Joseph Deans

“ We commend the thoughts here expressed to the candid attention of believers in Holy Writ, in the full confidence that it will manifestly appear that the teaching of The Book is in favour of the doctrine of the immortality of all men, a doctrine whose practical tendency is to induce a love and practice of virtue for its own sake, and for the sake of its results in time and in eternity, and a loathing and abandonment of evil on account of its nature and its results in time and in eternity. ”

“ For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death. For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh; that the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the spirit. For they that are after the flesh do mind the things of the flesh; but they that are after the spirit the things of the spirit. For to be carnally minded is death ”

“ We propose in the following pages to consider the theory of the Annihilation of the Wicked, which may be briefly stated as follows: “All men are not immortal—heathens and children die to rise no more, but those who have been instructed from the Scriptures will rise again at the general resurrection, when the good will be endowed with mortality, and the wicked will be annihilated.” We shall endeavour to show that this theory is not the theory of the Bible, which, when rightly understood, teaches:—
I. That the good and the evil live again. ”

“ Here a state of condemnation (defined in verse 29 as a state in which men do evil) is described as a state of death from which men pass, by hearing and believing, into a state of life. This passing from death to life is further explained in the following verse, “The hour is coming, and now is, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God, and they that hear shall live.” ”

“ Having adduced testimony on this head, we now proceed to show that Scripture teaches us that man never ceases to exist, but that the event we call death is simply an emigration from the Old World to the New. ”

“ The doctrine of the immortality of man has been so generally accepted by believers in the Bible, that the new views upon the subject which have been brought into prominence during the past few years have somewhat startled theologians, and caused them seriously to reflect upon the nature of the evidence on which their ideas are based. ”

“ Now as to Hades, wherein the souls of the righteous and the unrighteous are detained, it is necessary to 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.... ”

“ 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.
(a) “For the living know that they shall die, but the dead know not anything; neither have they any more a reward,” etc. If this bears on the subject at all, it proves too much for the believers in the annihilation of the wicked, viz., that there is no future, no reward for the good. ”

“ VI. That eternal life means existence in a state of virtue and consequent happiness.
Of course, in a pamphlet of the present size, it has not been possible to enter minutely into all the bearings of the subject pro and con; we have preferred to let Scripture speak for itself in words far more convincing than any that we could utter. ”

“ Of course there is a sense in which the death of man is like that of the beast, that which dies knows nothing, and has no more a reward, that which goeth into the grave cometh up no more. But there is a sense in which man has an undoubted pre-eminence above a beast, a broad line of distinction between the two hinted at in Eccl. ”

“ In dealing with this objection, which appears to be the strongest, we must begin by getting a clear understanding of the Bible use of the terms death and life. Death and life have each two meanings. Death means, 1st, the end of earthly existence ”

“ The Apostle says, “To live is Christ, and to die is gain,”—to die could never be gain if it meant that existence was to be suspended. To die is gain to the Christian, because his absence from the body brings him present with the Lord, agreeably to 2 Cor. ”