DOCTRINE OF ETERNAL MISERY.
By Wm. Penniman
IN the examination of texts which are said to prove endless suffering, we first notice Matt. 3:12: "Whose fan is in His hand, and He will thoroughly purge His floor, and will gather His wheat into the garner, but He will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire." The wicked are compared to chaff to represent their worthlessness, and to show that they are to be wholly destroyed. All that is meant by unquenchable fire is that the fire burns till that which it feeds upon is consumed. The great Chicago fire and many others were unquenchable. The wicked are compared to the most inflammable substances. As for instance, see Ps. 68:2; Isa. 1:31; 51:8; 17:13; Ps. 37:20; Mal. 4:3; Matt. 13:40; John 15:6; 2 Peter 2:5, 6. "Depart from Me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels." Matt. 25:41. It will be seen by referring to Rev. 14:10, 11 and to 20:10 that the beast and image worshipers, also the devil and his angels, receive this punishment on this earth. This passage can not better be explained than by giving an explanation of Jude 7, where the Sodomites are "set forth for an example,5suffering the vengeance of eternal fire;" "the proper interpretation of any portion of the Sacred Record will show that it is in divine harmony with the general tenor and plain facts of the whole Book." It will be seen by the careful Bible student that this principle of interpretation is the very key of success in unfolding the true meaning of the Scriptures. Therefore an apparently discrepant text must harmonize when rightly interpreted and understood with others more plain or easy to comprehend. If the great majority of texts prove unquestionably that the wicked will be destroyed, or will finally "be as tho they had not been," then certainly the very few which seem, on a careless examination, to be against the position, must harmonize, and can be made so to do. And so it is with the text in question. The eternity of torment is not mentioned, but only the eternity of fire is inferred. We read (Gen. 19:24-28): "Then the Lord rained upon Sodom and Gomorrah brimstone and fire from the Lord out of heaven; and He overthrew those cities, and all the plain, and all the inhabitants of the cities, and that which grew upon the ground." "And Abraham got up early in the morning to the place where he stood before the Lord; and he looked toward Sodom and Gomorrah, and toward all the land of the plain, and beheld, and, lo, the smoke of the country went up as the smoke of a furnace." Certainly no one could say that these Sodomites, who are set forth for an example, are to this day in that fire. Peter bears testimony to this, all the more valuable because the chapter containing it is almost an exact parallel to the epistle of Jude. Peter says: "Turning the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah into ashes condemned them with an overthrow, making them an ensample unto those who should after live ungodly." 2 Peter 2:6. Have we not here, then, a perfect pattern of the future punishment of the wicked? Peter thus shows that the fire did its proper office upon the wicked cities of the plain. They were turned to ashes. Their case is an example of what God will do to all the wicked after the resurrection to condemnation, when fire shall descend out of heaven upon them, and the whole earth becomes a lake of fire. Revelation 20; 2 Peter 3; Malachi 4. In their utter destruction these cities suffer the vengeance of eternal fire; for their destruction was brief, as Jeremiah testifies: "For the punishment of the iniquity of the daughter of My people is greater than the punishment of the sin of Sodom, that was overthrown as in a moment, and no hands stayed on her." Lam. 4:6. We read (Luke 17:29) that the same day that Lot went out of Sodom "it rained fire and brimstone from heaven, and destroyed them all." But to carry out the point still further; if the Sodomites are not now in that fire, and yet suffer the vengeance of eternal fire, may not the devil and his angels, and all the wicked suffer the vengeance of "everlasting fire" and yet not remain forever in it? There is nothing said to be everlasting in the text but the fire. What may the ungodly learn from this sudden example?—That their fate will be similar if they do not forsake their sins. "And these shall go away into everlasting punishment; but the righteous into life eternal." Matt. 25:46. Here says the objector: "The word 'everlasting,' qualifying the word translated punishment, and the word 'eternal,' qualifying 'life,' are both translated from the same word in the original, kolusin aionion, punishment everlasting, or zoen aionion, life eternal, or just as correctly life everlasting." We admit this, and yet the text does not prove endless suffering. The true key to this text is the word "punishment." Everlasting suffering is not necessarily implied in everlasting punishment. The true sense would have been just the same if the text read as follows: These shall go away into everlasting death, or everlasting destruction, or everlasting extinction of being. From the punishment threatened to the wicked we can not consistently infer that they are immortal and will live forever in a lake of fire and brimstone. It is evident that punishment is inflicted for sin, and is the penalty for the violation of God's law. "The wages of sin is death." Rom. 6:23. "The soul that sinneth, it shall die." Eze. 18:4. Christ is the Lifegiver; therefore there is no immortality save through Him, as He came to bring "life and immortality to light through the Gospel." 2 Tim. 1:10. But to return to the punishment question. We will conclude this article with a brief quotation from a work entitled "The Theology of the Bible," by Oliver Spencer Halsted. We quote briefly (page 626), as follows:— Professor Hudson, formerly a preacher of orthodoxy, but who abandoned the system in a work published by him, says he has heard Presbyterian clergymen say they dared not think on eternal punishment lest they should disbelieve it. The Rev. Doctor Theodore Clapp, in his autobiography, says he had preached at New Orleans a zealous sermon for endless punishment; that after the sermon, Judge W., who, says he, was an eminent scholar, and had studied for the ministry, but relinquished his purpose because he could not find the doctrine of endless punishment and kindred dogmas, asked him to make out a list of texts in the Hebrew and Greek on which he relied for the doctrine. The doctor then gives a detailed account of his studies in search of texts to give to the judge. That he began with the Old Testament in the Hebrew; and prosecuted his study during that and the succeeding year; and yet that he was unable to find therein so much as an allusion to any suffering after death. That in the dictionary of the Hebrew language he could not discern a word signifying hell, or a place of punishment in a future state. That he could not find a single text, in any form of phraseology, which holds out threats of retribution beyond the grave. That to his utter astonishment it turned out that orthodox critics of the greatest celebrity were perfectly familiar with these facts. That he was compelled to confess to the judge that he could not produce an Hebrew text. But that now he was sanguine that the New Testament would furnish what he had sought for in Moses and the prophets. That he prosecuted his study of the Greek of the New Testament eight years. That the result was, that he could not name a portion of it, from the first verse in Matthew to the last of Revelation, which, fairly interpreted, affirms that a part of mankind will be eternally miserable. The preceding quotation is strong evidence against the doctrine of eternal misery. There is no immortality of death or of the "death that never dies." Reader, let us not fail to gain an immortality of life through the Lifegiver.