Thomas Williams

“ When we breathe we inhale the air that surrounds us, which God has, in his mysterious ways, impregnated with the principle of life. When by disease or accident, we are prevented from breathing, our breath goes out, life goes out and we are left as lifeless as Adam was before God breathed the breath of life into his nostrils. God is the only source of life--the life of all living creatures. Life came from Him. When death takes place it returns to Him. The life that God gave to Adam was not an immortal entity. ”

“ But "to the meet the Lord", the Prince of Peace, in the heaven wherein dwelleth righteousness would be exaltation the most glorious, and "so to be ever with the Lord" would be immortality and power, that which should never end. Where is the man who cannot comfort himself and others with words so full of meaning as these? He is easily found. He is the man who can only judge after the flesh, and who has no eye to discern the hidden treasures of truth lying beneath the surface of truth lying beneath the surface of literal language. ”

“ When one calls to comfort the distressed it is not the time to bestow a look of wrath nor to utter words of vengeance. It is a time to speak words of consolation and to give expression to a heart-felt sympathy -- so far as truth and facts will allow, of course. The man who has nothing but vengeance and wrath in his words and looks has no business in the house of mourning. When one is addressing his friends in the language of hope he does not stop to mar it’s beauty by interjections of words of judgment and punishment. ”

“ This world, or order of things political, religious and social, is to pass away with a great noise. The system, with all the works that are therein -- all the details of evils that go to make up the combustible aggregation are to pass away, melt with a fervent heat--the heat of God's just vengeance upon a wicked world; and then will come the third, which Peter says "we, according to his promise, look for new heavens and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness". ”

“ It would therefore represent them in "heaven" as possessed of natures that could take sweet and eternal enjoyment, with their children before their eyes writhing in the most terrible torture, a spectacle no sane person could in this life look upon for a moment without being pained and horrified. How long, my friend, would you enjoy the sight of a spectacle not one thousandth part as bad in this life? ”

“ The groaning millions of our time are looking into the political heavens and watching the clouds, hoping for a rain that will bring relief to a thirsty world; but alas! the clouds have no water to quench their burning thirst, no rain to give life to the withered and blighted fields that are ready for the sickle of the swiftly coming harvest of wrath. ”

“ So that man in death has no more personal, conscious existence than he had before he was formed. All that remains of him is the memory his friends may have of him; and, if he was responsible to the law that shall judge the just and the unjust, there remains an impress, as it were, of his character in the Divine memory, which, when re-formation, or resurrection takes place, will be re-impressed upon him, which will either prove him to be worthy of eternal life or of eternal death. Disembodied existence, then, finds no room in Scripture nor in reason. ”

“ What happens when one leaves his body? The only answer is, Death. Death, according to. popular tradition, is the only thing that can take a man out of his body; and when he is out of his body that is death, they say.
Here is how they express their theory of death in poetry:
"Burdened with this weight of. clay We groan beneath the load, Waiting the hour that sets us free And brings us home to God. "Know that when the soul unclothed Shall from the body fly, 'Twill animate a purer frame With life that cannot die." ”

“ Some have erroneously concluded from this passage that there will be no resurrection of the unjust, because all who are the subjects of the apostle's discourse here are to "be ever with the Lord". This error arises from a short-sighted view, a failure to realize, the fitness of things. There is a time for everything, a time to warn and a time to comfort. At the death-bed side and at the open mouth of the grave are not the places to address sorrow-stricken people upon judgement and punishment. ”

“ If we read in ours newspapers that there is a cloud in the political heavens we do not look up to the sky expecting to see it there. If we read "there is war in the air", we do not understand that the writer is referring to the literal atmosphere. In the world natural there are sun, moon, stars, cloud, air, etc. When we use a figure of speech drawn from the world natural we must be consistent. Hence, if we employ the word heavens to represent a kingdom we must, to be consistent, allow for sun, moon, stars, clouds, air or firmament in the heaven of which we are speaking. ”

“ Taking this view of the parable of the rich man and Lazarus, instead of limiting it’s scope to a supposed individual destiny of two men, and of forcing the Saviour into a oneness of belief with men who, because of their acceptance of the Platonic fiction of the "immortality of the soul" and the serpent’s falsehood that "there is no death", were "of their father the devil", we have a volume of truth condensed into a few words -- a characteristic of the Bible that to the diligent student is seen to be an indelible stamp of divinity. ”

“ In time of drought clouds that contain no rain inspire hope and then tantalize with bitter disappointment. When the earth is dried up, vegetation scorched and burned and man and beast are parched for water, how anxiously men will wait and watch for a cloud, and if they can catch a glimpse of one, even though it be but "like a man's hand", what hope and joy it brings. Now we speak of "clouds of sorrow", clouds of darkness", "clouds of war", etc. ”

“ The common sense that can see in a parable or a symbol how blood can speak, the earth sing, trees rejoice and clap their hands, will have no difficulty in understanding how souls, though dead, can be represented as crying out for to be justly avenged of the cruelty of which they have been the victims. ”

“ The most sublime aspects of Divine truth are only visible to the spiritually minded by letting the light shine and straining, the eyes of the new man to look intensely down to it’s depths, up to it’s heights and away into the vast expanse of it’s illimitable breadths. ”

“ Solomon must be reminded that he made quite a mistake in not guarding his words so as to say that at death the spirit of the good man only goes to God, while that of the bad man goes in an opposite direction --not to God, but to the devil.
You, dear reader, will not be willing to allow that Solomon made a mistake. You will rather be disposed to conclude that the popular theory is so much out of harmony with inspiration that Scripture words, must undergo much changing in order to make them appear to suit the dogmas of theological schools. ”

“ Now suppose we reverse this and contemplate death, in which we lose our life, dissolve or waste away and thus cease to be, is there not a return to non-being? and in such a case, since we say we came into this life, may we not say that in death or dissolution we go out of this world or out of life and still not mean that we exist after we have gone, any more than we mean that we existed before we came.
Now instead of the word gone we may use the word departed; to go out of life might be expressed by the words depart out of life. ”

“ Therefore fear not them who will torture the body but cannot torture or harass the mind. Fear not men in the sufferings you will be called upon to receive at their hands. Be faithful, be calm and steadfast. Then He tells them whom they should fear. "Fear him who is able to destroy"---here is the stronger word, meaning to destroy totally, to be lost, to perish, to be annihilated. ”

“ As there are clouds in the natural heaven, so are there in the political; and so there will be in the new heaven of righteousness. A company of people is called by the apostle Paul a cloud – "Wherefore seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us (Heb. 12:1) . The word cloud is used figuratively in various ways, the thoughts conveyed being derived from the natural heavens, in which there are thunder clouds, clouds without rain and clouds with rain. ”

“ Now, dear reader, you have only to take heed to one word in this verse to see that since the soul here is not the supposed immortal, indestructible soul of popular belief. That word is destroy. "Fear him that is able to destroy both body and soul in hell" (Gehenna) . Please notice that the one word destroy is used to describe what God will do with the body in Gehenna and what He will do with the soul in the same place. Gehenna was known by the Jews to be a place of destruction--destruction of life and destruction of carcasses or bodies after, they had been deprived of life. ”

“ If a man well known to be a non-believer in the same popular theory in our day were to use that theory as a parable of some thought he wished to impress he could not reasonably be charged with believing the theory; he would only be indorsing that which he would be illustrating, not the thing used to illustrate. Here then are the very religious Pharisees deriding the Saviour. They represent the nation of Israel as it then existed in Judea. They were puffed up over having Abraham, as their father and as being God’sfavored people, having "no dealings with thee Samaritans" nor with the Gentiles. ”

“ To show John that there would be a grand sequel to the dreadful drama that was being performed before his eyes, as the canvas, as it were, passes a vision appears of those souls being given white robes, indicative of the glorious reward of immortality, to be bestowed upon them by Him who declared, "Behold; I come quickly and my reward is with me, to give every man (or every soul) as his work shall be."
The only shadow at which the believer in the immortality of the soul can snatch in this case is, that the souls are represented as crying out. "Can dead souls speak?", they triumphantly ask. ”

“ Stick to the text, and we then have a dead man buried, not a living man in torture. Yes, you will say, but it says he was in torment. While he was dead and buried? It is literally true that death closes our eyes, destroys the power of sight. When the rich man died he closed his eyes in death. And does it not say that after he was dead and buried he "lifted up his eyes"? And what would that be for a dead and buried man but resurrection, an opening of his eyes in life after having closed them in death? ”

“ For we that are surrounded by the things seen and temporal do groan, being burdened; not that we desire to enter the death state by being unclothed or divested even of mortal life, but clothed upon by putting on immortality, that mortality may be swallowed up of life. Now he that has begotten in us this earnest hope is God, who has given us the spirit as the earnest of what we shall receive at the coming of the Lord. ”

“ Our birth of the flesh gives us relation to the first only; but God in His goodness has opened up a way by which we may change our relationship from Adam the first to Adam the second, and thereby become now heirs of eternal life, and in the future possessors of that boon with all it’s glorious consequences. ”

“ Our Saviour speaks of God "clothing the grass of the field (Matt. 6:30) . If He could speak of grass being clothed He could also speak of it being unclothed; for the former implies the latter. Who is there foolish enough to think of a disembodied state of grass because the word clothed is applied to it in fact and "unclothed" by implication? For the grass to be clothed is for it to have life; for it to be unclothed is for it to die. Apply this to life and death in relation to man and common sense will readily see the conclusion. ”

“ One would think that the fact of these souls being under an altar, and of them having blood would be sufficient to show that they are not immortal or immaterial. Suppose the words are taken in the most literal sense, we should, standing beside the Apostle John, see a heathen priest place a person on an altar, slay the person or soul, who In the struggles with death falls from the altar and under it cries out, "How long, O Lord, holy and true, dost thou not judge and avenge, our blood (which we see running from the wounded soul) on them that dwell on the earth?" ”

“ I will show you a man who can glory, because, he has been favored with visions and revelations of the Lord". I knew a man in Christ above fourteen years ago, whether beside himself, as you say, whether a fool, as you say--whether beside himself or not beside himself, whether in the body or out of the body, I cannot tell,- God knoweth. ”

“ In Matt 16:26 we have a striking case where the translators have shown their bias in favor of this theory, and yet it only exposes the fallacy of it: What Is a man profited if he shall gain the whole world and lose his own soul? or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?" Many quote this in support the great value of the soul in view of it’s supposed immortality. A little thought, however, will show that such a theory was far removed from the Saviour's mind, and make clear that the word psuche here rendered soul means life. ”