*From "Man and the Future State," F. W. G.*

The thought of a hope after death suits men well, and they are drinking in this delusion. It is that which those who trifle with a Saviour's mercy will take to hang themselves over that awful abyss of hell, till they prove it, not the fire of love, but the awful and eternal fire of wrath, which answers to the undying worm within.

Is man willing to have God's salvation, and God lacking in will or in power to save him? Never, surely. "Whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved." Is salvation a doubtful, laborious process, arrived at by long effort, by prayers, by strivings, which may have to be eked out after death by some supplementary process? Nay, but being "justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ," "justified through the faith of Christ, and not by works of the law." Is hell-fire God's process of salvation for those who look to Him?-or God's wrath upon those who reject His salvation? It is the latter, and not the former. Did Christ tell the "poor in spirit" that theirs was the lake of fire or "the kingdom of heaven"? Did He tell the mourners they should be "comforted" or tormented?

The preaching of this hope is really infidelity as to fundamental truth-as to Christ and grace. Those only could find encouragement in it who are ignorant of grace, or else those who want comfort to go on in sin as long as they can. The apostle asks, "How shall we escape, if we neglect so great salvation?" The Lord bids, "Fear Him who is able to destroy both body and soul in hell."

It is not an exceptional thing that the question of God's love and the denial of His truth should go together.

Let us consider the passage which is largely made the basis for this delusion.

"For Christ also hath once suffered for sins, the Just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh, but quickened by the Spirit, by which also He went and preached to the spirits in prison, which sometime were disobedient when once the long-suffering of God waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was a preparing, wherein few, that is, eight souls, were saved by water" (1 Pet. 3:18-20).

Let us carefully examine this passage, therefore, and see what it really says and teaches. First, it was by the Spirit that Christ went and preached-not personally. It has been sought to make "the Spirit" signify Christ's human spirit; with this necessary effect, that if He were "quickened in His human spirit," that human spirit must have itself died, in order to be quickened. On this account it has been attempted to substitute "quick," or "alive," or "preserved alive," for "quickened:" meanings which the word cannot possibly bear. "Made alive by the Spirit" can only refer to resurrection, and thus it is not Christ as a disembodied spirit that is spoken of at all.

But they urge that "He went and preached" shows a personal going. It has been answered that in the same way He "came and preached peace," in Eph. 2:17, must be (what confessedly it is not) a personal coming. "By the Spirit He went" excludes the thought entirely.
Then further as to the "spirits in prison." They are in prison now (that is the force of it) as having been once disobedient in the days of Noah. But disobedient to what? Why, to the Spirit's preaching. It was of these that of old God had said, "My Spirit shall not always strive with man." Plainly it was in that time of old that Christ had preached to them, and what should make it certain, without any nice questions of translation, is that the limit of God's striving with these antediluvians is plainly set:My Spirit shall not always strive with man, for that he also is flesh:but his days shall be an hundred and twenty years." It is strange that some should think this a limit put to human life, which was for generations afterwards far longer. It is the limit of the Spirit's striving with that generation, at the end of which the flood came. With them the end of the Spirit's striving and of their life came together. And it is just to these, these teachers claim, that Christ specially preached more than two thousand years afterward, in direct contradiction of the divine assertion that His Spirit would not strive.

The text is an unfortunate one for such a hope as is advocated. It is unfortunate that the very examples of probation protracted beyond the grave should be the very examples given us by the word of God itself of the precise opposite! And if the fate of these dead sinners was irrevocably fixed by death, it must be obvious that we have no good reason to suppose that ours is not as much as theirs. Nay, it is unreasonable to imagine that they are an exception to, instead of an illustration of, the universal rule.

Another similar text, however, in the next chapter of the first epistle of Peter is also used. Let us take it, and see if it will lead us to any other conclusion.

"For this cause was the gospel preached also to them that are dead that they might be judged according to men in the flesh, but live according to God in the Spirit" (1 Pet. 4:6). Are we to infer that the people were dead when preached to? The passage reads literally "to the dead;" and we must gather the rest from the context.

The apostle has been speaking of the altered conduct of those converted from heathenism, and of how the Gentiles around mis-judged them. "Wherein they think it strange that ye run not with them to the same excess of riot, speaking evil of you; who shall give account to Him that is ready to judge the quick and the dead." Thus sinners in their fleshly way were judging the spiritual life of those approved of God by it. Christians were judged after the manner of men in a fleshly way, but lived according to God in a spiritual one. And for this -to separate them from the ranks of these mis-judging ones, themselves the objects of God's righteous judgment-had the gospel been preached to them. So far all is plain; but why "to the dead?" Surely because the apostle would bring in the very thought that death fixed the condition in which it found men. These righteous ones had got the good of that preached gospel, which had made them anticipate the coming doom of sinners, and accept the judgment of men in the flesh, rather than God's final and eternal one. But could they possibly be "dead" before they were preached to? Certainly not, if they were being judged according to men in the flesh for their changed lives! The context is conclusively against the Restorationist interpretation.

We must yet say a word as to another scripture, where the "great gulf fixed" assures us of the impossibility, in the death state at least, of any passing from the flame of torment on the one side to the comfort in Abraham's bosom on the other. No doubt the expressions here are figurative; yet they express very plainly what they figure. It is Christ who has fixed it. He has ordained that none shall pass it, and that settles it, for the death state at least, that none shall. After this, eternal judgment allows no escape. So the fact remains of a "great gulf fixed" already in the intermediate state between the two classes of just and unjust-a gulf which cannot be traversed from either side. "After death, the judgment," and the nature and duration of that final award we have considered.

But all Scripture assures us of the momentous fact that the significance of the present life is just this, that here and now is decided man's eternal destiny. He is called to repent to-day, lest God swear "he shall not enter into His rest" (Heb. 4:7,11). And who shall say that brief as indeed it is, the present life may not as fully test the individual man as indefinite ages of probation or eternity itself? The judgment after death it must be allowed is according to deeds done in the body, and no other. If these did not after all characterize the man, that judgment would be partial, and therefore false. It is in vain then to plead for the extension of a day of grace beyond the present, which brings with it no extension of responsibility such as the day of judgment would take notice of.

In conclusion, as to the arguments and scriptures advanced by those advocating Restorationism in its various forms, it may simply be said that they are based upon a wrong interpretation of the many statements or promises of earthly conditions, opportunities, and blessings of millennial character and time, dealing largely with the restoration of Israel, and in connection with her, the blessing of the nations. They confound national with individual restoration, and national with individual resurrection. Then failing thus to distinguish, they make national conversion, deliverance, etc., also of individual application. Some New Testament passages are then forced into supposed accord with the Old Testament scriptures, but once see the false principle of this system of interpretation, which has been, I believe, sufficiently shown, and the whole building falls with the removal of its foundation.

The familiar passage, Acts 3:21, upon which so much is built, as though it meant a restitution of the universe, speaks plainly of things, not persons, and (according to what we have seen to be the scope of that Old Testament to which, of course, the apostle refers) it is upon the earth-and nowhere else. "Restitution of all (the) things of which the prophets have spoken" is the true force of the word. Likewise in Ephesians and Colossians, it is things, not persons, and in the latter place the persons reconciled are named apart. In none of these passages is hell named or by any possibility included; neither fallen angels nor lost men, but heavenly and earthly things. Reconciliation in Scripture in no way involves what Restorationists try to make out of it. Nor in the light of the testimony of Scripture as we have considered it, can the subjection of Phil. 2:10,11 be construed to mean virtually salvation.

It must suffice now to say that there is nothing in the whole array of argument and scriptural quotations presented by any of the Annihilationist, or Restorationist schools, in their various individual or combined forms, which affects the plain teaching of Scripture as we have presented it in these pages.

These systems of error deal capriciously with the Word of God, and do not hesitate to set it aside by supposing copyist errors, etc., where its voice is to plainly against them. The judgment of sin is lowered, the person of Christ and the Spirit seriously attacked, atonement too, in fact all vital to Christianity becomes affected by these views.