p. 92 | WM. C. GAGE by Wm. C. Gage

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Aug 22, 1865

WM. C. GAGE

By Wm. C. Gage

Popular Errors and Their Fruits. No. 2.

NEXT in order comes the doctrine of natural or inherent immortality. The first preaching of this error was to our first parents in Eden, by the arch-deceiver, when he told them they should not surely die, even if they disobeyed God. The fruit of that preaching was the fall of man, and the threatened destruction of the entire race.

Not satisfied with the mischief already wrought, Satan has re-iterated this falsehood from that time to the present, with the intention of keeping man in his fallen condition. Having caused a paradise lost, he would by the same means prevent a paradise restored.

Without this error the doctrine of endless misery would fail to the ground; for it would thus have lost its chief pillar, and support. Persuade men that they are mortal, and that unless something is done for them, they have no future life beyond the execution of God's judgments upon the wicked, and they are then prepared to understand why they should seek for immortality. They have no need of the doctrine of endless torment, which they can never realize, to induce them to love God; for the gift of eternal life through his Son looks attractive to them, when they are made to feel the necessity of it.

The belief in universal salvation is also founded on the idea of natural immortality. Both reason and revelation teach that if all men are immortal, then all will be finally happy; for, while the former will not permit us to believe that God will allow Satan to defeat his plans and triumph over him, by permitting sin to exist forever, the latter explicitly declares (Rev. v, 13) that a time is coming when all creatures everywhere will be heard praising God; and if the wicked are to live forever, they will of course join in this song of praise. Thus "orthodoxy," is to a certain degree responsible for Universalism.

Closely allied to, and growing out of this error, we have another, equally unscriptural, that is, the conscious state of the dead. Springing from this we have all manner of papal errors, such as invocation of saints, prayers for the dead, purgatory, &c., to say nothing of the Protestant purgatory, or half-way place, which certain D. D.'s have fixed up for dead people, rather than to believe the Bible declaration that "the dead know not anything." This belief also gets people judged at death, and robs the resurrection of its glory by making it entirely unnecessary.

But all these are minor errors, compared with Satan's great master-piece of delusion, modern Spiritualism, which is sweeping over the land, burning and scarring all within its track, yet making its millions of converts, and spreading licentiousness and misery on every hand. The wide-spread error of conscious immortality, furnishes the foundation of this frightful evil, or in the words of another, "modern orthodoxy has laid the track for the car of spiritualism to run upon." When we assail this hydra-headed error, it is therefore important that we make it clearly manifest that the "dead know not anything," notwithstanding popular opinion, or the desire of the masses that such "important" matters be let alone.