In Revelations 17,18 we read of a certain very wicked woman called "Babylon the Great." It is generally believed in Protestant churches that this is the great Apostasy. The true church is also compared to a woman, a pure chaste virgin, but Babylon the Great is a vile degenerate woman. Just as surely as the woman represents the great apostasy, so surely does the cup represent the Bible, containing the water of life, divine truth. Nothing is said against the cup, there was nothing wrong with it, but the abominable things put into it were without divine authority. She introduced the abominable idea that God instituted man, the Pope to the head of God's church, that men should worship the Virgin Mary, and that they should confess their sins to the priests. There is not the slightest scriptural support to any of them. Martin Luther perceived that this was the case, and started the work of cleaning the golden cup of the errors attached to it during the Dark Ages. He stopped before it was cleaned, so others took up the work to carry it on, and the cleaning has continued to the present time. We call these our brethren, although we are not Lutherans or Baptists, for they have the characteristics which we would expect to find in the true child of God. We also have this desire to see the golden cup cleansed, but it has not yet been cleansed.

One of the most abominable things put into the golden cup has not yet been removed, namely that our Heavenly Father has promised to torment nearly all of earth's billions through all eternity. This was put in to frighten the heathen into the church. No one could be so full of sin as to deserve such a punishment. This idea more than any other has made many infidels. Nine out of every ten infidels have been made such directly or indirectly by this dreadful doctrine. Any one who believes this doctrine is near to infidelity. This is not a part of the golden cup, but was put into it. None who really believe in Christ as the sacrifice for sins can believe this doctrine. If the penalty for sin were eternal torment then Christ would have had to suffer it in order to pay the penalty. There is no eternal life for the wicked (Psa. 145:20), so they cannot [PE54] suffer eternal torment. All who have eternal life will be in harmony with God (1 Cor. 15:28; Rom. 6:23). The Bible presentation of God is everywhere that He is love. He would not allow the eternal torment of any of His creatures. Moloch, a heathen idol, has great arms which were heated and children put into them as secrecies, and God declares in (Jer. 32:35) that such a thing as that never came into His mind. If any were eternally tormented, all would be, for the knowledge of what the evil were suffering would be torment to the righteous. God's indignation and anger will cease with the destruction of the wicked (Isa. 10:25), for all the wicked are to be destroyed, and none will any more cause Him to be angry. (Rev. 21:4,8) Pain will have accomplished its mission, and shall be no more.

It is very easy to say that Hell is the place of eternal torment, but it is not so easy to prove it. A man who dies goes to hell, the grave, the tomb. Our savior when he died went to hell (Acts 2:27), but God raised Him out of hell the third day. None are put alive into hell. All the incorrigible will be returned into hell. While it is God's purpose to bring all out of hell, yet the willfully wicked will go back to the second hell, the second death. There is a resemblance between the first and second deaths, hells, but there is a difference too, because there will be a resurrection from the first, but never from the second. There is a likeness to fire and brimstone, because these are so destructive, no form of life can withstand its destructiveness. Those who die in the second death will die as the beasts, who perish in corruption. We believe in hell, but not in eternal torment. Many Jews rejected Jesus because they could not believe that He was right and their Scribes and Pharisees were wrong. They rejected the Apostles also. It was just the same with Martin Luther, the people could not believe that the Catholic priests were wrong. We believe in a hell not because great men have believed it, but because the Bible teaches it.

Those who believe in eternal torture have only eight passages in the Bible which seem to teach it. Of these eight every one is highly figurative, not one of them is a straight statement. Two are from Revelations, a book they do not pretend to understand. Rev.14:10,11; 20:10.) The Adventists find that there is no eternal torment taught in the Bible, so they understand more of this book than those who believe that doctrine. Of the other six: Two are in the parables of our Lord (Matt. 25:31-46; Luke 16:19-31), two more are His statements (Mark 9:42-48,49), one in Isaiah (Isa. 66:24), and one in Jude 7. (see Isa. 30:33.) Paul said he was not ashamed to declare the whole counsel of God, and in all that he has written he has not mentioned eternal torment, while he has touched on every other doctrine of theology. Surely he would not have [PE55] failed to speak of it if it were true. He did say: "Our God is a consuming fire" (Heb. 12:28), but not a preserving fire.

Luke 16:19-31: This is a parable, though it is not called a parable, for it is not a literal statement. In a parable the thing said is not to be understood as the thing meant. The rich man represents one class, and the poor man another class. The rich man is the class to whom Jesus was speaking, the Jewish nation. It is customary to compare nations to men; we call the United States, 'Uncle Sam,' and England is called 'John Bull,' Turkey the 'Sick man of the East.' So the Jewish nation is compared to a rich man because she had enjoyed much more of God's favor and blessing than had any other nation; to them were given the promises of God, and the just laws which placed their social condition far in advance of that of any nation of that day, and also the patriarchs and prophets (Rom. 3:1,2; Acts 3:25,26). Where was there another nation to which was shown so much of God's goodness? The rich man was clothed with purple and fine linen. Purple represents royalty, the royal family from which the King was taken; Israel was a royal nation. (Exod. 19:5,6.) Fine linen represents their righteousness; they were not actually righteous, but typically, reckonedly so, because of their sacrifices for sin. (Leviticus 16:29-31.) Where was there a nation which favored so sumptuously as this on the messages of God sent to them? (Deut. 4:6-8,32-34.) From this view the whole parable is easily explained. In Matt. 12:36 we read that every idle word that men shall speak they shall give account thereof in the day of judgment. If this parable supports the doctrine of eternal torment than over half the words in it are idle words, but our Lord spoke in no idle words. This explanation is the only one which makes use of every word. The dog was an unclean animal to the Jew (Leviticus 12:27), and the epithet was often applied to the Gentiles by the Jews. The beggar would represent those Gentiles who afterwards accepted Christ. The wall would represent the Law covenant (Eph. 2:14); the gate, circumcision; those outside the gate, who did not circumcise, the Gentiles; Beggar, those Gentiles who afterwards accepted Christ; dogs, those Gentiles who never accepted Christ. (See Mark 7:25-28.) The beggar is described as being full of sores; these are not literal sores, but the fears, doubts which filled the minds of those who searched earnestly for truth, anxieties concerning the future life, which puzzled their minds and worried them, mental sores. The dogs licked his sores; the heathen philosophers came and tried to comfort these worried ones, and showed them sympathy by giving their theories of the future life; but this could not cure their troubles.

The rich man died. Has the Jewish nation died? It surely has. Where is the Jewish nation today? It does not exist. For the pas 1900 years [PE56] nearly, since A.D. 70, the Jews have been scattered, buried among all nations, tho victims of the worst persecutions that men could devise, despised, hated, trodden down by all men, most badly treated by those whose faith should have taught them mercy, by nominal Christians; surely that nation has been dead, and its people in torment.

Abraham is here a type of Jehovah, as in the figure, wherein he offered up Isaac, typifying Jehovah, offering his only Son, Jesus, for our sins. Since the death of the Jewish nation God has been afar off from them, and His favor withdrawn from them.

Lazarus also died and was taken to Abraham's bosom: The Jews were rejected, and the beggar class of Gentiles also died to their old condition. Previously they had been without God and without hope in the world, they had no share in the promises, and were aliens from God. (Eph. 2:12). But these old conditions passed away, a change came. It was not an individual death, but death to old conditions. To be received into one's bosom means to be adopted into one's family. (See Num. 11:12.) So these Gentiles were adopted into God's family in place of the rejected Jews. The rich man implored that Lazarus might come to soothe his agony. 'Angels' are messengers, sometimes heavenly, sometimes earthly. Peter was the angel who was sent to convert Cornelius; the apostles were the angels who carried the Gentiles into God's family. Thus the Jews have seen the Gentiles exalted and themselves debased. They have implored the Christians for hundreds of years for relief from their sufferings, but none came, their heaven was like iron. (Leviticus 26:19). There was a great gulf, a religious and social gulf that none could pass. It is not so wide in the United States as in Russia, nor so wide now as in the Dark Ages, but none can cross it, not even those Jews who become Christians can cross the social gulf. The Jews seemed to realize that if any help came it must come through Christians. The five brethren were Jews also, for Christians have more than Moses and the Prophets, the New Testament. The Jewish nation consisted of twelve tribes, the two tribes of Judah and Benjamin as the Kingdom of Judah, and the other ten tribes of Israel.

These were taken captives to Assyria or to Babylon, and later Cyrus gave all the Jews in his dominions liberty to return to Jerusalem.

Some of all the tribes returned and most of Judah and Benjamin. If the rich man represents the two tribes of Judah and Benjamin composing most of the returned nation), then five men would represent the ten tribes. So the Jews prayed that their brethren might escape such torment as was theirs..This was not a warning of eternal torment for they would have found nothing about that in the scriptures. If it were true, he should have sent them to certain works of theology which treat the subject. The Jews [PE57] were to be persecuted until the end of the Times of the Gentiles. The Gentiles are now comforted as they exercise faith in Christ. Instead of accepting Jesus' messages the Jews rejected Him and them; and it does not follow that they would be equally blessed in the new age because they were in the old. If the Israelites would not believe Moses and the Prophets, neither would they believe one from those dead to the world and to sin. This parable illustrates Israel's woes.

The destruction of the wicked will be complete. Eternal torment would be vindictive on God's part, but He has no such punishment for any of His creatures. The punishment is everlasting death, with no resurrection. All the righteous will live forever. All places in the Universe will be happy places. (Psa. 37:10.) But would it not be dangerous to preach this, would it not make men worse, if this fear were removed? We have yet to hear of a single case of a person's being made worse by knowing that God was more loving than he had believed. Indeed the most of our criminals are from that class which most apparently believes that doctrine.