Cowley's Talks on Doctrine

by Matthias F. Cowley

That God has a distinct hand in the appointment of the time for His children to come upon the earth is very clearly stated by the Apostle Paul. In the seventeenth chapter of Acts he says: "God that made the world and all things therein, giveth to all life, and breath, and all things; and hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth and hath determined the times before appointed and the bounds of their habitations." Thus we learn that this great emigration of souls from the presence of the Lord to this earth is controlled and directed by the Almighty. That He designed them all at some time to learn of Him is stated in the verse following the above quotation, which reads, "That they should seek the Lord and find Him."

We are compelled from these facts to believe that, as God Himself sent millions into the world when the Gospel was not had among the inhabitants of the earth, then His saving plan, to be compatible with His attributes of mercy and justice, must be of such a character as to reach these people after they leave this world. We may add here that this vast host of humanity who lived when the Gospel was not extant is greatly augmented by the unnumbered millions of people who live during the dispensation of the Gospel, but who never see or hear an authorized servant of the Lord.

In connection with this branch of the subject it may be well to refer to the belief of many that, at death the wicked are consigned to their final doom and the righteous to full and complete exaltation in the presence of God. We can explode this fallacy by quotations from Holy Writ. In line with this mistaken belief we find ministers attending the culprit at the gallows, urging him to confess Christ, and telling him that by such confession he will be saved in the kingdom of heaven. In the face of such doctrine the Scriptures plainly declare that, "The murderer hath not eternal life abiding in him." We who live in this dispensation are forbidden by the living oracles of God to receive temple ordinances for even the suicide. To exhibit the error of many in the religious world on this point read the forty-second and forty-third verses of the twenty-third chapter of Luke. The thief on the cross is recorded as saying to the Savior, "Lord, remember me when Thou comest into Thy kingdom." Jesus then said to him, "Today shalt thou be with me in Paradise." The claim is made that such a promise amounted to salvation, taking the malefactor to a condition of eternal glory. In the face of this mistaken interpretation of the Scripture, we have the assertion of Christ Himself, made three days later to Mary: "touch me not, for I am not yet ascended unto my father." (John xx:17.) This is conclusive evidence that the paradise spoken of was not the enjoyment of the presence and glory of God. But we are not left in ignorance of where He did go. He had previously said to His apostles, as recorded in John v:25, "The hour is coming and now is when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God, and they that hear shall live." The object of this preaching is stated in the fourth chapter, sixth verse, of I Peter, to be, "For, for this cause was the Gospel preached also to them that are dead, that they might be judged according to men in the flesh, but live according to God in the spirit."

This Scripture establishes the truth beyond doubt that death does not perfect people, and dying without obedience to the Gospel does not relieve them of the impartial obligation placed upon all men to believe and obey. It also maintains the doctrine of man's free agency by showing that salvation is only realized when man exercises his own volition to receive the Gospel, and by education in the knowledge of God, step by step, becomes prepared to dwell in the glorious presence of the Father and the Son. With this testimony of the Savior and the Jewish apostles, the teachings of the Book of Mormon and of the Prophet Joseph Smith are in perfect harmony.

The sacred record of the Nephites informs us that the spirit which possesses a man who dies in his sins will have power to possess him in a future state. The Prophet Joseph, speaking upon this subject, also said, on April 10, 1842: "If you wish to go where God is, you must be like God, or possess the principles which God possesses, for, if we are not drawing towards God in principles, we are going from Him and drawing towards the devil. A man is saved no faster than he gets knowledge, for, if he does not get knowledge, he will be brought into captivity by some evil power in the other world, as evil spirits will have more knowledge and consequently more power than many men who are on the earth. Hence, it needs revelation to assist and give us knowledge of the things of God."

To show still more definitely Christ's mission in the spirit world, we read from Peter, third chapter, eighteenth verse, as follows: "For Christ also hath once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh, but quickened by the spirit; by which also He went and preached unto the spirits in prison; which sometimes were disobedient, when once the long-suffering of God waited in the days of Noah."

We may infer safely that the penitent thief had the privilege of going to the prison house with the Savior and hearing the Gospel; the distinction between his situation and that of the antediluvians being that they had remained in purgatory for hundreds of years, while the penitent man, who had shown some repentance in the last hour of his life, may have heard, with but little delay, the Gospel. Whether he had heard it in life and rejected it we are not informed, and how long he would remain in the spirit world without realizing its full benefits we do not know, but the above quotations are ample to disprove the fallacy of the position taken by those in the religious world who deny salvation after death.

One objection made by the world to this doctrine is, that offering salvation after this life destroys the incentive to embrace the Gospel here and holds out the inducement to indulge in the pleasures of sin, through people believing that they might be redeemed in a future state where the pleasures of sin would be less delusive. If we admit, for the sake of argument, this theory, the evil results following are incomparably less than would be those which offer salvation to some and deny it to others, for this amounts virtually to a destruction of the attributes of justice and mercy which dwell in the bosom of a wise Creator; but there is another side to this part of the question. We may illustrate by comparison. If a man obey the law of the land simply because he fears the penalty of violating the law, you have at once an individual devoid of love for right and of no strength of character, a man who is a mere slave to the influences which surround him; or if you find a being who is willing to pay the penalty of stealing or committing other crimes, for the pleasure he finds in them, with the knowledge that when he has served his term in prison he may be liberated only to steal again, you have a man devoid of character, and to say that this would be the course of mankind relative to the boon of eternal life is only to belittle the character of the human family and strip them of those attributes which come from God their Father. This mission of the Savior was contemplated by the ancient Jewish prophets. They, knowing that the atonement of Christ and the principles of the Gospel must apply to those who lived before His coming as well as to all who came after, understood that the millions who died without the Gospel in this life must hear and obey in the life to come. Isaiah prophesied concerning the mission of the Son of God: "I, the Lord, have called thee in righteousness, and will hold thine hand, and will keep thee, and give thee for a covenant of the people, for a light of the Gentiles; to open the blind eyes; to bring out the prisoners from the prison, and them that sit in darkness out of the prison house." (Isaiah xlii:6, 7.)

Thus salvation for the dead is a scriptural doctrine. The Gospel is preached to the spirits in prison. At the same time, it is evident from all that we learn upon this subject that the ordinances of baptism, confirmations, sealings, etc., are received by those living in the flesh, in behalf of those who die without the Gospel in this world, but receive it in the next. Paul, in the fifteenth chapter of I. Corinthians, speaking of the resurrection, says: "Else what shall they do which are baptized for the dead, if the dead rise not at all? Why are they then baptized for the dead?" While Paul's argument is not upon the subject of baptism for the dead, why does he thus forcibly allude to this subject if no such an ordinance belongs to the Gospel? The theologians of sectarianism have exhausted their ingenuity in a fruitless effort to mystify or explain away the true meaning of this passage, for the evident reason that it strikes a deadly blow at their unjust dogmas respecting the eternal damnation of those who die without the truth. The plain meaning of the above statement of Paul is that a living person receives baptism in behalf of those who are dead. This simple interpretation was adopted by the early writers on Christianity. Scaliger, Meyer, Erasmus, Calixtus, De Witt, Grotius and others, counted as good authority, adopted the same view.

Epiphanius, in the fourth century, writing of the Marcionites, makes use of this language: "A traditional fact concerning them has reached us, that when any of them had died without baptism, they used to baptize others in their name, lest in the resurrection they should suffer punishment as unbaptized."