"HELL-TWO WAYS OUT" LECTURE AT TOWN HALL.

Evening Post, Volume LXXXVII, Issue 73, 27 March 1914, Page 2

"HELL- TWO WAYS OUT" LECTURE AT TOWN HALL.

"Hell— Two Ways Out" formed the somewhat startling title of a lecture delivered by Mr. R. R. Hollister, a jour-nalist-lecturer from New York, at the Town Hall last evening. There was a large attendance, and the lecturer, who is aiming at promoting a closer study of the Bible, was accorded an excellent hearing. The speaker opened his address by quoting Confucius as saying : "There may be a heaven ; --there must be a hell." He claimed that the fervid belief in a place of eternal torment was more prevalent a generation ago than it was to-day, though even to-day vast multitudes believed that the Bible distinctly taught that doctrine. Mr. Hollister said they should consider the subject from the Bible's teaching, and he took up an analysis of the word "hell" as represented in the Hebrew, Greek, and English languages. He pointed out that in the revised version the Hebrew word "slieol" was frequently translated as "grave" and "pit." Hell, he' said, meant the grave, and 4 She resurrection was the way out. Tha lecturer then presented the idea that there are to be two separate and distinct resurrections, or wayys out, and, by various Biblical citatidns, sought to establish the Scripturalness of the thought. He argued that the Church, variously termed the "Body of Christ,*' the "Bride of Christ," "those having done good," "the just," etc., was to be a participant in, the first resurrection.. It would be jnot only prior in point of time, but also superior in> respect to quality and degree of life. This high calling was limited to the present age of special opportunity only. To gain this chief prize, one must not only be justified by faith ; but, furthermore, fully consecrated to God, and a footstep follower of Jesus. The resurrection would constitute their birth on the spirit plane of life, partakers of God's own nature. They sacrificed with their Lord their mortality and terrestrial hopes, and by pod's grace would have attained immortality and celestial bliss. Continuing, Mr. HolHster remarked : "The future of those who have done evil, and elsewhere designated the unjust, turns upon the significance of this word 'judgment,' for theirs is to be a resurrection of judgment. The English word is a translation of the Greek 'Krisis,' which is identical with our word 'crisis,' and means a critical period, A test, or turning point. We r speak of a person, who is seriously ill, reaching a crisis : he may recover, or he may die. Thus we see that the vast majority of humanity will participate in the second resurrection, which will be a gradual lifting back to the perfect earthly nature and human conditions lost in Eden. We can now see why Christ and His Church are to reign upon the earth as kings and priests, and as Abraham's seed, blessing all its families. This reign will be educational and instructive, as well as reformative and punitive. Appropriately, the Prophet Isaiah, "'referring prophetically that judgment day or period of one thousand years, wrote 'When Thy judgments are in the earth, the inhabitants will learn righteousness.' How dare we limit God's saving power to the? present life?" The incorrigible, he declared, who would not conform to that new regime, would be utterly . destroyed. They died the death, the second death, from which no recovery would be provided, or, as St. Petei explained, as tha brute beast.