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First Great Deception
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and not one of the family of Adam has been permitted to pass that
barrier and partake of the life-giving fruit. Therefore there is not an
immortal sinner.
But after the fall, Satan bade his angels make a special effort
to foster the belief in man’s natural immortality; and when they
had induced the people to receive this error, they led them on to
conclude that the sinner would live in eternal misery. Now the
prince of darkness, working through his agents, represents God as
a revengeful tyrant, declaring that he plunges into hell all those
who do not please him, and causes them ever to feel his wrath; and
that while they suffer unutterable anguish, and writhe in the eternal
flames, their Creator looks down upon them with satisfaction.
Thus the arch-fiend clothes with his own attributes the Creator
and Benefactor of mankind. Cruelty is Satanic. God is love; and
all that he created was pure, holy, and lovely, until sin was brought
in by the first great rebel. Satan himself is the enemy who tempts
man to sin, and then destroys him if he can; and when he has made
sure of his victim, then he exults in the ruin he has wrought. If
permitted, he would sweep the entire race into his net. Were it not
for the interposition of divine power, not one son or daughter of
Adam would escape.
He is seeking to overcome men today, as he overcame our first
parents, by shaking their confidence in their Creator, and leading
them to doubt the wisdom of his government and the justice of his
laws. Satan and his emissaries represent God as even worse than
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themselves, in order to excuse their own malignity and rebellion.
The great deceiver endeavors to shift his own horrible cruelty of
character upon our heavenly Father, that he may cause himself to
appear as one greatly wronged because he will not submit to so
unjust a governor. He presents before the world the liberty which
they may enjoy under his mild sway, in contrast with the bondage
imposed by the stern decrees of Jehovah. Thus he succeeds in luring
souls away from their allegiance to God.
How repugnant to every emotion of love and mercy, and even
to our sense of justice, is the doctrine that the wicked dead are
tormented with fire and brimstone in an eternally burning hell, that
for the sins of a brief earthly life they are to suffer torture as long as
God shall live. Yet this doctrine has been generally embodied in the