In their reaction against the hell fire and torment preaching of earlier times, the men of this age take an equally fallacious view about the inheritance of God’s gift of immortality. Some take the easy idea that God is very lax in his judgments and will extend salvation to all who “confess Jesus Christ” regardless of their manner of life, while others who show more respect of divine integrity feel that it would be unjust on the part of God to condemn to eternal extinction in natural death all those who in ignorance of his will had died without further opportunity of knowledge.
This latter view is presented in an excerpt from a contemporary periodical.
“Since our God is just, it stands to reason that if He has provided a way of mercy and salvation for Adam and his family—if He purposes to give to each of them a chance for life eternal—then we may be sure that it will be a righteous, a fair, a full opportunity. The fact that it is the Almighty who has purposed this great opportunity for life to our race, sentenced to death in Adam, guarantees us that every member of our race, therefore, shall come to an accurate knowledge of the Truth and to a full opportunity of embracing righteousness on fair, equitable and reasonable terms ; and that only such as have enjoyed such terms and opportunities and knowledge have had their trial for life. Others, who have not yet enjoyed full, fair opportunities of clear knowledge and of opportunity for obedience, have not yet had their trial for life. Of this class is the great mass of mankind, the heathen world, and in all lands the infants who die before reaching years of knowledge and discretion, and the mentally unbalanced, the idiotic. None of these surely have had the opportunities of deciding for themselves the question of life or death by an intelligent acceptance of the Lord and His way of righteousness. The Apostle speaks of the world to come—that is, the Age to come in which righteousness will prevail (2 Pet. 3. 13). And we are assured that it is there, in that Day, that these classes enumerated, which constitute the great majority of mankind, will have their opportunity and testing, to determine whether they shall enjoy an eternity of Divine favor or whether they shall be utterly blotted out, extinguished.
. . . But now we come back to the civilized and intelligent and the educated ; and we say, Are not all who live in civilized lands on trial for life or death in the present time ? We answer No ! the great majority of them are not. The great majority who reside in Christian lands are blind and deaf as respects the Divine character and Plan, and are thoroughly incompetent to make a choice as between good and evil.”
Deductions such as the foregoing find no echo in the Scriptures. They represent human sentiment rather than divine revelation, for the Bible gives no hint of a further opportunity for those who in this life have not come within reach of God’s promises. One cannot read the scriptures in their condemnation of pagans and their practices, or about the day of judgment, without finding in them a finality which makes no provision for an extension of leniency.
God’s love and justice has been clearly set forth from Eden onward. In the beginning God gave commandments to regulate human conduct in relation to God, but man chose to disobey, and the disobedience resulted finally in widespread ignorance of God’s requirements and by tradition men have learned to love the evil of their own making and to hate the good of God’s making. And so God has said, “I am a jealous God, visiting the iniquities of the fathers upon the children, even to the third and fourth generation of them that hate me.” This divine dictum is observable in all the world down to this time. For the more one thinks about opening a further door of opportunity in the age to come for the especial benefit of those who in this life have either consciously or unconsciously rejected his promises, the more apparent it becomes that divine justice could not be served by that means. Let one, for example, start preaching Christ to countless thousands of professing christians and he will soon discover that in their hearts they despise what they call the effeminacy of religion, preferring to pursue their normal course of material advancement in this life ; or let one preach Christ to the millions of earth’s pagans and followers of oriental philosophical cults and he will soon discover how little Christ appeals to them. It is obvious that long ago the world exercised its freedom of choice and has become hardened in its chosen way.
Was there unjustice with God because he said to Pharaoh of old, “Even for this same purpose have I raised thee up, that I might shew my power in thee, and that my name might be declared throughout all the earth” ? On this Paul comments, “Therefore hath he mercy on whom he will have mercy, and whom he will he hardeneth. . . . Shall the thing formed say to him that formed it, Why hast thou made me thus ?” (Rom. 9. I7-20). “It is not of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God that sheweth mercy.”
In choosing between the sons of Isaac, through whom the “Seed” was called, God said, “Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated”, and this choice was made before the children were born. Can it be said that Esau was deprived of his opportunity by God ? Or was God aware beforehand of the character which the unborn child would develop as he matured into manhood ?
Out of the dust of the earth God created man and commanded him to be “fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth”. God placed a value upon human life with the command, “Thou shalt not kill.” But every human being has not the same value in his sight. Abraham, for example, believed God and it was accounted to him for righteousness, and he was called the Friend of God. And this was not written of him for his sake alone, “but for us also to whom it shall be imputed, if we believe on him that raised up Jesus our Lord from the dead ; who was delivered for our offences, but was raised again for our justification” (Rom. 4. 23-25).
This underlines the opportunity and our responsibility to it.
In the matter of the relative values of human lives, Psalm 49 makes the contrast clear. “Man being in honour abideth not : he is like the beasts that perish. . . Like sheep they are laid in the grave ; death shall feed on them ; and the upright shall have dominion over them in the morning ; and their beauty shall consume in the grave from their dwelling. But God will redeem my soul from the power of the grave : for he shall receive e” (ver. 12-15). And Isaiah adds his inspired conviction ; speaking of Israel’s foreign overlords, he says, “They are dead, they shall not live ; they are deceased they shall not rise : therefore hast thou visited and destroyed them, and made all their memory to perish” (ver. 14). And of ignorant men Paul says, “As many as have sinned without law shall also perish without law : and as many as have sinned in the law shall be judged by the law” (Rom. 2. 12).
But in both cases all men stand condemned before God. In this state they can either perish : “If our gospel be hid, it is hid to them that are lost” ; or they can be saved, through the operation of the grace and mercy of God working through faith in his Son Jesus Christ.
God is “calling out of the gentiles a people for his name”, and of them he says he will make a new creation, “Christ is the firstfruits, afterwards they that are Christ’s at his coming . . . for he must reign, till he hath put all enemies under his feet. The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death” (1 Cor. 15. 23-26).
God’s process for the employment of his divine love and justice is :—reconciliation, repentance, obedience. And all scripture makes it clear that the process applies to this life, now, and not in the future or under the constraints of a new order in the world to come. And there is instency and urgency in the preaching of the apostles : “Therefore being justified by faith we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ . . .
When we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, being reconciled, we shall be saved by his life . . . Shall we continue in sin that grace might abound ? God forbid.” (Rom. 5 and 6).
Much more could be said along the same line to show that now is the day of opportunity, “Today, if ye will harden not your hearts as in the Provocation in the wilderness.” To what purpose, then, do men beg the question of a “second chance” for human failures ? Is it because that in their inner conscience they suspect that they themselves are presuming upon the mercy and long suffering of God ? Why do they advance a plea that destroys the whole sense of urgency in the act of repentance which Christ and his apostles stress : “Save yourselves from this untoward generation” ; “The day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night ; in which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat, the earth and the works thereof shall be burned up” ; “Yourselves know perfectly that the day of the Lord so corned’ as a thief in the night. For when they shall say, Peace and safety, then sudden destruction cometh upon them” (1 Thess. 5. 2, 3)
Reflections on the Potter and the Clay