle in an iron cage and an eagle pitching from Chimborazo toward the sun. His work on earth is not done. It is not half done, it is not a fourth done, it is not a thousandth part done. He resumes it now under better auspices. How do I know? ‘Are they not all ministering spirits, sent forth to minister to them that shall be heirs of salvation?’ The lines of telegraphy and of rail track connect no two earthly cities so well as earth is connected with heaven. Did Thomas Guard, after he was established in this land, go to South Africa to get his family and bring them to this better country? And shall he not now come back sometime to that earthly home, and at the right time take his loved ones to the still better country? But he shall not come alone. The twain shall come, they who were side by side for so many years, bending over the same cradle, weeping over the same grave, now coming side by side, wing and wing, to hover over those children when they sleep, and to escort them heavenward when they die. Father and mother coming to help! Father and mother coming down to comfort! Father and mother coming down to defend! . . .”
“Is yonder a soul in great excruciation of pain, and shall Thomas Guard refuse the ministry when he knows about suffering? Is yonder a soul awfully bereft? Surely Thomas Guard cannot refuse his ministry, for he knows what it is to be bereft. Shall we have revivals of religion in our churches, and Thomas Guard not join in the hallelujah? Shall there come a great Armageddon, in which all the good are on one side, and all the bad on the other side, earth and hell and heaven drawn out in battle array, and the gallant spirit just ascended not mingle in the fight, not draw his sword, not lift his battle shout? Passing on to fatigueless service!”
Is David in Heaven?
IN this quotation, Dr. Talmage quotes a passage in the first chapter of Hebrews which applies to the angels: “Are they not all ministering spirits, sent forth to minister for them who shall be heirs of salvation?” This cannot by any means be made to apply to the spirits of the dead. The Bible nowhere suggests such a thing. Mr. Talmage's talk about Thomas Guard or any one else coming back is without any Scriptural warrant whatever.
Of course, we wish it most distinctly understood that we are not seeking to cast any disparagement upon Mr. Talmage as a man or as a Christian. We simply wish to correct wrong teaching. A man may very honestly put forth an error; but an error never can do any good, no matter how honestly it may have been taught. The Bible does not teach that when a Christian dies, he goes at once to heaven, although Mr. Talmage, in the quotations given, teaches that they do.
And what says the Bible with reference to these things? Take, for example, David. No one, I think, doubts that David died a saved man, an heir to immortal life. Paul says of him, “For David, after he had served his own generation by the will of God, fell on sleep, and was laid unto his fathers [in the grave], and saw corruption.” Acts 13: 36. This is very plain as to where David went and what happened to him; yet the belief in inherent immortality—that all go to heaven at death—is so strong that many will think, in spite of this, that in some way David, or part of David, went to heaven anyhow.
But we have the fact further stated by Peter on the day of Pentecost. He said, “For David is not ascended into the heavens” (Acts 2: 34); and to settle the question forever, he says plainly, “Men and brethren, let me freely speak unto you of the patriarch David, that he is both dead and buried, and his sepulcher is with us unto this day.” Acts 2: 29.
Lest you fail to get the importance of this statement, note that the argument which Peter made on the day of Pentecost is this: He quoted from the Psalms where David said, “The Lord said unto my Lord, Sit Thou on My right hand.” He raised the question, Does David mean that the Lord said to him that he is to sit upon the right hand of God? Then Peter, in carrying out the argument to show that this is Christ, and not David, said8that David had not gone to heaven, had not sat down on the right hand of the Lord, and that this statement of David was a prophecy of Christ, because it could not in any wise apply to David, who was dead and buried, and whose sepulcher was with them at that time. This entirely eliminates any possible thought of David's going to heaven when he died. It is plain, Scriptural teaching. And if one like David did not, then how shall we believe that any do? The Lord could make no exception. None who die, live again until their resurrection.
The Work of Deceiving Devils
THE Bible is very plain regarding man's condition in death. For example: “In death there is no remembrance of Thee: in the grave who shall give Thee thanks?” Ps. 6: 5. “For the living know that they shall die: but the dead know not anything, neither have they any more a reward; for the memory of them is forgotten. Also their love, and their hatred, and their envy, is now perished; neither have they any more a portion forever in anything that is done under the sun.” Eccl. 9: 5. “His sons come to honor, and he knoweth it not; and they are brought low, but he perceiveth it not of them.” Job 14: 21.
Thus it is apparent why God has forbidden any communication with those spirits which claim to be the spirits of the departed dead. There are none such; any who claim to be such are deceiving. They are the spirits of devils, working miracles. Rev. 16: 12-16. They are masquerading as our friends. It was for this purpose — to enter into the affections and the secret thoughts of humanity — that the enemy of all truth has fostered and encouraged the belief in inherent immortality. God promises immortal life, but every such promise is connected with a resurrection from the dead. There is no intimation, anywhere in the Bible, of a promise of life otherwise. See 1 Corinthians, the fifteenth chapter. Next week we will consider this subject further.
