The state of the dead and the destiny of the wicked

After the Bible, what? When once the word of God pronounces upon a question, what further evidence is needed to sustain the position, or what evidence is strong enough to break...

As clearly as the human race have been taught by the experience of six thousand years that death is their common lot, so clearly are we taught by the word of God, and by some no...

When will all men come to agree respecting the state of the dead? When will the question whether the dead are alive, conscious, active, and intelligent, or whether they rest in...

The inquirer into the nature of man, and his condition in death, must ever turn with the deepest interest to the record left us concerning the father of our race. In Adam we hav...

By this direct interrogation inspiration calls us face to face to the great question of the final destiny of the lost, not to leave us at last in perplexity and doubt, but to gi...

“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...

Another passage, supposed to teach the separate conscious existence of the soul, is found in 2 Cor. 5:8: “We are confident, I say, and willing rather, to be absent from the body...

The previous chapter left us with the problem on our hands whether it were better to try to overthrow all that Moses and the prophets have written respecting _sheol_ and the con...

Finding no immortality for man in the breath of life which God breathed into man’s nostrils at the commencement of his mysterious existence, it remains to inquire if it resides...

When our Lord was transfigured, on a high mountain of Galilee, before Peter and James and John, there appeared with him two other glorified personages, talking with him. These,...

According to Luke’s account of the crucifixion of our Saviour, Luke 23:27-46, one of the two malefactors who were crucified with him, said to Jesus, “Lord, remember me when thou...

If man is immortal, we should naturally suppose that the Bible would make known so weighty a truth in some of the instances where it has had occasion to use the words immortal a...

The only remaining texts to be urged in favor of the eternal torment of the wicked, are two passages which are found in the book of Revelation. The first is Rev. 14:11: “And the...

The discussion of Gen. 2:7 (as in the preceding chapter), brings directly before us for solution the question, What is meant by the terms soul and spirit, as applied to man? Som...

In all arguments for the continued life and consciousness of the dead, 1 Sam. 28:3-20, usually holds a conspicuous place. In examining this scripture, we will look at (1) the na...

“Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?” asked an eminent servant of God in the opening pages of revelation, Gen. 18:25; and when all is finished, the redeemed, looking...

Mark 9:43, 44: “And if thy hand offend thee, cut it off: it is better for thee to enter into life maimed, than having two hands to go into hell, into the fire that never shall b...

Matt. 10:28: “And fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul; but rather fear him who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell.”

In turning to the Bible, our only source of information on this question, to learn whether or not man is immortal, the first and most natural step in the inquiry is to ascertain...

In a search for testimony relative to the nature of man, with the purpose of ascertaining whether or not he is immortal, those texts first demand attention which are claimed as...

Ecclesiastes 12:7: “Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was, and the spirit shall return to God who gave it.” It is natural for men to appeal first and most directly t...

This text is very commonly urged as an objection against the view that the destiny of the reprobate is an utter and eternal extinction of being; and it is one which has great ap...

The pleasing doctrine that man can never die, though unfortunate in its parentage, is very tenacious of its life. In treating this subject in previous chapters, we have found th...

We have now examined the teaching of the Bible relative to man, in his creation, in his life, in his death, and in the intermediate state to his resurrection; and we have found...

In Rev. 6:9-11, is another instance where the word, soul, is used in a manner which many take to be proof that there is in man a separate entity, conscious in death, and capable...

“But ye are come,” says Paul, “unto Mount Zion, and unto the city of the living God, the Heavenly Jerusalem, and to an innumerable company of angels, to the general assembly and...

Gradually the mind awakes to the mystery of life. Excepting only the first pair, every adult member of the human race has come up through the helplessness of infancy and the lim...

The hoary fable that every man has in his own nature an immaterial, ever-conscious, never-dying principle, vaulting from the gloomy regions of heathen mythology over into the pr...

We have seen how the grand doctrine of the future resurrection of the dead, demolishes with its ponderous weight the gossamer fabric of the immortality of the soul. There is ano...

To arrive, however, at the correct meaning of Eccl. 3:21, a brief examination of the context is necessary. In verse 18, Solomon expresses a desire that the sons of men may see t...

Yes, says the immaterialist, for he taught that God, who declares himself to be the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, is not the God of the dead, but of the living; therefore, A...

Gen. 1:27, states, in general terms, the form in which man was created, as contrasted with other orders of animal life. In Gen. 2:7, the process is described by which this creat...

“I knew a man in Christ above fourteen years ago, (whether in the body, I cannot tell; or whether out of the body, I cannot tell: God knoweth;) such an one caught up to the thir...

We have now examined all those passages in which the word spirit is used in such a manner as to furnish what is claimed to be evidence of its uninterrupted consciousness after t...

With these words Solomon introduces, in Eccl. 3:21, a very important question respecting the spirit of man. He says: “Who knoweth the spirit of man that goeth upward, and the sp...