T H E K I N G ’ S B U S I N E S S
74
Should a God of Love Have a Hell in His Universe? A Sermon Delivered a t Metropolitan Tabernacle, London, By Dr. A. C. Dixon
record. Not torture. There is no viciousness in the word. Not imposed by anyone, but that which comes from the character, and the environment, and the past and the present and the future. You have but to look at that in order to analyze the term. Separated from God. A great gulf fixed. Separated from the good. “Tormented in this flame.” “Wickedness,” says Isaiah the prophet, “burn- eth like a fire.” Sin scorches. Sin consumes. Sin withers and blasts because it burns. And all that is needed for this flame is the presence of sin, the contagious existence of sin. In that place there is memlory. Memory is immortal. Death cannot kill it. It seems that death really brings it to life, makes it more active, more sensitive. One of our brethren said in the prayer-meeting the other evening he was knocked down and nearly killed by a bus off the street, and in that moment all the past flashed before him like lightning. One of my deacons in a former church said: “I was flung from a horse and almost killed, I thought I was going to be killed. Between that saddle and the ground where I struck there was a panorama of everything I had ever said or done, it seemed to me.” As the body grows weak sometimes the mjemory grows stronger. Men of letters so feeble that they could hardly whisper have repeated page after page of what they had committed to memory years ago, and could not remember in vigorous health. The memory is immortal, and will carry with it into the future what it has gathered here. * Reason is just as immortal. That man on the other side of the gulf used the word “therefore/* It is most sug gestive. “Therefore, Father.” Showing he knew how to draw conclusions. The reason that makes the ritualism of this day. The reason now so exalted in some quarters above revelation. Reason that would sit in judgment on the supernatural, on God Himself. Reason that would criticize God for His actions and His truth. That reason is immortal. It will go with us into eternity, and will be there to appreciate whatever memory has brought. You can read between thei lines that CONSCIENCE lives. Con science is immortal. Conscience is lashing. “Go and tell my brothers not to come to this place.” The sight of them will make me more unhappy. My influence with them has been bad. The company of them at home will not add to the joy but rather to the misery. Imagination is immortal. There are two or three phrases which show that imagination is vivid. “ Send Lazarus back to the other world, and when they see him spring out of the grave and startle every body they will repent.” “You are mistaken about that, for if they will not hear Moses and the prophets neither will they be persuaded though one rose from the dead.” Miracles do not make men re pent now any more than when Christ was here. And if all the hospitals in this city could be cleared of the sick by everyone of them being healed,-—I am tempted to go further than that and say if every cemetery in Great Britain were emptied of its dead and they were brought before us,—the men that will not accept Moses and the Prophets, the rev elation that Christ has given in the Book, would explain away the miraculous however wonderful it may be. What I want you to see now is God’s definition of hell. “Depart from Me, ye cursed into everlasting fire.” Into this flame of sin and memory and reason and conscience and imagination. “Depart from Me into everlasting fire.” Now the question comes: “Is it right that the God of
“As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up that whosoever be- lieveth in Him should not perish.” For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish.” John 3:15-16. H HAT did the Lord Jesus mean by that phrase “should not perish?” The purpose of the up lifted Christ was that people should not perish. The purpose of the descending Christ from heaven, to be born of a woman, to suffer on the Cross, to rise from the dead and return for intercession was that the people should not perish. The negative side of the incarnation is in these few simple words. The positive in the words “but have everlasting life.” What Christ would give us and what He would keep from us. What He would save us from and save us to. We only have to trace that Greek word through the New Testament to find the shades of meaning. It means no where to blot out, to exterminate, to annihilate. There is not a trace of that about it. If you will turn to Mark 2:22 you will find that very word translated “marred.” Men do not put new wine into old bottles lest the bottles be marred, broken, destroyed in that sense. The same word is used in Matthew 10:6, “Go rather to the lost sheep of the House of Israel.” The perished sheep. The sheep that have wandered from the shepherd. Out of right re lation with their owner. The very same word in Matthew 15:24, “I am not sent but unto the lost sheep, the perished sheep, of the House of Israel.” The same in Matthew 18:11. “The Son of man is come to seek and to save that which was lost.” Already lost. There could not be any thought of extermination in that. “What man of you, if he hath a hundred sheep, if he lose one, doth not leave the ninety-and-nine in the wilderness and go after that which is lost until he find it?” Lost. Lost! Out of true relation with the shepherd. And that is not a bad definition of a lost soul. One that is really owned of God and not possessed of God. One who is bought by the blood and yet refuses to acknowledge the ownership. The shepherd has it, but it is gone. It is his but it will not yield to him. But the thoughtful, loving Christ, goes further in His definition of that term. In the Scriptures that I have quoted He is talking about the present condition of the lost soul. Condemned already. Lost now. Perished now, because separated from God the Source of life. Existing. Of course you will not forget the definition between mere existence and life. To exist is not to live. The stones on which you walk along the streets exist but they do not live. The dead cold steel exists, but there is no life in it; And those who define eternal life as simply immortality, continuity of existence, have really missed the mark. A corpse can exist. The soul continues to exist apart from God after death. Immortality is the part of God’s image that will remain after it has been miarred by sin. Our Lord Jesus defines the condition of the lost soul here, and then He goes on to give us a revelation of what will take place yonder. The soul that is perished now will con tinue perished through eternity. If we pass through life into the unseen separated from God, we continue separated. And that record, not of a parable, but it seems of a biogra phy, which the Lord Jesus Christ gives. (Luke 16:19-23) teaches plainly that the soul of the good and the bad was conscious after death, one conscious of joy, the other of torment. The .word torment is used three times in the
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