UNIVERSALISM

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Apr 6, 1876

John the Baptist commenced his ministry by calling men to repentance, by warning them of “wrath to come,” by assuring them that the august Personage whom he came to announce would burn up the wicked, in the last day, “like chaff in an unquenchable fire.” How much instruction of this kind would it take to convince men that there was no wrath in the future, no unquenchable fire into which the wicked would be cast?

The preaching of the divine Redeemer was equally inexplicable upon the same principle. If he was a Universalist he came to introduce ideas at war with the opinions of the whole world; and not only to teach, but to create them. But so far from asserting, in direct terms, the salvation of all men, and employing language that would leave no room to doubt his meaning, he used language which has led nine-tenths of the Christian world, and those the most competent to judge, to believe that he taught and designed to teach that many souls would perish forever.

Let a sermon in defense of Universalism be printed, and a copy thrown into every house in the country, and no difference of opinion would arise in respect to the faith of the author, or the design of the sermon. And should a Universalist preacher send forth to the world a sermon so written that the great mass of intelligent men in the community would suppose that the writer meant to teach that many of our race would finally be lost, all would regard the writer as destitute of common honesty or common sense.

If Universalism be true, it impeaches either the honesty of the Saviour, or his competency to teach. He used language which no Universalist can harmonize with his system, language which none but an insane man would use if he were a sincere believer in the salvation of all men.

Like his forerunner, Christ began his ministry by calling men to repentance. In his first sermon he describes the class of men who are blessed and accepted of God, and, by contrast, those who are cursed and rejected. He adverts to the broad way, through which the thronging multitudes go down to death, and points out the narrow way, in which few travelers are found. He mentions sins, the commission of which exposes men to “hell fire”—“a fire that never shall be quenched.” He urges men to lay up for themselves treasures in Heaven, for so only can they have an inheritance there. He plainly teaches that all who heed not his words will, in the last day, resemble the foolish man who was ruined in the hour of tempest and storm. How many converts would this first sermon of the Saviour secure, if now repeated from place to place by the advocates of Universalism?—Sel.