Immortality or Resurrection (Updated) by William West (reading strategies book .TXT) 📖

/> to all who want the truth.
Worst Than Gods Of Paganism: "Paganism in its worst forms has never surpassed, if it
has equaled, the savage and terrible descriptions which have been given by Christians of their
God. The character ascribed to Him; the dreadful wrath and vengeance with which He is moved;
the cold and malignant purpose of creation in regard to million of souls; the stern severity and
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gloom of His government; the horrible and never-ceasing tortures which He will inflict on His
helpless, children-all this, and much more of like character, defies the power of language to set it
forth in its true light, or to present it in a manner adequate to its shocking revolting reality."
Thomas Thayer, "The Origin And History Of The Doctrine Of Endless Punishment."
Makes The Universe A Theater Of Cursing And Blasphemy: "What, then, is the
doctrine of endless misery? Stripped of all its drapery, it is no more or less than this: That a large
part of the human family are doomed to suffer the most intense and indescribable torments as
long as God shall exist, without the least hope or possibility of being benefited by their
sufferings. In some part of this beautiful universe, God has prepared an awful, dismal, burning
hell, and there countless myriads of human beings shall weep and groan, unpitied and
unrelieved, while ceaseless ages shall roll; and when ten thousand times ten thousand years shall
have passed, they shall have as long to suffer as if their sufferings had but just began. And, then,
to think of the number of the lost to remember that there are on this earth not less than eight
hundred millions of human beings, and that out of these there are not more than fifty millions
that can be saved, upon the broadest system of partialism; and that, by consequence, there must
be more than seventy thousand souls going down to hell every day; and, then, to think of
generations that have past, and reflect upon the vast and countless multitudes that must be
congregated in that huge reservoir of tears and woe; the very thought bears the lie upon its front.
The degree of the punishment outrages all ideas of proportion between guilt and punishment,
and the number of the victims shocks all feelings of humanity or mercy. It makes the universe a
theater of cursing and blasphemy, rather than a field for the display of the boundless perfections
of a merciful and benevolent Creator." I. D. Williamson, An Examination Of The Doctrine Of
Endless Punishment, 1860.
God The Tormentor: Spurgeon, one of the greatest of Baptist preachers, said, "When
thou driest, thy soul will be tormented alone; that will be a hell for it; but at the day of judgment
thy body will join thy soul and then thou wilt have twin hells, thy soul sweating drops of blood,
and thy body suffused with agony. In fire exactly like that which we have on earth, thy body will
lie, asbestos like, forever unconsumed, all thy veins roads for the feet of pain to travel on, every
nerve a string on which the devil shall forever play his diabolical tune of hell's unutterable
lament." From his sermon "The Resurrection of the Dead." Like most who believe God will
forever torment many billions, he must have some revelation that is not in the Bible to tell him
about their suffering. In his day most orthodox Protestants believed the Devil would be doing the
tormenting, but today most orthodox Protestants think he was wrong, that God is the one who
will be doing the tormenting. The man made "Hell" is forever changing. What was orthodox in
his day is no longer orthodox. For many Baptists his truth is no longer truth.
Ebenezer Erskine in "The Judgment" "How shall the adulterer satisfy lust when he lies on a
bed of flames? The swearer shall have enough of wounds and blood when the devil shall torture
his body and rack his soul in hell. The drunkard shall have plenty of his cups when scalding lead
shall be poured down his throat, and his breath draw flames of fire instead of air."
An Atrocious Slander On God: Henry Ward Beeches speaking of Michael Angelo's
painting, The Last Judgment said, "Let anyone see the enormous gigantic coils of fiends and man;
let anyone look at the defiant Christ that stands like a superb athlete at the front, hurling his
enemies from him and calling his friends toward him as Hercules might have done; let anyone
look upon that hideous wriggling mass that goes plunging down through the air-serpents and
man and beasts of every nauseous kind, mixed together; let him look at the lower parts of the
picture, where with the pitchforks men are by devils being cast into cauldrons and into burning
fires, where hateful fiends are gnawing the skulls of suffering sinners, and where there is hellish
cannibalism going on-let a man look at that picture and scenes which it depicts, and he sees what
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were the ideas which man once had of Hell and of divine justice. It was a night-mare as hideous
as was ever begotten by the hellish brood it-self; and it was an atrocious slander on God...I do not
wonder that men have reacted from these horrors."
Jonathan Edwards, "The world will probably be converted into a great lake or liquid globe of
fire, in which the wicked shall be overwhelmed, which will always be in tempest, in which they
shall be tossed to and fro, having no rest day or night, vast waves and billows of fire continually
rolling over their heads, of which they shall forever be full of a quick sense within and without;
their heads, their eyes, their tongues, their hands, their feet, their loins and their vitals, shall
forever be full of a flowing, melting fire, fierce enough to melt the very rocks and elements; and,
also, they shall eternally be full of the most quick and lively sense to feel the torments; not for
one minute, not for one day, not for one age, not for two ages, not for a hundred ages, not for
ten thousand millions of ages, one after another, but for forever and ever, without an end at all,
and never to be delivered."
Benson, "He will exert all his divine attributes to make them as wretched as the capacity of
their nature will admit...They must be perpetually swelling their enormous sums of guilt, and still
running deeper, immensely deeper, in debt to divine and infinite justice. Hence after the longest
imaginable period, they will be so far from having discharged their debt that they will find more
due than when they first began to suffer." He has God charging interest on the debt of the
suffering sinner owes Him at such a high rate that the sinner gets more behind as time goes on.
If the punishment exceeds the crime by billions of times would it be justice or injustice?
Dr. E. Beecher said it, "Involves God, his whole administration, and his eternal kingdom in the
deepest dishonor that the mind of man or angel can conceive, by the violation of the highest and
most sacred principles of honor and right, and on the scale of infinity and eternity" Page 225.
"The human mind cannot be held back from abhorring such a theory, except by the most
unnatural violence to its divinely inspired convictions of honor and right" Page 306, Conflict of
the Ages.
WHAT KIND OF JUSTICE IS THIS? To fill many books with the most harrowing
descriptions of torment would not equal the torment we are told that God will give to just
one person for all eternity. After someone who never knows of God in his lifetime on
earth has been in torment in Hell for not believing in God for trillions times trillions of
years, we are told they will still have eternity with not one second less time to suffer.
Those who believe in Hell say, "It is justice." My question to them is how do they know
it to be justice; where did God tell this to them? It being justice is something they had to
make up to try to justify their heathen Hell even if they make God be much more evil
than Satan. They are saying, “Stepping on a person’s lawn may get you a disapproving
look, but stepping on God’s lawn will get you eternal torment by God.” No one could
know this without a revelation from God and there is no such revelation, it is an addition,
it is making God evil just to justify their evil teaching.
DO YOU WONDER WHERE IN THE BIBLE THEY FOUND THINGS LIKE THE
DEVIL POURING SCALDING LEAD DOWN THE THROAT OF A PERSON AND
MANY THOUSANDS OF LIKE THINGS? THE ANSWER IS THAT THEY ARE IN
THE SAME PASSAGE WHERE THEY FOUND HELL AND THE SAME PASSAGE
WHERE THEY FOUND THE NAME OF HELL. THEY FOUND THEM IN THE
TEACHING OF MEN, NOT THE BIBLE.
"As a child, Robert Ingersoll heard a preacher proclaim the doctrine that God subjects sinners
to unending torment in hell. Ingersoll decided that if God were like that, then he hated Him.
Later he wrote of this belief that it 'makes man an eternal victim and God an eternal fiend. It is
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the one infinite horror. Below this Christian dogma, savagery cannot go.' There are
substantial moral and logical difficulties in believing in a God who tortures
His enemies forever. Like Ingersoll, thousands of thinking men have turned
away from such a God" Tim Crosby in Ministry.
E. Petavel, D. D., "The lamentable results of the Platonic doctrine may be seen in the theology
of a Tertullian and an Augustine,--theology called orthodox.--which makes the God of love an
Executioner whom innumerable victims will curse eternally. Such a doctrine is a burden even to
its adherents. It has drawn from them admissions, which we are bound to record. Henry Rogers
declared that 'for his part he would not be sorry to see every child die at the age of four years.'
Albert Barnes admits, with a soul full of anguish that he cannot understand why there are men
destined to suffer forever. 'The Gospel,' says Isaac Taylor, 'fills us with a universal sympathy
which sometimes make us regret that it must be true in all its teaching.' Calvin himself cannot
refrain from confessing that the decree of God concerning sinners seems to him horrible
('decretum horrible fateor'). In a word, the traditional dogma conducts to pessimism by making
evil eternal. What has been the result? Extremes meeting, the doctrine of eternal
suffering has led to Universalism. More or less secretly many of the partisans of the
traditional dogma, unable to hold it any longer, have quitted their position, to embrace the hope
of a universal salvation; while others wander in the penumbra of eschatological skepticism" The
Extinction Of Evil, Page 78, 1889.
THE CAUSE OF ATHEISM AND STUMBLING IN MANY Matthew 18:6
A DOCTRINE THAT MAKES ATHEISTS
God has been made so cruel, and this doctrine is so unthinkable that it has
probably created more atheists, and caused more weak believers to fall away than
any other false teaching. The dread of Hell has caused misery and metal anguish to
countless millions and INSTEAD OF THE HORROR OF HELL TURNING MANY
TO GOD TO ESCAPE ETERNAL TORMENT, MANY MILLIONS HAVE BEEN
TURNED AWAY FROM SUCH AN UNJUST GOD. The doctrine of Hell is one of
Satan's best tools to turn many away from Christ. Do you want to give an account to God
at the judgment for teaching it? No heathen religion has a God as unjust and fiendish as
many "Christians" make their God.
Edward White said, "It cannot be denied that the frightful doctrines on the future of
humanity...supported by the general authority of nearly all Christendom for at least fourteen