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 haven is eternal, so likewise is hell. It may be my ignorance, but I know 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 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 righteousness 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 principle 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 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." Even in our burial service we pray at the grave side, "Deliver us not into the bitter pains of eternal 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 of Rome. But I must speak according to the light which God has given to me; and I do not thing 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." (Gen. 3:4). 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 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). But we must not be wise above that which is written. No  morbid love of liberty, so called, must induce us to reject anything which 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 unchangableness, and His hatred of sin. Let us beware of falling into this delusion. It is a growing evil in these latter days.

~J. C. Ryle~

(continued with # 3)