There Is no Death by S. B. Whitney

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Aug 22, 1871

There Is no Death.

By S. B. Whitney

SO MODERN spiritualism would fain have us believe, and modern orthodoxy is but little behind it, in this respect.

I was forcibly reminded of this by an incident at a Methodist Episcopal quarterly meeting which I recently attended. In a social meeting a minister was expatiating upon the tree of life, intimating that he had already reached it, and remarked, among other things, that he sometimes felt that he should not die, that there is no death, when another minister responded, “There is n’t any death.” But, thought I, if this be so, why has inspiration used such expressions as the following: “In the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die”? Gen. 2:17. “For the living know that they shall die.” Eccl. 9:5. “The soul that sinneth it shall die.” Eze. 18:4, 20. “Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned.” “For the wages of sin is death.” Rom. 5:12; 6:23. “The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death.” 1 Cor. 15:26; and scores of others of the same import. And again, in describing this death, we read, “For dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.” Gen. 3:19. “For in death there is no remembrance of Thee.” “The dead praise not the Lord, neither any that go down into silence.” “His breath goeth forth, he returneth to his earth; in that very day his thoughts perish.” Ps. 6:5; 115:17; 146:4. “But the dead know not anything. . . . Also their love, and their hatred, and their envy, is now perished.” Eccl. 9:5, 6, &c. Would Infinite Wisdom threaten, as the extreme penalty of the law, that which cannot be inflicted, and minutely describe and promise to destroy that which never existed?

But stranger still that the human mind can be so perverted and depraved, that while professing to believe the Bible and venerate its teachings, it will take positions that completely nullify its plainest and most positive declarations, and prostitute it to the cause of Satan’s most diabolical schemes. S. B. WHITNEY.