[OV165]
The Jewish nation consisted of twelve tribes. Some of all were at Jerusalem in Palestine, the center of their national life. But two tribes, mainly, were represented there--Judah and Benjamin. These two, therefore, may be specially considered as the rich man in the parable. His five brethren mentioned would correspond to the remaining ten tribes residing in the countries round about. The parable shows that no special favor would be shown to those brethren--"They have Moses and the Prophets; let them hear them." These words clearly identify the rich man and his brethren as the twelve tribes of Israel to whom God's favors and blessings came through Moses and the Prophets.
Cannot all see clearly that this parable, which is the mainstay of all the eternal torment doctrines and teachings, has been misunderstood? Its teachings are beautiful and in entire accord with the facts of history and revelation.
This, also, is a parable, and not a literal statement. Besides, it applies not to people now living, but to people who will be living in the world during the thousand years of Christ's reign following His second advent. The context tells us this. We read, When the Son of Man shall come in His glory and all His holy angels with Him, then shall He sit upon the Throne of His glory, and before Him will be gathered all nations.--Matthew 25:31-46.
The Son of Man has not yet come in His glory. He is waiting for the development of the Church, His saintly Bride class, which is to sit with Him in His Throne and share His glory, and, with Him, participate in the judging of the world--"Know ye not that the saints shall judge the world?"-- (1 Cor. 6:2.) This parable, then, belongs not to the Church, nor to this Gospel Age, but to the world's Judgment Day or trial time in the coming Age, the thousand years of Messiah's reign. Mankind are represented as sheep and goats. Surely these are symbolical. Surely mankind will not turn into sheep and goats! We must interpret it symbolically. Like a shepherd the great Messiah will, during the thousand years, instruct, uplift and enlighten humanity. Such as receive the instructions and come into full accord with Him are styled sheep, symbolically, of course. And they are placed at His right hand, symbolically, of course, signifying a place of favor. The others, the wayward, not developing the graces of character under these instructions, will be goats, in a symbolical sense, of course, and will be gathered to Messiah's left hand of disfavor. At the conclusion of that glorious thousand years of Divine favor, uplifting, restitution (Acts 3:19-21), the consummation of the matter will have been reached. The sheep class, perfect, glorious, will be ushered into life everlasting. The goat class, wilful rejectors of Divine favor on the Divine terms, will receive death everlasting! their everlasting punishment. But what kind of punishment will it be? St. Paul answers, "They shall be
The question may arise, Why did our Lord use the words, "Depart, ye cursed, into everlasting fire prepared for the devil and his angels?" Fire is here used as a symbol of destruction, and the word everlasting has its full import, as St. Paul expressed it, "everlasting destruction." Is not fire as good a symbol of destruction as a sheep is a symbol of a child of God, or a goat a symbol of a follower of Satan? We can think of no better symbol of destruction than fire--nothing more destructive.
But the Monitor raises the suggestion that matter is indestructible. Very true. The burning of a human body in a literal flame or the burning of the same body by the chemical action of the atmosphere, more slowly, would reduce it to dust and gases. Nothing would be lost. But man is more than a body. The intelligent will, thought, etc., which constitutes a human soul or human being, is something more than a body, and is not subject to the same conditions. The soul can be destroyed. Intelligence can be blotted out. The human will perishes when the spark of animal life quits the body. And it is the soul that the Bible declares is responsible for sin, and not the body. It was Adam, a soul, that was condemned to death. It was Adam and the souls of all his children that were redeemed by Jesus' sacrifice. As it is written, He redeemeth thy soul (life, being) from destruction.--Psalm 103:4. The death or destruction of Adam's soul would have meant annihilation had not the Almighty provided the redemption. The redemption price was the death of Jesus' soul; as we read, "He poured out His soul unto death; He made His soul an offering for sin." Likewise it was Jesus' soul that was raised from the dead; as we read, "Thou wilt not leave my soul in sheol, hades, the grave," etc. (Acts 2:27.) This is St. Peter's explanation not ours.
Because Adam, a soul, and all his children's souls have thus been redeemed (not from torment, but from sheol, hades, the tomb, the state of death), therefore we have the Master's own words, "All that are in their graves shall hear the voice of the Son of man and come forth." The First Resurrection will consist only of the holy, the saintly, whose trial is in the present time, and who will be awakened to their reward to sit with Messiah in His Throne. During the thousand years all the remainder of the dead will be awakened and given the opportunity of resurrection or raising up out of sin and death. That will be a resurrection, of judgment, or trial, or testing for them, because only those who will conform to the tests of that time will ever be fully raised up. The others, the goat class, will be destroyed in the Second Death.
The Monitor's third proof-text of eternal torment is found in St. Mark 9:42-48. The Lord advised all rather to cut off their right hand or pluck out their eye than to go into gehenna fire "where the worm dieth not and the fire is not quenched."
We read recently of a poor man in Sweden who took the Monitor's literal view of this step and chopped off his right hand. He thought the statement literal and acted according to his faith. We doubt if the Monitor's editor has done the same, or would be likely to take this passage literally if the conditions were ever so favorable. It is worthy of note that the word here rendered hell fire, is not the same Greek
"Gehenna originally stood for 'the valley of the sons of Hinnom.' It was notorious as the scene in earlier days of the horrible worship of Moloch. Later, when the Jews fell away from the true worship of God, they even went so far as to burn their own children to the demons of that region. It was a place that had been defiled by Josiah, cursed by Jeremias, and for these associations held in abomination by the Jews, who according to the course of time, used it to signify also the fiery and cursed abode of the damned. This is the very usage of the term that Christ Himself adopted."
The Monitor styles it the abode of the damned. But what is the real meaning of the word damned? All will agree that it signifies condemned. So we say that gehenna will be the abode of all condemned to the Second Death as the filth and offscouring of the earth, unfit for the Divine favor and blessing of life everlasting. The Valley of Hinnom (gehenna), in our Lord's day, was deep and was used as a garbage place for the destruction of valueless things. No living things were ever cast into it--only dead carcasses, rats, mice, dogs, etc. Many of these, falling along the sides of the Valley would gradually decompose. Maggots would breed in them and speedily reduce them to dust. These are the worms mentioned by Jesus, that died not. These worms are not alive now; they were like any other worms. Jesus meant that, as the worms surely accomplished the destruction of the refuse cast therein, so, complete destruction awaits the wilfully wicked. No one thought of killing those worms or stopping their ravages. They were doing good work.
When Jesus spoke of the fire that was not quenched, he referred to the burning of brimstone in the bottom of this gehenna. Its use was intended to destroy bacteria, the germs of disease, and help to preserve the health of the city. Those who heard Jesus had no thought that he meant for them to cut off their hands or their feet, or pluck out their eyes. Neither did they understand Him to mean that the wicked would be literally cast into that or any similar gehenna. They interpreted the parable properly to mean that any sin we may cherish, be it as precious to us as a right hand, a right foot, or a right eye, would be too costly to continue if it were to lose for us the everlasting life and harmony with God symbolized by the New Jerusalem--if it would win for us the Second Death, symbolized by gehenna and its worms and fire.
The Monitor evidently knew about the prophecy which corresponds exactly to Jesus' words, but it does not cite it. We will do so. It is found in Isaiah 66:24. The context shows us that the prophecy relates to the future--to the period of Messiah's Kingdom, when all will be expected to worship God and to obey, under the assistance of the great Mediator between God and men. Then, however, transgressors will perish, and the righteous will look upon the carcasses of them that transgressed against God, whose worms shall not die, whose fire shall not be quenched. It will be the carcasses that will be in evidence, and the worms and the fire, and the people will see these. It will not be a roasting of souls by devils with pitchforks to all eternity! A little Scripture helps to dissolve much of the confusion of the "dark ages."
The Monitor agrees that the literal meaning of the word sheol, the only
"Pastor Russell thinks to do away with the Biblical reason for a hereafter of punishment by calling attention to the fact that the word sheol, the Hebrew term for hell, literally means, the grave. It is to be remarked first that the origin of this word is doubtful. The general agreement among Hebrew scholars is that it comes from another Hebrew word meaning to be sunk in or to be hollow; accordingly signifying a cave or place under the earth, and hence a grave. But as in all other tongues, so in Hebrew, words have several significations related or connected with their original meaning."
Very good. No scholar would think of questioning that the primary meaning of sheol is the grave, and that the word sheol in the Common Version of the Old Testament is translated grave and pit more times than it is translated hell, but means grave or pit every time. The Monitor thinks, however, that it sees an objection, and that sheol does not always signify the grave. It cites us to Jacob's lament over the supposed death of Joseph. Jacob said, I will go down into sheol unto my son mourning. The Monitor argues that, since he thought his son had been devoured by wild beasts, he could not refer to going to the grave. The Monitor must take a broader view of the word grave and consider it the tomb, the death state. Otherwise he would be forced to the supposition that Jacob expected the same wild beast to devour him, so that he could go to his son.
In order to understand the Bible we must approach it with free minds, unbiased, and seek to be taught by it instead of seeking to make it support our own theory or irrational theories of the past. In old English literature the word hell was freely used as signifying grave or pit or any covered state or condition. Thus a man might speak of the helling of his house and mean the thatching of it with straw, the one-storied buildings of olden times being buried under the thatch. Farmers in olden times wrote, telling how many bushels of potatoes they helled in the fall--buried in pits to keep them from sprouting that they might be dug up for use in the spring. Whoever will take the trouble to look up every one of the sixty-six occurrences of the word sheol in the Old Testament may satisfy himself without a doubt respecting the meaning of the word, that it refers to the death state, the tomb. Hades in the New Testament corresponds to this, and is used to translate sheol in Acts 2:27, "Thou wilt not leave my soul in hell," and in 1 Cor. 15:55, "O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?" As before stated, the only word translated hell which has fire connected with it in any sense is gehenna, which is a metaphor, as we have already explained.
Whatever sheol is, it is to be destroyed. It is not to last forever, for the Lord so declares, "O sheol, I will be thy destruction." (Hosea 13:14.) The grave, the tomb, the state of death is to be destroyed. The death penalty which came upon the race through our Father Adam's disobedience is to be cancelled, obliterated, as a result of Jesus' sacrificial death, the Just for the unjust. The thousand years of Messiah's reign will be devoted to this very work of destroying Adamic death--the death which has come upon the human family because of Father Adam's disobedience. From the Bible standpoint, the whole human family are dead, in the sense that they have no right to life because imperfect.
Thus Jesus speaks of them, saying, "Let the dead bury their dead; go thou and preach the Gospel." During Messiah's reign, the knowledge of the Lord will fill the whole earth. Every creature will be enlightened. All the blind eyes shall be opened. All the deaf ears shall be unstopped. All that have gone down into sheol (the tomb) will come up; thus sheol will be destroyed, to be no more.
St. Paul confirms this, declaring that ultimately a great shout will go up, "O hades, where is thy victory?" Hades now is having a great victory;
The Monitor closes with an appeal to believe in eternal torment based on its final text on the subject, St. Luke 12:4,5:
"I say unto you, my friends: Fear not them that can kill the body, and after that have nothing more that they can do. But I will show you whom you shall fear; fear Him who, after He hath killed, hath power to cast into hell. Yea, I say to you, fear Him."
Strange to say, the Monitor does not perceive that this, its last thunderbolt, shatters its own argument! The argument is that the Lord's disciples should not fear men in their loyalty to principle, because men could merely kill the body, could merely take away the present life and could do no more. Men could have no power to vitiate or render inoperative that privilege of everlasting life which God has provided for all mankind through Jesus. On the contrary, all should know that God is able to destroy the soul, the future life, in gehenna. He, and He alone, is to be feared. The present life is of minor consequence, anyway. It can last but a few years at most. The life we are most interested in is the eternal one, which Jesus has secured for all who will accept it on His terms, but which will be missed by all those who fear and obey men rather than God. Compare Matthew 10:28, remembering the Monitor's definition of gehenna, to which we agree, with supplemental explanation respecting the future, antitypical gehenna.
The Monitor closes with the following old-fashioned appeal, which many erroneously suppose to be Scriptural-- "To doubt is to be damned." It says:
"What a mad act it is to close one's eyes on the edge of an abyss, only to fall into it the more surely! Better hard truth than false security."
The difficulty with the Monitor and with many others of us in the past has been that we kept our mental eyes closed and imagined hobgoblins and dreamed nightmares respecting fireproof devils with horns and forked tails and cloven feet, etc., which are not only unknown to the Scriptures, but thoroughly contrary thereto. If the Monitor is still blind, notwithstanding the eye-salve of exposition which we have endeavored to apply as gently as possible, we shall consider its case hopeless and leave it with the masses of the world for that blessed future time declared through the Prophet when all the blind eyes shall be opened. Then they will see the hitherto undiscovered length and breadth and heighth and depth of the love of God. Then they will see that Satan and his fallen angels, instead of being afar off stoking fires, have been right here with humanity, posing as angels of light and doctoring our theology to make it picture the Almighty God as the most horrible and monstrous Being of the Universe, and His Plan of dealing with humanity the most diabolical and unjust possible for the human mind to conceive.
These "doctrines of devils," as St. Paul calls them, have had a good, long trial, and the result is, that those who believe these things most thoroughly are very generally the worst people in the world. Rarely do we hear of a murderer being executed who has not professed faith in these monstrous theories of the past, still advocated by the Monitor.
If preaching bad tidings of misery to nearly all the people has brought so little good fruitage in so long a time, would it not be well for the Monitor
It was the full belief in these "doctrines of devils" which led our forefathers, as Catholics and Protestants, to burn each other at the stake. And it is partly because these doctrines are less believed to-day than then that we have a better, safer, saner religion, more in accord with the teachings of Jesus and the Apostles. It is the Gospel of God's love and mercy that is proving now a blessing to the saintly few who have ears to hear and hearts to fully respond. And it will be the Gospel of Divine mercy toward mankind in general, throughout Messiah's Kingdom, which will bless, uplift and captivate the hearts of mankind in general during the Millennium. Whether the majority of these thousands of millions will become sheep at the right hand of Messiah and gain eternal life, or whether the majority will be of the "goat" class, who will fail to get that eternal life, and instead get everlasting destruction, is not for us to determine. We can, however, declare with the eye of faith, "True and righteous are Thy ways, Lord God Almighty! Who shall not come to worship before Thee when Thy righteous dealings are made manifest?" (Rev. 15:3,4.) The righteous dealings of God will bring a sure penalty to every one in proportion to his degree of knowledge and wilfulness, but it will bring a just, and not an unjust penalty, and it will be remedial-- with a view to the recovery of the penitent and his everlasting blessing. Otherwise it will terminate in his everlasting destruction.--2 Thess. 1:8,9.
I KNOW some day my Lord will come,
And stand within my humble home,--
His glorious presence in the room
Will make it like a rose in bloom.
His voice, like music on mine ear,
Will banish every thought of fear,
He'll fold me closely to His breast
And there in peace I'll sweetly rest.
And, oh, my Lord, on that sweet day
I know the words that Thou wilt say,
"It is enough, my child, come home,
Thy work is done, beloved, come."
Then I'll arise and go with Thee
Across the shining, crystal sea,
Until we reach that blissful shore
Where we shall dwell for evermore.