My God and My Country

Future Punishment and the Bible

(Part One)

by Samuel Logan Brengle (1860-1936)

Prefaced & Edited by R.P. Woitowitz Sr.

Brethren:
There are many that believe one of two doctrines.
First, hell is not real
Second, a loving God would not condemn anyone to eternal suffering.

Friends, both are lies. Jesus Himself (and I think He would know with all certainty) speaks many times over about Hell, describing it as a place of fiery torment, or as the outer darkness. Either way, it is the permanent and eternal separation from our Creator, period. There is no way around this, nor is there any sugar coating about it. I can think of no other punishment, no other condition so unbearable as to be cut off from Him. And yet, there are those that will not believe it could be so.
R.P. Woitowitz Sr. - Disciple of Christ

8 But unto them that are contentious, and disobey the truth, and obey unrighteousness, shall be indignation and wrath. 9 Tribulation and anguish shall be upon the soul of every man that doeth evil: of the Jew first, and also of the Grecian.

Joseph Cook, one of America's soundest and clearest thinkers, said to me a generation ago, 'Let the Churches banish from their pulpits the preaching of Hell for a hundred years, and it will come back again, for the doctrine is in the Bible, and in the nature of things.' And he said in his great lecture on the 'Final Permanence of Moral Character': 'The laws by which we attain supreme bliss are the laws by which we descend to supreme woe. In the ladder up and the ladder down in the universe, the rungs are in the same side pieces. The self-propagating power of sin and the self-propagating power of Holiness are one law. The law of judicial blindness is one with that law by which the pure in heart see God.'

There is but one law that can save me from 'the law of sin and death,' that is 'the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus.' If I refuse to submit to that law, I abide eternally under the law of sin and death and endure eternally its dread penalties.

'Every sinner must be either pardoned or punished.'

I once heard these words uttered by The Army Founder in the midst of an impassioned appeal to men to make their peace with God; and they have remained in my memory, always representing a tremendous truth from which we can never get away. The Atonement opens wide the door of pardon, of uttermost Salvation, and of bliss eternal to every penitent sinner who will believe on Christ and follow Him, while it sweeps away every excuse from the impenitent sinner who will not trust and obey Him.

The Atonement justifies God in all His ways with sinful men.

The holiest beings in the universe can never feel that God is indifferent to sin when He pardons a believing sinner, lifts up his drooping head and introduces him to the glories and blessedness of Heaven because Christ has died for him. On the other hand, the sinner who is lost and banished to outer darkness, cannot blame God nor charge Him with indifference to his misery, since Christ, by tasting death for him, flung wide open the gateway of escape. That he definitely refused to enter in will be clear in his memory forever, and will leave him without excuse.

We do not often encounter now the old-fashioned Universalist, who believed that all men, whether righteous or wicked, enter into a state of blessedness the moment they die. But others, with errors even more dangerous, because seemingly made agreeable to natural reason and to man's inborn sense of justice, have come to take his place and weaken men's faith in the tremendous penalties of God's holy law; in fact, there seems to be a widespread and growing tendency to doubt the existence of Hell and the endless punishment of the wicked.

A theory often advanced is the annihilation, or extermination, of the wicked. It is said that there is no eternal Hell; and that the wicked do not enter into a state of punishment after death, but are immediately or eventually blotted out of existence.

Then there is the doctrine of 'eternal hope.' This asserts that the wicked will be punished after death, possibly for ages, but that in the end they will all be restored to the favor of God and the bliss of the holy. The words of our Lord to the traitor appear to be an unanswerable refutation of this doctrine. If all are to be saved at last, would Jesus have said about Judas 'It had been good for that man if he had not been born '? (Read Matthew 26:24) For what are ages of suffering when compared to the blessedness and rapture of those who finally see God's face in peace and enjoy His favor to all eternity?

There is something so awful about the old doctrine of endless punishment, and such a seeming show of fairness about these new doctrines, that the latter appeal very strongly to the human heart, and enlist on their behalf all the sympathies and powerful impulses of 'the carnal mind' which is enmity against God,' and which is 'not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be.' (Read Romans 8:7; James 4:4)

In forming our opinions on this subject we should stick to the Bible. All we know about the future state is what God has revealed and left on record in 'the law and ..... the testimony,' and 'if they speak not according to this Word, it is because there is no light in them.' (See 1 John 1:6; Job 24;13) Human reason, as well as human experience, fails us here, and we can put no confidence in the so-called revelations of spiritualism nor in the dreams of sects who pretend to be able to probe the secrets of eternity. If the Bible does not settle the question for us, it cannot be settled.

The Bible teaches that there is punishment for the wicked after death, and that of this punishment they are conscious. In the record of the rich man and Lazarus, Jesus says: 'The rich man also died,..... and in Hell he lifts up his eyes, being in torments, and seeth Abraham afar off, and Lazarus in his bosom. And he cried and said,..... Send Lazarus, that he may dip the tip of his finger in water, and cool my tongue, for I am tormented in this flame.' (Read 16:24)

Some labor hard to strip this Scripture of its evident meaning and to rob it of its point and power, by declaring that it is only a parable. On the contrary, the Saviour's statements are given as facts. But even though we admit the account to be a parable, what then? A parable teaches either what is or what may be, and in that case, these words lose none of their force but stand out as a bold word-picture of the terrible doom of the wicked.

Over and over Jesus speaks of the wicked being cast into 'outer darkness,' where 'there shall be weeping' and 'wailing and gnashing of teeth.' Three times in one chapter He speaks of the worm that dieth not and the fire that is not quenched. Paul says, 'Indignation and wrath, tribulation and anguish,' shall come upon the wicked. And John in the Revelation, says they are in torment.' What can all this mean but conscious punishment? (Read Matthew 8:12, 22:13, 25:30; Mark 9:44-48; Romans 2:8; Revelation 14:10, 20:10)

Let a man who never before saw the Bible, read these words for the first time, and he would at once declare that the Bible teaches the conscious suffering of the wicked after death. He might not believe the teaching, but he would never think of denying that such was the teaching of the Bible. The punishment mentioned in the Bible must be felt, must be conscious, otherwise, it is not 'torment,' 'tribulation and anguish.' The 'second death,' the death of the soul, must be something other than the destruction of its conscious existence. Jesus has defined for us eternal life as the knowledge of God: 'This is life eternal, that they might know Thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom Thou hast sent.' [John xvii. 3] If then this blessed knowledge constitutes eternal life, what is the death which sin imposes but just the absence of this knowledge, with consequent wretchedness and misery? To lose God, to sink into outer darkness, to lose all fellowship with pure and loving souls, to be an outcast forever, this is 'the second death,' this is 'torment and anguish,' this is 'Hell,' and this is 'the wages of sin.'

The Bible further teaches that the punishment of the wicked after death will be endless.

There are distinguished teachers and preachers who have declared that the Bible does not teach the eternity of sin and of punishment. But if we examine for ourselves, we find this teaching as clear as human language can make it. In the Revised Version we read: 'Whosoever shall blaspheme against the Holy Spirit hath never forgiveness, but is guilty of an eternal sin,' and eternal sin will surely be followed by eternal woe. While sin lasts misery lasts. The strongest terms that can be used have been used to teach eternal punishment. When we say a thing will last forever we have put it strongly, but when we duplicate the phrase and say it will last forever and forever, we cannot add to its strength -- we have said all that can be said. This is just what the Bible does in speaking of the punishment of the wicked. The phrase 'for ever and ever ' is the strongest term by which the idea of eternity is expressed in the Bible. It is the phrase used to express the eternal life and glory of the righteous: 'And they shall reign for ever and ever.' Paul used these words when he prayed for the continuance of God's glory: 'To whom be glory for ever and ever.' [Galatians i. 5; see also Philippians iv. 20; 2 Timothy iv. 18; Hebrews xiii. 21.] It is also the very phrase used to assert the eternal existence of God Himself -- Who 'liveth for ever and ever.' [Revelation iv. 9, 10; x. 6; xv. 7.]