AN EXAMINATION OF CERTAIN SCRIPTURES

The Prayer of the Souls Under the Altar:TFC 3.2

“How long, O Lord, holy and true, dost Thou not judge and avenge our blood on them that dwell on the earth?” Revelation 6:10.TFC 3.3

The advocates of the kindred popular doctrines of the immortality of the soul, and that the souls of the righteous go to heaven at death, believe and teach that the souls of martyrs are alive under an altar in heaven, and that they literally pray in the above words for vengeance on their persecutors. They do not seem to see that there is anything inconsistent in the idea that the souls of the martyrs in the presence of God, where there is fullness of joy, should be able to think only of their past tortures, and be entirely given up to anxiety for vengeance on their persecutors, who had hastened their arrival to their state of blessedness. Nor do they seem to realize that such prayers are not only unlike the spirit of Christ, who prayed in an hour of extreme anguish, “Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do;” but that they are unlike the spirit of the noble martyr Stephen, who cried with his dying breath, “Lord, lay not this sin to their charge.” Luke 23:34; Acts 7:60. Nor do they explain how such a prayer can be offered literally while the Saviour stands before the ark of God’s law as a great sacrifice, and the Spirit of God strives with sinful men to lead them to repentance. But let this case stand while we look at another.TFC 3.4

The parable of the rich man and Lazarus teaches, to the same class of people, that the righteous at death go to heaven, and the wicked at death go into the flames of hell. See Luke 16:19-31. It also shows them that the wicked in their torment are not only in plain sight of the righteous in their blessedness, but that the two places are within speaking distance of each other, and that the two parties converse together. Now let us put these two cases together.TFC 4.1

The souls under the altar had only to look from their state of blessedness to see their persecutors in the flames of hell, or dropping, one by one, into this fiery gulf. Could the martyrs, with this terrible sight before them, pray, “How long, O Lord, holy and true, dost Thou not judge and avenge our blood on them that dwell on the earth?” Would they have been bidden to wait yet a little season? Would they not rather have been directed to look across the great gulf, and see many of their persecutors already in torment, and others every moment arriving? Who does not see that these two cases, when taken together, completely refute the doctrine so often drawn from each taken alone!TFC 4.2