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First Great Deception
247
fire”? Oh, solemn mockery! shameful impeachment of the wisdom
and justice of God!
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Nowhere in the Sacred Scriptures is found the statement that
the righteous go to their reward or the wicked to their punishment
at death. The patriarchs and prophets have left no such assurance.
Christ and his apostles have given no hint of it. The Bible clearly
teaches that the dead do not go immediately to Heaven. They are
represented as sleeping until the resurrection. In the very day that
the silver cord is loosed and the golden bowl broken, man’s thoughts
perish. They that go down to the grave are in silence. They know
no more of anything that is done under the sun. Blessed rest for the
weary righteous! Time, be it long or short, is but a moment to them.
They sleep, they are awakened by the trump of God to a glorious
immortality. As they are called forth from their deep slumber, they
begin to think just where they ceased. The last sensation was the
pang of death, the last thought that they were falling beneath the
power of the grave. When they arise from the tomb, their first glad
thought will be echoed in the triumphal shout, “O death, where is
thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?”
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