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IS THIS ORTHODOXY?

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International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Feb 11, 1889

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 15, No. 6.

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IS THIS ORTHODOXY?

By Editor

ON a recent Sunday the representatives of the press visited the Chicago churches to find out three things: 1. Why do so many more women than men attend church? 2. Do ministers still believe in hell? 3. Is orthodoxy dying out?
The liberals believed that orthodoxy was decaying; that is, if orthodoxy meant the teaching of the Scriptures. Of course this was denied by the conservatives. As regards their belief in hell, the Congregationalist of the 17th ult. says:—
“With the same exception [the liberals in belief], all expressed their firm belief in hell as a place of punishment, some describing it as made by the sinner himself, and carried in his own breast, but all agreeing that it means banishment from the presence of God. Of course no one believes in it as a place of literal fire and brimstone.”
If this is not a departure from the orthodoxy of a few years ago, we are not able to comprehend terms. The ministers of those days and their converts who exist still, among the Methodist, Baptist, Presbyterian, and Congregationalist churches, believed in hell as a place of literal fire and brimstone. Many of their ideas were erroneous, contrary to reason and fact, especially as regards eternity of torment. But the present view is not less unscriptural. If hell is within the sinner, the Universalist doctrine is true. If hell is “banishment from God,” that is just what would please the sinner; for “God is not in all his thoughts.” He desires not the presence of God, or thoughts of his presence. Banishment alone, then, would, instead of being a punishment to him, be the very reverse. And the greater the sinner, the more he would desire to be far from the presence of the Lord, and the less would be his punishment. The more he sinned, the harder would become his heart, the more benumbed his conscience, the less he would suffer. And this is orthodoxy! What more could infidelity ask in this direction? We prefer to believe the word of God. “And whosoever was not found written in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire.” Rev. 20:15.