And What About Death?-1

March 31 - And What About Death?-1

 


But I would not have you to be ignorant, brethren, concerning them which are asleep. 1Thess. 4:13.

Some time ago we learned how the early Sabbatarians discovered the Bible truths about the seventh-day Sabbath and the two-phase ministry of Christ in the heavenly sanctuary, teachings that they integrated with their understanding of the Second Advent as found in Revelation 11:19-14:20. Those three "pillar truths" stood at the very center of Sabbatarian Adventism.

But observant readers may have noticed a fourth Adventist pillar missing from our discussion-what Adventist have traditionally called "the state of the death." We need to take a look at how those early Sabbatarians developed their understandings on hell and what happens to individuals when they die.

Such issues deeply trouble many poeple. Take young Ellen Harmon, for example. "In my mind," she wrote, "the justice of God eclipsed His mercy and love. The mental anguish I passed through at this time was very great. I had been taught to believe in an eternally burning hell. . .The horrifying thought was ever before me, that my sins were too great to be forgiven, and that I should be forever lost. The frightful descriptions that I had heard of souls in perdition sank deep into my mind. Ministers in the pulpit drew vivid pictures of the condition of the lost. . .The tortures of thousands upon thousands of years," during which "the fiery billows would roll to the surface the writhing victims, who would shriek, 'How long, O Long, how long?' Then the answer would thunder down the abyss, 'Through all eternity!'. . .

"Our heavenly Father was presented before my mind as a tyrant, who delighted in the agonies of the condemned; not as the tender, pitying Friend of sinners, who loves His creatures with a love past all understanding, and desires them to be saved in His kingdom. When the thought took possession of my mind that God delighted in the torture of His creatures, who were formed in His image, a wall of darkness seemed to separate me from Him"(LS 29-31).

Needless to say, young Ellen could not harmonize the traditional teachings of hell with the loving Jesus. Yet that thought itself made things worse, since now she feared that she was rejecting God's Word and thereby deserved hell even more than before.

        

Help us, Lord, as our finite minds grapple with the difficult teachings of Scripture.

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