Eternal destruction

“ Nothing real can be lost, even in the dissipation of a million universes. Utter destruction, everlasting death,—all such terms of fear have no correspondence to any truth but the eternal law of change. ”

“ This is why this record of destruction will be shown to you Gentiles, to give you the chance to repent, that you may not allow these murderous combinations to get above you. If you do build up and support these secret combinations, then the work of destruction will come upon you as the Eternal God's sword of justice falls upon you, causing your overthrow. ”

“ On other and practical grounds we see that the theory of eternal progression is untenable, for destruction is the goal of everything earthly. All our struggles and hopes and fears and joys, what will they lead to? We shall all end in death. ”

“ May the Eternal grant me to praise thee!
In the present course, dangerous
Our work; destruction is a slight impulse of wrath.
They reckon of the saints a tribe,
King of heaven, may I be eloquent about thee! ”

“ Their punishment will be no less than destruction, not of their being, but of their bliss; not that of the body alone, but both as to body and soul. (3.) This destruction will be everlasting. They shall be always dying, and yet never die. Their misery will run parallel with the line of eternity. The chains of darkness are everlasting chains, and the fire is everlasting fire. It must needs be so, since the punishment is inflicted by an eternal God, fastening upon an immortal soul, set out of the reach of divine mercy and grace. ”

“ But that which is the sum and accomplishment of God's curse and man's misery is that death to come,—eternal death,—not death simply, but an “everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord and the glory of his power;”—an infinite loss, because the loss of such a glorious life in the enjoyment of God's presence ”

“ Where are they whelmd beneath these ruins in horrible destruction
5 And if Eternal falling I repose on the dark bosom
Of winds & waters or thence fall into a Void where air
Is not down falling thro immensity ever & ever
I lose my powers weakend every revolution till a death
Shuts up my powers then a seed in the vast womb of darkness
10 I dwell in dim oblivion. brooding over me the Enormous worlds
Reorganize me shooting forth in bones & flesh & blood
I am regenerated to fall or rise at will or to remain
A labourer of ages a dire discontent a living woe
Wandring in vain. ”

“ Hell is destruction from the presence of the Lord, 2 Thess. i. 9. It is a perpetual banishment from the fountain of all good. This is the choice of sinners; and so shall their doom be, to their eternal confusion. ”

“ They have accepted the burden of eternal life. They have taken the agony from birth; and their life does not fail them even in the hour of their destruction. ”

“ It buries our bodies, burns the present world, triumphs over death by a general resurrection, and opens all into an eternal state.
It never considers us in any other respect than as fallen spirits, it disregards worldly distinctions, and proposes nothing to our fears but eternal misery, nothing to our hopes but an endless enjoyment of God. ”

“ This time, these hundreds and thousands of years, how they mock at our frail edifices! how Oblivion triumphs in every part of the earth, with ruins crumbling beneath her feet! and Destruction, while with unfeeling malignity she tramples every form of life in the dust! ”

“ You will recall more clearly than I certain horrible, catastrophic, universal-ruin passages in Revelation—monsters swallowing the universe, blood and fire and clouds and an eternal crash, rolling ruin enveloping all things—well, all that's come. There are, perhaps, ten million men dead of this war and, perhaps, one hundred million persons to whom death would be a blessing. ”

“ Like cormorants that seek a submerged prey.
An angel of destruction guards the door
And keeps the peace of our ancestral home;
Freedom to dream, to work, and to adore,
These vagrant days, nights of untroubled breath,
Are bought with death. ”

“ And since this soul, on the dissolution of the body, is cut off and destroyed, does not continue after death, then is it, Sir, that the soul is completely annihilated.” Thus is it that some maintain the cutting off, the destruction, the annihilation of a living being. ”

“ Thou, too, shalt die, and dread annihilation meet!
The soul shall happier be when thy ruin ’s complete.
Listen, then, thou scourge! “And the angel which I saw
Stand upon the sea, and upon the earth, lifted up his hand{208}
And sware by Him that liveth for ever and ever
That time should be no longer.” Never, no, never,
In the night of eternity shall thy face be seen;
Thou shalt not break in to mar existence more serene.
In the deeps of outer darkness shall be thy doom,
In the desolate voids of black, eternal gloom. ”

“ I shall be tormented in eternity even as I suffer now. I am not a crowned potentate in a magnificent city, but an evil malefactor, in hell tormented. I perish, dragging a multitude of the people to destruction. ”

“ Those whose names are not written in the book of life are condemned, body and soul, to eternal torments which is the second death. Hence death and hell (the wicked) are cast into the pool of fire to be tormented for ever with the beast and his prophet. ”

“ Because the world must end; all, all must die,—except Satan! Immortal more than God! I live to bring chaos into other worlds!
DEATH.
But thou hast not, as I, this vista of eternal nothingness before thee; thou dost not suffer with this death-like cold, as I.
SATAN.
Nay, but I quiver under fierce and unrelaxing hearts of molten lava, which burn the doomed and which e’en I cannot escape.
For thou, at least, hast only to destroy. But I bring birth and I give life. I direct empires and govern the affairs of States and of hearts. ”

“ Why does it waste, and further shrink from heaven?
If I nor lie your pity can provoke,
See your own heavens, the heavens begin to smoke!
Should once the sparkles catch those bright abodes,
Destruction seizes on the heavens and gods ”

“ We should be awake while we are here, and try to release them from their bondage, for ere long the terrible storm will break loose; every man's hand will be let loose upon his neighbour, and blood and distress, turmoil, sorrow, misery, war, and destruction will sweep the whole face of the earth as with the besom of destruction. ”

“ Powerless to move or speak, he stood watching the terrible circle of fire, extend and expand, till all the visible universe seemed melting in one red furnace of flame;—and in himself he felt no hope,—no chance of rescue;—in himself he knew that the appalling work of destruction was being accomplished with a deadly swiftness that left no time for lamentation,—that the nations of the world were as flying straws swept into the burning, without space or moment for a parting prayer or groan. ”

“ Then, both ourselves and seed at once to free
From what we fear for both, let us make short,—
Let us seek Death;—or, he not found, supply
With our own hands his office on ourselves:
Why stand we longer shivering under fears,
That show no end but death, and have the power,
Of many ways to die the shortest choosing,
Destruction with destruction to destroy?—
She ended here, or vehement despair
Broke off the rest: so much of death her thoughts
Had entertained, as dyed her cheeks with pale. ”

“ Saints have conquered death's destruction,
Shewed Thy path to gods and men!
Whoso seeks Thee not in worship,
Shunned by dearest kith and kin,
Lives a life of vain illusion,
Dies a death of woe and sin ”

“ For slaves, not men. With bitter hand, destroy
This idol of destruction! Smite all haunts
Of faith and resignation and defeat
And rest and peace and comfort. Heaven and earth
Alike are poisoned: somnolence in heaven,
Decay on earth is regnant. Every faith
And law and nation must in wreck go down
For us who see the death that taints their halls;
And ruin shall walk reckless through the world,
Destroying tombs where life is daily slain!
(Faust pauses)
BRANDER (rises suddenly from his place in the audience)
My friends, I came to listen, not to speak. ”

“ Millions of years will pass away and still these torments will exist as if they were only just beginning. Alas! they will endure forever, — yes, forever. " The smoke of their torments shall ascend up for ever and ever; neither have they rest day nor night." (Apoc. xiv. 11.) 1. They will be eternal, because the human soul is immortal; "They shall desire to die, and death shall fly from them." ”

“ Their greatest consolation, their purest joy was found in their belief that all who failed to obey their words, to wear their yoke, would suffer infinite torture in the eternal dungeons of hell.
Living for God was tried in the Dark Ages. Thousands of scaffolds were wet with blood, countless swords were thrust through human hearts. ”

“ If the horrible burden and plague of all men, death, still presses on me, from which I am not secure for one instant, but go in fear of it, of hell and the wrath of God, and tremble and shiver at the prospect, and this without any hope of its coming to an end, but continuing for all eternity? ”

“ And everything which is in this world shall be given to destruction, to destruction and destruction, even this nature which you so passionately love, and which it is so hard and painful for you to renounce.' Everything drives us to the mysterious realm of the eternally fantastic, eternally chaotic, and—who knows?—it may be, the eternally beautiful.... ”

“ And, lastly, the destruction takes place, when the good gifts of Providence are caused to perish either by neglect, or by waste, or by absolute destruction with fire and sword, as when the demon of war stalks through the harvest-fields, cutting down and trampling under foot the golden treasures which a bountiful Creator had provided for man's sustenance and enjoyment, and covering with desolation and smoking ruins the face of God's beautiful world. ”

“ Do you not behold the clouds open, and destruction lurid and dire pour down on the blasted earth? See you not the thunderbolt fall, and are deafened by the shout of heaven that follows its descent? Feel you not the earth quake and open with agonizing groans, while the air is pregnant with shrieks and wailings,—all announcing the last days of man? ”

“ Lights up the impenetrable horror of gloom,
Chilling the very soul, like an impending doom.
Is this the lone region of death and fell despair?
And is hell with all its fury lurking there?
Do Satan and Apollyon roam those deadly deeps,
Gloating o’er the suffering of the damned that ne’er sleeps?
Was’t there the rebellious hosts of heaven found their doom,
To shriek in nameless torture in so dread a tomb?
Hist! hist! did ye hear it? that shuddering roll
Of frenzied anguish, creeping up from damnation’s goal?
O relentless Time! Let’s flee away from this dread sphere ”

“ Eternity will repeat the antagonism—for as God once swept off procreant mankind by a transient flood of water, sparing but eight from a world of men, so at last He will ruin the majority of the whole human race in a permanent deluge of fire, wherein the million generations of men, each millions of millions strong, shall "perish everlastingly," in never-ending fiery rot, while He and the Devil alone shall take delight in this flaming massacre, this funeral pile of humanity, where the worm of agony dieth not in the fire of his wrath, which is not quenched for ever and ever. ”

“ Each drop that he pours upon the fire increases its intensity, and spreads the destruction. There are men who do not hesitate, by the indulgence of pride, to increase that war of passions which burns so fiercely and destructively in the world and desolates ten thousand hearts and homes. But the well advised, by the exercise of the grace of humility, endeavour to quench the conflagration which, first kindled by hell, has devastated the earth for so many generations. ”

“ For this God’s law of Compensation makes but one return—Destruction. Wars shall prevail; plague and famine shall ravage the nations;—young children shall murder the parents who bore them; theft and rapine shall devastate the land. For your world is striving to live without God,—and a world without God is a disease that must die. Like a burnt-out star this Earth shall fall from its sphere and vanish utterly—and its sister-planets shall know it no more. ”

“ O lord of the universe, cherish not the wrath for the destruction of creatures. No more let creatures, immobile and mobile, be destroyed. Through thy grace, O illustrious one, let the threefold universe, viz., the Future, the Past, and the Present exist. Thou, O Lord, hadst blazed up with wrath. From that wrath of thine, a substance like fire sprang into existence. That fire is even now blasting rocks and trees and rivers, and all kinds of herbs and grass. Indeed, that fire is exterminating the immobile and the mobile universe. The mobile and the immobile universe is being reduced to ashes. ”

“ Devouring everything, devouring itself, fire seems to leave off its frenzy, only to devour the sooner any mortal thing that comes in the way to retard destruction. A few embers, then a handful of ashes, are the sole evidence of what was once kingly or beggarly. ”

“ Earth with thy folds, and hollows and holes, into which a man may fling himself and crouch down! In the spasm of terror, under the hailing of annihilation, in the bellowing death of the explosions, O Earth, thou grantest us the great resisting surge of new-won life. Our being, almost utterly carried away by the fury of the storm, streams back through our hands from thee, and we, thy redeemed ones, bury ourselves in thee, and through the long minutes in a mute agony of hope bite into thee with our lips! ”

“ But I must suffer all things, in the pangs of flame, sick and sorrowful, lamenting here my lost possessions, which once I owned, while still my home was in the heavens. Will the Eternal grant us ever again a home and dwelling in the heavenly kingdom, as He did of old?"
(ll. 279-297) So wailed God's adversaries, as they burned in hell. God, the Lord, was moved to wrath against them for their blasphemy. Wherefore should every living man, whose heart is good, resolve to banish sinful thoughts and loathsome evil. ”