ATJ
BY A. T. JONES
The doctrine of the natural immortality of the soul makes the body only worthless clay, formed into a prison that binds, and fetters, and clogs the free action of the soul; while death is the friendly messenger that bursts the prison bars, and sets free the aspiring soul to seek its native sphere. One of the most influential of American preachers said lately, of one who had died, that that person was living, and more thoroughly living, to-day than any of us who are clogged and hampered and chained down by earthly impediment.” This is simply the expression of the common belief of those who hold to the idea that the soul is immortal. Embodied in metre so that it can be sung, it runs on this wise:— BEST September 7, 1903, page 432.1
“Why should we start and fear to die? BEST September 7, 1903, page 432.2
What timorous worms we mortals are! BEST September 7, 1903, page 432.3
Death is the gate to endless joy; BEST September 7, 1903, page 432.4
And yet we dread to enter there.” BEST September 7, 1903, page 432.5
Now we read in the word of God, as follows: “O death, I will be thy plagues.” Hosea 13:14. And again we read that “death” “shall be destroyed.” 1 Corinthians 15:26. Can it be that God is going to visit with plagues, and destroy, the gate to endless joy? Is He so displeased to have His creatures entering into endless joy that He is determined to destroy the very means by which they enter that blissful state? If the words of this preacher and the language of this hymn, and the doctrine upon which these are founded, be the truth, then the Lord is going to do just the thing that is here pointed out, that is, he is going to visit with plagues, and destroy, the gate to endless joy. BEST September 7, 1903, page 432.6
But this is not all. We read further of Christ: “Forasmuch then as the children are partakers of flesh and blood, He also Himself likewise took part of the same; that through death he might destroy Him that had the power of death, that is, the devil.” Hebrews 2:14. Granting the claim that death is the gate to endless joy, then from this scripture it follows just as absolutely as logic can demonstrate, that the devil, having the power of death, is the gate-keeper. And so the Lord is not only going to destroy this “gate to endless joy,” but He is going to destroy him that keeps it. BEST September 7, 1903, page 432.7
Nor yet is this all. Granting not only the claim, based upon the doctrine of the immortality of the soul, that death is the gate to endless joy, but also that the soul is clogged, and hampered, and imprisoned by its confinement in the body, and that it is released by death, it follows that if there had never been any death in the world no soul could have ever been set free, and there never would have been any gate to endless joy. And as it was the devil who brought death into the world, therefore, under that doctrine, to him must be accorded the honour of setting men free from this world, and of creating and opening to men the gate of endless joy. But this is the very thing that Christ says that He Himself came to do. He says: “I am the way, the truth, and the life; no man cometh unto the Father but by me.” John 14:6. “I am the door; by Me if any man enter in, he shall be saved.” John 10:9. Therefore when the doctrine of the immortality of the soul makes death the gate to endless joy, and the friendly messenger that releases men from this world, it supplants the Saviour of the world, and bestows upon Satan the honor that is due to Christ. BEST September 7, 1903, page 432.8
And by all this, we lay against the doctrine of the natural immortality of the soul the legitimate and logical charge that it frustrates the purpose of God, that it nullifies the mission of Christ, and that it supplants the Saviour of the world. There is a difference wide as eternity between that doctrine and the truth of God. BEST September 7, 1903, page 432.9
Next week we will try to show from what source we obtain the life. BEST September 7, 1903, page 432.10