Philosophy of Death by Editor

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · May 31, 1883

Philosophy of Death.

By Editor

A NUMBER of the New Jerusalem Messenger was recently placed in our hands by a friend which contains an article entitled the Philosophy of Death. It might quite as well be styled the Theology of Death, for its teachings are nearly identical with the popular views of death which are very generally taught in the churches. The "New Jerusalem" theology is that of Swedenborg, and is identical with the latest phase of Spiritualism. On the subject of death there is scarcely a shade of difference between Spiritualism and the most orthodox Orthodoxy of the churches. The paper now before us notices the lecture of a Boston minister on Swedenborg. The minister is not a disciple of Swedenborg. He was reported as saying: "Swedenborgianism has done the liberalizing work of the last century." "The wave Swedenborg started lasts to this day." "The statements of Swedenborg's works have revolutionized theology." This is true, beyond a doubt. Swedenborg was the great spiritualizer of the ages, far out-doing Origen, who may be considered the father of the spiritualizing system. Man, ever since the forbidden fruit was eaten in Eden, has sought to improve on God's ways, and almost the entire religious world has now accepted the system, the foundation of which was laid by Origen, perfected by Swedenborg, and now so successfully used by Satan in the hands of the Spiritualists of the present day.

This paper says:—

"Death, as men have made it, is sad in the extreme; its cause is believed to be a penal calamity, and its mission is regarded as harsh and forbidding. We all need a better faith, more trust in God, and a belief that covers with flowers even the slopes of the valley of the shadow of death."

We believe that Jesus has robbed death of its sting, but he has not changed its nature; he has not turned it into a friend, nor covered the dark valley with flowers. When Christ's soul was "sorrowful even unto death," in the garden, it was not a season of pleasurable sensations to him, nor did the flowers beguile his soul from its agony while he was on the cross. He did not come to dress it up as a thing of beauty, and to prove to us its attractiveness, but to conquer and to destroy it. He passed under it "that through death he might destroy him that had the power of death, that is the devil." Heb. 2:14. "The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death." 1 Cor. 15:26. "The wages of sin is death." Rom. 6:23.

Again this paper says:—

"Death is the orderly, and withal, the beautiful method of traveling onward and upward through those degrees of existence whose wards unlock one after the other toward the shining court of the eternal King."

With such Scripture declarations as we have quoted above, and scores more to the same intent, before them, how can men write such things as we copy from this paper? They have no difficulty at all; they just deny the Scriptures and build up a theory to suit their own fancies. It is true that Swedenborg professed to believe the Bible, and so do his followers; but it is equally true that they do not believe what the Bible says; they believe what they say it means—which is very frequently directly the opposite of what it says, as in the case of the scriptures we have here quoted. But we insist that that is no belief of the Bible at all; it is only an abuse and a perversion of the Bible. And by this means the Spiritualists are enabled to palm off their abuses of the Bible, for no matter how great and glaring the perversion may be, they find a warrant for it in the spiritualizing processes to which the churches have subjected the word of God.

The Bible informs us that when God created man and placed him in Eden, he told him that if he disobeyed him he should die. We find this penalty for transgression confirmed in many scriptures. "The soul that sinneth, it shall die." Eze. 18:4. "The wages of sin is death." Rom. 6:23. Who would imagine, from reading the works of Spiritualists, or even those of the popular authors of the day, either secular or religious, that death was an enemy, a curse, a fruit of sin? A popular author makes an apostrophe to death as follows:—

"O death! thou art lovely! O death! thou art grand. Now I see that man was made in the image of God. Life may deface it, but death restores it. The impress of the Divinity is here."

If this were true, Jesus would again deface the image of God when he raised his saints from the dead! The Spiritual Age says:—

"There is, strictly speaking, no such thing as death, in the popular signification of that term. Death, so-called—the death of the human—is a veritable birth into a higher life. It is a change in the condition, consequent upon outward dissolution. . . . The REAL life and consciousness, upon a plane beyond—far beyond—the reach of fire and flood."

The Scripture, corrected by this standard, should read: The soul that sinneth, it shall be born into a higher life! The wages of sin is a transition to a more elevated plane of being! This is comforting to sinners, no doubt, for the present; but when the penalty of God's holy, just, and good law shall be inflicted, and the sinner dies, even the second death, how miserably foolish and vain will appear the perversions of God's word on which he has staked eternal life! Truly, "they know not what they do."

The Healing of the Nations says:—

"At the death of the outer body the true life of the inner spirit commences."

Thus again we may paraphrase the threat of the Lord to Adam: In the day thou eatest thereof the true life of thine inner spirit shall commence. If some of our professed Christian friends discover the counterpart of their systems of theology in such teachings, we hope they may be led to consider well its opposition to the word of God. The rudiments of Spiritualism have been taught in the pulpits throughout the length and breadth of the land. And it is vain for those ministers to try to pull down the superstructure, and denounce it as evil, who guard and defend the foundation with such a jealous care.

The Baptist Register said:—

"There is no death; what seems so is transition: This life of mortal breath Is but a suburb of the life elysian, Whose portals we call Death."

A well-known religious hymn says:—

"Death is the gate to endless joy."

A Spiritualist paper says:—

"Fold us in thy embrace, sweet angel death, So that no cloud can our twin being sever, Come with soft lips and kiss away our breath, And let us take our heavenward flight together."

The American Messenger, the organ of the American Tract Society, says:—

"Who calls thee grim and terrible, Thou glorious angel, Death?— Thy form should wondrous beauty wear, Like sweet perfume thy breath; Thy robes should be of woven light, Of clear, resplendent sheen; A crown of stars upon thy head, Thy face as Heaven serene. 'But now, midway from earth to Heaven, Upon thine ebon throne, A glorious boon is granted thee, To thee, great Death, alone: The golden key of life, true life, Op'ning the pearly gates, Where never enter woes nor strife, But rest the FREED awaits.'"

Another well-known hymn says that death "Is but the voice that Jesus sends To call us to his arms."

Joel Tiffany, in his lectures on Spiritualism, says:—

"But hark! a voice comes from beyond the grave to tell us that death is not our foe; that he is the messenger of life and joy; that he is the grand accoucheur of the soul, and comes to usher it into light and life eternal. 'To the bereaved husband, the voice of the departed wife comes back, saying: “Weep not for me, my dear husband, for I am with you still, and I watch over you, and will guide and guard you through life,”' etc."

Mr. Tiffany would pass for an infidel with many professed Christians, yet the whole page from which we make the above quotation, is not the mere counterpart of it, but identical with the majority of funeral discourses.

"Appendix-B," in the "Healing of the Nations," commences as follows:—

"From the N. Y. Evangelist. 'On the ministration of departed spirits in this world. By Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe. 'It is a beautiful belief That ever round our head, Are hovering on viewless wings The spirits of the dead.'"

The Scriptures say that the saints of God will all take their "heavenward flight," not when they die, but when the Lord Jesus shall come and restore them to life. 1 Thess. 4:13-18. If the Spiritualist theory were true, to destroy death would only be to reverse a desirable "transition." What would the Baptist Register say to this?

Again, the Scriptures say: "The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death." 1 Cor. 15:26. How different the teachings of Spiritualism, and also of the theology quoted. In the Scriptures, Christ is called "our life;" he says it is his privilege to give life; that no man cometh to the Father but by him. But according to the above quotations, both spiritual and religious, this is the prerogative of death—of "death alone!" While the Spiritualist says it is a messenger of life, and the hymn book says it is the voice of Jesus to call us to his arms, and the American Messenger that it has the key of life and opens the pearly gates, the Bible says it is the fruit and wages of sin, and he that had the power of death is the devil. How different—how widely different? With such unscriptural ideas the theology of the present age has prepared the way for the introduction of Satan's last deception—Spiritualism. And still they go hand-in-hand, affirming that death qualifies our friends to guard and guide us, and render us that assistance that the living cannot give. The article from Mrs. Stowe noticed above, together with a large proportion o the pen and pulpit essays of the theology of this age, is Spiritualism denying its name.

"Sin entered into the world, and death by sin." Therefore, if death is a friend, if it opens the elysian fields to our view, we must give all the praise to sin, or yet to the devil, by whom this "messenger of life" was sent on his errand of joy.

Wisdom cries: "All they that hate me, love death." Oh! that men would listen to the voice of wisdom, and seek life through Jesus and the resurrection from the dead. The Lord, by the prophet, speaks of them that say: "We have made a covenant with death, and with hell [the grave] are we at agreement." Isa. 28:15. They despise the word of the Lord, calling "evil good, and good evil." But there is a day coming when God will vindicate his truth, and his enemies shall perish; for he says: "And your covenant with death shall be disannulled, and your agreement with hell shall not stand; when the overflowing scourge shall pass through, then ye shall be trodden down by it."