Concessions on Future Punishment and God's Word
By R. F. Cottrell
THE Sabbath Recorder says: “Infidelity is the offspring of an unsanctified heart, and is always born outside of penitence. And further attempts to satisfy skeptics by, in any manner, lowering the claims of God, will be a double loss. God will be dishonored and the sinners will be lost.” To this, we respond a hearty Amen! We believe it. His subject is the controverted question of future punishment. We would not lower the claims of God upon the sinner, nor would we dare, or desire, to abate an iota from all that God has threatened in his word. We would do all that we can to help unbelievers to come to God and believe his word. But, to win him, we have no right to compromise God’s word in the least degree. Neither should we, in order to save him, venture to exaggerate, in the least degree, the threatenings of that word. This, instead of helping him, might prove a stumbling block, over which he would stumble into perdition. The editor further says, “We firmly believe that every truly penitent is helped, rather than hindered, in coming to Christ, who feels the justice of the divine wrath.” Again we say, Amen! And the instances are numerous of infidels who never had been able to “feel the justice” of an eternity of conscious torment, who have been converted when they have learned that the Bible, instead of this, threatened the death of the sinner. They could feel the justice of this. It is the justice and certainty of punishment, and not its extreme terribleness, that, as a motive, aids in bringing men to Christ. I leave the argument, but would express an opinion; and that is, that no man can be found, believer or unbeliever, that will seriously reflect upon the infinite duration of eternity, and then upon the fiery torment, the terrible fierceness of wrath and indignation, and the weeping and gnashing of teeth, that shall be there as represented in the Bible, and “feel the justice” of such unspeakable woe to be endured to endless ages, as the punishment for the sins of this brief state of existence. Professors of this faith cannot believe it, and hence they tame the suffering, down, perhaps to the self-torment of a guilty conscience, which, in the present life, is generally in inverse proportion to the enormity and continuance of their guilt. They come to the conclusion, at least, that fire does not mean fire; though an apostle has said, after speaking of the antediluvian world perishing by water in the days of Noah, that “the heavens and the earth, which are now, by the same word are kept in store, reserved unto fire against the day of Judgment and perdition of ungodly men.” Men might learn, if they would, from the agonizing sufferings which are endured in this present life, that God is terribly in earnest against sin, and that he will punish the sinner, as he did the Sodomites, and not leave it for sinners to punish themselves. I remember of hearing the opinion of a reflective Christian, who held, as he had been taught, the immortality of the wicked. It was this: “That some of the most harmless of sinners would be even more comfortable in hell, than they had been in the present life.” And it is no wonder that he should form such an opinion from his standpoint, had he witnessed, as I did recently, the exquisite and indescribable agony of a kind neighbor dying of pleurisy. Not very long since I heard a Methodist minister preach. After alluding to the “lake of fire burning with brimstone,” said he, “You know that I do not believe that there is such a place.” He held that this language is figurative. We do not believe that there is a lake of fire, where the wicked are receiving their punishment, but we believe that there will be. To us, God’s threatenings are a certainty. I have sometimes wondered that professed Christians should show such zeal to prove the wicked immortal, against revelation and reason. I have thought, You hope to escape the punishment of sin; and what comfort can it be to you to think others must endure it eternally? But another thought: They may feel, as I do, that there is a possibility of their coming short of the reward, and of sharing the fate of the transgressor. In that case, they would like to have the punishment unreal, and consequently uncertain, rather than meet just what the Bible threatens. If Christians really believed that sinners were exposed to an eternity of conscious agony, they should be very zealous to labor for their conversion. But I see no more zeal to labor, sacrifice, and suffer, to save men, with those who hold to eternal torment, than I do with those who believe that “the wicked shall perish, and the enemies of the Lord shall be as the fat of lambs: they shall consume; into smoke shall they consume away.” It is a fearful thing to take from, or add to, the words of the Lord.