IS THE SOUL IMMORTAL?

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Aug 26, 1880

IS THE SOUL IMMORTAL?

"The King of kings, and Lord of lords; who only hath immortality." 1 Tim. 6:16.

"To them who by patient continuance in well-doing, seek for glory, honor, and immortality." Rom. 2:7.

"Man became a living soul." Gen. 2:7.

The word "soul" occurs in the original Scriptures eight hundred and seventy-three times; but it is never once called immortal. The word "immortal" is found only once in all the Bible (1 Tim. 1:17), and there it is applied, not to man, but to God.

Bishop Tillotson, A. D. 1774, said: "The immortality of the soul is rather supposed, or taken for granted, than expressly revealed in the Bible."—Sermons, Vol. 2.

Olshausen, the Commentator, says: "The doctrine of the immortality of the soul, and the name, are alike unknown to the entire Bible."—Com. on 1 Cor. 15:13.

Dr. Bagnall, in the Methodist Quarterly Review for April, 1852, while advocating the opposite view, makes this frank admission: "In the Bible, we think there is no passage which can be strictly said to declare that all human souls are immortal."

The celebrated Richard Watson says: "That the soul is naturally immortal . . . is contradicted by the Scripture, which makes our immortality a gift dependent on the will of the Giver."—Theol. Inst., Vol. 2, Part 2, chap. 18.

Martin Luther says:—"But I permit the pope to make articles of faith for himself and his faithful, such as, the pope is emperor of the world, and the king of heaven, and god upon earth; the soul is immortal, with all those monstrous opinions to be found in the Roman dunghill of decretals."—Defense, Prop. 27.

Cardinal Du Perron says:—"Luther held that the soul died with the body, and that God would hereafter raise both the one and the other."—Historical View, p. 344.

A Lutheran minister denied this statement, and in endeavoring to refute it made the following admission: "The origin of this calumny is a letter he [Luther] wrote to Amsdorf in the year 1522; in which he appears much inclined to believe that the souls of the just sleep to the day of Judgment, without knowing where they are. He does

not pretend to say that they are dead in this interval, but only lie in a profound rest and sleep, in which opinion he followed many fathers of the ancient church."—Ibid, p. 347.

Mosheim speaks of the "General Baptists," who flourished in England in the sixteenth century, and enumerates their articles of faith, one of which he mentions as follows: "VI. They believed that the soul, between death and the resurrection at the last day, has neither pleasure nor pain, but is in a state of insensibility."—Eccl. Hist., Vol. 3, book 4, p. 218.

ORIGIN OF THE IMMORTAL-SOUL DOCTRINE.

"The serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die, . . . your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods." Gen. 3:4, 5.

The next who taught it were the Egyptians. Herodotus, a Greek, born B. C. 484, regarded as the first and one of the most reliable of profane historians, says:—"The Egyptians were also the first who asserted the doctrine that the soul of man is immortal."—Herod. Euter. 2. Par. 123.

THE GREEKS AND ROMANS LEARN THE DOCTRINE FROM THE EGYPTIANS.

The celebrated Grecian philosophers, Pythagoras and Plato spent many years in Egypt, learning of the priests and teachers there.

Warburton, speaking of Pythagoras, says:—"He and Plato, with others, traveled into Egypt, like their predecessors. . . . The ancients tell us of their long abode there; their hard condition of admittance into the sacred colleges; and their bringing away with them all the secret science of the priesthood."—Div. Legu., Vol. 2. pp. 108, 109.

Bassville says:—"The religion of the Romans appears to have been that of Greece—a mixture of Syrian and Egyptian fables. The principal gods of both people were the same.—Elements of Mythol., p. 244.

Thus has the doctrine passed down from him, who, from the beginning, abode not in the truth, John 8:44, through the Egyptians, to the Grecians and Romans, and the great Protestant denominations of to-day have not been careful to keep their skirts clear from this heathen fable and "doctrine of devils," 1 Timothy 4:1, upon which doctrine the arch-seducer has chosen to build his "strong delusions" and show his "great signs and wonders," to deceive all the world except the "very elect." Practicing that which God has declared to be an abomination unto him, Deut. 18:10-12, and which will shut men out of the kingdom of God, and the heavenly Jerusalem, Gal. 5:20, 21; Rev. 22:14, 15, viz., Necromancy, which is defined as being the art of foretelling events by a pretended communication with the spirits of the dead. See Webster; also Isa. 8:19, 20; 2 Thess. 2:8-12; Matt. 24:24; Rev. 13:13, 14; 16:14, 15; 2 Tim. 3:1-8. Who will take warning by this testimony produced, and be true Protestants indeed, protesting against every innovation upon the truth of God's word, and will return to the simplicity of the faith that was once delivered to the saints, as it is in the word of truth, through which alone we are to be sanctified. John 17:17.