PUBLIC OPINION

Putaruru Press, Volume V, Issue 198, 18 August 1927, Page 1

PUBLIC OPINION

(A COLUMN FOR THE PEOPLE.) LIFE AFTER DEATH. (To the Editor) Sir, —In your issue of August 4 there is a report of a seientilic lecture by Rev. E. Ward, of Putaruru, to a crowded congregation. In his opening remarks he stated he had received a pamphlet issued by the Seventh Day Adventists, and that

“ it appeared to be the essential part of. their teaching that there was no separate life after death.” “ Such types thought they knew all there was to be known on the subject.” He then proceeds to uphold the deductions of Count Flammarion, expresident of the French Astronomical Society, to prove the opposite, viz., “ that there is a life after death,” and that science had proved it. Here you have an accredited minister of the Gospel of Jesus Christ discarding or ignoring the Jewish Scriptures and Apostolic writings for the gospel of Flammarion.

The Apostle Paul, in writing to the Galatians, chapter 1, Bth verse, says : “ But though we or an angel from heaven preach any other gospel unto you than that which we have preached let him be accursed.” In 12th v. the apostle says : “ For I neither received it of man, neither was I taught it, but by revelation of Jesus Christ.” The Apostle Peter (to whom Christ gave the keys of the Kingdom of Heaven) says in Acts 4-12 : “ Neither is there salvation in any other : for there is none other name under heaven given among men whereby we can be saved ” ; and again in 2nd Epis. Timothy, Ist chapter, 10th verse : “ Jesus Christ hath brought life and immortality to light through the gospel.” Jesus says, as recorded in sth chapter John, 39th verse : “ Search the Scriptures, for in them ye think ye have eternal life and they are they which testify of me.” Jesus Christ is the pivot upon which hangs the destiny of the human race, as Paul writes in 1 Cor. 15-22 : “ As in Adam all die, so in Christ shall all be made alive.” “ But every man in his own order.” “ Christ the first fruits, afterwards they that are Christ’s at his coming.” (Not at their going.) What then, according to the Bible, is the condition of those who die previous to the coming of Christ? According to the Bible, Man is mortal (subject to death), on account of the disobedience of our first parents.

Gen. 3-19 : “ In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground ; for out of it was thou taken, for dust thou art and unto dust shalt thou return.” David says, Psalm 6-5 : “ For in death there Is no remembrance of thee ; in the grave who shall give thee thanks.” Again, Psalm 146-3 : “ Put not your trust in princes nor in the son of man in whom there is no help. His breath goeth forth ; he retumeth to his earth, in that very day his thoughts perish.” Solomon says, Eccles. 3-20 : “ All go unto one place, all are of the dust and all turn to dust again.” Eccles. 9-5 : “ The living know that they shall die, but the dead know not anything, neither have they any more a reward, for the memory of them is forgotten.” Verse 10 : “ Whatsoever thine hand findeth to do, do it with thy might, for there is no work nor device nor knowledge in the grave, whither thou goest.”

Here we have the Bible view of the dead (between death and resurrection), but the time is coming, when Jesus Christ the first fruits of immortality “ Shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the Voice of the Archangel and with the trump of God and the dead in Christ shall rise first.” 1 Thess. 4-46 : “ And many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt.” Dan. 12-2. The Bible is the most scientific book, because it is a book of “ organised facts,” but Flammarion belongs to that class “ that knows not God, nor obeys the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ,” but to the one that

the Apostle speaks of to Timothy 1 Epis. 6-20 : “ O Timothy, keep that which is committed to thy trust, avoiding profane and vain babblings, and opposition of science, falsely so called.”—l am, etc., JOHN DRAPER. Matamata.