Page:The Annihilation Theory Compared with Holy Scripture.pdf/8

8 speak of it. Hades is a place in the world not regularly finished; a subterraneous region, where the light of this world does not shine…. This region is allowed as a place of custody for souls, in which angels are appointed as guardians to them, who distribute to them temporary punishments, agreeable to every one’s behaviour and manners,” etc. Without committing ourselves to the views of Josephus in their entirety, it is manifest in what sense the term was used by ancient writers, and that it did not mean the grave.

Besides Hades, however, the word Gehenna is used about eighteen times in the Greek Testament, and it also means something distinct from the grave. No argument against the future existence of the wicked can be legitimately based upon the original of Holy Writ.

Objection II. That no doctrine of Immortality was revealed to the Jews. We are quite willing to admit that the Jewish ideas upon this subject were very vague, but to say that they knew nothing of the matter contravenes the Lord’s words previously quoted (Luke xx. 37, 38). It is certainly said that “life and immortality were brought to light by the Gospel,” but if this means that there was no immortality either actual or promised before Christ came into the world, it means also that there was no life. Further, the passage not only refers to life and immortality, it says, “Jesus Christ hath abolished death,” and yet naturally, as to their bodies, men die now as they ever did.

Objection III. That the Bible often speaks of death as an extinction of being.