However faithfully one may adhere, both in letter and spirit, to the teaching of the apostle on these matters

of the faith, the supreme test of orthodoxy lies outside of them all, and unless one can add the doctrine of

eternal conscious punishment to his creed, and bring it to the fore in season and out of season, he must be

content to be called "unsound", "dangerous", and other unpleasant titles. Such an one, however, is in

good company, for Paul himself confessed that after the way his opponents called heresy, so he

worshipped the God of his fathers, and the added fact that he believed all things which are written in the

law and the prophets, did not in any sense mitigate their condemnation of his teaching. It is safe to say

that Paul would not pass the orthodox test today. He would be branded "a soul-sleeper", "a non-eternity

man", "an annihilationist", and classed as unsound. This assertion we hope to prove when we examine

the apostle upon this question.

It is not as though the testimony of the apostle is meagre, or that he has not actually dealt with the subject,

for he has, giving us a complete statement concerning sin, its consequences, and its divine remedy, and

has, moreover, added to this his own personal testimony that nothing had been omitted that was essential,

and that his conscience was clear:

"I take you to record this day, that I am pure from the blood of all men. For I have not shunned to

declare unto you all the counsel of God" (Acts 20:26,27).

If we turn to Ezekiel 33 we shall see that whatever doctrine might be omitted by the apostle and still leave

him pure from the blood of all men, it was incumbent upon him faithfully to warn his hearers of the

judgment to come. Paul would not be pure from the blood of all men if the wages of sin were eternal

conscious punishment, and he did not say so. It would not save his reputation that he went so far as to

teach "everlasting destruction", or that "the wages of sin is death", or that "God is a consuming fire"; all

this falls so far short of the traditional "hell" as to leave him convicted of trifling with the souls of men.

He speaks of "wrath to come", of "tribulation and anguish", of "judgment to come", of "condemnation",

of "death", of being "consumed", "destroyed", "punished", but none of these terms are terrible enough to

satisfy orthodoxy, and those who have persisted in the use of these terms, without addition, have been

hounded out of assemblies as dangerous and unsound. While one is speaking and adhering to the "form

of sound words" left by the apostle for our guidance, one is often conscious that in the back of the mind of

many hearers is one dominant question, What does this man teach regarding HELL? It is time therefore

that this question was answered.

It will be understood from what has been said that this will resolve itself into the question: "What did Paul

teach about hell?" If we hold and teach, without addition, subtraction, or alteration of any kind, exactly

the same teaching on the subject as was taught by Paul, what can it matter what others may say of us? If

to Paul "hell is a place of torment", then it will be so in our teaching. If to Paul it be "a place of

disembodied spirits that can never die", it will be so in our teaching.

There are twelve different addresses given by Paul recorded in the Acts, and (including Hebrews) there

are fourteen epistles from his pen covering the whole range of gospel, doctrine, and practice for the

present time. If the subject of "hell" be but half as important as orthodoxy would have it to be, surely we

shall expect to find at least fourteen references to it in his epistles, and at least twelve in his addresses, this

being a very low estimate of what a genuine zeal would demand.

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