IN our two preceding numbers we have briefly spoken of Christ as the Life and the Judge. We will now consider the solemn reality of the future.
Infidelity is attacking the truths of the immortality of the soul and of future punishment, and in its efforts to disprove that, of which it can know nothing surely save by the revelation of God, it seeks in a base way to overturn the meaning of the plain words “forever.” Yes, in a base way, for infidelity Christianized, or Christianized infidelity, allows that God lives forever, and that men shall exist in heaven forever, yet denies that men shall exist in hell forever. Now it is simply dishonest, if God uses the selfsame word for His own everlasting existence, and for the everlasting happiness of such as love Him, and also for the everlasting punishment of the wicked, to say everlasting means what it says when applied to God and to happiness, but it does not mean what it says when applied to punishment?
Take from amongst others these passages of scripture where the identical words are used translated “forever.”
“Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty, which was and is, and is to come,”... who liveth Forever AND EVER. Rev. ch. 4:8, 9.
Again—
Again—
The dishonesty of the doctrine is so evident that we should scarcely think it could gain ground, were we not aware who is at the back of it, even the father of lies. And the fact of the rapidity wherewith the doctrine does gain ground only shows how busy Satan is, and how readily he is believed.
At the beginning, our first parent, Eve, believed the devil’s word, “Ye shall not surely die,” rather than God’s, and now, alas! many prefer the devil’s doctrine of no eternal death to fleeing from the wrath to come. Neither Adam nor Eve had seen a human being die when God warned them what would happen should they disobey His plain command. Death, therefore, was an unknown terror to them. The myriads of graves that this world now contains are each a witness to the fact of God’s truth, and because of the presence of death none disbelieve God’s word that “It is appointed unto man once to die.” No living man has seen hell, nor a human being risen from the dead and in such a condition as will render him capable of living forever. But, reader, shall we wait till the reality of the second death is before our very eyes to believe the plain word of God respecting it, till hell and its inhabitants prove that God speaks not in vain? When the future becomes the present, men will find no difficulty in understanding those truths which are now revealed to us to believe regarding it.
There is in the human heart a stubborn hatred against receiving the word of God respecting coming judgment. It was so with the sons-in-law of Lot. They would not believe the testimony of their father-in-law that God would destroy Sodom. All seemed fair when Lot sought to persuade them to escape from the coming wrath, and the sun rose as usual upon the last day of Sodom. There was no sign of the approach of that which never before had been—a storm of fire poured from the sky. It may have been that even while those sons-in-law of Lot were gazing into the blue heavens and jesting at the idea of God’s destroying their city that the storm broke, in the flames of which they perished.
We read the words of the prophets to transgressing Israel, and find how determined the hearts of those people were not to credit the word of God respecting the judgments which He declared He would send upon them. Over and over again judgments fell upon that people, and yet fresh generations walked in the ways of their erring fathers and despised and refused to believe Jehovah’s warnings.
Now we Christians are taught to look upon those fulfilled judgments as witnesses of the truth of the Divine word. Jerusalem trampled under foot by the nations, the Jews scattered over the earth, the ten tribes lost and, as it were, buried out of sight and mind, are matters patent to us all! Tyre and Sidon, once flourishing cities of mighty influence and power in the world, now but a few huts for fishermen, proclaim to very childhood the truth of God’s word coming to pass. But when Tyre was in her prosperity, when her ships sailed on many seas and all the world contributed to her exaltation, when she was lifted up to heaven in her pride, think you that she believed the word of God that all her glory should perish, and that her majesty would be but a memory on the earth?
It is simple to accept the testimony of God respecting past judgments upon the earth, for ruined cities and overturned kingdoms attest the truth of the prophetic word, yet, notwithstanding the witness of Sodom, of Tyre and Sidon, and of Jerusalem, the very men who read the Bible are vain enough to deny that the future judgment of God against the sinner will ever be realized—no, say they, there is not an eternal punishment.
It is conceded that too many die and pass out of time into eternity without God and without Christ. Alas the fact is so awfully apparent that it could not be otherwise than allowed. But such being owned, it is asked, “Is there, then, no hope?” And the whisper is heard, “It would comfort us to think that there was hope for those whom we loved who lived wickedly and died without repentance.”
Reader, can you believe that God is deceiving you when He says forever? Do you credit that our blessed Lord was misguiding men when He said forever? Do you accept that the Holy Spirit of God is merely frightening you with dreadful tales when He says forever? Can you comfort yourself with such notions of God the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost? Such as do so have low conceptions of the character of God.
It is not necessary to be a scholar to understand the plain word of God. Our English Bible tells the truth with remarkable simplicity, indeed with so much force and clearness that no uneducated man could be led astray by it. Is it not necessary that a man should be very learned indeed, so learned that his learning has confused or elated him, not to understand it? We live in an age of Bibles. Ours is a day of new versions. God has, in His providence, allowed old manuscripts to be recovered, and by them the letter of the truth was never read more clearly than now.
Yet it is still as it was in the days of Eve: there is a ready ear for the Tempter’s insinuation, “Hath God said?” He has found his way into the professing church quite as easily as he found the way into paradise, and now from the very heart of the professing Christian body the voice is heard denying the letter and seeking to disprove the spirit of the Book.
We earnestly implore our readers to take the Word of God as it is written. “It is written,” said the Lord to Satan, and drove him back. “It is written!” must ever be the Christian’s defense. No doubt Satan will try to twist the scriptures, and so to master our souls. Wrest them not to your own destruction. (2 Peter 3:1616As also in all his epistles, speaking in them of these things; in which are some things hard to be understood, which they that are unlearned and unstable wrest, as they do also the other scriptures, unto their own destruction. (2 Peter 3:16).) “It is written;” “Forever.” Woe to that man who dares to diminish from these words! H. F. W.