The Mount Holly news. [volume] (Mount Holly, Burlington Co., N.J.) 1891-1942, 1913-08-19

uRASIQR RUSSELDJ The Pastor open
ed his discourse
with the words: How blind we have
all been-stupidly blind-in respect to
our Heavenly Fathers wor1sl We
have believed human traditions, which
we ought not to have believed, and left
unbelieyed the Bible teachings, which
we ought to have believed, until the
Church as whole has become thor
oughly puzzled in respect to every
thing religious. ! am not judging any
particular person or sect The matter is
20 general as not to need specification.
All have sinned, all are out of the
way Of Truth, lost In the fog Of super
stdtion and error. guided thither, as
st Paul foretold, by doctrines of de-
MONS" q Timothy 40 There is no
time for faulthnding The duty of the
hour is to get right-to get lack into
harmony with God, and to obtain the
true light on His Word that viii re-
store Christian faith, love- devotion.
Blaming nobody except the Arch-D De-
ceiver, Satan, we find, as the Master
predicted, that the whole world has
been made drunk by the false doc
trines which Satan gradually introduce
ed during the Dark Ages-"The inhab-
itants of the earth have been made
drunk with the wine of her fornica-
ton" Revelation 1922 Some were
crazy drunk, to the extent of persecut-
ing others; some were stupidity drunk.
Like drunken people, we mixed up
and confused the good and the bad.
In one breath we told Of the love of
God-His mercy, gentleness, patience
and how all of His children must be-
come copies of His Divine character.
Then In another breath we painted this
God Of Love as sitting down, before
creating humanity, and deliberately,
with fore-knowledge arranging that
thousands of millions should be born
In sin, misshapen In iniquity; and that
after few short years, full of trou-
BILE, all Of them with only rare excep-
lions, should be turned over to fire.
proof demons. to be tortured through
all eternity
When a soberer thought would sug-
gest that the fire would destroy them,
that the torture could not last more
than few hours, then a drunken
thought inspired by the Devil came
that God delighted In the torture of
His creatures. and that all those thou
sands Of millions would have life In
Jected into them by the Almighty Him.
self, the great Fountain of Life, so as
to prevent them from ever ceasing to
be, ceasing to suffer-so as to perpetu-
ate great chamber of horrors such
as no human mind could imagine.
Dante pictured the Inferno most hor-
rfbly, that eternal torture chamber,
over whose gates were the words.
"Who enters here abandons hope"
Satan's Great Success.
The Master styled Satan the father
Of lies. His first great lie misled our
first parents and murdered them, by
leading Mother Eve to disbelieve Gods
Word, "In the day that thou eatest
thereof, thou shalt surely de-" Gen
esis 2:17.) Satan contradicted the Al
mighty, saving. "Ye shall not surely
die"-cannot die, ye are immortal. your
life is perpetual one
Satan has since impressed this false
hood upon the whole world, and has
largely succeeded in deceiving all.
When in fulfilment of Gods Word
people die, Satan has brought in the
deceptive theory that they really have
become more alive than ever. With
the theory that nobody can die came
the other theory-that when they seem
to die they merely go somewhere else
to live
Thus. contrary TO the Scriptures, the
whole world has come to believe that
at the moment of death the sanity go
TO Heaven and all the remainder, more
alive than ever. go either to Hell or
Purgatory. The plain, common-sense
statement of the Bible that all-both
good and bad. old and young-go to
Sheol, Hades. to the tomb, is ignored.
The Bible teaching. that the redempl
tive work of Jesus assured all a res
direction from the dead, is made null
and void by Satan's declaration that
nobody is dead
Immortality IN Christ.
The Bible does indeed hold out for
the Church the hope of Immortality
but 1t is only hope, not already a
possession. Man was not created IN
1ualifedly immortal. The life given
him was only a tentative one. If be
would use 1t in harmony with his Gre
ator's commands, he might enjoy 1t
forever, as indicated in the words,
"Be fruitful and multiply and fill the
earth" with your posterity, and sub
due the earth as We have need of it.
As your posterity increases, extend the
bounds of Eden. until it will include
the whole earth.
But that the life was a tentative one,
q conditional one. is indicated by the
threat that disobedience would bring
death-the cessation of life. Thus,
when the sin had been committed, God
declared. Accused is the ground for
thy sake. In the sweat of thy face
shalt thou eat bread, until thou return
to the ground: for dust thou art, and
unto dust shalt thou return" -Genesis
SIT, 49,
The whole world knew that it was
dying; and not even a suggestion of q
reversal Of the curse was made up to
first time, God declared it His purpose
to bless all the families of the earth
which implied the rolling away of the
curse. This blessing, the rolling away
Of the curse. was to come through
Abraham's Seed I'm thee and in thy
Seed shall all the families of the earth
be blessed" St Paul declares that
this Seed is The Christ-Jesus the
Head, and the Church His Body.-Ga.
latians 3:16. 20.
But the Apostle explains that even
this statement to Abraham was more
or less indistinct: it did not bring the
matter clearly forward and give posi-
tive assurance of everlasting life. st
Paul declares that this was accom-
phshed through Jesus. more than 4.00C
years after the fall He declares that
Christ brought life and Immortality to
light through the Gospel Tim. lilo.
Now we may see that this promise of
immortality, deathlessness, death-proof
existence, is a very much grander one
than we ever supposed. Immortality
10 a quality Of life which thus far is
possessed only by Jehovah God and by
His Son, our Lord Jesus Christ Moth
ing in the Scriptures indicates that
even the angels possess death-proof
bodies. On the contrary. the Bible