Unbelief is attacking the truths of the immortality of the soul and of future punishment. In its efforts to disprove what it cannot know except by the revelation of God, it seeks to overturn the meaning of the plain words “forever.” Yes, in a contemptible way for infidelity Christianized, or Christianized infidelity, accepts that God lives forever and that men will exist in heaven forever, yet denies that men will exist in hell forever. Now this is simply dishonest. If God uses the selfsame word for His own everlasting existence and for the everlasting happiness of such as love Him, as well as for the everlasting punishment of the wicked, to say that everlasting means what it says when applied to God and to happiness, but it does not mean what it says when applied to punishment is dishonest.
Note these passages of Scripture, where the identical words are used translated “for ever.”
“Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty, which was, and is, and is to come....who liveth FOR EVER AND EVER” (Rev. 4:8-98And the four beasts had each of them six wings about him; and they were full of eyes within: and they rest not day and night, saying, Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty, which was, and is, and is to come. 9And when those beasts give glory and honor and thanks to him that sat on the throne, who liveth for ever and ever, (Revelation 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—the father of lies. The rapid gaining of ground by the doctrine only shows how readily Satan is believed.
At the beginning, our first parent, Eve, believed the devil’s word, “Ye shall not surely die,” rather than God’s; and sadly many now 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 in a body that will endure forever. Should we then 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 the truth? 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 refusal 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 normal when Lot sought to persuade them to escape from the coming wrath, the sun rose as usual upon the last day of Sodom. There was no sign of the approach of that which had never been before, and then 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 destroying their city that the storm broke into the flames through 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 about the judgments which He declared He would send on 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 underfoot by the nations, the Jews scattered over the earth, the ten tribes lost and buried out of sight and mind as it were are obvious 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 even to children 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, do we think she believed the word of God that her glory would perish, and that her majesty would be but a memory on the earth?
It is easy 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 they say, 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. Sadly the fact is so awfully apparent that it could not be denied. But such being admitted, it is asked, “Is there, then, no hope?” And the whispered response is heard, “It would comfort us to think that there was hope for those whom we loved who lived wickedly and died without repentance.”
Do we believe that God is deceiving when He says forever? Do we credit that our blessed Lord was misguiding men when He said forever? Do we accept that the Holy Spirit of God is merely frightening us with dreadful tales when He says forever? Can man comfort himself 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. It is still as it was in the days of Eve: there is a willing ear for the Tempter’s insinuation, “Hath God said?” He has found his way into the professing church, 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.
“It is written,” said the Lord to Satan, and drove him back. “It is written” must ever be the Christian’s defense. “It is written,” “Forever.”