Some Terrible Evils Incident to the Immortality Dogma
By George W. Rine
If the overwhelming testimony of the Holy Scriptures to the effect that man is mortal and that the dead are actually dead, were universally accepted, that monstrous travesty of the Christian religion, Mormonism, could never have been possible. The fundamental tenet in the weirdly grotesque creed of this sect is that man is not only a deathless being, but that he has had a spiritual existence from all eternity. This is in flat contradiction of the testimony of the divine Spirit as to the origin of man. See Gen. 1:26, 27; 2:7; 3:19. Mormonism lays insistent emphasis upon the anti-Biblical but distinctly heathen dogma that all human spirits, at the death of the body, go to a prison-house, or purgatory, and remain there in a conscious probationary state until they become worthy of a higher sphere. From this dank and musty speculation of pagan mythology they logically deduce the pleasing theory, so utterly at variance with the whole tenor of the Bible, that all men are destined to ultimate salvation, without reference to character in this life. By accepting such teaching millions, lulled into a sense of carnal security, are destined to destruction. Now, we must not forget that it is that ancient pronunciamento of the dragon that is responsible for Mormonism; namely, that man is constitutionally immortal. If all men believed the Scriptures, Mormonism, with its concomitant perils, would be unthinkable. Again, there is that world-wide system of apostasy known as Roman Catholicism. With her there is the worship of the Virgin and the saints generally. It is a worship of the creature instead of the Creator. The Founder of the Christian church declared, "Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and Him only shalt thou serve." When one feels that it is of more concern to invoke the favor and protection of the Virgin, morning, noon, and night, than to invoke the blessing and favor of God, it is sheer, crass idolatry. The "invocation of the saints" is fundamental in the Roman system of worship. The practise is in utter contravention of the first commandment. It is as distinctly idolatrous as the worship of sun, moon, and stars. The celebrating of masses for the dead comes straight from classic paganism. The practise of praying for and to the dead—the very heart of Romanism—is a fearful perversion of the plain, uniform teaching of the Bible. Being essentially the worship of man rather than the worship of God, Romanism is virtually one aspect of the religion of Humanism. The Basis of Every False Religion
But this system of gross idolatry is again the child of that primary and central plank in the platform of every false religion—original human immortality. From the womb of this primal lie has been spawned every idolatrous system of worship that the world has ever known. Once more, the Roman doctrine of purgatory, weird, uncanny, pagan, and utterly subversive of Scripture truth, grew naturally and inevitably out of the soil of the immortality dogma. Let all the devotees of Romanism accept the unmistakable teachings of the Bible as to the state of the dead, and that5hydra-headed system of disguised paganism could not continue to exist for a day. That hoary Luciferian pronouncement that man can not die, so prolific in the breeding of false religions, is the mother of that cryptic movement bearing the proud appellation of Christian Science. Its growth has been phenomenal. Many of its adherents are persons of refinement and culture. And yet the essential tenets of this cult are violently antithetical to the plain, unmistakable teachings of the Christian Scriptures. If, as their creed teaches, universal man is essentially one with God, and sin and death are figments of mortal mind, then there can be no room for the cross of Christ, no need for a Gospel. Let a man once believe the Scriptures as to how and when men can attain to immortality, and Christian Science will become to him grotesquely inane and unintelligible. There is no place in Christian Science for Calvary, no place for the atonement. Hence there is in it no redemption, no salvation. The movement is accordingly destined to compass the perdition of multitudes of souls. But if men did not assent to that primal lie, "There is no death," Christian Science, like Spiritualism, could never have been conceived. No one who is spiritually enlightened would deny that all the pagan religions—Hinduism, Brahmanism, Buddhism, Shintoism, Theosophy, etc.—have their tap-root in the muck of the human-immortality dogma. We all know that these religions are as baneful as they are false. They have kept a very large part of humanity dark, immobile, hopeless. But were it not for the fetish of human immortality, not one of these monstrous religions would ever have been possible. Belief in Error Does Not Make Truth
The well-known Dr. Madison C. Peters, of New York, and the eminent brain specialist, Dr. Wm. Hanna Thomson, both argue that since the vast majority of mankind intuitively believe the immortality theory, it must be true. They both refer to the untold millions of India, China, Japan, and so on. Dr. Peters does not even pretend to go to the Bible for his evidence; for he says: "Where do we go to find out what is truth, but to concurrent human testimony? All men can not be deceived, therefore immortality is a reality." In keeping with his premises, Dr. Peters declares, "Death is the gate of life—and through its portals all must pass to enter into the promised land." This is smug paradox, but is foreign to the Book that he as a clergyman is expected to teach. It is Dr. Peters's false assumption that betrays him into virtually asserting that man is saved through death rather than through Christ. "I am the way," declared Jesus. Dr. Thomson broadly declares that the hosts of Asiatics are "living wholly without God, because no need is felt for God when the all-powerful spirits of their ancestors can furnish all protection and guidance. They therefore have even forgotten His name, so that missionaries for long found it difficult to find a Chinese word which would properly designate God." Altho Dr. Thomson is laboring to demonstrate the theory of inherent human immortality, yet he stultifies himself by clearly asserting that this doctrine alone is responsible for the tragic fact that the multitudinous Chinese have no conception of God, and are confirmed ancestor-worshipers. In truth, Dr. Thomson confesses that the immortality dogma has made China a nation of atheists. Well did Satan realize what he was doing when he enunciated that sinister dogma. Hundreds of other astute thinkers and facile writers are leaping into the arena to champion, through the medium of books and journals, the diabolic pronouncement that man is a deathless being. Millions are convinced. To believe this hoary pagan tenet is the first step to prepare one to espouse any old religion that the old dragon may have to offer. The facts fully bear me out in this sweeping declaration. Millions born in "Christian" America, England, France, and Germany are to-day embracing not only Spiritualism, but Christian Science, Theosophy, and even Buddhism, Hinduism (New Thought), and Mohammedanism. Buddhist and Hindu temples are springing up in all the metropolitan centers of Christendom. We have such temples in San Francisco, St. Louis, Chicago, New York, and Boston. They are notoriously in evidence in Paris, Vienna, and Budapest. The Rev Dr. Campbell, the sponsor par excellence in England for the New Theology, teaches that "physical death is not the all-important event which theologians have usually made it out to be; it is only a bend in the road. My own impression is that when we individually pass through this crisis we shall find the change to be very slight. It will mean the dropping of the scales from the eyes, and that is about all." Now, those who are informed as to the creed of the New Theology know that its paramount doctrine is the divinity of man. Dr. Campbell declares: "Humanity is divinity viewed from below. Divinity is humanity viewed from above." Again he avers, "The New Theology regards all mankind as being one with the Father." Another choice bit of the doctor's blasphemous presumptions is the following: "There is no such thing as punishment, no far-off judgment-day, no great white throne, and no judge external to ourselves. And who, pray, is the judge? Who but yourself? The deeper self is the judge, the self who is externally one with God." But even Dr. Campbell would be incapable of such utterly unchristian deliverances did he not assume, as we saw above, the immortal-soul theory. First let a man assume that he, like God, is immortal, and it is easy and natural to take the next step and assume man's essential divinity—his universal oneness with God. If man—sinful man—is "one with the Father," of course he needs no Saviour, no atonement. The incarnation of the Son of God would be uncalled for and anomalous. And accordingly that is what the New Theology accentuates. It denies that Christ was divine in any different sense than is every human being. It denies the virgin birth, the bodily resurrection of Christ, the expiatory nature of the death of Christ, etc. In other words, the New or Twentieth Century Theology is a sweeping negation of the whole plan of salvation as enunciated in the Bible. Think of the awful ruin of souls that the New Theology movement is destined to compass! Its pantheistic teachings are filtering through the creeds of all the historic Christian denominations. But such a movement would forever have been utterly impossible, even unthinkable, if men did not place man upon equality with God as to immortality. Dr. Campbell and his fellow New Theologians instinctively reason that since man possesses the divine attribute of immortality, he must accordingly be divine. Let all men believe the Bible as to the nature of man, and the New Theology would be utterly out of the question. Undeniably, then, the immortal-soul dogma is at the foundation of all the mighty last-day delusions that are darkening the whole earth. The inspired apostle prophesied that Christ's coming would be immediately "after the working of Satan with all power and signs and lying wonders, and with all deceibableness of unrighteousness in them that perish; because they received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved." Dear reader, shall we not vow to God that by His grace we will believe and practise the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth? Thus shall we be saved. The Saviour Himself declared, "Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free"—free from sin and death.