A Better Prospect

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Jan 6, 1909

A Better Prospect.

SPEAKING of the future state of man, the Western Watchman of Nov. 15, 1908, says:

“But O, in that world to come conditions are unchanging. There is no death there; no relief will come in death. There the rich will be rich forevermore and the poor will suffer want forever and ever. There those who are happy will be happy without end; those who are in misery will be in misery forevermore. O, what will reconcile these conditions? O, how reconcile the existence of heaven and hell with a just God, who is the Father? WE SHUDDER AT THE THOUGHT that some men will be eternally happy, while others will be eternally miserable. Would you know why that great distinction? After you have reconciled the different conditions of human society here, can you face that other proposition; CAN YOU RECONCILE WITH THE JUSTICE OF GOD THE EXISTENCE OF AN ETERNAL PLACE OF TORMENT and the existence of eternal abode of happiness?”

We do not wonder that human reason staggers at the awful, horrible thought of eternal existence in misery. Bigoted as men have been, cruel as they have been in their persecutions, one could not conceive how they could consign their worst enemy to torture unending, to misery perpetual. And yet men will charge God with inflicting upon poor mortals that very thing. They charge Him with perpetuating existence, that He may perpetuate misery. No wonder that men having been taught that conception have denied God. No wonder that souls have gone insane while contemplating such a fearful future. And it is all the logical sequence of endeavoring to combine eternal justice with the utterly unscriptural doctrine of the immortality of the soul. Mankind have been led to believe the old lie, “Ye shall not surely die; . . . ye shall be as God.”

The words are found in the Bible, reader, but it is not God who said them. They are from the lips of that old serpent, “called the devil and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world.” Upon that falsehood of the inherent immortality of the soul rest the doctrines of the endless hell, eternal torment, purgatory, prayers for the dead, and other doctrines equally unbiblical. Because of this falsehood, men reject the resurrection of the dead and the second coming of Christ.

Yet there is nothing in the Bible to support the immortal-soul doctrine. Rightly understood, the Bible teaches no endless torment. It rather points forward to the time when all strife will be over, when sin and all identified with sin shall have perished, when God’s universe will be clean from every trace of sin, forever clean. Punishment of the incorrigibly wicked will be eternal, but it is eternal death. It is everlasting punishment, not everlasting punishing. It is a completed act, not a continued process. It metes out exact justice and indicates the character of God.