The state of the dead and the destiny of the wicked

by Uriah Smith

But further, the same view which puts these souls into Heaven, puts the souls of the wicked, at the termination of this mortal life, into the lake of fire, where they are racked with unutterable and unceasing anguish, in full view of all the heavenly host. In proof of this, the parable of the rich man and Lazarus is strenuously urged. But is it so? If it is not, then the popular exposition of that parable must be abandoned. But that supposed stronghold will not readily be surrendered, so it is proper to look at the bearing it has upon the case before us.

According, then, to the orthodox view, the persecutors of these souls were even then, or certainly soon would be, enveloped in the flames of hell, right before their eyes, every fiber of their being quivering with a keenness of torture which no language can express, and of which no mind can adequately conceive.

Here they were, their agony full in view of these souls of the martyrs, and their piercing shrieks of infinite and hopeless woe ringing in their ears; for the rich man and Abraham, you know, could converse together across the gulf. And was not the sight of all this woe enough to glut the most insatiate vengeance? Is there a fiend in hell who could manifest the malevolence of planning and praying for greater vengeance than this? Yet these souls are represented, even under these circumstances, as calling upon God to avenge their blood on their persecutors, and saying “How long?” as if chiding the tardy movements of Providence, in commencing, or intensifying, their torments. Such is the character which the common view attributes to these holy martyrs, and such the spirit with which it clothes a system of religion the chief injunction of which is to forgive, and the chief law of which is mercy. Does it find indorsement in any breast in which there remains a drop of even the milk of human kindness?

4. These souls pray that their blood may be avenged--an article which the uncompounded, invisible, and immaterial soul, as generally understood, is not supposed to possess.

These are some of the difficulties we meet, some of the camels we have to swallow, in taking down the popular view.

But it is urged that these souls must be conscious; for they cry to God. How easily our expositors forget that language has any literal use, when they wish it to be figurative, or that it is ever used as a figure, when they wish it to be literal. There is supposed to be such a figure of speech as personification, in which, under certain conditions, life, action, and intelligence, are attributed to inanimate objects. Thus the blood of Abel is said to have cried to God from the ground. Gen. 4:9, 10. The stone cried out of the wall, and the beam out of the timber answered it. Hab. 2:11. The hire of the laborers, kept back by fraud, cried; and the cry entered into the ears of the Lord of Sabaoth. James 5:4. So these souls could cry, in the same sense, and yet be no more conscious than Abel’s blood, the stone, the beam, or the laborer’s hire.

So incongruous is the popular view that Albert Barnes makes haste to set himself right on the record as follows:--

“We are not to suppose that this literally occurred, and that John actually saw the souls of the martyrs beneath the altar--for the whole representation is symbolical; nor are we to suppose that the injured and the wronged in Heaven actually pray for vengeance on those who wronged them, or that the redeemed in Heaven will continue to pray with reference to things on the earth; but it may be fairly inferred from this that there will be as real a remembrance of the wrongs of the persecuted, the injured, and the oppressed, as if such a prayer was offered there; and that the oppressor has as much to dread from the divine vengeance, as if those whom he has injured should cry in Heaven to the God who hears prayer, and who takes vengeance.”--Notes on Rev. 6.

But it is said that white robes were given them; hence it is further urged that they must be conscious. But this no more follows than it does from the fact that they cried. How was it? They had gone down to the grave in the most ignominious manner. Their lives had been misrepresented, their reputations tarnished, their names defamed, their motives maligned, and their graves covered with shame and reproach, as containing the dishonored dust of the most vile and despicable characters. Thus the church of Rome, which then molded the sentiments of the principal nations of the earth, spared no pains to make her victims an abhorring unto all flesh.

But the Reformation commences its work. It soon begins to be seen that the Romish church is the corrupt and disreputable party, and those against whom it vents its rage are the good, the pure, and the true. The work goes on among the most enlightened nations, the reputation of the church going down, and that of the martyrs coming up, until the corruptions of the papal abomination are fully exposed, and that huge system of iniquity stands before the world in all its naked deformity, while the martyrs are vindicated from all the aspersions under which that Antichristian church had sought to bury them. Then it was seen that they had suffered, not for being vile and criminal, but “for the word of God and for the testimony which they held.” Then their praises were sung, their virtues admired, their fortitude applauded, their names honored, and their memory cherished. And thus it is even to this day. White robes have thus been given unto every one of them.