The Great Salvation/7
PROPOSITION 7.
The Nature of Man Man Is Mortal, a Creature of the Dust
Now, dear reader, I want to appeal to you upon another subject. You know that it is the belief of the religious world that man is an immortal soul, and that when death takes place the real man does not die -- he simply forsakes his body and continues to live without a body. If he has been a good man, he goes to heaven to live in happiness; if he has been a bad man, he goes to hell (supposed to be a place of torment) to live in misery. Now, just think for a moment. The Bible says there is to be a day of judgment.
Eccl. 3:17 I said in mine heart, God shall judge the righteous and the wicked; for there is a time there for every purpose and for every work.
II Cor. 5:10 For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, that everyone may receive the things in body, according to that he hath done, whether good or bad.
This judgment, you must know, is not at death, but at the second coming of Christ:
II Tim. 4:1 I charge thee therefore before God and the. Lord Jesus Christ, who shall judge the quick and the dead at his appearing and his kingdom.
Matt. 25:31 When the Son Of man shall come in his glory, and all his holy angels with him, then shall he sit upon the throne of his glory; and before him shall be gathered all nations; and he shall separate them one from another as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats.
Here is proof that the judgment of good and bad is to take place when Christ comes back to the earth. So it follows they have not yet been judged. Now, then, to return to the point. If it be true that the good go to happiness when they die (and have to die to get there)! and the bad go to misery when they die, what is the judgment for? I appeal, reader, to your reason. Can you believe that God will reward and punish good and bad men for thousands of years and then call them to judgment? You will possibly say, "O well, God knows where to put them when they die as well as He will at the judgment day." Granted; but if it is a question of His knowledge, why has he provided a day of judgment at a set time? Do you not think there is something wrong with a theory that represents God as arranging in His plan for a day of judgment in which He will reward every man according as His work shall he (Rev. 22:12), and yet rewarding some for hundreds of years before that day of judgment arrives?
Now the Bible will help us out of this difficulty, and the first step is to believe that man is mortal, a creature of the dust.
I Cor. 15:47 The first man is of the earth, earthy.
Gen. 2:7 And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground.
Gen. 3:19 For out of it (dust) wast thou taken; for dust thou art and unto
dust shalt thou return.
Job 33:6 I also am formed out of clay
Gen. 3:23 Therefore the LORD God sent him (Adam) forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground, from whence he was taken.
Gen. 18:27 And Abraham answered and said, Behold now, I have taken upon me to speak unto the Lord which am but dust and ashes.
Job 4:17 Shall mortal man be more just than God? Shall a man be more pure than his maker?
Job 10:9 Remember, I beseech thee, that thou has made me as the clay; and wilt thou bring me into dust again?
Psa. 103:14 For he knoweth our frame; he remembereth that we are dust.
Now do not forget that all this is said of man--not of the house that man is supposed to dwell in for a time, as if man were one thing and his body another. It was the man that was formed out of the dust.
It is the man that is of the earth, earthy. It is the man that is formed out of clay. It is the man that is dust and ashes. Now the second step out of the difficulty presented is to believe that