ANNIHILATION by A. E. Place

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Mar 25, 1889

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 15, No. 12.

ANNIHILATION.

By A. E. Place

A CLERGYMAN, in answering the question, "Will the wicked be destroyed?" said to his congregation: "The Adventists teach annihilation, but any man who has studied even the rudiments of science, knows that it is utterly impossible to annihilate the smallest particle of matter." Of course, if it is utterly impossible, then God is not omnipotent. Scientific men, so called, have thus set in judgment on God and limited his power. Would not this judgment naturally include its opposite, viz., that it is utterly impossible to create the smallest particle of matter?—a position taken by some scientific (?) men. To illustrate the first impossibility, the speaker said: "Take that chair, for instance; you may split it all into kindlings, grind them to dust, and burn the dust to ashes, but not one particle of matter has been annihilated. It is in existence somewhere."

This is simply likening God's power to man's power, and concluding that because man cannot do a certain thing it is absolutely impossible for God to do it.

After the services, we asked if the speaker had any idea that after the chair was burned to ashes it was still a chair? He thought not. "Do you think it would, if so used, ever be a chair again?" "No! of course not." That is all the annihilation Seventh-day Adventists teach. Not that God annihilates men as matter (though he might do even that if he chose), but as men, as individuals, as beings; "burns them up root and branch" (Mal. 4:1); "brings them to ashes" (Eze. 28:18); "and never shall they be any more" (verse 19); they "shall be as though they had not been" (Obad. 16).

God's word should be recognized and used as the rule by which to test every theory, scientific or otherwise. A. E. PLACE.