Thoughts On Immortality # 2

Thoughts On Immortality # 2

(b) Let us settle it; for another thing, in our minds, that the future misery of those who are finally lost is eternal. This is a dreadful truth, I am aware, and flesh and blood naturally shrink from the contemplation of it. But I am one of those who believe it to be plainly revealed in Scripture, and I dare not keep it back in the pulpit. To my eyes eternal future happiness and eternal future misery appear to stand side by side. I fail to see how you can distinguish the duration of one from the duration of the other. If the joy of the believer is forever, the sorrow of the unbeliever is also forever. If Heaven is eternal, so likewise is hell. It may be my ignorance, but I know not how the conclusion can be avoided.

I cannot reconcile the non-eternity of punishment with the language of the Bible. Its advocates talk loudly about love and charity, and say that it does not harmonize with the merciful and compassionate character of God. But what says the Scripture? Who ever spoke such loving and merciful words as our Lord Jesus Christ? Yet His are the lips which three times over describe the consequence of impenitence and sin, as "the worm that never dies and the fire that is not quenched." He is the Person who speaks in one sentence of the wicked going away into "everlasting punishment" and the righteous into "life eternal." (Mark 9:43-48; Matt. 25:46). Who does not remember the Apostle Paul's words about charity? Yet he is the very Apostle who says, the wicked "shall be punished with everlasting destruction.' (2 Thess. 1:9). Who does not know the spirit of love which runs through all John's Gospel and Epistles? Yet the beloved Apostle is the very writer in the New Testament who dwells most strongly, in the book of Revelation, on the reality and eternity of future woe. What shall we say to these things. Shall we be wise above that which is written? Shall we admit the dangerous principles that words in Scripture do not mean what they appear to mean? Is it not far better to lay our hands on our mouths and say, "Whatever God has written must be true." "Even so, Lord God Almighty, true and righteous are Your judgments." (Rev. 16:7).

I cannot reconcile the non-eternity of punishment with the language of our Prayer book.  The very first petition in our matchless Litany contains this sentence, "From everlasting damnation, good Lord,deliver us." The Catechism teaches every child who learns it, that whenever we repeat the Lord's Prayer we desire our Heavenly Father to "keep us from our ghastly enemy and from everlasting death." Once more I ask, "What shall we say to these things? Shall we teach our congregations that even when people live and die in sin we may hope for their happiness in a remote future? Surely the common sense of many of our worshipers would reply, that if this is the case Prayer-book words mean nothing at all.

I lay no claim to any special knowledge of Scripture. I feel daily that I am no more infallible than the Pope in Rome. But I must speak according to the light which God has given to me; and I do not think I should do my duty if I did not raise a warning voice on this subject, and try to put Christians on their guard. Six thousand years ago sin entered into the world by the devil's daring falsehood - "You shall not surely die." At the end of six thousand years the great enemy of mankind is still using his old weapon, and trying to persuade men that they may live and die in sin, and yet at some distant period may be finally saved. Let us not be ignorant of his devices. Let us walk steadily in the old paths. Let us hold fast the old truth, and believe that as the happiness of the saved is eternal, so also is the misery of the lost.

(a) Let us hold it fast in the interest of the whole system of revealed religion. What was the use of God's Son becoming incarnate, agonizing in Gethsemane, and dying on the Cross to make atonement, if men can be finally saved without believing on Him? Where is the slightest proof that saving faith in Christ's blood can ever begin after death? Where is the need of the Holy Spirit, if sinners are at last to enter heaven without conversion and renewal of heart? Where can we find the smallest evidence that any one can be born again and have a new heart, if he dies in an unregenerate state? If a man may escape eternal punishment at last, without faith in the blood of Christ or sanctification of the Spirit, sin is no longer an infinite evil, and there was no need for Christ making an atonement!

(b) Let us hold it fast for the sake of holiness and morality. I can imagine nothing so pleasant to flesh and blood as the specious theory that we may live in sin, and yet escape eternal perdition; and that although we serve diverse lusts and pleasures while we are here, we shall somehow or other all get to heaven hereafter! Only tell the young man who is wasting his substance in riotous living, that there is heaven at last, or, at any rate, no eternal punishment, even for those who live and die in sin, and he is never likely to turn from evil. Why should he repent and take up the cross, if he can get to heaven at last, or escape punishment, without trouble?

(c) Finally, let us hold it fast, for the sake of the common hopes of all God's saints.  Let us distinctly understand that every blow struck at the eternity of punishment is an equally heavy blow at the eternity of reward. It is impossible to separate the two things. No ingenious theological definition can divide them. They stand or fall together. The same language is used, the same  figures of speech are employed, when the Bible speaks about either condition. Every attack on the duration of hell is also an attack on the duration of heaven. It is a deep and true saying, "With the sinner's fear our hope departs."

I turn from this part of my subject with a deep sense of its painfulness. I feel strongly with Robert M'Cheyne that "it is a hard subject to handle lovingly." But I turn from it with an equally deep conviction that if we believe the Bible we must never give up anything which it contains. From hard, austere, and unmerciful theology, good Lord, deliver us! If men are not saved, it is because they will not come to Christ. (John 5:40). No morbid love of liberality, so called, must induce us to reject anything which God has revealed about eternity. Men sometimes talk exclusively about God's mercy and love and compassion, as if He had no other attributes, and leave out of sight entirely His holiness, and His purity, His justice and His unchangeableness, and His hatred of sin. Let us beware of falling into this delusion. It is a growing evil in these latter days.

Low and inadequate views of the unutterable vileness and filthiness of sin, and of the unutterable purity of the eternal God, are prolific sources of error about man's future state. Let us not thing of the mighty Being with whom we have to do, as He Himself declared His character to Moses, saying, "The Lord, the Lord God, merciful and gracious, patience and abundant in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity, and transgression, and sin." But let us not forget the solemn clause which concludes the sentence - "And And that will by no means clear the guilty." (Exodus 34:6, 7). Unrepented sin is an eternal evil, and can never cease to be sin;and He with whom we have to do is an eternal God.

The words of Psalm 145 are strikingly beautiful - "The Lord is gracious, and full of compassion; slow to anger, and of great mercy. The Lord is good to all - and His tender mercies are over all His works. The Lord upholds all that fall, and raises up all those that be bowed down. The Lord is righteous in all His ways, and holy in all His works. The Lord is near unto all them that call upon Him, to all that call upon Him in truth. The Lord preserves all them that love Him." Nothing can exceed the mercifulness of this language! But what is a striking fact it is that the passage goes on to add the following solemn conclusion, "All the wicked will He destroy." (Psalm 145:8-20).

~J. C. Ryle~

(continued with # 3)