A Pagan Paradise by J.

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Dec 30, 1886

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 12, No. 50.

A Pagan Paradise.

By J.

IN its notes on the Sunday-school lesson the Advance of November 18 says:—

"Hades is the place of departed souls, without reference to their character or condition. Paradise and Gehenna, or hell, are both in hades."

Can it really be that hell and paradise are both in the same place? If that be so, it either cannot be a very bad thing to be in hell, or else it cannot be a very nice thing after all to be in paradise. Or is hades such a large country that it can contain both paradise and the lake of fire—for gehenna is the lake of fire—and yet they be so far apart that the misery of the one cannot detract from the happiness of the other? The Advance says that "paradise and gehenna, or hell, are both in hades." But where is hades? The Advance leaves us totally in the dark on this point. True we are told what it is, —"the place of departed souls,"—but we should like to know where it is.

Does the Advance agree with Josephus that "Hades is a place in the world not regularly finished; a subterranean [under-ground] region, where the light of this world does not shine; from which circumstance, that in this place the light does not shine, it cannot be but there must be in it perpetual darkness"?—Discourse on Hades.

As Josephus, like the Advance, says that "in this region there is a certain place set apart, as a lake of unquenchable fire," and that is gehenna or hell; and as Josephus speaks of another part of this under-ground region, this hades, and describes it in such a way as to correspond to the Advance's suggestion of paradise, we think perhaps the Advance has in view the very place that Josephus describes. If so, will the Advance tell its readers just what place "in the world" it is.

By the way, the thought just occurs to us that as Mr. Peloubet in his "Select Notes" on the international lessons, gravely informs the Sunday-schools of the land, on the lesson for January 9, 1887, that "A most able argument has been presented by President Warren of Boston University, in his late book, 'Paradise Found,' in favor of the north pole as the site of Eden;" and as the Advance oracularly declares that paradise and gehenna or hell are both in hades; it must be that hades is at the north pole. That being the case it would necessarily follow that gehenna is at the north pole, which would hardly correspond with the idea of the temperature that is generally supposed to be the special characteristic of hell. It does, however, exactly correspond to what we were taught in Sunday-school in our youth. For, when a child, the writer of this article was actually taught in an "orthodox" "evangelical" Sunday-school that the gnashing of teeth of the lost was really the chattering of the teeth from shivering in the excessive cold of the place of departed souls. When such stuff as this, and that of the Advance, is seriously taught in the Sunday-schools, then how far removed is the Christian world

from downright paganism on the subject of the place and state of the dead?

The Bible deals in no such nonsense. Neither paradise nor gehenna is in hades. Hades, in the New Testament, as well as sheol in the Old, is the place of the dead. But that place is in the grave, in the dust of the earth. For at the resurrection that is where they are found. "Many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake." Dan. 12:2. "Awake and sing, ye that dwell in the dust; for thy dew is as the dew of herbs, and the earth shall cast out the dead." Isa. 26:19. "And the graves were opened; and many bodies of the saints which slept arose, and came out of the graves after His resurrection." Matt. 27:52, 53. "All that are in the graves shall hear his voice and shall come forth." John 5:28, 29. According to the word of God, the grave, the dust of the earth, is the place of the dead.

The tree of life is in the midst of paradise. Rev. 2:7. But the tree of life is on either side of the river of life, and the river of life proceeds "out of the throne of God and of the Lamb." Therefore, according to the word of God, paradise is in the presence of the throne of God.

Gehenna or hell,—the lake of fire,—is not found until the judgment of the great day, "When the Son of man shall come in his glory, and all the holy angels with him." Matt. 25:31, 41. And when gehenna is kindled, it is when, at the end of the millennium, the devil and the wicked of all the earth go up on the breadth of the earth, and compass the camp of the saints about, and the beloved city; and fire comes down from God out of Heaven and devours them. Rev. 20:7-9. There it is, and then it is, and not till then, that gehenna is found.

It is most devoutly to be wished that the word of God, instead of pagan superstition, could be taught in the Sunday-schools. J.