Future Punishment

There is no doctrine of the faith of our fathers which is more widely questioned at the present day than that concerning the future destiny of those who reject Jesus Christ in the life that now is. Even in circles that have little sympathy with the destructive criticism, or with the denial of the Virgin birth of our Lord and His bodily resurrection from the dead and other phases of thought which are characteristic of “the new theology,” there is widespread denial, or at least doubt, of the endless, conscious suffering of the persistently impenitent. Where there is no denial or doubt regarding this doctrine, there is at least silence concerning it. Very grave evils have arisen from the general questioning regarding the reality and awfulness of a future hell. A firm belief that there is a hell and that men would receive, in a future life, punishment for the sins that went unpunished in the life that now is, exerted a mighty restraining influence over the lives of men. With the weakening of that belief there has been an appalling increase in suicide, social impurity, unfaithfulness of husbands to wives and wives to husbands, divorce, and all kinds of lewdness, lawlessness and anarchy. There has also been an appalling decrease in the churches of separation from the world and of concern and prayer for the salvation of the lost, at home and abroad. A strong belief in a stern doctrine, regarding the future punishment of the impenitent, drives Christians to prayer and to effort for the salvation of the lost as almost nothing else docs.

The only really important question regarding future punishment is, What does the Bible teach? Human speculations on such a subject as this have no value whatever. All we know about it is what God has been pleased to reveal. Of ourselves we know nothing of the life beyond the grave. God knows all about it. God has been pleased to reveal to us much that He knows, and on a subject like this, one ounce of God’s revelation is worth ten tons of man’s speculation. Most of the false theories regarding future punishment are built upon the proposition that God is love. To this fact they constantly appeal to give force to their arguments. But how do we know that God is love? Only from the Bible. Human reason can not prove that God is love if we discard the Bible. The physical universe and human history teach that there is a God who is a wise and beneficent being, but they do not teach that God is love. We learn this entirely from that revelation of Himself which God has made in the Bible. Discredit the Bible and wre have no satisfactory proof that God is love. Now the teaching of the Bible is true, or else it is not true. Now if the teaching of the Bible is true, then we must accept all that it teaches, and we must accept what it teaches about future punishment. It is utterly illogical to take out of the Bible the things that we like and reject the things we do not like. To take a statement out of the Bible and to draw from it inferences that contradict other plain teachings of the Bible is to be utterly illogical. On the other hand, if the Bible is not true, we have no proof that God is love, and all the arguments built upon that fundamental proposition fall to the ground, and consequently all the loo.se theories of future punishment, which start out with the love of God as their premise, collapse. We may take whichever horn of the dilemma that we please — that the teaching of the Bible is true, or that the teaching of the Bible is not true — and in either case, the doctrine of the ultimate salvation of all men can be shown to be untrue.

Many seek to discredit the Bible in order to get relief from this stern doctrine regarding future retribution, but no relief can be obtained by discrediting the Bible. There are two absolutely certain facts of experience and observation. The first fact is that whoever sins must suffer, and suffer more or less for every sin which he commits. We all know that to be true. The second certain fact of experience and observation is that the longer one sins, the more deeply he sinks down into sin and into the moral bondage and blindness and misery and shame and agony and despair which are the consequence of sin. Now put these two facts together, that whoever sins must suffer, and the longer he sins the deeper he sinks down into the moral bondage, blindness, misery, shame, agony and despair which are the consequence of sin, and when the possible day of repentance has passed (and it must be passed some time), what have we left but an everlasting hell. The only change that the Bible introduces into the problem is that it points out the way of escape and salvation from sin and its consequences, and those who seek to do away with the doctrine of an awful and eternal hell by discrediting the Bible are guilty of the incredible folly of trying to .<?hut up hell by closing the only door of escape. Loose doctrines, regarding future punishment, do not come from consulting reason but consulting our prejudices and our unsn.nctified wishes.

Future Ptlltithinfhl

BUT WHAT DOES THE CHILE TEACH REGARDING FUTURE PUNISH MENT?

I. That there is a Hell. In Matt. 5:29, R. V., Jesus says, “And if thy richt eye causeth thee to stumble, pluck it out, and cast it from thee: for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not thy whole body be cast into hell.” These words certainly teach that there is a hell. If there is no hell, these words of Christ’s are without meaning, and the One who uttered them is a fool, so whoever denies that there is a hell makes Jesus out to have been a fool. Again our Lord Jesus says, in Matt. 25 141, “Then shall he say also unto them on the left hand, Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the Devil and his angels.” And in the forty-sixth verse of the same chapter, “And thes£ shall go away into everlasting punishment: but the righteous into life eternal.” These words also certainly teach that there is a hell. The Apostle Paul says, in 2 Thess. I 7-9, R. V., “And to you that are afflicted rest with us, at the revelation of the Lord Jesus from heaven with the angels of His power in filling fire, rendering vengeance to them that know not God, rnd to them that obey not the Gospel of our Lord Jesus: v h ) shall suffer punishment, even eternal destruction from tl e face of the Lord and from the glory of His might.” Wh?n we come to see later what destruction means in the Bible we will see that these verses also plainly teach that there is a hell. The Apostle Peter says, in 2 Pet. 2:4, Q, “For if God spared not the angels that sinned, but ca:t them down to hell, and delivered them into chains of darkness, to be reserved unto judgment... The Lord knoweth how to deliver the godly out of temptations, and to reserve the unjust unto the day of judgment to be punished.” These words certainly teach that there is a hell. The Apostle John says, in Rev. 20:15, “And whosoever was not found written in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire.” These words teach that there is a hell. Our Lord Jesus says once more, in Rev. 21 :8, after He Himself has died and gone down into the abode of the dead and come up therefrom and risen and ascended to the right hand of the Father — He certainly knows now what He is talking about — “But the fearful, and unbelieving, and the abominable, and murderers, and whoremongers, and sorcerers, and idolaters, and all liars, shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone: which is the second death.” These words certainly teach that there is a heH. All these passages, taken in their context, point unmistakably to a hell, and to a hell that is not merely a condition, but a place, and a place of awful and prolonged conscious suffering.

II. In the second place, the Bible teaches that HELL is A PLACE OF EXTREME BODILY SUFFERING. That is plain from many passages in the New Testament. But a few illustrations will serve our present purpose. The commonest words used in the Bible to express the doom of the impenitent are “death” and “destruction.” They constantly recur. Now what do “death” and “destruction” mean? God always takes pains to define His terms and He has defined these terms. We will find God’s definition of destruction by a comparison of Rev. 17:8 with Rev. 19:20 and Rev. 20:10. In Rev. 17:8 we are told that the beast shall “go into perdition.” The word here translated “perdition” is the same word which is elsewhere translated “destruction,” and ought to be so translated here, or else it ought to be translated differently in the other passages. Now if we can find where the beast goes, we will have God’s own definition of “perdition” or “instruction.” In Rev. 19:20 we are told that the beast “was cast alive into the lake of fire burning with brimstone” (R. V.)- Now if we turn to Rev. 20:10 we are told that a thousand years after the beast was cast into the “lake of fire burning with brimstone” that the Devil is cast into the same “lake of fire burning with brimstone” where the beast and false prophet still “are” (that is, they are there still after a thousand years) and “shall be tormented day and night forever and ever.” By God’s own definition “perdition” or “destruction” is a portion in a place defined as a “lake of fire burning with brimstone,” whose inhabitants are tormented consciously forever and ever.

Ye will find God’s definition of “death” in Rev. 21 :8, “But the fearful, and unbelieving, and the abominable, and murderers, and whoremongers, and sorcerers, and idolaters, and all liars, shall have their part in the lake, which burneth with fire and brimstone: which is the second death.” God’s definition of death, therefore, is a portion in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone, just the same as His definition of “perdition.” It may be said that these statements are highly figurative. Very well, let it go at that, but we must remember that God’s figures always stand for facts, and God is no liar and God’s figures never overstate the facts, and if these words be figures, they mean at least this much, bodily suffering, and that of the intensest kind. We should remember, furthermore, that in the next life we do not exist as disembodied spirits. All this theory, so common today of the immortality of the soul independent of the body, where we float about as disembodied spirits, is ethnic philosophy, and not New Testament teaching. According to the Bible, in the world to come the redeemed spirit is clothed upon with a body, not this same body, it is true, a radically different body, but

The Higher Criticism and The Xeii’ Tfaology

still a body, perfect counterpart cf the redeemed spirit that inhabits it and partaker with it in all its blessedness. On the other hand, according to the Bible, there is a resurrection of the unjust as well as of the just (John 5 128, 29), and the lost spirit is clothed upon with a body, not the same body with which it is clothed in the present life, but a body, perfect counterpart of the lost spirit that inhabits it and partaker with it in all its misery.

II. The Bible teaches that HELL IS A PLACE OF MEMORY AND REMORSE. Our Lord Jesus has given us a picture in Luke 16:19-31 (there is no indication in the narrative that it is merely a parable) of the condition of a lo-l man after death. It is true that this picture has to do with the intermediate state, that is, the condition of the lost before the final judgment of the great White Throne, but it clearly indicates what will be the condition after that also. In the picture which Christ has given us of the rich man in Hades, Abraham said to the rich man “Remember.” The rich man had not taken much that he had on earth with him into Hades, but he had taken one thing; he had taken his memory. And men and women today who go on in sin and therefore are doomed to spend eternity in hell, will not take much with them that they have in their present life, but they will take one thing, they will take their memories. Men will remember the women whose lives they have blasted and ruined, and women will remember the lives they have squandered in fashion and frivolity and foolishness that they ought to have lived for God. Everyone will remember the Christ they have rejected and the opportunities for salvation which they have despised. There is no torment known to man like the torment of an accusing memory. I have seen, in my office in Chicago, strong men weeping: like children. What was the matter? Memory! I have seen one of the brainiest, nerviest, strongest men I ever knew throw himself upon the floor of my office and roil and sob and groan and wail. What was the matter? Memory! I have had men and women hurry up to me at the close of a service with pale cheeks, with drawn lips, with haunted eyes and beg a private conversation. What was the matter? Memory! And the memory and the conscience that are not set at peace in the life that now is by the atoning blood of Christ and the pardoning grace of God, never will be. Hell is a place where men remember and suffer.

III. The Bible teaches that HELL IS A PLACE OF INSATIABLE AND TORMENTING DESIRE. Jesus tells us that the rich man in Hades, cried, “Send Lazarus that he may dip the tip of his finger in water that he may cool my tongue, for I am in anguish in this flame.” (R. V.) These are dreadful words, appalling words, but they are the words of Jesus. Hell is evidently a place where desire and passion exist in their highest potency and where there is nothing to gratify them. The men and the women who, in this present life, are living in sin, or living in worldliness, are developing into ruling power passions and desires for which there is no gratification in that world toward which they are hastening on, and where they must spend eternity. Happy is that man or woman who, by setting their affection on things above in the life which now is, cultivates into ruling power desires and aspirations for which there is abundant satisfaction in the eternal world to which we are all going. Wretched, indeed, is that man or woman, who, by living for sin or living for the world, cultivates into ruling power passions and desires for which there is no gratification in that eternal world toward which they are hastening on. What could more accurately represent their condition than the picture of a man in a scorching flame with parched tongue longing for one drop of water to cool his tongue, but no water to be had.

V. The Bible teaches that Hell is a place of shame and contempt. We read in Daniel 12:2, “And many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt.” How heart breaking is the agony of shame. How many it drives to despair, insanity and suicide. Hell is a place of universal shame where every inhabitant is dishonored, disgraced and exposed to everlasting contempt and abhorrence.

VI. The Bible teaches that Hell is a place of vile companionships. Jesus Christ Himself has given us a picture of the society of hell in Rev. 21 :8, “But the fearful, and unbelieving, and the abominable and murderers, and whoremongers, and sorcerers, and idolaters, and all liars, shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone.” That is the society of hell. It may be said that some men and women of brilliant gifts and attractive character reject Christ, and, therefore, according to the teaching of the Bible, must spend eternity in hell. This is true, but how long will it take the most gifted man or woman to sink in such a world as that beneath the level of the vilest moral leper that now walks our streets. I can go to the lowest dives in Chicago and pick you out men who were once physicians, lawyers, congressmen, college professors, leading business men, and even ministers of the Gospel, but who are now living with thugs, drunkards, whoremongers and everything that is vile and bad. How did they get there? They began to sink. And in such society as that of hell, the best man or woman that ever enters there will soon sink beneath the level of the vilest that we know here upon earth.

VII. The Bible teaches that HELL IS A WORLD WITHOUT HOPE. There are those that contend that there is hope even in hell, and that men and women who die impenitent will have another chance to repent and be saved. For many years men have been seeking to prove this from the Bible. I do not wonder that men try to prove it. I would to God that they could prove it. If any one could give me one good proof (i. e. Bible proof, for no other proof on this subject is of any value) that there is hope, even in hell, and that those that die impenitent will have another chance, and that all will ultimately repent and accept Christ, it would be the happiest day of my life. If any one could show me one single passage of Scripture that, properly interpreted in its context taught that, it would bring unspeakable gladness to my heart, but they can not do it. I have carefully examined every passage on this subject that has ever been produced to prove that proposition. I once thought that I had discovered one that really taught this, and I taught it, but the time came when I found that the passage would not bear the burden that I put upon it and, with great reluctance, I gave up my doctrine of eternal hope and that all men would ultimately be saved. I have read and pondered the best literature on this subject in English and in German with the hope that I might find proof that was really satisfying, that even after death men might repent and be saved, but at last I had to give up the hope. It is said by those who would have us believe that there is hope even in hell, that the word Aionios, translated “everlasting,” does not necessarily mean never-ending. It is true that it does not necessarily mean never-ending. This is its natural meaning and its usual meaning, but there are places where it is used without the full significance of never-ending. What it does mean, therefore, in any given instance, must be determined by the context. In Matt. 25 46, we read, “These shall go away into everlasting punishment: but the righteous into life eternal.” The word which is translated “everlasting” in the first part of the verse is the same as the word translated “eternal” in the latter part of the passage, and what it means in the last half of the verse, it must also mean in the first part of the verse. But no one doubts that in the last part of the verse it means absolutely endless; therefore, it must mean that in the first part of the verse. We must admit that our Lord was at least an honest man and He was too honest to use a word with one meaning in one half of a verse and with another meaning in the other half of the verse. Our Lord Jesus then teaches the absolute endlessness of the future punishment of sin.

But this is not the worst of it. There is another expression, Eis tous aionas ton aionon (or as it is sometimes found, Eis aionas aionon). This expression is used twelve times in one book, the last book in the Bible. Eight times it is used of the existence of God and the duration of His reign; once of the duration of the blessedness of the righteous; and in every remaining instance of the punishment of the beast, the false prophet and the impenitent. It cannot be doubted, then, that it means absolute endlessness. It is the strongest known expression for absolute endlessness. It represents not merely years tumbling upon years, or centuries tumbling upon centuries, but ages tumbling upon ages in endless procession. I have hunted my Bible through again and again and again for one ray of hope for men that died impenitent — just one ray of hope that can be called such when the passage is properly interpreted by the right laws of exegesis and I have failed after years of search to find one. The Bible does not hold out one ray of hope for men and women who died without Christ. Any one who dares to do so dares to do what God has not done, and takes a fearful responsibility upon himself. VIII. The Bible teaches that THE ETERNAL FU TURE DESTINY OF MEN IS SETTLED IN THE LIFE THAT NOW IS. Jesus says in John 8:21, “Ye shall die in your sins: Whither I go, ye cannot come.” Thus settling it that a man who dies in sin, dies unsaved, cannot go where He does. In Heb. 9:27, we read, “It is appointed unto men once to die, and after this [that is, after death, without an opportunity of further repentance] the judgment.” We read in 2 Cor. 5 :io, that “We must all appear before the judgment-seat of Christ, that every one may receive the things done in his body, according to that which he has done whether it be good or bad.” That is to say, ‘’the things done in the body,” the things done this side of the grave; the things done before we shuffle off this mortal coil, are the basis of eternal judgment. The same truth is clea.’ly implied in the words of our Lord in John 9 14, “I must work the works of Him that sent Me while it is day; the night cometh when no man can work.” The clear implication of these words, taken in their context, is that the time when a man must work is this side the grave. We read in Rev. 20:12, “And I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God; and the books were opened: and another book was opened, which is the book of life: and the dead were judged out of those things which were written in the books, according to their works.” The clear teaching of this passage is that the eternal judgment of the Great White Throne is decided by what one has been and done in the life that now is. The Bible does not contain one hint of another chance. The only passage that might seem to imply the possibility of another chance is I Pet. 3:18, 19, “For Christ also hath once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh, but quickened by the Spirit: by which also He went and preached unto the spirits in prison.” This has been taken to mean that Christ, after His crucifixion and His death, went in His spirit into that part of Hades where lost spirits dwell and there preached the Gospel to them, and it is thought by some to imply that there was a chance of their repentance. I formerly so interpreted the passage, but, on further study, I found out that it did not so teach. In the first place, “the spirits in prison” are, presumably, the fallen angels who sinned in the days of Noah (See Gen. 6:1, 2 cf. Jude 6, 7). The word “spirits” is not used of men anywhere in the Bible in this way. However, this does not greatly matter, for, in the second place, there are two words translated

“preach” in the New Testament. One means to herald, as, for example, to herald the kingdom, and the other means to preach the Gospel. The word used in this passage is not the word that means to preach the Gospel, but the word which means to herald, and the utmost that the passage can teach is that Jesus went to the abode of the lost dead and heralded there the triumph of the kingdom. It was not a Gospel proclamation, neither is there the slightest indication that any one, either angel or man, repented and was saved.

Some one may ask, may not those who have never heard of Christ in this world have another opportunity. To this we must answer, that there is not a line of Scripture upon which to build such a hope. All men have sufficient light to condemn them if they do not obey it. We read in Rom. 2:u. 16, “For as many as have sinned without law shall also perish without law: and as many as have sinned in the law shall be judged by the law. ... in the day when God shall judge the secrets of men by Jesus Christ, according to my Gospel.” It is sometimes strangely imagined that this passage was given to show how men are saved by the light of nature. Any one who will study the context will discover that it was given to show not how man was saved by the light of nature, but how the Gentile is under condemnation by the law written in his heart, just as the Jew is under condemnation by the law of Moses. The conclusion of the whole matter is found in Rom. 3 119, 20, 21, 22, 23, “Now we know that what things soever the law saith, it saith to them who are under the law: that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world become guilty before God. Therefore, by the deeds of the law there shall no flesh be justified in His sight: for by the law is the knowledge of sin. But now the righteousness of God without the law is manifested, being witnessed by the law and the prophets; even the righteousness of God which is by faith of Jesus Christ unto all and upon all them that believe; for there is no difference: for all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God.”

The conclusion of the whole matter is that the future state of those who reject the redemption offered to them in Jesus Christ is plainly declared to be a state of conscious, unutterable, endless torment and anguish. This conception is an awful and appalling one. It is, however, the Scriptural conception and also the reasonable one, when we come to see the appalling nature of sin and especially the appalling nature of the sin of trampling under foot God’s mercy toward sinners and rejecting God’s glorious Son Whom His love has provided as a Saviour. Shallow views of sin and of God’s holiness and of the infinite glory of Jesus Christ and of His claims upon us lie at the bottom of weak theories of the doom of the impenitent. When we see sin in all its hideousness and enormity, the holiness of God in all its perfection, and the majesty and glory of Jesus Christ in all its infinity, nothing but a doctrine that those who persist in the choice of sin, who love darkness rather than light and who persist in the rejection of the Son of God, shall endure everlasting anguish, will satisfy the demands of our own moral intuitions. Nothing but the fact that we dread suffering more than we loathe sin and more than we love the glory of Jesus Christ makes us repudiate the thought that beings who eternally choose sin shall eternally suffer, or that men who despise God’s mercy and spurn His Son shall be given over to endless anguish.

But some one will ask, What about our impenitent friends and loved ones? To these we would answer, it is better to recognize facts, no matter how unwelcome they may be and to try to save those friends from the doom to which they are certainly hurrying on, than to quarrel with facts and seek to remove them by shutting our eyes to them. Furthermore, if we love Christ supremely, as we should love Him, and realized His infinite glory and His supreme claims upon man, as we should realize them, then will we say, if even the dearest friend we have on earth persists in trampling this infinitely glorious Christ under foot, he ought to be banished from the presence of God and to suffer forever and ever. If some one you greatly love should commit some hideous wrong against one whom you loved still more and persist eternally in that wrong, would you not consent to his eternal separation from the one whom he seeks to wrong and to his eternal suffering? If, after men have sinned against God and God still offers them mercy and makes the tremendous sacrifice of

His Son to save them, if they still despise that mercy and trample God’s Son under foot, if then they are consigned to everlasting torment, all right-minded people, all persons who are in sympathy with God and His righteous government, must exclaim, “Amen! Hallelujah! True and righteous are Thy judgments, O Lord!”

At all events, the doctrine of the conscious, endless suffering of persistently impenitent man is clearly revealed in the Word of God, and whether we can defend it on philosophical grounds or not, it is our business to believe it and to proclaim it and to leave it to the clear light of eternity to explain what we cannot now understand, realizing that an infinitely wise God may have many infinitely wise reasons for doing things for which we, in our ignorance, can see no sufficient reason at all. It is the most unpardonable conceit for beings, so limited in knowledge, and so foolish, as the wisest of men are, to attempt to dogmatize how a God of infinite wisdom must act. All we know about how God will act is what God has been pleased to reveal to us.

Two things are certain. First, the more closely men walk with God and the more devoted they become to His service, the more likely are they to believe this doctrine. There are many who tell us that they love their fellowmen too much to believe this doctrine, but the men who show their love in more practical ways than sentimental protestations about it, the men who show their love for their fellowmen as Jesus Christ showed His love, by laying down their lives for them, they believe the doctrine. And what is more to the point, Jesus Christ Himself believed it and taught it, and surely no one of us would think of comparing our love to our fellow-men with His love to man. As professed Christians become worldly and easy-going they grow loose in their doctrine

n concerning the doom of the impenitent. The fact that loose doctrines regarding future punishment are spreading so rapidly and so widely in the church in our day is nothing in their favor. It is rather against them, for who can deny that worldliness is also spreading in the church. (See I Tim. 4:1; 2 Tim. 3:1; 4:2, 3.) Increasing laxity of life and increasing laxity of doctrine go arm in arm. The church that dances and frequents theatres and plays cards and lives in all manner of self-indulgence during the week, enjoys a doctrine on the Lord’s Day that makes the punishment of the wicked not so awful after all.

The second thing that is certain is that those who accept a loose doctrine regarding the ultimate penalty of sin (whether it be restorationism, or universalism or annihilation, or millennial dawnism, or whatever it may be) lose their power for God. They often are very clever at argument and zealous in proselyting, but they are always poor at soul-saving. They are seldom found beseeching men to be reconciled to God. They are far more likely to be found trying to upset the faith of those already won by the efforts of others than trying to win men who have no faith at all. If you really believe the doctrine of the endless, conscious suffering of the persistently impenitent, and the doctrine really gets hold of you, you will work as you never worked before for the salvation of the lost. If you, in any wise abate the doctrine, it will abate your zeal. Time and time again, the writer of these pages has come up to this appalling doctrine and tried to find some way to escape from it, but when he has failed to find such a way of escape (as he always has in the final outcome when he was honest with the Bible and with himself) he has returned to his work with an increased burden for souls and an intensified determination to spend and be spent for their salvation.