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ANOTHER CONTRAST

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Publishing Committee · Battle Creek, Mich. · Mar 5, 1861

FromReview and Herald, Vol. 17, No. 16.

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ANOTHER CONTRAST.

By Editor

It is well for the cause of Truth to have divines speak to the point and in language which can be readily understood. It is too often the case that counsel is darkened by words without knowledge, and that the advocates of a popular error, by multitudes of words and long circumlocution, bewilder the common mind till the discrepancy between their teaching and the word of God can hardly be discerned. Views plainly expressed, in simple and direct language, can easily be brought to the law and the testimony, and tested thereby. Such is the following extract from a sermon by Spurgeon relative to the resurrection of the wicked and their future punishment. He says:
"When you die your spirit must suffer alone, that will be the beginning of hell; but your body must rise again, then this very flesh in which you have transgressed the laws of God, this very body must smart for it. It must lie in the fire and burn, and crack, and writhe throughout eternity. Your body will be raised incorruptible, otherwise the fire would consume it. It will become like the asbestos stone, which lies in the flame and yet is never consumed. If it were this flesh and blood it would soon die under the pangs we must endure, but it will be a body all but omnipotent. As I spoke of the righteous having such great power, so shall you have; but it will be power to agonize, power to suffer, power to die, and yet to live, uncrushed by the stern foot of death. Those members that have become instruments of lust, shall become instruments of hell. Rotting as they will do in the grave, they will nevertheless rise with a fiery immortality about them, and endure an eternity of agony and unutterable woe and punishment."
There is no mistaking the above. Mr. Spurgeon plainly declares that the wicked shall be raised incorruptible. But why endow them with incorruptibility? The necessity of the case at once gives answer. In the language of Mr. S. when speaking of the body, "Why, otherwise the fire would consume it!" and then, impliedly, what becomes of the immortality of the wicked, and the eternity of their sufferings? The question, then, is fairly opened. Will the wicked in their resurrection be endowed with incorruption? Popular theology, in order to maintain the integrity of its position, finds it necessary to contend that they will. It has therefore spoken out explicitly on the subject. The Bible, also, has spoken no less directly on the same point. Let us therefore bring them together, and test their agreement. Passing by the long contrast we might draw up between the future conditions of the righteous and the wicked, showing that the punishment of the wicked is not eternal life, but is always contrasted with it as an opposite, and that those only who seek for immortality will ever possess it, we turn to Gal. vi, 7, 8. In these verses we find the most solemn declaration that according to a man's life here, his fate shall be hereafter. "Be not deceived," says the apostle, "God is not mocked; for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap; for he that soweth to the flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption; but he that soweth to the Spirit, shall of the Spirit reap life everlasting." The sowing time here spoken of is the present state; the exhortation and warning are in the present tense; and they are designed to impel us to a faithful discharge of our duty here, in view of the time of reaping which is in the future. By the reaping is brought to view the lot of both righteous and wicked in the future state; since it is only in that state that life everlasting is to be obtained. And now let it be marked that at the same time that those who sow to the Spirit (the righteous) reap life everlasting, those who sow to the flesh (the wicked) reap corruption! Language could not well be made to express more clearly that the wicked when they reap the future harvest for which they are sowing in this life, will have nothing about them incorruptible. They shall reap corruption. Yet says Mr. Spurgeon, Your body shall be raised incorruptible. Reader, which do you believe?
In this age of strong delusion, when the fear of man is supplanting the fear of God, and a blind reverence for human tradition is making void his word, we exhort you to decide with care. Decide in favor of that word which shall be found to stand, when the theories and inventions of men shall be swept into oblivion.