ENDLESS TORMENT REFUTED, AND “EVERLASTING PUNISHMENT” EXPLAINED.

            The preceding ‘argument’ is quite a flourish of trumpets; a very windy blast, full of uncertain sound, having no scriptural significancy. If our valiant friend would talk less about logic and be more logical, he would pass for a better logician than he appears to be from his argument; but pluming himself so much upon his fancied proficiency in the syllogistic art, he tempts one to a scrutiny of his pretensions, to ascertain if it be all gold that glitters in his sentences! The odour of the extract before us is very redolent of that species of logic styled sophistry by the professed. Its argument seems to be founded on a fallacy of that class styled ‘material,’ or non-logical, where the conclusion, indeed, follows from the premises, which, however, ought not to have been assumed.

            Strange as it may appear, it is nevertheless manifest, that Mr. C. errs, not knowing what the word punishment imports. No man can reason correctly if he do not understand the signification of the terms he employs. These must be correctly defined, so that an accurate idea may be formed of what a man is talking about. The thing in dispute is that represented by ‘punishment,’ or kolasis. In what sense are these words used in English? A man who aspires to the renown of having given to his contemporaries a faithful and thorough translation of the scriptures, ought to be able to answer this question. It is evident, however, from the above, that Mr. C. is not. He ‘errs not knowing the scriptures,’ nor the words he employs; therefore his logic is but a non-logical fallacy, as I shall show.

            He is evidently very partial to ‘eternal fire,’ and to eternal consciousness as indispensable elements of the thing represented by the word ‘punishment.’ Because, these ideas haunt his imagination like ghosts, or like the remembrance of the shade he saw when a dyspeptic student, that told him all that should befall him to the end, he therefore conceits they were as certainly a part of the Lord’s mind when he spoke of ‘eternal punishment!’ But with our experience of Mr. C., we cannot admit that his mind and the Lord’s are one upon a single important particular. A great change must come over us before we can admit that, to reject Mr. C’s opinions is to ‘annihilate the sanctions of the gospel, and directly to contradict the positive declarations of the Saviour concerning eternal punishment.’ With Mr. C. there can be no eternal punishment unless fire co-exist; if then it should turn out that the fire is not eternal, he denies eternal punishment, and therefore the doctrine of the Lord. Thus we throw back his ‘very grave charge’ against ‘destructionists’ upon himself; and in opposing assertion to mere assertion, we affirm that a co-eternal fire is not necessary to eternal punishment such as it is represented to be in the scriptures of truth.

            Mr. C. undertakes to sustain well the ‘truly very grave charge’ he has made against those who reject his speculations. We like to see a thing ‘well sustained;’ and when we read his intimation to sustain his charge well, we were all on the qui vive to see how well he would do it! To accomplish this, the first thing he very properly inquires is, What is indicated by the term punishment? He asserts that it is not mere animal suffering. I, for one who believe in destruction, never imagined that it did. There is no dispute between Mr. C. and myself here. I believe with him that punishment is not mere animal suffering. Next he says, there is mental pain as well as physical pain in punishment. Here again we are agreed in part. There is, provided the offender be of sound mind and have time for reflection; but it is quite conceivable that, a man may have inadvertently transgressed a law, and suffer instant death before he had time to reflect upon the penalty he had incurred by the act. In this case there would be punishment without either physical or mental pain. The case of Uzzah is in point here. He stretched forth his hand to steady the Ark with the seemingly good intention of preventing its fall. But it was contrary to law for any one to touch the Ark but a priest, under penalty of death. This was the law-punishment, which in Uzzah’s case took instant effect. He sinned inadvertently, thinking, doubtless, of nothing less than the law and its penalty, and the punishment of death followed as a flash of lightning.

            Again, a fool, idiot, or madman, may transgress a law whose penalty is death, but in their case commuted into imprisonment for life. Instead of suffering mental pain because deprived of liberty, they would probably enjoy themselves very much; and might conceit themselves to be kings and princes in a palace. Cases of this sort are numerous in asylums. They would be suffering the punishment of the law, being in the passive voice, but without pain of any sort, unless they should happen to fall sick of a painful disease; but in this case the pain would be no part of the legal infliction, but consequent upon the infraction of a law of health. These are obvious truths, and form the exception to our full acquiescence in the idea that there is always mental pain in punishment. It is self-evident that there is not.

            But, I admit there may be mental pain sometimes. Thus, if a conscientious, or a conscious, person know the law, and the punishment which is sure to follow its neglect or transgression, and nevertheless violate it, then his punishment begins with the transgression. He may be free from physical pain, but be crucified with mental agony by ‘a certain looking for of judgment and fiery indignation, which shall devour the adversaries.’ And when he comes to appear in that judgment, his anguish of mind will increase, not from apprehension of physical pain only, but from ‘seeing Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and all the prophets, in the kingdom of God, and he himself cast out.’ This will cause ‘weeping and gnashing of teeth,’ evincing great mental suffering. This is punishment, but not all the punishment. Physical pain follows mental, and for a time co-exists with it, until both end in death and corruption. But of this hereafter; the points admitted are, that punishment is not mere animal suffering, or bodily pain; nor is it exclusively mental pain; nor always mental and physical pain combined, though it is sometimes; but it may exist without either. And this harmonises with the meaning of the word ‘punishment’ as given in the dictionary, though not with Mr. C’s theory. It is defined by lexicographers as ‘Anything inflicted on a person for a crime or offence, by the authority to which the offender is subject, either by the constitution of God, or of civil society.’ The person in this case is a sufferer, because he is in the passive voice, being a person acted upon. His being a sufferer does not necessitate that he should be conscious of what he is undergoing. Criminals have been hanged in unconsciousness from fainting; they were nevertheless sufferers in the true import of the term, and are therefore said to have ‘suffered death,’ or the punishment inflicted by the law they had transgressed. We use the word ‘punishment’ in the received sense, which Mr. C. and his brethren, the eternal-tormentists, do not. They say, ‘there must always be consciousness of guilt, or a sense of crime committed, in order to punishment.’ We have seen in the case of Uzzah that no such necessity exists—there may be punishment, and no co-existent consciousness.

            From what has been said it is evident, that our friend Campbell is like a mariner who has lost his course, completely out of his reckoning in saying, that ‘punishment begins and ends with the feeling of pain inflicted for the commission of crime;’ so that any time the feeling of mental or physical pain should cease that moment punishment ceases! No pain no punishment, is the dogma of tormentists—a tradition of their fathers, so manifestly false and ridiculous that, if it were not for the extraordinary kind of admiration we have for their brother Campbell, so ‘profoundly skilled in analytic,’ we should be tempted to class them among those ‘foolish men’ whose ‘ignorance,’ the learned Paul commanded his son Timothy to ‘send to Coventry!’

            Presuming that no pain no punishment is good logic, and a first principle of the oracles of God, but which I have shown to be a mere conceit, Mr. C. turns upon the ‘destructionists,’ and charges them with incontrovertibly denying the everlasting punishment taught by Jesus in rejecting his dogma! This is certainly quite presumptuous. Destructionists believe what Jesus says about punishment; but they do not believe the tormentists-interpretation of what he said on the subject: nor are they convinced that the opinions of the fire-and-brimstone men are entitled to the same respect as His teaching. In denying the no pain no punishment theory, they do not deny that the ‘these’ referred to ‘shall go away into everlasting punishment’—Matthew 25: 46. They believe they will; and that the punishment will be as permanent as the ‘everlasting destruction’—2 Thessalonians 1: 9, and ‘second death’—2 Corinthians 2: 15-16; Revelation 20: 14; 21: 8, threatened by Paul and John.

            But to return to our logician. When shall we get him to stick to the text? He quotes Jesus as saying, ‘the wicked’ (at the final judgment) ‘shall go away into everlasting punishment.’ We beg leave to remark that Jesus says no such thing. His words are, ‘these shall depart into everlasting punishment.’ Mr. C. has substituted ‘the wicked’ for ‘these,’ and thrown in parenthetic words fixing the time of going away into punishment at what he calls ‘the final judgment.’ By the wicked is generally understood all who are not righteous. Though the wicked are unquestionably unrighteous; yet all that are not in a justified state, are not styled wicked in scripture. The ‘these’ referred to by Jesus are doubtless wicked persons; but they are not ‘the wicked’ in the popular Gentile sense of all mankind who are not righteous. Hence, the Lord Jesus was not speaking off the punishment of all ‘the wicked,’ or unrighteous; but only of those who sustain a relation to him in being in some way related to his disciples, whom they allow to suffer from hunger, thirst, desolateness, nakedness, sickness and imprisonment, without attempting to relieve them. They are in fact the ‘many who shall say, in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied (or preached) in thy name? And in thy name have cast out devils? And in thy name done many wonderful works? And then I will profess unto them, I never knew you: Depart from me’—Matthew 7: 22.  —Where to? Into the fire mentioned in the twenty-fifth chapter, ‘prepared for the devil and his angels;’ and why? Because ‘ye work iniquity.’ These are they who depart into the punishment; and not all the sons of Adam who die in sin, or being sinners.

            But some one will say, ‘if the ‘these’ be unrighteous professors only, all ‘the wicked’ in the Gentile sense are certainly comprehended with ‘the Devil and his angels’ who suffer in the same fire?’ I answer, not so. ‘The Devil and his Angels’ are powers on earth, incarnated in the goat-nations on the King’s left hand. They are ‘the Beast with the False Prophet, and the Kings of the earth, and their armies, gathered together to make war’ with Him—Revelation 19: 19-20. Turn to this passage. The reader will there see, that the powers represented by the symbols of ‘the Beast’ and ‘False Prophet,’ are to be cast into the same place as ‘the Devil and his Angels’—eis teen limneen tou pyros teen kaiomeneen, ‘into the lake of the fire being inflamed with brimstone.’ That region of the earth where the Powers assemble to contend with the King in war, is the territory which will be converted into a fiery lake by the warfare which is to rage there until the Powers be consumed, with the armies that strengthen them. The Nations from which those armies are drawn, though subject to many calamities, will not be destroyed—Zechariah 14: 16. They will be subdued, when their kings can no more raise armies out of them for battle; and when their conquest is complete, they will joyfully accept the law off the victor, and become blessed in Abraham and his Seed. The horrors of the contest in the lake of fire, the great battle-field of the age—AION—will be awful. The fiery indignation of the Lord, by pestilence and famine, fire and sword—Isaiah 66: 15-16; Zechariah 14: 12, will there devour the adversaries; and thither, to share in ‘the terror of the Lord,’ will the cursed professors, but not doers, of the word, previously awakened from the dust of the earth, be exiled, and overwhelmed in the torment of the crisis.

            The Eternal-tormentists err in assigning the period of the departure into the punishment into what they term ‘the final judgment.’ By this they mean, a judgment to occur when Jesus comes with all the ghosts of the righteous, to reunite them with their bodies; also to rejoin the hell-bound spirits with their bodies, and to send them back to fire and brimstone to burn in pain, physical and mental, without end; and to conflagrate the earth and all the wicked upon it, immediately after he has separated the living righteous from among them, and added them to the newly embodied ghosts he brought with him from the skies: —a judgment which, when perfected, will have been a work of destruction of one of the fairest planets of the universe, leaving Jesus and his company no more to do with earth, nor earth with them: so that now all things being finished, nothing else remains, but that he should turn his back upon the smoking ruins, and the piercing shrieks of Hell’s burning myriads, and ‘escort his friends to a new paradise of God, in which the tree of life, in all its deathless beauties, shall bloom and fructify for ever!’ O merciful God, what savages must they be who can frame, and earnestly plead for such a crisis of humanity; and how dishonouring to thy character, as thou hast revealed thyself in thy word, to attribute such diabolism to thee! It is the ferocity of wolves superadded to the folly and imbecility of creatures who are wise in their own conceit, and unsubdued to the spirit of thy truth! No wonder their enmity is so fierce against them that believe it.

            Such is ‘the final judgment’ elaborated by the thinking of beclouded brains. They don’t pretend to say exactly when it will come to pass; though taking the apocalyptic thousand years as symbolic time, to be estimated on the day for a year principle, some of them say, it may be 360,000 years to come! Precious interpreters are these! Well, whenever it is to be, they assign the scene predicted by the Lord to the epoch of ‘the final judgment;’ so little do they know of any thing to happen before then! Yet this assignment is vastly strange! The Lord himself says, that this going away into punishment and life, is ‘When the Son of Man shall come in his glory, and all the holy angels with him.’ And he tells us when this coming is to happen; for he continues, ‘then shall he sit upon the throne of his glory.’ But how do the spiritualisers get along with this? They say, that Jesus ascended to the throne of his glory before the Day of Pentecost, and has been sitting upon the throne of his kingdom for ages! If we grant it, then the ‘these’ he speaks of went away into everlasting punishment then; which, perhaps, even they, who are accustomed to assent to the most fabulous incongruities with implicit credulity, would say is absurd. It is absurd, just as much so as to affirm, that the Son of Man ascended his throne of glory on the day of his ascension to heaven, or that he sits on it at the present time. Let the reader turn to Matthew 25: 31, and study it. He does not go from earth to sit thereon, but He comes in his glory; not alone, but accompanied by his angels; He comes escorted by them to ascend the throne of his glory and to sit on it till, as Paul says, he shall have put down all enemies; for he must reign till he has accomplished that. Jesus was in Israel’s land when he said he would come to sit on the throne of his glory. Mark that, ye sky-kingdomers! This text teaches, that the throne of glory which he is to sit upon is to be a throne in Israel’s land; and that when he comes to sit upon that throne, the context further informs us, that the ‘anathema maranatha,’ the accursed when the Lord comes—1 Corinthians 16: 22 (verse 41,) are exiled from his presence into the age fire, which is, as already explained, the punishment of the age. It is clear, that the judgment referred to in this chapter is not a final judgment; but one introductory of the Kingdom, the preparation of which is then complete. This appears from the thirty-fourth verse, where the Heirs of the Kingdom—James 2: 5—promised them, are told to come and take possession of it—a kingdom prepared for them. But the ‘taking possession of the kingdom, and dominion, and the greatness of the kingdom under the whole heaven’—Daniel 7: 27, by the Heir and his associates, cannot be effected without judgment. It is therefore written in Daniel, ‘the Ancient of Days came and judgment was given to the Saints of the Most High; and the time came for the Saints to possess the kingdom.’ This is the judgment of which Jesus speaks in the twenty-fifth of Matthew—not a final judgment; but the judgment on THE POWERS represented by Daniel’s Fourth Beast with its Little Horn, and its Eyes and Mouth, and its Ten Horns; summarily designated by the Lord, ‘the Devil and his Angels,’ because what they represent constitutes SIN’S BODY POLITIC; and styled by John, ‘the Beast, the False Prophet, and the Kings of the Earth’—the Little Horn being ‘the Beast;’ the Eyes and Mouth, ‘the False Prophet;’ and the Horns, ‘the Kings of the Earth.’ So long as these Fourth-Beast Powers retain their dominion, ‘the blessed of Christ’s Father’ cannot inherit the kingdom; because its territory and people, the Twelve Tribes, are in their hands. Hence, ‘the judgment’ must first ‘sit, to take away their dominion, to consume and to destroy it to the end.’ When this is accomplished as represented by John—Revelation 19: 11-21; 20: 2-3, ‘the Father’s blessed Ones’ are in possession of the kingdom, and thenceforth ‘reign with Christ a thousand years’ without any further change. In consuming Sin’s Body Politic, and destroying it out of the way, scope is afforded for the punishment of individuals, who will be raised for this purpose. The rapidly approaching judgment which introduces the Age to Come, is ‘a time of trouble, such as never was since there was a nation to that same time’—Daniel 12: 1. When it is manifested, it will be ‘the everlasting fire prepared for the Devil and his Angels,’ in the lake or territory of the Fourth Beast. At this crisis, three things occur of joyful interest to the believer—Michael, who is Jesus, stands up for Israel; Israel is delivered; and many of the dead awake. Not all of them, but ‘many;’ they are the dead once constituted righteous, some of whom continued ‘faithful unto death;’ while others, who began to run well, were hindered; and returned like ‘dogs to their vomit, and like washed hogs to their wallowing in the mire:’ the former ‘some,’ awake from the dust in which they are sleeping, to everlasting life; while the latter, arise to be exiled from the King’s presence with shame and contempt, to share in the punishment of the age.

            The final judgment, scripturally considered, is the last to which the inhabitants of earth will ever be subjected. It occurs a thousand years after the judgment treated of in the twenty-fifth of Matthew. The territory on which the decision will be determined will be the arena of the pre-millennial judgment; for ‘the devil’ of that crisis, is to find his destruction where the Beast and the False Prophet encountered their’s a thousand years before. The final judgment is the epoch of the destruction of the last enemy, death; so that thenceforth there shall be no more death upon the earth. The destruction of death is represented in the symbolographic sentence saying, that ‘Death and the Grave were cast into the lake of fire,’ that is, ‘the rest of the dead’ to be raised, but who had no part in the resurrection of the First Fruits, with the unjust who died during the thousand years, these at the end of them are awaked, and driven into exile where they come to their end with the devil, who seduced from their allegiance the millennial nations at the end of that age. ‘This is the second death.’

            The words in which Matthew’s Greek translators record the expression used by Jesus are eis kolasin aionion. Mr. C. says, ‘the word aioonios, everlasting, ascertains the continuance of the punishment, and of the life.’ This is as much as we could expect from one who is ignorant of the gospel of THE AIOON, or glad tidings concerning the blessedness of the nations in the Age to Come. I object, that it does not define the continuance of either; but indicates the epoch of the punishment and the life. The mind of Jesus, the apostles, and of the Jewish nation, was full of the Future Age, styled Aioon Mellon in the Greek. They were of one mind on this subject. Referring to the future Aioon, the prophet styles Messiah AVI AD, the Father or founder of the AD or age—Isaiah 9: 6. Hence, when they wrote ‘for ever and ever,’ they expressed it by LE-OLAHM WAH-ED, or a long time even to the Age. If the words are affirmed of these things before the age, the long time is terminated at the age; but if of things established at its introduction, the long time ends at the introduction of the next, or succeeding age, which is an Ad, comprehending Ages of Ages without limitation. When Jesus offered to wash Peter’s feet, he declined, and said, in the words of the English version, ‘thou shalt never wash my feet.’ But this is not the translation of Peter’s words as recorded in the text. He said ‘Ou mee nipsees tous podas mou EIS TON AIOONA’—John 13: 8, thou mayest not have washed my feet unto the age. The age in this instance was the limit of Peter’s ‘never.’ Again, the psalmist speaking of the continuance of the throne of the Mighty One says to him prophetically, kisakah elohim olahm wah-ed—‘thy throne of the gods is a long time even to the age.’ Paul applies this to Jesus and his brethren. The signification of it is, ‘Thy throne, O mighty God, is a throne of the gods, thy brethren, a long time until the Ages of Ages,’ which Paul styles ‘the end, when the Son shall deliver up the kingdom to the Father, that God may be all in all’—Psalm 45: 6; 1 Corinthians 15: 24.

            The Lord Jesus was well aware that he was to be the Founder of that Age; that all his glory pertained to it; and all the good things promised to man in the gospel were inseparable from it. Even the gifts of the Spirit bestowed in the apostles’ day Paul styles dynameis mellontos aioonos, ‘powers of the Future Age’—an earnest of the powers the saints shall then possess. Hence, Jesus said to Peter that a man who made sacrifices ‘for the kingdom of God’s sake, should receive in the Age to Come age-life’ (en too aiooni too erchomenoo zooeen aioonion.) Thus, it was Age-life and Age-punishment at the introduction of the Age to Come of which he treated in his discourse to the people.

            AIOONIOS, I have said, indicates the epoch of the substantive, not its continuance. In addition to what has been said illustrative of this, I may cite the words evanghelion aionion, in the English version rendered everlasting gospel. Now, it is not to be conceived that aionion expresses continuance here. The proclamation called gospel is not to be an everlasting proclamation; for when it is rejected it will cease to be proclaimed; and when the kingdom of which it treats is set up, it will have ceased to be a matter of faith; it will be an accomplished fact, and consequently there will be no more good news to announce for faith concerning it. The ainoonian gospel is THE GOSPEL OF THE AIOON, or the Age-Gospel—the glad tidings of the coming Age, of which Jesus is the founder. The life promised to believers belongs to this age; it is therefore aioonian. It does not belong to the Mosaic Age, nor to the Times of the Gentiles; so that men dying under the Law, and under the reign of Antichrist, even if they had ‘spirits’ capable of a disembodied existence, could not enter into the promised life at death. It belongs to the Age treated of in the gospel, and cannot be obtained till then; for it is not till the introducing of that Age that the dead are raised. It is the Age-Life of the Age-Gospel, and therefore ainoonian.

            But, while I deny that aioonios indicates the continuance of punishment, I admit that there are other words which note persistence in connexion with it. I adduce the following passage as an example.

‘If any worship the Beast and his Image, and receive his mark in his forehead, or in his hand, the same shall drink of the wine of the wrath of God, which is poured out without mixture into the cup of his indignation; and he shall be tormented with fire and brimstone in the presence of the holy angels, and in the presence of the Lamb; and the smoke of their torment ascendeth for ever and ever; and they have no rest day nor night’—Revelation 14: 9-10.

Thus the passage stands in the English version. It is parallel with the text in Matthew which speaks of the Devil and his Angels, and giving us additional information respecting those who are to suffer with them in the torment. The first eleven verses of this chapter of Revelation enumerate the events in the order of their development, for which those ‘who keep the commandments of God, and the faith of Jesus,’ are waiting with all the patience they can exercise. First, the Lord appears in Zion with his angels, and resurrected brethren; next, a proclamation of the Gospel of the Age is made to the nations and their governments, the effect of which is to divide them into sheep-nations and goat-nations; thirdly, the Goat-nations having rejected it, their Great City Babylon, or Rome, is overthrown; and fourthly, the Goat-nations having prepared for battle, march against the Lamb and his army—Revelation 19: 11-21, by whom they are met at the seat of war and in this way they come into ‘the presence of the holy angels, and the Lamb.’ This seat of war is the place of their torment, which begins and ends with the war. The Goat-nation confederacy is represented by ‘the Beast and the False Prophet.’ As I have said before, these are powers, or dominions. They are the Imperial and Pontifical sovereignties, which exercise civil and ecclesiastical jurisdiction over those nations which do reverence to the emperor and the pope. These nations are characterised by a sign, or ‘charagma,’ impressed or signed upon them. Few individuals belonging to them are without the sign. Perhaps none. It is ‘the Sign of the Cross,’ or accursed tree, * which is signed upon the forehead of every subject of the Beast and his Image when he is sprinkled, or ‘baptised,’ as they absurdly style it; and upon the palm of the right hand of those of them, who may be afterwards ordained priests to buy and sell in the Bazaars of the Patron-Saints, or Mahuzzim, of their superstition. These are ‘the goats,’ who, in their civil and ecclesiastical organization, are symbolised by ‘the Beast and his Image,’ ‘the Beast and the False Prophet,’ or by ‘the Devil and his Angels.’ The resurrected who are driven from the Lord’s presence, commingle with the goats, and share with them in the torment prepared.

 (Continued)