28
Darkness Before Dawn
too late. A life of rebellion against God has unfitted them for heaven.
Its purity, holiness, and peace would be torture to them; the glory of
God would be a consuming fire. They would long to flee from that holy
place. They would welcome destruction, that they might be hidden
from the face of Him who died to redeem them. The destiny of the
wicked is fixed by their own choice. Their exclusion from heaven is
voluntary with themselves, and just and merciful on the part of God....
The theory of the immortality of the soul was one of those false
doctrines that Rome, borrowing from paganism, incorporated into the
religion of Christendom. Martin Luther classed it with the “monstrous
fables that form part of the Roman dunghill of decretals.”—E. Petavel,
The Problem of Immortality, page 255. Commenting on the words
of Solomon in Ecclesiastes, that the dead know not anything, the
Reformer says: “Another place proving that the dead have no ... feeling.
There is, saith he, no duty, no science, no knowledge, no wisdom there.
Solomon judgeth that the dead are asleep, and feel nothing at all. For
the dead lie there, accounting neither days nor years, but when they
are awaked, they shall seem to have slept scarce one minute.”—Martin
Luther, Exposition of Solomon’s Booke Called Ecclesiastes, page 152.
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.
1 Thessalonians 4:14
;
Job 14:10-12
.
In the very day when the silver cord is loosed and the golden bowl
broken (
Ecclesiastes 12:6
), 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.
Job 14:21
. 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. “For the
trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible.... So
when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and this mortal
shall have put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying
that is written, Death is swallowed up in victory.”
1 Corinthians 15:52-
54
. 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.