I DON’T believe in that eternal-torment doctrine of yours.”
“It is not a doctrine of mine.”
“You preach it.”
“That does not make it a doctrine of mine. But why should you bother about it? Who is going to endure it?”
“If what you say be true, the great majority of men and women.”
“What for?”
“I suppose because they are sinners.”
“Scarcely―at least this is not the whole truth, for ‘all have sinned,’ and who then could be saved? You know there has been, through the rich mercy of God, a great Saviour provided, and a great salvation through His precious blood.”
“Well, then, I suppose it is because they do not avail themselves of that Saviour.”
“Why?”
“There are so many things in the Bible contradictory, and impossible to believe.”
“I have not seen these things, and I think I have read the Bible as much as most skeptics. But I venture to affirm that you are entirely mistaken when you give this as a reason for men rejecting Christ. The vast majority who reject Christ, and go to hell, have never heard of those so-called contradictions. How is this?”
“I cannot tell; perhaps they prefer the world.” “To God’s Son?”
“I suppose so. It has more attractions for them.”
“Than the unfathomable love of God to guilty men told out in His cross?”
“All this is so difficult for a reasonable man to believe.”
“The mass of English-speaking men and women do not question it in their minds, however little it may have touched their hearts.”
“Then I suppose they are too light-hearted to think seriously about it.”
“With the tale of hell’s horrors ringing in their ears?”
“Well, it is hard if they are to be tormented for all eternity.”
“What is to be done with them? Christ they will not have. They preferred a robber and a murderer eighteen hundred years ago, and their mind is unchanged to this day.”
“Well, they might be punished for a time.”
“And then?”
“Get into heaven.”
“How? Without Christ—God-haters?”
“Perhaps they would love Him then.”
“Could you punish a man into loving you? You might make him fear you, but ‘there is no fear in love’! But if punishment would do, why not have punished our first parents into saints before the guilty race was begun? Hell-fire will never make the lost love God: they gnash their teeth there.”
“But do not you love and serve God out of fear of going to hell?”
“No; blessed be His name, the question of my salvation was a settled thing with me before I began to love Him. ‘We love him, because he first loved us’ (1 John 4:1919We love him, because he first loved us. (1 John 4:19)). The devil once made me believe God was a hard Master, and refused an innocent man an apple. The cross shows me that for a guilty man He spared not His only begotten Son, and this is how He commends His love toward us, in that ‘while we were YET SINNERS Christ died for us’ (Rom. 5:88But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. (Romans 5:8)). And the real truth about man is, he wanted to exalt himself to equality with God― (the thing he is aiming at today) and for the fruit of the forbidden tree gave God up, and, after four thousand years, murdered His Son for nothing at all, out of pure malice of heart.”
“Well, I don’t understand it.”
“You don’t want to. Why, instead of bowing at the feet of Jesus with rapturous adoration, do you stand there like a man in a burning house who refuses to avail himself of the fire-escape until he knows all about the origin of the fire, and has examined every chamber to assure himself that the alarm has not been exaggerated? And why are you so anxious to deny the eternity of punishment Is it not, that if you could persuade yourself that the wrath of God is all a horrible farce, you would live as you liked, and have an easy mind?”
“But why does man not die like a dog?”
“Because he was not made like a dog. He did not come into existence like a dog, and therefore he cannot go out of existence like a dog. It was by the breath of God he became a living soul. God made him to have to say to Himself, and every creature thus formed must exist forever, fallen or unfallen.”
“But why did God form him thus?”
“That is His business. Have you got Him at your judgment-seat? If you were not terribly duped by the devil you would never be so presumptuous as to ask the question.”
“I don’t think there is any presumption about it. Am I to come to the discovery that I am an object of God’s wrath, the possessor of a mind at enmity with God, and in danger of eternal damnation, and must I take it as a matter of course?”
“You should not take it as a matter of course, but what will you accomplish by flying in the face of God? Are you stronger than He? Will you enter into judgment with Him, and fasten the blame upon the Judge of all the earth? You certainly should not take your wicked heart as a matter of course, but have you not discovered yourself to be anything but an object of divine displeasure? What does, the cross reveal? Have you taken it as a matter of course that God has expressed that in His heart there was nothing but love to you, however impossible it was for Him to pass over your sins, and that the cross has opened up a way of life for all under the sentence of death? Have you not taken this so much a matter of course that you have rejected it altogether?”
“But God would not cast any one thus into a hopeless hell.”
“This assumes that you know Him. How did you come to the knowledge of Him? By what searching have you found Him out? To say God would or would not do a thing is to assume you know His nature.”
“God is love.”
“How can you tell? Have you come to this conclusion from your own observation of the state of this world? Do the jails, lunatic asylums, infirmaries, graveyards, bear witness to it? Are the pains, oppressions, violence, sorrows, deaths, calamities, and miseries of the human race the proof of it? Do those that are born mutes, monsters, blind, idiots, declare it? Who told you God is love?”
“Why, the Bible says so.”
“I thought you questioned the Bible. But if it says ‘God is love,’ it says also ‘GOD IS LIGHT,’ and His wrath is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men (Rom. 1:1818For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who hold the truth in unrighteousness; (Romans 1:18)); and the Lord Jesus shall be revealed from heaven with His mighty an is in flaming fire, taking vengeance on them that obey not the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ, who shall be punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of His power (2 Thess. 1:7-97And to you who are troubled rest with us, when the Lord Jesus shall be revealed from heaven with his mighty angels, 8In flaming fire taking vengeance on them that know not God, and that obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ: 9Who shall be punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord, and from the glory of his power; (2 Thessalonians 1:7‑9)). So you see if God is love, He is also holy, and can have nothing to do with sin except in the way of judgment. And here it may be well to remind you, that the devil’s first lie in Eden was that the penalty attached to eating the forbidden fruit was only a scarecrow, and would never be inflicted. And right through the Old Testament it is the same tale, ―man rejecting the testimony of coming wrath, and setting up prophets who prophesied SMOOTH THINGS. Our first parents discovered, when it was too late, that they had listened to a liar. May you discover it in time. All your reasonings come from the pride of your wicked heart, which, like Cain, refuses to bow to the justice of the judgment which lies upon you.”
“But this hell-doctrine seems to me a stain upon the character of God.”
“I don’t think you are altogether so very careful of the honor of God as such words might lead one to suppose. But the stain is all the other way. Does God take pleasure in sin, and will He fill heaven with devils and wicked men? And if He can do this, why must man die off this earth? Why, if a little temporary punishment would suffice, does He put a period to the existence of man in this world? Why not reinstate him in blessing here on earth?”
“Well, I cannot make it out. I believe I will think no more about it.”
“You cannot help thinking about it; and if you stifle the voice of conscience here in this world, you will have to listen to it for a hopeless eternity.”
“But what is one to do?”
“Get at the root of your trouble, and your difficulties will vanish; they are born of your miserable pride. Forgive me being plain with you. I have only been taking you on your own ground, ―answering you a little according to your folly, ―and there is not a morsel of sound sense in all your philosophy. You think God ought to have been other than He is, and that He ought to have done differently. You would judge God. Need I say it is you that must go into the dock? The child of wisdom always justifies God and judges himself. But what is the specialty in your cup of misery that is not in every other man’s? Here am I, a sinner like yourself, perfectly satisfied with the revelation God has been pleased to give, rejoicing in God and in Christ as my Saviour; and as all His counsels and ways of grace pass in review before my soul, I bow my whole moral being in worship and adoration. I am beside myself with joy. I am glad I have lost innocence and a garden upon earth, because the Father’s house has been opened to me, and as a son with His Son, in the likeness of Christ, I shall be there forever. I am glad I am not an unfallen man or angel, because I could never be so much to Jesus, or He so much to me, as He is now He has shed His blood for me.
“The fall does not trouble me, nor the lake of fire either. I would not, even if I could, change places with the archangel. If a monarch set a beggar’s hovel on fire over his head that he might bring him into his own palace as a prince, and fill his heart with every good thing, would that beggar murmur at his hard lot? But how good of God, when by our own willfulness we had burnt our house of clay to the ground, in infinite grace and through the blood of Jesus, to open heaven itself to us. A way of escape has been made for you, and see to it that you do not miss it. The judgment of sin has been borne by Christ. In unfathomable love to men, God sent Him. The work of the cross is a finished work, and God through it has been glorified. The blood is upon the mercy-seat. It is the only ground upon which God can receive you. His invitation is to all; you are no exception. ‘Come now, and let us reason together, saith the Lord; though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool’ (Isa. 1:1818Come now, and let us reason together, saith the Lord: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool. (Isaiah 1:18)). Delay no longer. Escape for your life. Look not behind you.
“Hearken not to the senseless reasonings of your miserable mind. May the voice of God drown every other sound in your soul. When the chill fingers of death are loosing the silver cord that binds body and soul together, you will, too late, awake to find you have reasoned your soul (which is more value to you than the universe of God) into the flames of hell, and what will you say when He shall punish you? Will your reasonings be to you, in the dungeons of damnation, like a fountain of waters, where for eternity you may bathe your burning brow, and cool your parched tongue? Will it be a consolation to you to look back from a lost eternity to the day of God’s patience and long-suffering, when, with heart of flint, and neck like an iron sinew, and brow of brass, you turned a deaf ear to the testimony of the Holy Spirit, and, despising the precious blood of Christ, sought to cast the blame of your ruin upon God Himself? Do you think you will have a kind of triumph even in the lake of fire? Poor dupe of Satan! May the Spirit of God awaken you at this present moment. Humble yourself before God. Bow at the feet of Jesus. There is no time to be lost. Any moment the door of grace may be shut, and then He will say— ‘Because I have called, and ye refused; I have stretched out my hand, and no man regarded; but ye have set at naught all my counsel, and would none of my reproof: I also will laugh at your calamity; I will mock when your fear cometh; when your fear cometh as desolation, and your destruction cometh as a whirlwind; when distress and anguish cometh upon you. Then shall they call upon me, but I WILL NOT ANSWER; they shall seek me early, but THEY SHALL NOT FIND ME’ (Prow. 1:24-28).
“May God grant that you may, as a penitent sinner, now fly to Christ, and believe on Him to the salvation of your soul.” J. B―D.