DEATH, NOT TORMENT, THE PENALTY
“Note well the mistake made in assuming eternal torment as the wages of original sin, when the Scriptures explicitly declare, “The wages of sin is death” - not eternal torment (Rom. 6:23). We search the Genesis account of man’s fall, and the sentence imposed, but find no suggestion of a future eternal torture, but merely of a death penalty. Repeating it the second time, the Lord said, “Dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return” (Gen. 3:19). But He said not a word respecting devils, fire and torment. How, then, did the Adversary deceive our fathers, during the Dark Ages, with his errors, which the Apostle styles “doctrines of devils”?
Note the fact that none of the prophecies mention any other than a death penalty for sin. Note that the New Testament likewise declares the same. The Apostle Paul, who wrote more than one-half of the New Testament, assures us, “I have not shunned to declare unto you all the counsel of God” (Acts 20:27), yet he says not a word about eternal torment, on the contrary, discussing this very matter of sin and its penalty, he says, “Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned.” (Rom. 5:12).
Note that it was not eternal torment that passed upon one man, nor upon all men, but death. If someone suggests that death would not be a sufficient penalty for sin, all we would need to do would be to point him to the facts, and thus prove his suggestions illogical. For the sin of disobedience Adam lost his paradisiac home - lost his perfect life and Divine fellowship, and instead got sickness, pain, sorrow, death. Additionally, all of his posterity, billions upon billions in number, were disinherited so far as the blessing are concerned, and have inherited instead, weaknesses, mental, moral and physical, and are, as the Apostle declares, “a groaning creation” (Rom. 8:22).
These countless billions born in sin and “shapen in iniquity” (Psa. 51:5)! A few short hours or days or years of trouble and disobedience brought them to their death bed; the weeping friends stood around with breaking hearts. They were carried to the tomb - ‘‘ashes to ashes; dust to dust.” Reviewing the whole situation - and remembering that all the sickness, sorrow, pain, death, mental and moral decrepitude results from Father Adam’s transgression, what sane man would say that the penalty has been insufficient, and that Justice could or further demands that these millions shall, at death, be hurried to a hell of endless woe, trouble - tormented by demons to all eternity? Dear friends, the person who thus reasons so indicates that he either never had the power to reason, or has lost it.”
