Page:Studies in the Scriptures - Series I - The Plan of the Ages (1909).djvu/385

 WHAT SAY THE SCRIPURES

ABOUT HELL? s^

AN EXAMINATION OF EVERY TEXT OF SCRIPTURE IN WHICH THE WORD "HELL" IS FOUND.

A CORRECT understanding of the subject of this booklet is almost /\ a necessity to Christian steadfastness. For centuries it has been the teaching of "orthodoxy," of all shades, that God, before creating man, had created a great abyss of fire and terrors, capable of containing all the billions of the human, family which he purposed to bring into being; that this abyss he had named "hell;" and that all of the promises and threatenings of the Bible were designed to deter as many as possible (a "little flock") from such wrong-doing as would make this awful place their perpetual home.

While glad to see superstitions fall, and truer ideas of the great, and wise, and just, and loving Creator prevail, we are alarmed to notice that the tendency with all who abandon this long revered dodhine is toward doubt, scepticism, infidelity. Why should this be the case, when the mind is merely being delivered from an error? do you ask? Because Christian people have so long been taught that the foundation for this awful blasphemy against God's character and government is deeplaid and firmly fixed in the Word of God the Bible and con- sequently, to whatever degree their belief in "hell" is shaken, to that extent their faith in the Bible, as the revelation of the true God, is shaken also ; so that those who have dropped their belief in a "hell," of some kind of endless torment, are often open infidels, and scoffers at God's Word.

Guided by the Lord's providence to a realization that the Bible has been slandered, as well as its divine Author, and that, rightly under- stood, it teaches nothing on this subject derogatory to God's character nor to an intelligent reason, we have attempted in this booklet to lay- bare the Scripture teaching on this subject that thereby faith in God and his Word may be reestablished, on a better, a reasonable foundation* Indeed, it is our opinion that whoever shall hereby find that his falsa view rested upon human misconceptions and misinterpretations will, at the same time, learn to trust hereafter less to his own and other men's imaginings, and, by faith, to grasp more firmly the Word of God, which is able to make wise unto salvation; and on this mission, under God's providence, it is sent forth.

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