MOV 6 1911 *) 
 
 BX 8526 .E3 
 
 Eaton, E. L. b. 1846. 
 
 The millennial dawn heresy 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 in 2014 
 
 https://archive.org/details/millennialdawnheOOeato 
 
The Millennial 
 Dawn Heresy 
 
 AN EXAMINATION 
 
 Of Pastor Charles T. Russell's Teaching Concerning the Pur- 
 pose of the Second Advent and the Millennium, as set 
 forth in His Published Books and Papers—" The 
 Divine Plan of the Ages." and Others 
 of Similar Import. 
 
 (Ettirittttalt : 
 
 JENNINGS AND GRAHAM 
 
 Nm» $ork: 
 EATON AND MAINS 
 
Copyright, 1911, by 
 Jennings and Graham. 
 
FOREWORD 
 
 "While Pastor of the North Avenue Methodist 
 Episcopal Church, Allegheny City, now Pittsburgh, 
 I had a chance to study Eussellism at close range, 
 for that city was at that time the home of Pastor 
 Charles T. Russell. He frequently assumed what 
 seemed to me a belligerent attitude, and declared 
 that orthodox ministers dare not meet the issues 
 which he championed. Believing his whole system 
 erroneous, and that it ought to be exposed, especi- 
 ally for those to whom it most strongly appealed — 
 persons the least able to discover its errors — I pro- 
 posed to him that we publicly debate those views 
 which he was putting forth in opposition to the cur- 
 rent theological opinions. Six debates were accord- 
 ingly arranged, and these took place in Carnegie 
 Music Hall, Allegheny City, in the Autumn of 1903. 
 
 These debates were printed in the city papers, 
 the Pittsburgh Gazette containing the fullest re- 
 ports of them. At the close these were gathered 
 into one number of that paper of which a very large 
 edition was printed and extensively circulated. I 
 felt from the beginning that these reports — taken 
 at the time by Mr. Russell's stenographer, I hav- 
 ing no chance to edit my part of the debate — did 
 iii 
 
FOREWORD 
 
 not fairly represent my side of the issue. Since 
 that time a large number of communications have 
 reached me from different parts of the world, asking 
 for literature upon the Millennial Dawn heresies; 
 it is therefore a pleasure that I am permitted, under 
 the auspices of the publishing interests of my own 
 Church, to give to the public an ungarbled account 
 of my reply to the false doctrines and extravagant 
 inventions published by the "Watch Tower Bible 
 and Tract Society," somewhat more vaguely known 
 as "Millennial Dawn." 
 
 E. L. Eaton. 
 
 Evatiston, III., April, 1911. 
 
TABLE OF CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 I. Principles of Biblical Interpreta- 
 tions - 3 
 
 II. Immortality and Soul-Sleeping - 25 
 
 III. This Present Gospel Age - - - 65 
 
 IV. The Millennium 91 
 V. Probation after Death - - - 127 
 
I 
 
 INTERPRETATION 
 
"Take heed that no man deceive you." — Matt. 
 24:4. 
 
 "Declare unto us the parable of the tares." — Matt. 
 13:36. 
 
 "Prophesy according to the analogy of faith." 
 —Bom. 12:6. 
 
 "No prophecy of Scripture is of any private in- 
 terpretation." — 2 Peter 1:20. 
 
CHAPTER I 
 
 PRINCIPLES OF INTERPRETATION 
 
 Millennial Dawn is Founded upon False and 
 Unscriptural Methods of Biblical Inter- 
 pretation 
 
 Open infidelity is not making much headway. It 
 is not long since it directed its assaults upon the 
 Bible and denied its divine authority. That was 
 Robert Ingersoll's method. But it is not doing 
 that now to any great extent. To-day it often 
 admits the Bible to be the Word of God, and then 
 proceeds to evolve doctrinal variations by false 
 systems of interpretation, like Mormonism, Eddy- 
 ism, and Millennial Dawnism. These are the pres- 
 ent-day tactics of those who would discredit the 
 work of the Church ; and the effect of their work is 
 to plunge honest but unskilled people either into 
 hopeless infidelity, or to bury them in religious 
 organizations that are meaningless and pitiable. 
 
 This is both the method and the fruit of the 
 Millennial Dawn Heresy. We can render no bet- 
 ter service to those honest folk who are seeking 
 after the truth than to expose these false, and 
 what we believe to be vicious, methods of Scrip- 
 3 
 
THE MILLENNIAL DAWN HERESY 
 
 tural interpretation. That we shall undertake to 
 do in this chapter. 
 
 Millennial Dawn adopts a high-sounding name 
 and makes much pretense of being Christian; but 
 it is fraught with great harm in many ways. 
 While we do not charge it with being a direct 
 and outspoken system of infidelity, yet we do say 
 that its tendency is to disturb the regular work 
 of the Church in every community where it can 
 get a foothold; to unsettle multitudes of well- 
 meaning people and to withdraw them from 
 spheres of active usefulness and contentment; to 
 land other multitudes into infidelity ; and to create 
 in all its votaries a feeling that there is little need 
 of earnest effort to escape the consequences of 
 sin, since the opportunity to secure salvation is 
 postponed to the coming age. 
 
 It is one of the fundamental principles of 
 Protestantism that every man is free to read and 
 interpret the Bible for himself ; but it is a serious 
 matter for one to assume to interpret it for others. 
 For the Bible is a difficult book to interpret; and 
 this because it is a very ancient book, a book filled 
 with Oriental imagery and poetic fancies, a book 
 that comes to us in foreign tongues, and above 
 all — a spiritual book. It deals with things that 
 do not lie level to the human mind. Therefore it 
 must be safeguarded with special and necessary 
 laws of interpretation. 
 
 No one has a right to invent canons of Bibli- 
 cal interpretation. Nor can any one interpret it 
 4 
 
INTERPRETATION 
 
 correctly who does not faithfully follow those 
 principles which are plainly laid down in the Bible 
 itself, or are the necessary dicta of common sense. 
 We shall endeavor to show in this chapter that 
 Millennial Dawn violates both common sense and 
 the "Word of God by its false method of interpre- 
 tation. 
 
 Let us now carefully consider certain laws of 
 interpretation which must be reverently followed 
 by all people who desire to arrive at the truth. 
 And the first law is — 
 
 Interpret Literally 
 
 This is the demand of common sense. Read 
 the Bible just as you read any other book, and 
 understand it accordingly. While this can not 
 always be done, it is nevertheless the first law of 
 interpretation. It must be observed and invoked 
 to protect the Bible from vagaries, extravagancies, 
 and fanciful interpretations. The author of Mil- 
 lennial Dawn tells us that "in a parable the thing 
 said is never the thing that is meant," and uses 
 this half truth in the nature of a license to make 
 the parables mean anything under the sun to help 
 out its system. Thus by disregarding this whole- 
 some and necessaiy principle of common sense — ■ 
 to interpret literally whenever a fair construction 
 requires it — he has used certain portions of the 
 Scriptures to the support of a system which is 
 made to stand out in open antagonism to practi- 
 cally every New Testament doctrine. 
 
 5 
 
THE MILLENNIAL DAWN HERESY 
 
 Where the language is literal the interpretation 
 must generally be literal. Where ' ' the thing said ' ' 
 is literal, "the thing meant" must be as apparent 
 as a literal statement, or the parable utterly fails 
 to accomplish the thing intended. It violates the 
 spirit and purpose of a parable to give it strained, 
 far-fetched, and inobvious interpretations. Take 
 the parable of the Good Samaritan. It means 
 exactly what it says, and can have no other mean- 
 ing; and its spiritual application is so obvious 
 that it needs no explanation. The Good Samaritan 
 did what he did because he had a kind and neigh- 
 borly spirit; and it is precisely that which our 
 Lord sought to illustrate and enforce by this great 
 parable. 
 
 In like manner the story of the Rich Man and 
 Lazarus. It means exactly what it says. It gives 
 us the history of two men in this world, one a 
 saint, the other a sinner. Then in the most direct 
 and literal way it shows us the results in the life 
 to come of the life which each lived here. And 
 that is the chief purpose for which this remark- 
 able story was told. To obscure or deflect its 
 plain purport to some far-fetched and foreign 
 object is to juggle with the Word of God. 
 
 But a vast portion of the Word of God can 
 not be interpreted literally because the text 
 itself is not literal. And that fact brings us 
 to the second law of Biblical interpretation, 
 which is — 
 
 6 
 
INTERPRETATION 
 
 Interpret the Figurative by the Literal 
 
 The Bible is an Oriental book. The divine 
 and the human elements are both there, but the 
 human element is Oriental. That makes it a poet- 
 ical book, abounding in figures of speech, a pictorial 
 book, often gorgeous with Oriental imagery. And 
 to interpret the portions that are manifestly figur- 
 ative and pictorial as though they were intended 
 for literal statements would be absurd. So, in 
 order to get exactly what the Spirit intended to 
 reveal, it is necessary to find the law of interpre- 
 tation which applies to figurative and pictorial 
 writing. We shall not have to search far nor in 
 vain. We have but to inquire, What was the 
 method of the sacred writers themselves? 
 
 The first noted Biblical interpreter was Joseph. 
 He was called upon to interpret the dreams of 
 the king of Egypt. In his dream (Gen. 41) the 
 king saw seven fat kine come out of the river; 
 he also saw seven lean kine. He saw seven full 
 ears of corn; also seven thin ears of corn. These 
 dreams were pictorial, figurative; what did they 
 mean? Asking wisdom from God, Joseph tells the 
 king what the dreams mean. The seven fat kine 
 (figure) mean seven years of plenty (literal). The 
 seven lean kine (figure) mean seven years of fam- 
 ine (literal). And so with the seven full and the 
 seven thin ears of corn. Here we discover the 
 divine law of interpretation. It is also the method 
 7 
 
THE MILLENNIAL DAWN HERESY 
 
 of common sense. No other way could possibly 
 be pursued if one is seeking truth. 
 
 The next great Biblical interpreter was Daniel. 
 In a similar way he interpreted king Nebuchad- 
 nezzar's dream of the metallic image with its 
 golden head, silver breast and arms, brass belly 
 and thighs, and iron legs. The image was a figure, 
 a picture; what did it mean? Daniel tells him: 
 "Thou, 0 king, art this head of gold." That is, 
 the head of gold (figure) means the king of Baby- 
 lon, or the kingdom over which he reigns (literal). 
 Here precisely the same method is employed by 
 Daniel that was observed by Joseph, which is, to 
 interpret the figurative by the literal. 
 
 Observe the method followed by our Lord in 
 interpreting His parables. Of the fifty parables 
 which He gave, His disciples asked Him to inter- 
 pret two — the Parable of the Sower, and that of 
 the Wheat and the Tares ; and in both instances He 
 interpreted these figurative stories by literal state- 
 ments. The latter parable (Matt. 13:24-30) He 
 interpreted as follows (v. 36-43): "The field is 
 the world; the good seed are the children of the 
 kingdom ; the tares are the children of the 
 wicked one," etc. This is sufficient to show His 
 method. 
 
 In his great pentecostal sermon (Acts 2 : 16 and 
 onward) Peter quotes a most graphic prophecy of 
 Joel, a passage abounding in flaming and lurid 
 symbolisms, including dreams, visions, wonders in 
 heaven, vapor, smoke, sun darkened, moon turned 
 8 
 
INTERPRETATION 
 
 to blood, etc. But in his interpretation of this 
 famous passage he employs nothing but plain, 
 literal statements, not indulging in a single figure. 
 This which you see is that which the prophet 
 wrote, is the amount of his solemn and literal 
 affirmation. 
 
 Paul pursued the same course, always inter- 
 preting the figurative by the literal. Notice an 
 instance in Rom. 14 : 10-12, where, after quoting a 
 poetical passage from Isaiah 45 : 23, about every 
 knee bowing and every tongue confessing to God, 
 he explains it as meaning that we shall all stand 
 before the judgment seat at last to be judged. 
 Many similar instances could be found in Paul's 
 writings, showing that it was his invariable method 
 of interpreting Scripture to use plain and literal 
 statements to explain figurative passages. 
 
 And practically the whole book of Hebrews is 
 devoted to a similar purpose — explaining the 
 Hebrew system with its types and shadows, its 
 ordinances and ceremonies, its flaming ritual and 
 lofty symbolisms — all by simple, plain, and literal 
 speech. No sacred writer or speaker, in any single 
 instance, ever departed from this divinely estab- 
 lished rule of interpretation. 
 
 One of the chief errors for which Millennial 
 Dawn will have to answer is the flagrant violation 
 of this simple and necessary law. It founds its 
 whole structure upon the affirmation that there is to 
 be a Millennium — a personal reign of Jesus Christ 
 upon this earth for a period of one thousand years, 
 9 
 
THE MILLENNIAL DAWN HERESY 
 
 to begin at the time of the Second Advent. Now, 
 where does Millennial Dawn get Scripture author- 
 ity for that teaching? Is it the twentieth chapter 
 of Revelation? It is found nowhere else in the 
 Bible ; and we shall show in chapter fourth of this 
 book that it is not even in Revelation. But the 
 thing which we wish to show just now is that in 
 probably the most figurative and pictorial book in 
 all the Bible, and in one of the most dramatic 
 chapters of that book, Millennial Dawn finds a 
 passage (Rev. 20:1-11) which speaks of a certain 
 special class of saints "living and reigning with 
 Christ a thousand years." And this high-wrought 
 and figurative book and chapter are made to in- 
 terpret all the plain, literal statements in the Bible, 
 instead of using these plain and literal statements 
 to interpret this chapter. By this unfair and un- 
 scriptural method every fragment of the Word of 
 God is tortured into submission to this one chap- 
 ter! The divine method is reversed and dishon- 
 ored, and everywhere and always the plain and 
 literal portions of the Scripture are interpreted 
 by the figurative. That is Millennial Dawnism. 
 By reversing the divine law of interpretation, 
 Millennial Dawn has managed to build up a most 
 false, extravagant, and fantastic system of doc- 
 trines, and is industriously trying to foist them 
 upon the world as a substitute for the well-nigh 
 universally accepted truths of Christianity. Put- 
 ting one man's opinion over against millions of 
 scholarly and godly men, and then founding that 
 10 
 
INTERPRETATION 
 
 opinion upon a false and crude principle of inter- 
 pretation — such is the propaganda that is now 
 undertaken to enlighten the world under the name 
 of Millennial Dawn! 
 
 A third important canon of interpretation, laid 
 down in the Scriptures as a divine law, is this — 
 
 Interpret by the Analogy op Faith 
 
 This law of Biblical interpretation is stated by 
 Paul (Rom. 12: 6) in these words: "Let him that 
 prophesies phophesy according to the analogy of 
 faith." To prophesy in the Old Testament sense 
 is generally to foretell events. To prophesy in the 
 New Testament sense is to teach or to preach. 
 And Paul's dictum therefore means that we must 
 prophesy or teach always in harmony with the 
 analogy of faith. The analogy of faith means the 
 general drift or teaching of Scripture upon any 
 subject. And in order faithfully to apply Paul's 
 principle we must never allow one or two or even 
 three texts of Scripture to stand out against the 
 general testimony or teaching of the "Word of God 
 Upon the subject under consideration. One, or 
 even few, texts can not be allowed to control the 
 meaning of many. The analogy of faith is the 
 final standard of appeal in all such instances. 
 Peter affirms the same doctrine when he says 
 (2 Pet. 1:20), "No prophecy of Scripture is of 
 any private interpretation," ("special interpre- 
 tation," say the Rev. Ver. and Am. Rev.). This is 
 11 
 
THE MILLENNIAL DAWN HERESY 
 
 precisely the doctrine of Paul, and places clearly 
 before us the divine law which affirms that we 
 must always interpret according to the analogy of 
 faith. Notice the application of this law in the 
 24th chapter of Joshua. Joshua said, "As for me 
 and my house we will serve the Lord;" to which 
 the people made answer, ""We also will serve the 
 Lord;" then Joshua answered, "Ye can not serve 
 the Lord, for He is a holy God, He is a jealous God. 
 He will not forgive your transgressions nor your 
 sins." Is that true in any literal sense? Did 
 Joshua tell Israel the truth when he said that they 
 could not serve Jehovah because He is a holy God ? 
 No, it is not true ; and for one to take that text and 
 disconnect it from its setting, and then insist that 
 the Bible teaches that men can not serve God be- 
 cause He is a holy God, would violate the analogy 
 of faith and destroy the meaning of the entire 
 Bible. Yet exactly that it is to refuse to observe 
 the principle here discussed as a divine law of 
 interpretation — namely, to interpret according to 
 the analogy of faith. The uniform teaching of 
 the Scripture is that man, though sinful, can 
 worship a holy God upon one condition — that he 
 turn away from sin. And exactly that is what 
 Joshua meant, though he did not incorporate the 
 full statement of it in this verse. 
 
 Millennial Dawn violates this divine law in 
 the most flagrant manner, as we will point out in 
 chapter three and elsewhere. It finds here and 
 there a single passage of Scripture, takes it out 
 12 
 
INTERPRETATION 
 
 of its natural setting, disjoints it from the con- 
 text, wrests and tortures it out of all recognition, 
 and by that means manages to make a show of 
 Scriptural support for its doctrinal fictions and 
 vagaries. "What should be thought of one who 
 refuses to obey this divine injunction twice laid 
 down in the New Testament, and continues to 
 disregard the analogy of faith in his interpreta- 
 tion? Is not that a dangerous method of treat- 
 ing the Sacred Scriptures? And is one who does 
 that fit to be a teacher of men in moral and spirit- 
 ual matters? Is it safe to follow such a teacher 
 of doctrines? If it can be shown that Millennial 
 Dawn errs grievously in this matter, would not 
 that fact forfeit its right to pose as the leader 
 of men in religious matters? 
 
 Another and very important principle of in- 
 terpretation recognized by fair-minded and schol- 
 arly men everywhere — is this: 
 
 Consider the Viewpoint op the Writer 
 
 There are thirty-six or more writers whose work 
 is included in the volume called the Holy Bible. 
 These men were widely separated both in time 
 and place. The earlier writers generally saw 
 truth more dimly and stated it more vaguely than 
 did the later writers. The revelation is progres- 
 sive. The vision grows clearer as the ages ad- 
 vance. In order to get the full meaning of their 
 message we must consider these persons — their 
 13 
 
THE MILLENNIAL DAWN HERESY 
 
 time, their place, their aim, their knowledge, and 
 their limitations. Not one of them told all the 
 truth. Each one makes a fragmentary contribu- 
 tion to the whole. No one is under obligation to 
 tell all the truth. Even Jesus did not tell all the 
 truth. No one ever agrees to do that except wit- 
 nesses in a court of law, and their signal failure 
 to keep their pledge is one of the grim humors of 
 the world. 
 
 If we consider the Gospel writers, we shall see 
 that they wrote from different standpoints, for 
 different peoples, and for different purposes. How 
 utterly divergent are the conceptions of Matthew, 
 Peter, and James on the one hand, and of John 
 and Paul on the other, as to the real character of 
 Christ's doctrine and kingdom. To the first group 
 the Church is a Jewish institution, and Christian- 
 ity a reformed Judaism; to Paul and John it is 
 not a Judaism at all, but a new thing under the 
 sun. To Matthew and Peter it is a sort of a mil- 
 lennial kingdom, such as the Jews had long been 
 looking for; that it was soon to be enthroned in 
 this world, with its capital at Jerusalem, and with 
 Christ upon its throne. To Paul and John it is 
 not in any sense an earthly kingdom, but a spirit- 
 ual one, having its throne in the hearts of those 
 who love God. 
 
 Thus we have the two concepts of the kingdom. 
 Is Christianity a reformed Judaism, or is it a new 
 kingdom altogether? Is Christ to be enthroned in 
 Jerusalem, or is He now enthroned in the hearts 
 14 
 
INTERPRETATION 
 
 of those who love Him? If one rejects Paul and 
 John's interpretation of the kingdom, and insists 
 that it is but a reformed Judaism, he will be a 
 Jewish Christian. He will very naturally fall 
 in with Millennium, soul-sleeping, Saturday-keep- 
 ing, immediate-second-coming, and world-going-to- 
 smash theories and doctrines; but if he takes the 
 view of Christianity that forbids regarding it as a 
 Judaism in any sense but a spiritual system of 
 truth and doctrine that proposes to enthrone Jesus 
 Christ in love in every human heart, then his 
 teaching will be something altogether different. 
 He will believe that Christ is now enthroned in 
 the hearts of those who love Him, and that is the 
 only way in which He desires to reign anywhere. 
 
 Take the book of Matthew. It was written as 
 an appeal to the Jews — to set before them the 
 Messianic claim, and to show how Jesus fulfilled 
 those expectations; to present the gospel to the 
 Jewish people in such a way that they would see 
 that our Lord's person and history fulfilled the 
 prophecies of the Messiah. It is an inspired book, 
 and gloriously did it fulfill its purpose and accom- 
 plish its mission. But it is not sufficient for the 
 Gentile world. It was not primarily intended for 
 them; and if we had no other Gospel but that of 
 Matthew we would all be Jewish Christians, think- 
 ing of Christianity as a renovated Judaism. Mat- 
 thew gives us thirty parables, and practically all 
 of them are about the kingdom, and are introduced 
 with the formula, "The kingdom of heaven is 
 15 
 
THE MILLENNIAL DAWN HERESY 
 
 like," etc. He is the only Bible writer who uses 
 the term, "kingdom of heaven;" all the rest say 
 "kingdom of God." Surely those Jewish Chris- 
 tians had quite a different concept of the kingdom 
 than is generally held by broad-minded Christians 
 of the later ages. Matthew thinks of Jesus as a 
 King; His capital is Jerusalem; His judgment 
 seat is a throne; and the paraphernalia of a royal 
 system is implied. 
 
 When we come to Paul and John, the kingdom 
 has well-nigh vanished. Doctrines, experiences, 
 and personal character are pressed to the fore. 
 Not so much prophecies of the coming kingdom 
 as the indwelling of the living King. Where in 
 Matthew, Mark, or Luke do we find the doctrine 
 of the Divine Sonship as we find it in Paul and 
 John? Or the doctrine of eternal life? Or the 
 doctrine of sin ? Or pardon by an atonement ? Or 
 justification by faith? Or regeneration? Or the 
 witness of the Spirit? Or of adoption? Or of 
 sanctification ? Or the resurrection? Or glori- 
 fication ? All of these doctrines are found in Paul 
 and John; but only dimly foreshadowed in the 
 Synoptic Gospels. Christianity is not law, but 
 life ; not an organization nor an institution, either 
 ecclesiastical or national, but doctrinal truth and 
 heavenly light in the souls of men. And since the 
 days of the apostles Christianity has generally 
 been interpreted from the doctrinal and spiritual 
 standpoint of Paul and John. To reverse that 
 order is to turn back to Judaism. For one now to 
 16 
 
INTERPRETATION 
 
 try to foist any system of Judaism or Millennialism 
 upon the enlightened Church is about as stupid 
 as to array the book of Ecclesiastes against the 
 doctrine of regeneration or the natural immortality 
 of the soul as stated in the New Testament. Yet 
 practically that those people do who forever ignore 
 John and Paul as the highest exponents of the 
 system Jesus taught. 
 
 When we come to Luke's Gospel the scene shifts 
 again. Here is a gospel writer who is about as 
 oblivious to the kingdom, at least to any Messianic 
 kingdom, as is John. Institutions do not appeal 
 to him. Organizations have no charm for him. 
 Nations and kingdoms are not in his thought, but 
 individuals, persons, character — that is his mes- 
 sage. We have thirty-six parables in Luke, and 
 almost none of them have any reference to the 
 kingdom. They are not introduced with the for- 
 mula which Matthew employs. They are character 
 studies, every one of them. This can not be said 
 of any of Matthew's parables, nor those of Mark, 
 generally. But every person, story, or parable in 
 Luke is a character study. And in his plan all 
 this conspires to reach its climax in Jesus, the per- 
 fect man — man at high-water mark! It is both 
 stupid and impertinent to attach to Luke's para- 
 bles, national, institutional, or kingdom meanings, 
 when they were selected from the Master's lips 
 to delineate character, and are never employed 
 for any other purpose. Yet Millennial Dawn has 
 committed that savage surgery upon one of the 
 
 2 17 
 
THE MILLENNIAL DAWN HERESY 
 
 remarkable stories in Luke's Gospel — the story of 
 the Rich Man and Lazarus. Oblivious to the awful 
 moral import of these two men's personal history 
 and character, it has torn them from their natural 
 place and meaning and compelled them to stand 
 as representatives of nations! And all that in 
 Luke! One capable of that has no conception of 
 the purpose for which Luke wrote. 
 
 Which are the most well-known and popular 
 of all the parables and stories of the New Testa- 
 ment ? Nearly every one would answer, The Good 
 Samaritan, The Prodigal Son, The Rich Man and 
 Lazarus, The Importunate Widow. Why are these 
 parables and stories universally popular ? Because 
 they delineate persons and character. Why are 
 they all in Luke and nowhere else? For exactly 
 the same reason. Yet Millennial Dawn would filch 
 these great studies in character from us and com- 
 pel them to do treadmill duty in support of its 
 manufactured institution which it calls Millen- 
 nium. We resent it and characterize the perform- 
 ance as ecclesiastical jugglery. 
 
 We have endeavored to draw attention in this 
 chapter to some of those fundamental principles 
 of Biblical interpretation which have been recog- 
 nized by sound scholarship the world over. Who- 
 ever is ignorant of them disregards them, or pro- 
 ceeds to interpret the Word of God in flagrant defi- 
 ance of them, can never arrive at the truth. His 
 system will be man-made, grotesque, anti-Chris- 
 tian ; and he will generally proceed to do what the 
 18 
 
INTERPRETATION 
 
 Mormons, the Roman Catholics, and the author of 
 Millennial Dawn have done — set up the claim of 
 inspiration or of special divine illumination from 
 whose dicta there is no appeal. By such means 
 an ingenious man can manufacture almost any 
 kind of a system. 
 
 Plundering Bible Prophecies 
 
 "We have noticed the tendency of all Millen- 
 nialists to plunder the Bible, and especially the 
 prophecies of the spread and triumph of the gos- 
 pel, and the reign of the Messiah. They appro- 
 priate these to their Millennium. We protest 
 against such treatment of the Holy Book. A noted 
 Millennialist of New York claims all the glowing 
 descriptions of Messiah's kingdom and reign as 
 having reference only to the Millennium. What 
 an outrage to take a scoop and shovel fifty-one 
 chapters of Old Testament phophecy over into the 
 Millennium, and to deny that they have any ap- 
 plication to the present Gospel Age ! 
 
 That is certainly bad enough, but it is petty 
 larceny compared with the performance of Millen- 
 nial Dawn. This institution lias taken practically 
 the entire Bible as having been written only for its 
 pet hobby. It begins with Adam, and insists that 
 about everything that has been said or done since 
 is a part of the great scheme of the Almighty to get 
 the entire human family over into the Millennium. 
 Nothing else is worth thinking about or striving 
 19 
 
THE MILLENNIAL DAWN HERESY 
 
 for. The Millennium monopolizes every page of 
 the Bible, every event of history, every prophecy 
 of Scripture, every thought of the race. All the 
 radiant prophecies of the Bible can be fulfilled 
 only in the Millennium. Prophetic utterances 
 about the glory of the Church, the destruction of 
 national vices, and the reign of righteousness can 
 come to fruition only in the Millennium. We char- 
 acterize such views as unscriptural, uncritical, and 
 untrue. Thus to wrest the Bible from its true 
 meaning abuses and dishonors the Word of God. 
 
 Matthew quoted the Old Testament sixty-five 
 times to prove to the Jews that Jesus was the long- 
 promised Messiah. Paul frequently quoted from 
 the prophecies for a similar purpose, as well as to 
 show that while preaching the kingdom of God 
 to the people of his day he was fulfilling those 
 very prophecies. This was especially true in all 
 his sermons to Jewish audiences. Paul evidently 
 believed that the utterances of the Hebrew proph- 
 ets were intended to apply to this Gospel Age, and 
 not to some future Millennium. The gospel of the 
 kingdom began to be preached at Pentecost by the 
 Apostles; and from that forward they constantly 
 quote the utterances of the Prophets as descriptive 
 of their age and work. Besides scores of allusions 
 to these prophetic utterances, we have carefully 
 noted sixty of these quotations, beginning with 
 that taken by Peter from Joel as his Pentecostal 
 text. 
 
 These prophecies, so understood by the inspired 
 20 
 
INTERPRETATION 
 
 Apostles, make it certain that they apply to this 
 Gospel Age, and have no reference to any sup- 
 posed Millennial Age to succeed this. That was 
 clearly their understanding; and we resent the 
 constant iteration that these prophecies were in- 
 tended for the Millennium and can be fulfilled 
 only in that age. Thus to divert them from their 
 real meaning is utterly to violate every true prin- 
 ciple of interpretation. 
 
 2; 
 
II 
 
 IMMORTALITY AND SOUL- 
 SLEEPING 
 
" 0 listen, man! 
 A voice within us speaks the startling word — 
 'Man, thou shalt never die!' celestial voices 
 Hymn it round our souls; according harps 
 By angel fingers touched when the mild stars 
 Of morning sang together, sound forth still 
 The song of our great immortality. 
 Thick-clustering orbs, and this our fair domain, 
 The tall, dark mountains and the deep-toned seas 
 All join in the solemn, universal song." 
 
 — Dana. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 IMMORTALITY AND SOUL-SLEEPING 
 
 Millennial Dawn Practically Denies the Ex- 
 istence of the Human Soul as an Organism 
 Distinct from the Body ; Utterly Denies Its 
 Immortality, and Propagates that Old Her- 
 esy of Soul-Sleeping 
 
 The teachings of Millennial Dawn concerning the 
 existence of the human soul, its creation and im- 
 mortality, are at variance with the opinions which 
 mankind have generally held, contrary to human 
 reason, and out of harmony with the "Word of God. 
 This reference to human reason will arouse the 
 wrath of Millennial Dawn, because it does not be- 
 lieve in any man's reason except its own. It re- 
 pudiates all others. The Scriptural account is 
 that God formed man's material, animal body of 
 the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nos- 
 trils the breath of life, and man became a living 
 soul (Gen. 2:7). The human person is therefore 
 composed of two distinct and separate entities, a 
 body and a soul. His body identifies him with the 
 animal kingdom; his soul places him in another 
 kingdom and makes him a being of a higher order 
 25 
 
THE MILLENNIAL DAWN HERESY 
 
 than the animals. If we examine the account care- 
 fully we shall see that man is differentiated from 
 the animals in several important particulars: 
 
 1 — God formed man of the dust of the ground. 
 We are not told that any animal was so formed. 
 This is man's first distinction. 
 
 2 — God breathed into man's nostrils. No ani- 
 mal received either its breath or its life in that 
 way. This is distinction number two. 
 
 3 — The thing breathed into man's nostrils is 
 called the "breath of life." Here the Hebrew 
 always makes a distinction between men and ani- 
 mals. The term — breath of life — is frequently 
 applied to animals in the early Hebrew Scriptures ; 
 but whenever animals are said to have the breath 
 of life the Hebrew term is always ruach-hayim, 
 literally, the wind of life. Whenever man is said 
 to have the breath of life it is always nishmath- 
 hayim, literally, the breath of life. There is no 
 •exception to this. Both men and animals have 
 "the breath of life," but it is not by any means 
 the same breath of life. This is a distinction 
 which is sacredly guarded by the Hebrew Scrip- 
 tures, but utterly obscured in our English version, 
 which always translates the two expressions as 
 though they were the same. No wonder innocent 
 but unskilled people are ignorant of the facts, and 
 become the easy prey of designing bunglers. It 
 will be our pleasure to point out many similar 
 instances where either the ignorance or the de- 
 
 26 
 
IMMORTALITY AND SOUL-SLEEPING 
 
 sign of Millennial Dawn touching the real meaning 
 of texts is capitalized to support that system, of 
 error. 
 
 4 — "Man became a living soul." This is equiv- 
 alent to saying that man became an immortal soul. 
 The term immortal soul, or immortality of the 
 soul, is not used in the Sacred Scripture ; the favo- 
 rite term being a "living soul." Plato's opinion 
 was that the soul, being a single substance and not 
 a compound, could not be destroyed, and that, 
 therefore, it is necessarily immortal. That opinion 
 from one of the greatest genius-inspired men which 
 the world has seen has no doubt influenced theo- 
 logians all too much. We are under no obligation 
 to adopt an error because it is old, nor because 
 it emanates from a man of superior genius. We 
 do not say that the soul is necessarily immortal, 
 but that it is naturally immortal — made to be "a 
 living soul," and that it will live always unless 
 assailed by some destructive agent outside of itself. 
 When we say that the soul is naturally immortal 
 we mean exactly what those words imply — a soul 
 whose nature it is to live; that there is no self- 
 limiting device upon or within the soul, no time- 
 limit upon it as there is upon or within the body, 
 which will die naturally within a definite period 
 of time. The soul will never die naturally, but 
 will live always unless it shall please God, for suf- 
 ficient reason, to strike it from the muster-roll of 
 the universe. This is what the Scriptures seem 
 27 
 
THE MILLENNIAL DAWN HERESY 
 
 to mean by the oft-repeated term "a living soul." 
 This view of immortality is both Scriptural and 
 reasonable. 
 
 5 — The next item is that the soul was created 
 in the "likeness and image of God." (Gen. 1: 26). 
 Does not this mean that the soul is an entity, an 
 organism, just as surely as the body is? and that 
 its organs or faculties are like God's? It is not 
 the same as God, nor in His nature, but like Him. 
 It is the regenerated soul that partakes of the 
 Divine nature (2 Pet. 1:4). The Hebrew Scrip- 
 tures speak of the divine soul fourteen times, 
 using the same word that stands for the human 
 soul one hundred and nine times. This furnishes 
 the basis of the divine likeness. In what respect 
 is the soul like God? It is not difficult to see. 
 Practically all eminent students of the soul agree 
 at this point. 
 
 The human soul is like the divine soul in that 
 it has power to think. That which thinks we call 
 intellect. Man's intellect is like God's — a finite 
 copy after the infinite Original. A being without 
 intellect could never be a companion of God. 
 
 The second respect in which man is like God is 
 that he is capable of feeling — pleasure, pain, joy, 
 sorrow, and the like. That organ or faculty of 
 the soul which feels we call heart or sensibility, 
 whether it be divine or human. In the possession 
 of this faculty also man is like God. 
 
 The third respect in which man is like God is 
 that he has power to choose, to act, to perform, 
 28 
 
IMMORTALITY AND SOUL-SLEEPING 
 
 and thus to bring things to pass. In this the 
 human soul is like God, whose power of choice 
 and action is infinite. This power we call will. 
 Thus man is like God in that he has powers of 
 thought, feeling, and action which are similar to 
 those powers in the Divine Being. This view of 
 "the likeness and image of God" is basic and 
 constitutional in the construction of the soul 
 itself. 
 
 No being in the universe, not even God, so far 
 as our present knowledge extends, has any power 
 outside of or beyond the power of thought, feeling, 
 and action. In this respect both men and angels 
 are like God. There is strong probability that all 
 intelligent beings in the universe were so created 
 — intellect, sensibility, will — for thus only could 
 they be capable of divine companionship. And 
 did not God make them to be companions for Him- 
 self? 
 
 The divine likeness in man has been weakened 
 by sin, but it has never been lost. Nearly two 
 thousand years after sin entered into the world, 
 God said to Noah, "Whoso sheddeth man's blood 
 by man shall his blood be shed, because in the like- 
 ness of God created He him," (Gen. 9:6). And 
 four thousand years after sin came, James says, 
 "With the tongue we bless God and curse man, 
 who was made in the likeness of God," (Ja. 
 3:9). 
 
 Paul tells the Corinthians that a man ought 
 not to cover his head, for he is the "image and 
 29 
 
THE MILLENNIAL DAWN HERESY 
 
 glory of God;" and these texts ought to settle it 
 once for all that man has not lost the divine image 
 by sin, though he has lost his original innocence. 
 The divine likeness therefore does not consist of 
 any quality or mental state or moral condition, 
 but of faculties and organs that are copied after 
 God. 
 
 Paul tells Timothy that "only God hath im- 
 mortality." If that statement be taken without 
 modification, then no being, not even angels, are 
 immortal, which is absurd. The text without modi- 
 fication proves too much. So if we would interpret 
 his statement in harmony with the "analogy of 
 faith, ' ' we should be obliged to say that Paul must 
 have meant that God is the only being in the uni- 
 verse who possesses immortality as an original, 
 eternal, and necessary endowment. No other being 
 has it in any one of these senses. His immortality 
 is eternal, ours had a beginning. His is original, 
 ours is conferred. His is necessary, ours is con- 
 tingent upon the divine will. Is not this a sane 
 view of immortality? And is it not the view that 
 the Bible holds? In this sense, and this only, we 
 claim to be immortal. 
 
 Millennial Dawn is not the first cult that has 
 sought to degrade and belittle man, by making him 
 in every essential respect a beast; his soul breath, 
 his spirit wind, the divine likeness, a mental state 
 or a moral condition ; instead of life and hope and 
 joy, a tomb; instead of millenniums of happiness 
 in Paradise, ages of rot in a grave. 
 
 30 
 
IMMORTALITY AND SOUL-SLEEPING 
 
 This truer doctrine of immortality comports 
 well with the dignity and glory that God associates 
 with the creation of man. The psalmist declares, 
 "When I consider Thy heavens the work of Thy 
 fingers, the moon and the stars which Thou hast 
 ordained, what must man be that Thou are mind- 
 ful of him, and the Son of man that Thou visitest 
 him? For Thou hast made him but a little lower 
 than God, and hast crowned him with glory and 
 honor. Thou madest him to have dominion over 
 the work of Thy hands; Thou hast put all things 
 under his feet." Soul-sleepers would rob man of 
 this high station and reduce him to the level of 
 the brute ; and if it had not been positively settled 
 that man was created in the divine likeness and 
 given dominion over the earth, we may be sure 
 that Millennial Dawn would have denied him any 
 distinction of that nature until it had gotten its 
 millennium into working order. But when the 
 psalmist says, "Thou hast put all things under 
 his feet," it is evident that he was not telling us 
 what was going to happen in some far-off millen- 
 nium, but what is true here and now in this pres- 
 ent world and time. "With this magnificent Scrip- 
 ture descriptive of man before us, can any fair- 
 minded person still believe that man is in no re- 
 spect different from the brutes that perish and rot 
 in the grave? There are those who, for the sake 
 of some doctrinal hobby, can go to that extreme, 
 but most candid and intelligent people repudiate 
 such low and coarse materialism. 
 
 31 
 
THE MILLENNIAL DAWN HERESY 
 
 Scripture Evidence of Immortality 
 
 There is nothing which Millennial Dawn so 
 much delights in — unless it is its furious and heroic 
 assaults upon those old and discredited falsehoods 
 of foreordination and eternal torments — as this 
 gruesome doctrine of soul-sleeping in the grave. 
 It seems to he almost delirious with joy at the 
 thought of the souls of the early saints, like Abel 
 and Enoch, rotting in their graves for five thou- 
 sand years! And that senseless stuff is the doom 
 of us all ! And how does it make out such an ab- 
 surdity? Easy enough. Just make sheol in the 
 Old Testament and hades in the New always mean 
 the grave or oblivion, and you have it ! Volume 
 V of the Millennial Dawn series at page 354 and 
 onward for nearly thirty pages reiterates over and 
 over that sheol and hades mean grave or oblivion. 
 And this absurdity is so deep-rooted in the entire 
 scheme of Millennial Dawn that we shall be obliged 
 to devote considerable space to the exposure of 
 the error. 
 
 What Does Sheol Mean? 
 
 1 — Sheol in the Hebrew Bible. — Gesenius' Heb- 
 rew Lexicon devotes two hundred and fifty words 
 to the definition of sheol as the under world, the 
 place where go departed spirits at death, etc., but 
 never once mentions either the grave or oblivion 
 in connection with it. And that is practically the 
 testimony of all Hebrew lexicographers. Any 
 32 
 
IMMORTALITY AND SOUL-SLEEPING 
 
 person who takes the trouble to examine the He- 
 brew lexicons of Gesenius, Moore, Fuerst, Park- 
 hurst, Brown, Driver, Briggs, will find that they 
 are all in perfect harmony in their affirmations 
 that sheol means the place of departed spirits ; not 
 the grave, not oblivion, not a state primarily, but 
 a place where all mankind go at death. We know' 
 of no Bible dictionary, cyclopedia, or lexical au- 
 thority that bears any other testimony. Who 
 knows best — the united and godly scholarship of 
 the entire world, or Millennial Dawn? For that 
 is exactly the issue ! 
 
 Sheol is found sixty-five times in the Hebrew 
 Bible. Its meaning must be found by the use 
 which those ancient Hebrews made of it. It 
 does not mean heaven ; the Hebrew word shama- 
 yim, found four hundred and twenty times, is al- 
 ways used in that sense. It does not mean hell, 
 except when qualified by a descriptive term, as we 
 shall show presently. It does not mean pit, the 
 common word for which is bor, while there are 
 ten other words which are used in that sense. 
 Sheol does not mean grave, the Hebrew word for 
 which is qcbcr, and appears more than fifty times 
 in the Hebrew. Nor does it mean death, though 
 it is once so translated in the Greek version. If 
 it does not mean heaven, hell, grave, pit, death, 
 nor oblivion — what is its true meaning? 
 
 If we were to examine all the texts where the 
 word occurs we would find that in many of these 
 the meaning is vague, frequently figurative, and 
 
 3 33 
 
THE MILLENNIAL DAWN HERESY 
 
 often obscure. No doubt in the Hebrew mind the 
 exact meaning of the word was not always well 
 defined — perhaps a little less distinct than the 
 common notion of heaven as generally held to-day ; 
 but it is certain that the word is found a sufficient 
 number of times where its meaning can not be 
 mistaken. Let us examine some of these. 
 
 (1) — Sheol means a place of conscious existence 
 for all mankind, and they enter it immediately 
 after death. 
 
 Gen. 37:35, "I will go down to sheol to my 
 son mourning." This is Jacob's way of saying 
 that his sorrow over the supposed death of Joseph 
 would kill him. Did Jacob expect to meet his son 
 in the stomach of a wild beast, or did he expect 
 to meet his soul in sheol 1 ? Will Millennial Dawn 
 or any other soul-sleeper please tell us why the 
 ancient Hebrew translators of the Greek version 
 rendered sheol in this place hades instead of 
 mnemeion or taphos, the Greek word for grave 
 and tomb? 
 
 Do not the following texts represent sheol as a 
 place of conscious existence for human souls after 
 death?— 
 
 Ps. 55:15, "Let them go down alive into sheol." 
 Ps. 9:17, " The wicked shall be turned into sheol 
 
 and all the nations that forget God." 
 Ps. 139 : 7-10, "Whither shall I go from Thy spirit, 
 
 or whither shall I flee from Thy presence ? If 
 34 
 
IMMORTALITY AND SOUL-SLEEPING 
 
 I ascend up into heaven Thou art there; if I 
 
 make my bed in sheol, behold, Thou art there ! ' ' 
 Ez. 32:21, "The strong among the mighty shall 
 
 speak to Him out of the midst of sheol." 
 Prov. 1:12, "Let us swallow them up alive as 
 
 sheol. ' ' 
 
 Jonah 2: 22, "Out of the belly of sheol cried I 
 unto Thee, and Thou heardest my voice." 
 
 Is. 14 : 9-15, describes the reception which a wicked 
 king received upon his entrance into sheol." 
 
 Ps. 49:14, "Like a flock they are laid in the 
 grave." "Who ever saw a flock of sheep laid in 
 the grave? No one. The finer figure of the 
 Hebrew poet is: "Like a flock we all are rush- 
 ing into sheol." 
 
 These are sufficient to make it clear that sheol 
 is often used in the Hebrew Scripture to indicate 
 a state of consciousness after death. But these 
 are not the only places where sheol has that mean- 
 ing, as we shall presently see. 
 
 (2) — "When sheol is used in a bad sense. — In 
 a broad and somewhat vague way the ancient He- 
 brews believed that sheol represented a state of 
 happiness for the good and of misery for the bad. 
 This is sufficiently shown by the ever present fact 
 that when sheol is mentioned as the abode of bad 
 men after death, a descriptive term is always used, 
 such as "the lower sheol," "the sides of sheol," 
 "the bottom of sheol," "the depths of sheol," etc. 
 35 
 
THE MILLENNIAL DAWN HERESY 
 
 Thus somewhat vaguely we have the two com- 
 partments of sheol as the home of the good and 
 of the bad — sheol and the lower sheol. The texts 
 which follow exhibit that character, and make this 
 proposition plain to any careful reader: 
 
 Deut. 32:22, "A fire shall burn to the lowest 
 sheol. ' ' 
 
 Is. 14:9, "Sheol from beneath is moved for thee 
 to meet thee at thy coming." 
 
 Ps. 86:13, "Thou deliveredst my soul from the 
 lowest sheol." 
 
 Prov. 9:18, "Her (the wicked woman's) guests 
 are in the depths of sheol." 
 
 Prov. 15:24, "To the wise the way of life goeth 
 upward, that he may depart from sheol be- 
 neath." 
 
 Whenever sheol is accompanied by a qualifying 
 term, as shown in these texts, it is used in a bad 
 sense, and represents the place and state of wicked 
 men after death. In all such cases it would be 
 proper to translate it hell, providing it be not 
 understood as a place of eternal retribution; for 
 we shall now see that — 
 
 (3) — Sheol is a temporal and not an eternal 
 state. — Sheol is an intermediate state. It begins 
 with death and ends with the resurrection, and so 
 far as the human race is concerned it will come 
 to an end with that event. Those dwelling in 
 sheol will not remain there forever, as the follow- 
 ing texts clearly indicate: 
 36 
 
IMMORTALITY AND SOUL-SLEEPING 
 
 Ps. 16 : 10, ' ' Thou wilt not leave my soul in sheol, 
 
 neither wilt Thou suffer Thine Holy One to 
 
 see corruption." 
 Ps. 49:15, "But God will redeem my soul from 
 
 the power of sheol." 
 1 Sam. 2:6, " The Lord killeth, and maketh alive ; 
 
 He bringeth down to sheol, and bringeth up." 
 Ps. 30 : 3, " Thou hast brought up my soul from 
 
 sheol. ' ' 
 
 Hosea 13 : 14, ' ' I will ransom them from the power 
 of sheol; I will redeem them from death. 0, 
 death, where are thy plagues? 0 sheol, where 
 is thy destruction?" 
 
 This last text prophesies the end both of death 
 for the body, and of sheol for the spirit, at the 
 resurrection ; and in his great chapter on the resur- 
 rection Paul paraphrased it in 1 Cor. 15 : 55. 
 
 This examination of sheol as it stands in the 
 Hebrew Bible is sufficient to establish the three 
 propositions made above — That sheol is an inter- 
 mediate state for all mankind between death and 
 the resurrection; that it is a state of conscious 
 existence; and that when it is used to designate 
 the abode of wicked souls, that character is indi- 
 cated by a descriptive or qualifying term. But 
 from first to last there is nothing about it that 
 identifies it with the grave, and there is no Bibli- 
 cal authority anywhere which in any way regards 
 it as meaning the grave or oblivion, Millennial 
 Dawn to the contrary notwithstanding. 
 
 37 
 
THE MILLENNIAL DAWN HERESY 
 
 The Septuagint 
 
 2 — Sheol in the Greek Version of the Hebrew 
 Bible. — In all the world there is no testimony so 
 valuable as to the meaning of Hebrew words as 
 the Septuagint. Here we have the opinion of an- 
 cient Hebrew scholars, nearly three hundred years 
 before Christ, put in such enduring form that no 
 possible change can ever affect it. The transla- 
 tion which these men made of their Bible into the 
 Greek tongue is their enduring and changeless 
 testimony as to what they thought these Hebrew 
 words meant. 
 
 Sixty-five times they encountered the word 
 sheol in the Bible; how did they render it into 
 Greek 1 Their treatment of this word must forever 
 settle it as to what the word meant in their day. 
 They did not render it hell, tartarus, not even in 
 Is. 14 : 9, where it might bear such a meaning. 
 They did not render it grave, though there are 
 two Greek words — mnema for grave, and taphos 
 for tomb — that would have exactly answered their 
 purpose if they had thought, as Millennium Dawn 
 does, that sheol means grave, or oblivion. Evi- 
 dently these old Hebrews two thousand years ago 
 were not basking in the superior effulgence of Mil- 
 lennial Dawn ! They did not render sheol with 
 the Greek word for pit, though that tongue has 
 several words bearing that meaning, two of which 
 are in the Greek New Testament. Evidently they 
 did not think that sheol meant pit. What did 
 38 
 
IMMORTALITY AND SOUL-SLEEPING 
 
 they think it meant? We are not left in doubt, 
 for they rendered it sixty-one times out of sixty- 
 five with the Greek word hades! There we have 
 it. Sheol does not mean pit, hell, nor grave, but 
 HADES ! 
 
 There is no scholarly authority in all this world 
 having any respect for intelligence and honesty 
 that dares stand out against this testimony of the 
 Septuagint translators, that sheol means hades! 
 Not until Millennial Dawn arose to "illuminate" 
 the world was there a dissenting voice. For nearly 
 twenty-two hundred years it was practically unani- 
 mous; now Millennial Dawn arises to tell the 
 human race that they are floundering in benighted 
 ignorance on the subject; that sheol always means 
 grave or oblivion. 
 
 What Does Hades Mean? 
 
 This is the next logical step in our inquiry. 
 Since the Septuagint translators rendered sheol 
 with the Greek word hades, and since hades is 
 found eleven times in the Greek New Testament, 
 it is all important now to find out what this word 
 actually means. And the way to find out is to 
 inquire of Greek authors and dictionary makers. 
 So we turn to the oldest and probably the most 
 influential of all the Greek authors, Homer, and we 
 find that the very first line of the Iliad declares 
 that the wrath of Achilles "hurled many valiant 
 souls of heroes down to Hades." This use of the 
 39 
 
THE MILLENNIAL DAWN HERESY 
 
 word forever fixed its meaning as the place of de- 
 parted spirits in the world to come. And that 
 meaning it has uniformly borne in all literature 
 to this hour. 
 
 It would seem almost a work of supererogation 
 to fill these pages with quotations from Greek lexi- 
 cons giving the definition of hades. We could men- 
 tion Liddell and Scott, Green, Pickering, and a 
 dozen others; but there is not one dissenting voice 
 that hades means the state and place of souls after 
 death, the spirit-world, the abode of departed 
 spirits. If it were a question to be determined by 
 the preponderance of authorities, we would here 
 print these definitions, but as the scholarship of 
 the world has but one testimony to offer, it is 
 needless to go further. If Millennial Dawn can 
 bring forward just one learned and respectable 
 authority to be found on the face of this earth, 
 showing that hades ever means grave, we will con- 
 fess defeat. We challenge it to show just one! 
 And if there is none on earth, we demand of Millen- 
 nial Dawn why it still goes on deceiving simple, un- 
 skilled folk with its downright misrepresentations? 
 Such a course in secular things would be called 
 dishonest. In the eyes of all capable and candid 
 men a system founded upon such a false basis 
 stands discredited. 
 
 The Greek New Testament 
 
 3 — Hades in the Nciv Testament. — Remember- 
 ing what has already been said — that sheol in the 
 40 
 
IMMORTALITY AND SOUL-SLEEPING 
 
 Old Testament was rendered hades in the Greek 
 Version, called the Septuagint — we find that this 
 opened the way for hades to come into the Greek 
 New Testament bearing the same meaning — the 
 world of departed spirits. We find hades in the 
 New Testament eleven times, though one of these 
 is a repetition by a different Gospel writer; that 
 it has substantially the meaning which the word 
 has in the Septuagint version, and which sheol 
 has in the Hebrew Bible. So that the sheol of 
 the Old Testament is the hades of the New. Let 
 us examine these texts in the New Testament and 
 try to find the meaning of hades there. 
 
 Matt. 11:23; Luke 10:15, "And thou, Caper- 
 naum, which art exalted unto heaven, shall be cast 
 down to hades." Here both heaven and hades are 
 used figuratively. Capernaum was not literally 
 exalted to heaven, nor was it literally cast down 
 to hades. 
 
 Matt. 16:18, "Thou art Peter, and upon this 
 rock I will build my church, and the gates of hades 
 shall not prevail against it." Here again the use 
 is figurative, and by "the gates of hades" is prob- 
 ably meant the powers of the invisible or spirit 
 world. 
 
 Luke 16:19-31, "And it came to pass that the 
 beggar died and was carried by angels into Abra- 
 ham's bosom; the rich man also died and was 
 buried; and in hades he lifted up his eyes," etc. 
 Here we have our Lord's authority to teach that 
 both saints and worldlings enter upon a conscious 
 41 
 
THE MILLENNIAL DAWN HERESY 
 
 state of existence immediately after death; and 
 there is no possible way by which Millennial Dawn 
 can get the soul of either of them into the grave! 
 We shall examine this story more fully in another 
 chapter. It is sufficient here to fix the meaning of 
 hades as a state of conscious existence upon the 
 authority of our Lord Himself. 
 
 Acts 2: 27, 31, "Thou wilt not leave my soul in 
 hades. " " His soul was not left in hades. ' ' This is 
 an inspired apostle's authority for declaring that 
 while our Lord's body was in the tomb His soul 
 was in hades ; also that hades is the correct render- 
 ing of the word sheol in the Sixteenth Psalm, from 
 which Peter was quoting. There is no grave about 
 it. What has Millennial Dawn to say to that? 
 
 1 Cor. 15:55, "0 death, where is thy sting? 
 O hades, where is thy victory?" This is Paul's 
 splendid paraphrase of Hosea 13 : 14, and both are 
 prophecies of the resurrection when death must 
 give up the body, and hades must surrender the 
 soul. 
 
 Rev. 1:18, "I have the keys of death and 
 hades. ' ' 
 
 Rev. 6:8, " And I saw a pale horse, and he 
 that sat upon him was death; and hades followed 
 with him." This represents death cutting down 
 the bodies, and hades following close after to claim 
 the souls. 
 
 Rev. 20:13, 14, "And death and hades gave 
 up the dead that were in them; and death and 
 hades were cast into the lake of fire." This is de- 
 42 
 
IMMORTALITY AND SOUL-SLEEPING 
 
 scriptive of the resurrection; death surrenders the 
 bodies which it holds, and hades releases the souls 
 which it has so long held in captivity. The fact 
 that they both come to an end in the lake of fire 
 shows that they both represent an intermediate 
 state. Eternity lies beyond the general judgment. 
 
 Sheol-Hades in Oue English Version 
 
 4 — We must next consider how these words 
 were rendered in our English Bible. — Luther and 
 the Reformers were so anxious to get rid of the 
 doctrine of Purgatory that they went to the ex- 
 treme of practically expunging every trace of the 
 intermediate state from the body of Christian doc- 
 trines and from the languages of modern Europe. 
 It is not therefore to be wondered at that there 
 is no word in either the German or the English 
 languages to represent sheol and hades; nor that 
 the nations that use these tongues are ignorant of 
 the real facts concerning them. As a result King 
 James' Version mistranslates sheol thirty-one times 
 grave, thirty-one times hell, and three times pit, 
 and thus succeeds in missing its true meaning 
 every time! 
 
 The Revised Version translates sheol fifteen 
 times grave, fifteen times hell, and five times pit, 
 and then proceeds to atone for the blunder by 
 transliterating it thirty times, which it ought to 
 have done sixty-five times. But this treatment 
 was better than any version before it had at- 
 tempted, and was a move in the right direction. 
 43 
 
THE MILLENNIAL DAWN HERESY 
 
 The American Revision has done the only thing 
 that could possibly be done correctly — not to trans- 
 late it at all, because there is no word in the Eng- 
 lish language which can possibly represent sheol. 
 They transliterated and thus made an English 
 word of it every time they found it. It is no 
 longer a Hebrew word exclusively. It has by the 
 American Revision been naturalized in the English 
 language; and we must now know its meaning as 
 we know the meaning of Jehovah, Zion, and Halle- 
 lujah, and many other words from the Hebrew, 
 which have been English words for centuries. 
 "Why did not these American Revisers render sheol 
 grave, pit, or hell? Simply because they had too 
 much intelligence, scholarship, and honesty to per- 
 petuate that stupid blunder any longer. Why does 
 Millennial Dawn still persist in foisting that old 
 discredited error upon mankind? Simply because 
 it prefers that kind of a foundation for its system. 
 It required a good deal of intelligence, honesty, 
 and heroism to repudiate a blunder so thoroughly 
 entrenched as this is, that sheol and hades always 
 mean the grave. But the Revised Version and 
 the American Revision have dragged the old fraud 
 from its obscurity, and henceforth intelligent peo- 
 ple will not remain in ignorance concerning it. 
 
 A similar treatment has been accorded the word 
 hades in the English New Testament. The Author- 
 ized Version rendered it hell in every instance but 
 one. This was bad enough, but it showed that 
 they thought it meant the place where the souls 
 44 
 
IMMORTALITY AND SOUL-SLEEPING 
 
THE MILLENNIAL DAWN HERESY 
 
 went at death, not the grave, and that was some- 
 thing gained. The revisers did not attempt to 
 translate it at all, but made an English word of 
 it in every instance. May we not now hope that 
 intelligent Bible students will gain correct opinions 
 concerning its true meaning? That question may 
 be considered settled, unless Millennial Dawn is 
 prepared to arise and tell us just where in the 
 New Testament hades ought to be rendered grave. 
 
 Soul-Sleeping 
 
 Nearly all grades of millennialists have an ab- 
 normal fondness for soul-sleeping. It is a strange 
 fascination. But to them, as to Millennial Dawn, 
 the thought of the privilege of rotting for thou- 
 sands of years, soul and all, in the grave, arouses 
 them to a high pitch of religious frenzy. Why 
 is this ? Is it because it is so much easier to manu- 
 facture a millennium out of the world 's population 
 now in their graves than it is to bring saints out 
 of Paradise or sinners out of Tartarus for such a 
 purpose? They are forever telling us that when 
 a man dies his soul goes into tbe grave along with 
 his body to "sleep" till the resurrection. No con- 
 siderations of the true nature of the soul, no evi- 
 dences of its natural immortality, however over- 
 whelming or convincing, are allowed to stand one 
 moment before this strange fiction. 
 
 And what a silly fiction it is! Gentle spirits 
 among all nations have preferred to represent the 
 harsh and stern realities of death under the kind- 
 46 
 
IMMORTALITY AND SOUL-SLEEPING 
 
 lier figure of sleep. It is a literary fancy that is 
 world-wide, and is justified by the evident simi- 
 larity in appearance between one asleep and one 
 dead. But few ever interpret this in any literal 
 sense. Death is not sleep, and sleep is not death. 
 Whenever we say of one dead that he is asleep, 
 we use language figuratively. So everywhere 
 and always with the Sacred Scriptures. The 
 warmth and glow of the Oriental mind could not 
 be expected to express itself upon so forbidding a 
 subject as death except in softer and more pic- 
 torial speech. Death is represented under the fig- 
 ure of sleep, just as religious joy is expressed by 
 "mountains breaking forth into singing and all 
 the trees of the field clapping their hands." The 
 righteous man is "like a tree planted by rivers 
 of water." Sensible conversation is "like apples 
 of gold in pictures of silver." We confess our 
 sins by saying, "All we like sheep have gone 
 astray." The universal reign of death is set forth 
 thus, "Like a flock they rush to sheol." The 
 wickedness of a great king is thus proclaimed, 
 "How art thou fallen from heaven, 0 Lucifer, 
 son of the morning ! ' ' And so forth with many 
 hundred like expressions, high-wrought, figurative, 
 fanciful. Could less be expected of minds imbued 
 with these Oriental feelings and training than that 
 they would express the sad features of death with 
 the gentler poetry of sleep? 
 
 We find the word sleep one hundred and thirty- 
 six times in the Scriptures, and fifty-five times it 
 47 
 
THE MILLENNIAL DAWN HERESY 
 
 is used figuratively for death. But there is no 
 affirmation in the Bible that death is sleep, or that 
 sleep is death. In the Thirteenth Psalm is the 
 expression, "sleep of death," as if the author felt 
 that the word sleep alone was not quite sufficient 
 to express real death. But the Orientals were not 
 confused by this use of the term sleep. Several 
 times in the Gospels we have the statement concern- 
 ing the maiden, "She is not dead but sleepeth." 
 Jesus said to His disciples, "Our friend Lazarus 
 sleepeth. ' ' They understood him as speaking liter- 
 ally, and suggested that sleep would do him good. 
 Then Jesus dropped the figure and spoke to them 
 in literal terms, ' ' Lazarus is dead. ' ' That incident 
 and the use our Lord made of the figure of sleep 
 ought to satisfy all fair-minded men that when one 
 is dead he is not in any sense asleep, and that the 
 Biblical use of sleep for death is always figurative. 
 
 When kings and eminent persons died the He- 
 brew writers generally said, "He slept with his 
 fathers;" but when men of lesser rank died that 
 fact was often stated in more literal terms, as note 
 1 Kings 11 : 21, " Hadad heard in Egypt that David 
 slept with his fathers and that Joab was dead." 
 Is not such an instance ample proof that when the 
 dead are said to be asleep the language is figura- 
 tive? 
 
 We wonder if Millennial Dawn ever discovered 
 that when an ordinary man, a sinner, or some great 
 scoundrel died, the sacred writers do not say, "He 
 slept with his fathers," but in bald literalism tell 
 
IMMORTALITY AND SOUL-SLEEPING 
 
 us that he died. Notice the account of the death of 
 Achan, Abner, Absalom, Saul, Joab, Ahab, the 
 Rich Fool, Judas, Ananias, Sapphira, and Herod. 
 
 The sacred writers and speakers frequently 
 represent sin and sinners by both sleep and death, 
 as, "Awake, thou that sleepest and arise from the 
 dead, and Christ shall give thee light." Here both 
 sleep and death are used as figures of sin. Death 
 is also used as a figure of the unregenerate in this 
 text, "Let the dead bury their dead." Millions 
 are constantly speaking of sleep for death who do 
 not at all believe in the soul-sleeping nonsense. In 
 view of all this it is notbing less than childish and 
 pitiable to see Biblical teachers, as Millennial 
 Dawn professes to be, forever reiterating that old 
 threadbare falsehood that the souls of the dead are 
 asleep in their graves or are in a state of "ob- 
 livion. ' ' 
 
 Further Scripture Evidence op Immortality 
 
 There is another class of Scripture evidences 
 which in their nature are more direct as bearing 
 upon the immortality of the soul, and while it would 
 make this work too cumbersome to quote them all, 
 we will introduce a few of them. A vast majority 
 of able, devout, and scholarly Bible students in all 
 ages have believed the soul's immortality upon the 
 authority of these Scriptures. And it is difficult 
 to see how they could have done otherwise. 
 
 "WTiat happens to a man when he dies? There 
 is a pretty substantial agreement that his body 
 
 4 49 
 
THE MILLENNIAL DAWN HERESY 
 
 decays, loses its identity, and is resolved into the 
 very elements of which the earth is composed. 
 Does a similar thing happen to his soul — that part 
 of him that was created in the image of God? Or 
 does death separate the body and the soul, and send 
 each to a separate destiny? That is clearly the 
 Scriptural message. "The dust returns to the 
 earth as it was, and the spirit returns to God who 
 gave it." (Ecc. 12:7.) Our life "is soon cut off 
 and we fly away" is the way the Ninetieth Psalm 
 has it. Paul declared, "I am in a strait betwixt 
 two, having a desire to depart and be with Christ." 
 (Phil. 1 : 23.) If Paul expected to go into the grave 
 or to lose all consciousness in "oblivion" it is hard 
 to understand his 1 1 strait. ' ' The fact is that Paul 's 
 better knowledge enabled him to say of death that 
 "to be absent from the body is to be present with 
 the Lord." (2 Cor. 5:8.) 
 
 In our Lord's controversy with the Sadducees 
 upon the resurrection, he took occasion to rebuke 
 them for their ignorance of the Scriptures and 
 of their rejection of the doctrine of immortality, 
 declaring that ' ' God is the God of Abraham, Isaac, 
 and Jacob; He is not the God of the dead, but of 
 the living." (Matt. 22: 32.) In effect, Millennial 
 Dawn says, "0 no, Jesus, You are mistaken. Abra- 
 ham, Isaac, and Jacob are not living; their bodies 
 have long since rotted in the grave, and their souls 
 are in 'oblivion.' They '11 not live again until 
 the Millennium!" Thus it puts itself squarely in 
 antagonism to the "analogy of faith" which Paul 
 50 
 
IMMORTALITY AND SOUL-SLEEPING 
 
 said should guide us in the interpretation of Scrip- 
 tures. (Rom. 12: 6.) Those who are willing to be 
 deceived will continue to follow Millennial Dawn. 
 
 Jesus taught that the death of the body does 
 not involve the death of the soul when He said, 
 ' ' Fear not them that kill the body, but are not able 
 to Mil the soul." (Matt. 10:28.) This language 
 of our Lord is misleading if the soul goes into 
 the grave with the body or into "oblivion" at 
 death. Paul in his experience of being "caught 
 up" to Paradise and the third heaven, tells us 
 that he did not know whether he was "in the body 
 or out of the body ; ' ' and his language can have no 
 meaning unless the soul and the body are two dis- 
 tinct and separate organisms, and the soul able to 
 exist apart from the body. (2 Cor. 12: 2.) James 
 says that the body without the soul is dead; but 
 he does not say that the soul without the body is 
 dead also. 
 
 Paul's account of the outward and the inward 
 man (2 Cor. 4:16) — the body and the soul — the 
 body perishing every day, the soul renewed and 
 ever growing in glory and power, can have no 
 meaning except upon the theory that these are two 
 distinct organisms, one material, the other spirit- 
 ual — one mortal and the other immortal. 
 
 Fifteen hundred years after Moses had died, 
 and seven hundred and fifty years after Elijah 
 had been translated, they both appeared with 
 Christ on the Mount of Transfiguration. Evi- 
 dently their souls were not in any grave nor slum- 
 51 
 
THE MILLENNIAL DAWN HERESY 
 
 bering in "oblivion." They were very much alive. 
 Millennial Dawn feels how damaging this is to its 
 pet soul-sleeping fiction; so it proceeds to create 
 another fiction, and tells us that this was a "vi- 
 sion," intending by that to convey the impression 
 that is was not real ; that what the disciples thought 
 they saw and heard was some impression produced 
 upon them in an abnormal or sub-conscious mental 
 state ; that Moses and Elijah were not really there 
 at all; in other words, that Jesus was only fooling 
 them! That is exactly what Millennial Dawn 
 does on every occasion when baffled by the truth — 
 resort to some fiction or falsehood to distort the 
 plain meaning of Scripture ! Peter and James and 
 John and the Master were not on the mountain 
 at all! Jesus was not transfigured before them! 
 Moses and Elijah were not there in person! The 
 whole thing was a ' ' vision ! ' ' And sure enough ! 
 Did not Jesus tell us it was a "vision?" When 
 we see anything we call it a sight. When the 
 Greeks saw anything they also called it a sight — 
 a liorama — a thing seen. That is what Jesus called 
 the Transfiguration, and that is also the word that 
 Stephen called the burning bush which Moses 
 saw (Acts 7: 31). Both were sights or visions, one 
 as real and literal as the other. 
 
 The Intermediate State 
 
 Protestant theologians in recent years have be- 
 come well-nigh unanimous in support of the doc- 
 trine of the Intermediate State. To name only a 
 52 
 
IMMORTALITY AND SOUL-SLEEPING 
 
 few among many — Wesley, Shedd, Hagenback, 
 Hodge, Miley, Pope, Johnson, Foster, Dwight, 
 Dorner, Merrill, Raymond, Curtis — shows that the 
 funeral sermonizer who assumes that saints go di- 
 rectly from this world to heaven, and sinners to 
 their eternal retribution, is likely soon to be lone- 
 some. The Intermediate State — sheol, hades, which 
 has already been fully discussed in this chapter — 
 has its two compartments or states, Paradise and 
 Tartarus (2 Pet. 2:4), separated by the Great 
 Gulf of Luke 16 : 26. Jesus went to Paradise from 
 the cross and remained there while His body was 
 in the sepulcher. He took with Him the soul of 
 the penitent thief, a glory which Millennial Dawn 
 would rob Him of by changing a punctuation 
 mark! The Sixteenth Psalm declared that "Thou 
 wilt not leave my soul in sheol;" and in his great 
 Pentecostal sermon Peter applies that to Christ 
 and declares that ' ' His soul was not left in hades. ' ' 
 Jesus was in hades — Paradise — not in heaven, for 
 on the morning of the resurrection He said to 
 Mary, "Touch Me not, for I have not yet ascended 
 to My Father. ' ' There is no Millennial Dawn soul- 
 sleeping nor "oblivion" here! 
 
 Immortality versus Eternal. Life 
 
 Immortality and eternal life are not the same. 
 A vast amount of confusion concerning the natural 
 immortality of the soul comes from the false notion 
 that they are identical. So when one comes across 
 a text — and there are many of them — which teaches 
 53 
 
THE MILLENNIAL DAWN HERESY 
 
 that eternal life is conditioned upon faith in Christ, 
 they at once assume, and wrongly, that immortal- 
 ity is so conditioned, and that those who have not 
 faith in Christ as the Savior miss immortality. 
 This is the fruitful source of the error and con- 
 fusion upon the subject. 
 
 Immortality is the life of the soul. We have 
 already defined it as exemption from any self- 
 limiting device. There is no time-limit in the 
 soul as there is within the body. The body will 
 die naturally after a certain time. The soul will 
 never die naturally. It is a living soul. If it ever 
 dies or ceases to exist, some power outside of itself 
 must work its overthrow. If never assailed from 
 without it will live forever. But immortality is 
 simply life — continued existence, duration; it has 
 no reference to a kind of life. It is quantity 
 rather than quality, amount rather than kind. We 
 inherit our souls as we inherit our bodies; we in- 
 herit our immortality as we inherit our souls, for 
 immortality is soul-life. It is the common inherit- 
 ance of the human race. 
 
 Not so eternal life. This is spiritual life. It 
 is the life of God, and of all holy and regenerate 
 beings, whether men or angels. It is not chiefly 
 duration or quantity. It has its seat in our spir- 
 itual nature — that nature which comes from the 
 Holy Spirit in regeneration. It is that which 
 causes the spirit to glow and shine. It fills the 
 whole being with "righteousness and peace and 
 joy in the Holy Ghost." It is quality, essence. 
 54 
 
IMMORTALITY AND SOUL-SLEEPING 
 
 It is not an inheritance. It is the gift of God 
 through Jesus Christ. 
 
 In his soul-life or immortality a man may be 
 educated, genteel, refined, cultured, high-toned; he 
 may know all science, and in thought, feeling, ac- 
 tion may become almost godlike; but no degree 
 of culture, intellectual development, or genius can 
 ever equal, nor be a substitute for, spiritual life 
 — the life of God in our spirit nature. That is 
 eternal life. 
 
 This eternal life is in God the Father (Jn. 
 5:26) as an eternal and necessary endowment. 
 The Father bestowed it upon the Son (ibid) and 
 Jesus was commissioned to bring it to light in the 
 gospel (2 Tim. 1: 10, Revised Ver.), and to bestow 
 it upon His disciples (Jn. 17:2) upon condition 
 of faith in Him as the Savior (Jn. 3:16); it is 
 God's glorious gift to man (Rom. 6:23) and is a 
 present possession of all those who accept Jesus 
 Christ by faith (Jn. 3:36), as well as their ever- 
 lasting inheritance. (Matt. 25:46.) 
 
 The Scriptures frequently exhort us to seek 
 and to lay hold on eternal life. We are never ex- 
 horted nor even invited to seek immortality, though 
 the Authorized Version, through faulty rendering 
 of Rom. 2 : 7, made it appear that we were to ' ' seek 
 for immortality." All recent versions have cor- 
 rected that, and also and for the same reason they 
 have corrected 2 Tim. 1 : 10. Thus two more props 
 of Millennial Dawn and all other soul-sleepers 
 are gone — killed by the truth — a correct rendering 
 55 
 
THE MILLENNIAL DAWN HERESY 
 
 of the Greek text ! The reason why the Scriptures 
 do not exhort us to lay hold of immortality is that 
 immortality is our inheritance ; the reason why we 
 are to seek eternal life is that it is a gift con- 
 ditioned upon those who seek it by faith. Paul 
 tells us (1 Cor. 15:53) that "this mortal must 
 put on immortality," but he is not now speaking 
 of the soul, but of the body which "is sown a 
 soulical body, raised a spiritual body." The resur- 
 rected body will be spiritual and immortal. 
 
 Demons are immortal, but they have not eternal 
 life. The natural man is immortal, but only the 
 regenerate have eternal life. By blindly con- 
 founding immortality and eternal life Millennial 
 Dawn exhibits its sad lack of spiritual insight and 
 puts up a bungling soul-life in the place of the 
 greatest, highest, divinest thing named in all the 
 Bible next to the Divine Name itself — Eternal 
 Life ! We have never encountered anything in Mil- 
 lennial Dawn that indicates its author ever had any 
 true conception of eternal life at all other than 
 mere continued existence. Eternal life is not 
 simply a life that has, and can have, no end, but 
 a life that is in some sense divine, and forever 
 growing more divine ; that partakes of the expe- 
 riences, emotions, and holy joys of God Himself, 
 and of all angels and glorified beings in the uni- 
 verse; where the whole being glows with an ever 
 brighter radiancy; "this is eternal life — to know 
 God," and by Him to be enriched with a "far 
 more exceeding and eternal weight of glory." 
 56 
 
IMMORTALITY AND SOUL-SLEEPING 
 
 This we believe to be the Scriptural doctrine 
 of immortality and eternal life. It has the glorious 
 merit also of satisfying the deep hungers of the 
 human heart. We infinitely prefer it to the gross 
 materialism or Millennial Dawn, with its grave 
 clothes, soul-sleeping, and "oblivion," and all in 
 constant and defiant disregard of every principle 
 of Biblical interpretation. 
 
 "Oblivion," Hades, or Heaven 
 
 Few Protestant Churches have any creed state- 
 ment of the Intermediate State. In the absence of 
 any formula of belief touching the state of de- 
 parted souls between death and the resurrection, 
 many Christian students and teachers have as- 
 sumed that translated saints were in heaven, and 
 sinners were in hell. And that view has quite 
 generally obtained in Protestant Churches. But 
 that doctrine is fraught with difficulties which soul- 
 sleepers have never failed to make the most of to 
 the disadvantage of the otherwise orthodox. If 
 that doctrine be true, then all human souls must 
 be brought from both heaven and hell in order to 
 be present at the general Judgment. It seems 
 an inconsistent doctrine, that after millenniums in 
 heaven and thousands of years in hell, souls must 
 be brought out for judgment. These incongruous 
 situations call loudly for a restatement. Three 
 ways have been proposed; and each has its advo- 
 cates : 
 
 1 — Give up belief in a General Judgment. But 
 57 
 
THE MILLENNIAL DAWN HERESY 
 
 the doctrine of a Judgment is too deeply inwrought 
 in the woof and warp of the Sacred Scriptures for 
 that. ' ' He hath appointed a day in which He shall 
 judge the world by that Man," etc; "For we 
 must all stand before the judgment seat of 
 Christ:" "Then shall He sit upon the throne of 
 His glory, and before Him shall be gathered all 
 nations." These and a score of other literal 
 statements of the great FACT make it impossible 
 to set it aside or to treat it as figurative. There 
 will be one General Judgment for all mankind. 
 
 2 — Assume that the soul "sleeps" in the grave 
 or in "oblivion" between death and the resur- 
 rection. Quite a number of Millennialists and 
 Second Adventists beside Millennial Dawn have 
 adopted that hypothesis. "We have already shown 
 how untenable it is. It involves a practical denial 
 of the real nature of the soul as an organism cre- 
 ated in the "likeness and image of God." It is 
 absolutely unscriptural, having substantially the 
 whole Bible against it. It also generally creates 
 confusion concerning the true nature of the soul 
 and the spirit, as well as the exact distinction be- 
 tween immortality and eternal life. While it offers 
 a way out for some, it can never be generally 
 adopted by Biblical scholars. 
 
 3 — A place of conscious existence, other than 
 heaven and hell, for all human souls between 
 death and the resurrection, is not only a necessity 
 of reason, but the clear testimony of the Word of 
 God. Departed souls take their places in Hades — 
 
 58 
 
IMMORTALITY AND SOUL-SLEEPING 
 
 Paradise or Tartarus — not as the verdict of any 
 Judgment, but upon the one criterion only — that 
 their names are written, or not written, in the 
 Lamb's Book of Life. 
 
 The General Judgment — which will take place 
 at the close of the Intermediate State — is not for 
 the purpose of deciding who shall be saved and 
 who lost — who shall go to heaven and who to hell ; 
 but for this one purpose, namely — To deliver per- 
 sonal rewards and retributions to each human soul 
 "according to the deeds done in the body." "And 
 the dead were judged out of the things that were 
 written in the books, according to their works." 
 It is one thing to be saved by faith, it is quite 
 another thing to be rewarded for works. The 
 Judgment throne is the place where "Whatsoever 
 a man soweth that shall he also reap" makes good. 
 Is it not possible that some saints shall miss their 
 reward? Is it not possible also that some sinners 
 may escape the heavier retribution ? In every case 
 it will be "according to the deeds done in the 
 body. ' ' 
 
 No Souls Now in Heaven 
 
 In his sermon on ' ' The Rich Man and Lazarus ' ' 
 John Wesley says, "The beggar died and was car- 
 ried by the angels into Abraham's bosom. It is 
 indeed very generally supposed that the souls of 
 good men as soon as they are discharged from the 
 body go directly to heaven ; but this opinion has 
 not the least foundation in the Oracles of God." 
 59 
 
THE MILLENNIAL DAWN HERESY 
 
 In this opinion Mr. "Wesley is certainly right. 
 While there are many Scripture texts which serve 
 to create the expectation of a happy place for the 
 good when they leave this world, and of a glorious 
 heavenly home at some future time, such as; "I 
 shall be satisfied when I awake in Thy likeness;" 
 "At Thy right hand there are pleasures for ever- 
 more;" "Thou wilt guide me with Thy counsel 
 and afterward receive me to glory;" "To depart 
 and be with Christ is far better;" "Then shall 
 the spirit return to God who gave it," etc., — yet 
 there are several texts which seem to positively 
 deny that any human soul has ever readied 
 heaven : 
 
 "No man hath seen God at any time." (John 
 1:38.) 
 
 "No man hath ascended up to heaven." (John 
 3:13.) 
 
 "David hath not yet ascended into heaven." 
 (Acts 2: 34.) 
 
 In the absence of any statement to the contrary 
 these texts are sufficient to establish the "analogy 
 of faith" upon that point. The first two state- 
 ments were made by our Lord Himself, the last 
 was made by Peter at Pentecost, and was said of 
 David, who had been dead a thousand years. Some 
 have thought that the saints were permitted to 
 enter heaven at the time of our Lord's resurrec- 
 tion, or at the time of our Lord's ascension. But 
 Peter made this statement about David fifty days 
 60 
 
IMMORTALITY AND SOUL-SLEEPING 
 
 after our Lord's resurrection, and ten days after 
 His ascension. 
 
 Paradise, Home op Saints, not a Twilight 
 World 
 
 Christ went to Paradise from Calvary, bearing 
 upon His bosom the soul of the repentant thief, 
 the first trophy of His redemptive scheme. Laza- 
 rus was carried there by the angels, from poverty 
 and suffering at the gate of Dives to the glories 
 of Paradise. About every time the clock ticks 
 some one closes his eyes on earth to open them 
 in Paradise. Every hour they are receiving news 
 from earth, and no doubt are thus made acquainted 
 with what is passing here. In that fashion we 
 are "surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses," 
 who are watching with intense interest the progress 
 we make. Are they not more interested in the 
 victories of the cross and the working out of the 
 divine plans than we are? What celebrations of 
 victories ! Paradise ! Will not its glories and ec- 
 stasies be about all we can stand for the first ten 
 thousand years? Adam and Eve, the first father 
 and mother of the human race — we trust are there. 
 Abel is there. Though never permitted to see the 
 inside of the earthly Paradise, the gates of the 
 celestial Paradise no doubt swung wide open to 
 receive him and to welcome him home, the first 
 arrival. Was he lonesome ? Well, he did not have 
 to wait long, for they soon began to arrive; and 
 61 
 
THE MILLENNIAL DAWN HERESY 
 
 for more than five thousand years the incoming 
 procession of victorious saints has not halted for 
 one hour, day or night. Enoch walked with God 
 three hundred years ; and one day he walked right 
 out of the sunset glories of earth into the morning 
 splendors of Paradise. Abraham caught a glimpse 
 of its unseen enchantments from Mount Moriah, 
 and soon after passed its portals to dwell in the 
 celestial splendors. Moses went there from Mount 
 Pisgah, Aaron from Mount Hor, David from 
 Mount Zion, Daniel from Babylon, or the royal 
 palace of Persia, Paul from Rome, John from 
 Ephesus, John the Baptist from Herod's prison, 
 Stephen from Jerusalem, and Jesus from Calvary. 
 Isaiah pours his soul of fire into its songs. All 
 the saved of earth are there. More than ten thou- 
 sand million of the earth we believe are there, 
 pouring forth their triumphant anthems of re- 
 demption and praise. 0 Paradise ! Thou art not 
 a twilight world. 
 
 62 
 
Ill 
 
 THIS GOSPEL AGE 
 
"All authority is given unto Me in heaven and 
 in earth; go ye therefore and teach all nations; 
 baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of 
 the Son, and of the Holy Ghost; teaching them to 
 observe all things whatsoever I have commanded 
 you ; and lo ! I am with you alway, even unto the 
 end of the world."— Matthew 28:18-20. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 Millennial Dawn Misrepresents the Purpose 
 of this Gospel Age, and Flatly Denies that 
 God Now Offers Salvation Full and Free to 
 All Men Everywhere 
 
 This gross error is one of the fundamental fea- 
 tures of Millennial Dawn. It declares that this 
 is the age of the Church, not the age of salvation 
 for all men. The Church is now on trial ; the rest 
 of the world will be hereafter. A few only can 
 be saved now, and these for the special work that 
 will be furnished them in the Millennium, when 
 they will be kings and priests and teachers and 
 evangelists, whose duties it will be to make all 
 mankind — the resurrected multitudes of all ages — 
 acquainted with Christ and His salvation. It en- 
 deavors to build this strange doctrine upon the 
 following 
 
 Faulty Foundation 
 
 1. God's promise made to Abraham, that "in 
 his seed all the families of the earth should be 
 blessed. ' ' ( Gen. 12 : 3 ; 28 : 14.) " All the nations 
 of the earth." (Gen. 18:18; 22:18.) Evidently 
 God intended to consider ' ' families ' ' and ' ' nations ' ' 
 as exactly the same in this covenant. Jesus is the 
 
 5 65 
 
THE MILLENNIAL DAWN HERESY 
 
 "seed" of Abraham, and it is through Him that all 
 families or nations of the earth are to be " blessed. ' ' 
 
 Millennial Dawn proceeds to deny that all the 
 families of the earth are blessed, or ever will be, 
 with the present order of things; that God, in 
 making this promise to Abraham, meant that all 
 mankind should be saved or should be placed in 
 such personal relation to Christ as to make their 
 salvation practically certain. Since that purpose 
 has failed and will continue to fail, and in order 
 to protect God's honor in making that promise, 
 it feels called upon to invent the wonderful Millen- 
 nial Dawn scheme of a thousand years probation 
 which it is cock sure will accomplish that purpose. 
 How kind of it to step in at just this crisis and 
 save the honor of Jehovah ! What would have hap- 
 pened if Millennial Dawn had never thought of it ? 
 It is terrible to contemplate. 
 
 Now, we accept the promise which God made 
 to Abraham, but we do not feel obliged to adopt 
 nor to manufacture any plan, other than the Gos- 
 pel Plan, to help God out of the difficulty of ful- 
 filling His promises. The Millennial Dawn insti- 
 tution is a pure fiction without one word of Scrip- 
 ture authority for it, and very much Scripture 
 against it. 
 
 On the contrary we affirm that God's promise 
 has not failed, but has been fulfilled, and is being 
 fulfilled, and will continue to be fulfilled more 
 and more until the end of time; and that all man- 
 kind — all the nations of the earth — are blessed in 
 66 
 
THIS GOSPEL AGE 
 
 Jesus Christ, the "seed" of Abraham, in this 
 present Gospel Age, and in the following ways: 
 
 (1) — By the gift of life. This earthly life is 
 the gift of God's mercy through Jesus Christ. Had 
 there been no Redeemer there would have been no 
 people to redeem, for before God made man "the 
 Lamb was slain [in the divine purpose] from the 
 foundation of the world." (Rev. 13: 8.) Had no 
 Redeemer been provided the human race would 
 have perished in the first pair. God's goodness 
 would not have permitted Him to create a race of 
 beings, subject them to the awful disability of sin, 
 without also providing a remedy for sin. Jesus 
 Christ is that remedy — "The Lamb of God that 
 taketh away the sin of the world. ' ' 
 
 (2) — The result of Christ's ministry in this 
 world has been and is a blessing to all mankind, 
 and is steadily increasing in effectiveness and 
 value. For nearly two thousand years He has been 
 a saving influence in the social health and progress 
 of the world, the mightiest force that has ever 
 been felt in human society. Millennial Dawn 
 forever belittles Christ's work in this world, and 
 sneers at any mention of moral reforms, diffusion 
 of knowledge, development of science, downfall of 
 despotism and slavery, birth of civil and religious 
 liberty, growth of Christian sentiment and en- 
 liglitment, and world-wide evangelization. All 
 these go for naught as unworthy honorable men- 
 tion. To mention one subject alone — War. Be- 
 fore the birth of Christ the world was a military 
 
 67 
 
THE MILLENNIAL DAWN HERESY 
 
 camp, and wars were waged for conquest and re- 
 prisal. The Christian spirit has so far permeated 
 the world that it would not to-day tolerate another 
 war for either of these causes. Japan yielded to 
 the Christian moral sense of the world when she 
 relinquished her demand for indemnity of Russia; 
 and America wrote the parable of the Good Sa- 
 maritan into the law of nations when it espoused 
 the cause of Cuba. If there shall be any war in 
 the future, its only cause can be fear, distrust, or 
 misunderstanding; and Christianity is rapidly 
 making it impossible for one nation to fear, dis- 
 trust, or misunderstand another. Thus it is true, 
 and growing more true daily, that the seed of 
 Abraham is blessing all the NATIONS of the earth. 
 
 We take it that the blessing which Christ has 
 been, and is, to the world to-day in its improved 
 mental, moral, and social condition, goes far to 
 satisfy the demands of God's promise to Abraham. 
 But Millennial Dawn insists that God's promise 
 means that every family of this earth must be 
 saved, and every individual must come to know 
 and accept Christ as his personal Savior, in the 
 Millennium; and it demands that this program 
 be carried out in the most literal sense. That is 
 its contention everywhere and all the time. So 
 we invite Millennial Dawn's attention once more 
 to the terms of the promise. "I will multiply thy 
 seed as the stars of heaven, and as the sand which 
 is upon the sea-shore; and in thy seed shall all 
 the nations of the earth be blessed." (Gen. 22 : 17, 
 68 
 
THIS GOSPEL AGE 
 
 18.) Millennial Dawn insists that the fulfillment 
 of that promise can mean nothing less than the con- 
 version of all the inhabitants of this world ; and 
 if not now, then in the Millennium ! It insists upon 
 the fulfillment of that promise in the most literal 
 sense. And so we insist upon the fulfillment of 
 the promise in the most literal sense as to the 
 NUMBER of people involved. The number con- 
 verted must be as innumerable as the stars! Has 
 Millennial Dawn counted the stars yet? Recent 
 photographs of star-clouds in the Milky-Way seem 
 to indicate that they must be numbered by hun- 
 dreds of billions! But has Millennial Dawn 
 counted the sands upon the sea-shore! Now, one 
 cubic mile of sand contains grains enough to rep- 
 resent the present population of the world 
 TWELVE BILLION TIMES ! But God did not 
 limit us to one cubic mile of sand, but to the sea- 
 shore — all the shore of all the sea. Does Millen- 
 nial Dawn know that there are two hundred thou- 
 sand miles of coast line on this planet, and that 
 there is not less than that number of cubic miles 
 of sand ? And does Millennial Dawn presume that 
 God meant to say with any approach to literalness 
 that the number of people who should be saved by 
 personal faith in Jesus during the supposed Mil- 
 lennium would amount to twenty-five hundred 
 thousand billion times as many people as there 
 are now living on this earth ? Yet it takes all that 
 to literalize the "sands of the sea-shore!" If one 
 part of this promise is to be taken literally, then 
 69 
 
THE MILLENNIAL DAWN HERESY 
 
 all of it must. If God meant what He said as to 
 the "blessing" of mankind, He meant what He said 
 as to the number to be "blessed." If He spoke 
 in the terms of hyperbole as to the number in- 
 volved in the promise, what authority has Millen- 
 nial Dawn to literalize or in any way to cramp 
 the terms of that blessing? Such a procedure is 
 gross assumption and folly. Thus the whole sys- 
 tem of Millennial Dawn falls flat upon the very 
 text on which it always relies to support its con- 
 tention. It rarely prints a page without wringing 
 in that promise about the "seed" of Abraham 
 blessing "all the families of the earth;" and al- 
 ways insists that its own interpretation of what 
 that "blessing" was to be is the only interpreta- 
 tion possible ! That is egotism and absurdity gone 
 mad! 
 
 (3) — But Christ is "blessing" and evangel- 
 izing the families and nations of the earth to-day 
 in this present Gospel Age. His gospel is being 
 preached in every country of the globe. Perhaps 
 this is a subject of grief, as it is often times of 
 ridicule, to Millennial Dawn; for it never misses 
 any chance to belittle the present missionary move- 
 ment. But God is blessing the work and will con- 
 tinue to bless it in spite of Millennial Dawn's dis- 
 paraging attitude, till the knowledge of God shall 
 fill the earth as the waters cover the sea. 
 
 Of course it looks absurd to Millennial Dawn. 
 Why shouldn't it? Hasn't Millennial Dawn 
 taken out its pencil and figured it out a hundred 
 70 
 
THIS GOSPEL AGE 
 
 times before your eyes, and shown that, at the 
 present rate of converts in heathen lands, the 
 Christian can never overtake the heathen? Of 
 course it has. Aren't heathen being born ten 
 times faster than they are being Christianized? 
 Of course they are. But does Millennial Dawn 
 ever stop to think that that very same reasoning 
 would prove that the Roman Empire could never 
 become even nominally a Christian State? that 
 Germany could never be converted? that England 
 could never become a Christian nation? that the 
 United States is forever doomed to benighted 
 heathenism? that no nation can ever become con- 
 verted to Christianity until the Millennium? Cli- 
 max of egotism and absurdity. 
 
 "Within a single lifetime every door of the world 
 has opened to the missionary of the cross. The 
 progress of the gospel in India, China, Japan, 
 Corea, and of the islands of the sea is astounding. 
 There is every reason to believe that every man, 
 woman, and child on this earth will be able to 
 hear the gospel message within the short span of 
 a single lifetime. Surely the "seed" of Abraham 
 is blessing all the families and nations of the earth ! 
 
 2. Millennial Dawn never gets weary of quot- 
 ing, "He that hath ears, let him hear," and then 
 assumes that most people have no ears to hear; 
 that they could not hear if they wanted to; that 
 God has given the hearing ear to only a few in 
 this Gospel Age — which is simply nonsense ! These 
 texts mean simply that Christ exhorts people to 
 71 
 
THE MILLENNIAL DAWN HERESY 
 
 use their ears, their understanding, just as He says 
 in Mark, "Take heed what you hear!" and in 
 Luke, "Take heed how ye hear!" To undertake 
 to found a doctrine upon such texts and such inter- 
 pretations as that exhibits the mental caliber of 
 its author. If people to whom Christ spoke could 
 not hear anyway, did He not exhibit gross igno- 
 rance in continually making His appeals to them? 
 Such an interpretation impeaches either the hon- 
 esty of Jesus or the common sense of Millennial 
 Dawn ! Take your choice. 
 
 3. Millennial Dawn assumes that no one can 
 be saved by Christ without having such a personal 
 contact with Him as has been impossible for the 
 heathen to have in this age. Since Christ is to be 
 present with the people in the Millennial Age, all 
 will then have the opportunity to know Him and to 
 come under the influence of His person ; and that, 
 all that is necessary to secure the salvation of the 
 heathen. 
 
 How does Millennial Dawn know all that? 
 Millions in these Christian centuries have been con- 
 verted and saved who never saw Christ, never 
 heard Him, never read a word that He said, nor 
 ever saw any one who ever did see Him. Abraham 
 never as much as heard His name, yet his works 
 were counted for faith. We do not claim that a 
 heathen can become a well-developed Christian 
 without knowing something of Christ and His doc- 
 trines; yet we ask, Could not God save a heathen 
 72 
 
THIS GOSPEL AGE 
 
 on practically the same terms upon which He 
 saved Abraham ? Does not His Word tell us ' ' that 
 God is no respector of persons ; but in every nation 
 he that feareth Him and worketh righteousness is 
 accepted with Him?" (Acts 10: 35.) Does He not 
 say that "the Gentiles who have not the Law are 
 a law unto themselves?" (Rom. 2:11-15.) Does 
 He not say, "If any man wills to do His will he 
 shall know the doctrine ? " (John 17:7.) Does He 
 not place the responsibility of our salvation chiefly 
 upon our own conscience, whether we are Christian 
 or heathen? Why then should Millennial Dawn 
 feel obliged to provide another Gospel Age in order 
 to give the heathen a chance ? If this performance 
 were simply a harmless amusement we should have 
 nothing to say; but it is pitiable to see innocent, 
 gentle folk led astray with such false doctrines. 
 
 4. Millennial Dawn quotes the Authorized 
 Version where our Lord says to His disciples, 
 "Many I say unto you shall seek to enter in and 
 shall not be able" (Luke 13:24), and then tri- 
 umphantly shouts that only a few can possibly be 
 saved in this Age ; Jesus says so ! But has Millen- 
 nial Dawn ever taken the pains to inform its de- 
 luded followers that the Revisers have in the mar- 
 gin of that text brought its teaching into harmony 
 with the "analogy of faith" by making it read 
 as all correct Greek texts read, "Many I say unto 
 you shall seek to enter in and shall not be able, 
 when once the Master has risen up and shut the 
 73 
 
THE MILLENNIAL DAWN HERESY 
 
 door!" Thus another world-saving doctrine, 
 founded upon a false translation, is knocked into 
 ' ' oblivion ' ' by the ' ' analogy of faith ! ' ' 
 
 A hundred other Scriptures have been wrested 
 and tortured into the support of this fantastic 
 system; but most of these are so manifestly erro- 
 neous, not to say silly, that it seems a waste of space 
 to pursue them further. Millennial Dawn has 
 taken six volumes to utter itself, and we can not 
 be expected to point out its false reasoning and 
 erroneous interpretations in every instance; but if 
 what we have already said is true, then nothing 
 can break it down. If not true, our contention 
 fails. We are willing to leave the matter with those 
 who do not want to be fooled — those who have 
 sense enough to understand, and candor enough to 
 admit the truth. 
 
 Salvation Full and Free is Offered to all Men 
 Now in this Gospel Age 
 
 Upon this question God's Word says one thing, 
 and Millennial Dawn flatly says another thing. 
 Salvation by faith in Jesus Christ is now offered 
 to all people everywhere, and pressed upon them 
 with most persistent urgency. Millennial Dawn 
 denies it, and in these words: "Our Lord's instruc- 
 tion was that His people should preach the gospel 
 in all the world for a witness — not to convert all 
 the world, but for a 'witness' to all the world. 
 The mission of the gospel is to select the kingdom 
 74 
 
THIS GOSPEL AGE 
 
 class, a ' little flock. ' " ( " People 's Pulpit, ' ' Vol. II, 
 No. 8.) Similar statements can be found hundreds 
 of times scattered through its literature; and they 
 make a square issue between God's Word and Mil- 
 lennial Dawn. So it becomes necessary to point 
 out with great clearness and fullness the message 
 of the gospel to lost men and the nature of the in- 
 vitations to come and be saved. 
 
 We wall start with the terms of the Great Com- 
 mission: "All authority hath been given unto Me 
 in heaven and on earth. Go ye therefore and 
 make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in 
 the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of 
 the Holy Spirit ; teaching them to observe all things 
 whatsoever I commanded you ; and lo ! I am with 
 you always, even unto the end of the world." 
 (Matt. 28 : 18, 19, 20.) Can an honest man discover 
 in this any sign that all men were not included; 
 any foreknowledge that only a few could hear 
 anyway ; any message to a " little flock ' ' only ? Is 
 it not as wide as the world, as deep as God's love, 
 and as honest as God's heart? Millennial Dawn 
 would have us believe that Jesus did not mean 
 what He said; that His generosity was gangrened 
 with a disingenuous proposal to all men, intending 
 only to search out a ' ' little flock ! " He was send- 
 ing them out with offers of salvation which most 
 people had no power to accept, and whom He did 
 not want to accept! 
 
 ' ' Come unto Me all ye that labor and are heavy 
 75 
 
THE MILLENNIAL DAWN HERESY 
 
 laden, and I will give you rest." (Matt. 11:28.) 
 Is not this invitation made in good faith to all peo- 
 ple everywhere ? Was not the formula, ' ' all ye that 
 labor and are heavy laden" intended to include 
 all people now dwelling on this planet? If so, 
 what warrant has any person to say that God is 
 not now trying to save all mankind ? 
 
 "Behold NOW is the acceptable time; behold 
 NOW is the day of salvation. " (2 Cor. 6:2.) Paul 
 here quotes a noble prophecy from the 49th chapter 
 of Isaiah, in which the Gospel Age is set forth in 
 most glowing terms. People afflicted with millen- 
 nium-phobia would long since have filched this 
 prophecy from this Christian Age if Paul had not 
 reiterated, "NOW is the day of salvation!" 
 
 "And ye shall seek Me and find Me when ye 
 shall search for Me with all your heart." (Jer. 
 29:13.) 
 
 "Let the wicked forsake his way and the un- 
 righteous man his thoughts, and let him return 
 unto the Lord, and He will have mercy upon him, 
 and to our God, for He will abundantly pardon." 
 (Isaiah 55:7.) 
 
 "Him that cometh unto Me I will in no wise 
 cast out." (Jn. 6: 37.) 
 
 "If any man thirst let him come unto Me and 
 drink." (Jn. 7:37.) 
 
 "Ho every one that thirsteth! Come ye to the 
 waters! Yea, come, buy wine and milk without 
 money and without price." (Isaiah 55:1.) 
 
 "The times of this ignorance God winked at; 
 76 
 
THIS GOSPEL AGE 
 
 but NOW commandeth all men everywhere to re- 
 pent. (Acts 17:30.) 
 
 "Repentance and remission of sins should be 
 preached in His name unto all nations, beginning 
 at Jerusalem. " ( Lk. 24 : 47 . ) 
 
 "Ask and ye shall receive, seek and ye shall 
 find, knock and it shall be open unto you; for I 
 say unto you that every one that asketh keceiv- 
 
 ETH ; AND HE THAT SEEKETH FINDETH ; AND TO HIM 
 THAT KNOCKETH IT SHALL BE OPENED." (Matt. 
 
 7:7, 8.) 
 
 "I declared to them of Damascus, and Jeru- 
 salem and Judea, and to the Gentiles, that they 
 should repent and turn to God." (Acts 26:20.) 
 
 "For the grace of God hath appeared, bring- 
 ing SALVATION TO ALL MEN!" (TitUS 2: 11.) " To 
 
 the 'little flock,' " says Millennial Dawn, "Paul, 
 you are mistaken ! ' ' 
 
 "As many as received Him, to them gave He 
 the right to become children of God." (John 
 1:12.) 
 
 "As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilder- 
 ness even so must the Son of man be lifted up, 
 that whosoever believeth on Him should not perish, 
 but have everlasting life." (John 3:14; also 
 John 3: 16.) 
 
 "The high priest prophesied that Jesus should 
 die for the nation; and not for the nation only, 
 but that He might gather together in one the chil- 
 dren of God that are scattered abroad." (John 
 11:52.) 
 
 77 
 
THE MILLENNIAL DAWN HERESY 
 
 "Look unto Me and be ye saved all ye ends 
 of the earth, for I am God and there is none else. ' ' 
 (Is. 45:22.) 
 
 "For to you is the promise, and to your chil- 
 dren, and to all that are afar off, even as many 
 as the Lord our God shall call unto Him." (Acts 
 2:39.) If Peter had not applied that glorious 
 prophecy of Joel to this present Gospel Age, you 
 may be sure that Millennial Dawn would long ago 
 have told you that Joel meant the Millennium! 
 But Peter settled that on the spot! 
 
 "0 Jerusalem, Jerusalem! How often would 
 I have gathered your children together, even as 
 a hen gathers her chickens under her wings; but 
 ye would not!" (Matt. 23:37.) Jesus weeping 
 over sinners whom He could not save! Does He 
 excuse them and say they could not believe? Mil- 
 lennial Dawn does. No, Jesus says they would not 
 believe. Who knows best, Jesus or Millennial 
 Dawn? 
 
 "The Spirit and the bride say come; and let 
 him that heareth say come ; and whosoever will let 
 him come and take the water of life freely." (Rev. 
 22:17.) 
 
 We have here quoted twenty, and these are but 
 a few, of the promises, exhortations, and invita- 
 tions of God's Word to the whole world of unsaved 
 men. These are quite sufficient to establish the 
 "analogy of faith" upon the subject of God's 
 mercy to lost men; and according to Paul (Rom. 
 12:6) and Peter (2 Pet. 1:20), the Scriptures 
 78 
 
THIS GOSPEL AGE 
 
 must be interpreted in harmony with this standard. 
 Nothing can be allowed to stand out against their 
 testimony. No limit of time, nor country, nor race, 
 nor condition, is ever anywhere suggested. Sal- 
 vation full, present, free, and universal is now of- 
 fered to all men everywhere ; and it is an impeach- 
 ment of God's honor to call in question His 
 sincerity in issuing these invitations. To deny the 
 import of these promises is to convict Jesus of 
 ignorance or dishonesty in making these offers. 
 It is difficult for us to understand how any sane 
 man can get his mental and moral vision so dis- 
 torted, or his egotism so inflamed as to thrust his 
 bungling man-made "Plan of the Ages" into the 
 very face of God in opposition to all these promises 
 of mercy to all unsaved men ! We know of nothing 
 masquerading under the name of Christian that is 
 so utterly out of harmony with God's plan of sal- 
 vation revealed in the Sacred Scriptures! 
 
 God's Plan Called to Naught 
 
 It is nearly nineteen hundred years since the 
 Kingdom of God was inaugurated at Pentecost. The 
 campaign which the Church has prosecuted since 
 is under the direction, approval, and consent of 
 God, or it is not. If it has neither, then it is the 
 work of the devil. If it is operating by the au- 
 thority of God, then to sneer at or disparage it 
 must be blasphemy. The means and agencies now 
 in operation for the conquest of this world — God's 
 Holy Book, now being published in all the lan- 
 79 
 
THE MILLENNIAL DAWN HERESY 
 
 guages of the earth ; the Church, many of its mem- 
 bers careless, indifferent, immoral, but millions 
 of them true and faithful and Christlike; the 
 world-wide missionary movements; the Holy 
 Spirit, whose office it is to awaken, to convict, and 
 to regenerate human souls; the Son of God, Re- 
 deemer and Savior, who "tasted death for every 
 man," who has commissioned His workers and has 
 promised to be with them unto the end of the 
 world — these are the energies which the infinite 
 wisdom of God has commissioned to go forth to 
 the conquest of this world. 
 
 Ages have passed ; splendid triumphs have been 
 won ; great opposition has been encountered ; lofty 
 barriers have been surmounted; yet never have 
 there been such encouraging signs of progress and 
 of final triumph as at this hour! Jesus is sitting 
 upon His mediatorial throne and reigning in His 
 kingdom, and shall continue to "reign until He 
 hath put all enemies under His feet;" and "He 
 shall not fail nor be discouraged till He hath set 
 judgment in the earth, and the isles shall wait for 
 His law." 
 
 No one is fully satisfied with the result already 
 attained. God is not satisfied. Jesus can not be 
 entirely satisfied. But God's infinite patience is 
 still prosecuting the campaign, though often baffled 
 at the door of human hearts. His faithful people 
 will not discourage the workers, nor disparage the 
 plan, nor belittle the results. No one can do that 
 without mocking God. Millennial Dawn holds 
 80 
 
THIS GOSPEL AGE 
 
 itself in a critical and unsympathetic attitude 
 toward practically all that has been done to save 
 this world by the plan that Jesus ordained and to 
 which He has pledged His support. We therefore 
 say unqualifiedly that the attitude and spirit of 
 Millennial Dawn is out of harmony with the spirit 
 of the gospel and of the Great Commission. 
 
 It is generally so. "When any man's soul gets 
 infected with the millennial microbe, his spirit 
 becomes pessimistic, he withdraws from any sym- 
 pathetic co-operation in moral and spiritual move- 
 ments for the regeneration of society, and his use- 
 fulness as a soldier in the Lord's army comes to 
 an end. 
 
 Discord, Wailing, and Sorrow 
 
 "The various creeds of to-day teach that all 
 of the billions of humanity, ignorant of the only 
 name under heaven by which they must be saved, 
 are on the straight road to everlasting torment; 
 and not only so, but that all of the Protestants, 
 except the very few saints, are sure of the same 
 fate." ("Divine Plan of the Ages," p. 17.) 
 
 This is Millennial Dawn's opinion of the 
 Churches of Christendom to-day. From this it is 
 easy to see how it utterly misrepresents the spirit 
 of the gospel, and misunderstands the very terms 
 under which God now offers mercy to lost men. 
 Millennial Dawn is a dismal system, full of dis- 
 cord, wailing, and sorrow. It can see nothing good 
 in this world, even though it is a world which 
 
 6 81 
 
THE MILLENNIAL DAWN HERESY 
 
 God made and Christ redeemed. There is no hope 
 for any one but in the Millennium. It is so intoxi- 
 cated with this dream of the Millennium that it 
 is out of all harmony with every movement in 
 this world to make it a better world, and to bring 
 in the Kingdom of God here and now by the di- 
 vinely-appointed agencies already in the field. Its 
 spirit is not that of the gospel, which is good 
 news to all men, especially to those who long for 
 righteousness. Millennial Dawn is good news 
 chiefly to those who love sin, who are glad to learn 
 that they do not have to repent in this life, as 
 they will have their chance in the Age to come. 
 God says, ' ' To-day ! ' ' Millennial Dawn says, ' ' To- 
 morrow ! ' ' God says, ' ' Now is the accepted time ! ' ' 
 Millennial Dawn says, "The Millennium is the ac- 
 cepted time!" God says, "Cry out and shout, 
 thou inhabitant of Zion, for the Great and Holy 
 One of Israel is in the midst of thee ! ' ' Millen- 
 nial Dawn says, "No shouting until the Millen- 
 nium!" God says, "Look unto Me and be ye saved, 
 all ye ends of the earth!" Millennial Dawn says, 
 "No one can be saved except the 'little flock.' " 
 God says, ' ' Strive to enter in ! " Millennial Dawn 
 says, "You may strive all you wish, but you shall 
 not be able!" Paul's conception of the joy and 
 triumph of salvation is chilled and blasted into a 
 hoarse croak. Paul conjugates every victory and 
 triumphant experience offered in the gospel in the 
 present tense. Millennial Dawn can see it only 
 as "this present evil world," a twilight fading 
 82 
 
THIS GOSPEL AGE 
 
 into a deeper gloom, the grave, "oblivion." It 
 calls itself Dawn, but it is Twilight, fast sinking 
 into the darkness of night. 
 
 In his Yale Divinity Lectures, Bishop Simpson 
 said: "When the gospel, under the preaching of 
 the Christian preacher, shall have filled the whole 
 earth, then indeed there will be a new heaven and 
 a new earth. Until that time comes we must 
 preach on. Nor must we be diverted by any sug- 
 gestions that society can not be reformed, or that 
 the Lord will come visibly to cut off the wicked 
 and reign as a temporal king. I have respect for 
 the good men who teach this doctrine, but none 
 for the doctrine itself. Analyzed, it shows a lack 
 of faith in God's Word; a spirit of indolence that 
 is unwilling to face calmly and patiently the 
 thought of long ages of toil and sacrifice; a spirit 
 of vengeance that calls for fire to come down from 
 heaven. They think it easier to kill men than to 
 convert them." 
 
 The "Little Flock" 
 
 The Sermon on the Mount was delivered to 
 Christ's disciples. In Luke's account of a portion 
 of this sermon occurs these words: "Fear not, 
 little flock; for it is your Father's good pleasure 
 to give you the kingdom." (Luke 12:32.) Now, 
 by every reasonable implication the "little flock" 
 must mean the disciples whom He was then ad- 
 dressing. To this "little flock" of disciples the 
 kingdom was to be given, and that in the most 
 53 
 
THE MILLENNIAL DAWN HERESY 
 
 literal sense. And it came to pass; for on the 
 great day of Pentecost they saw "the Son of man 
 coming in His kingdom" (Matt. 16:28), and by 
 the terms of the Great Commission the kingdom 
 was literally delivered into their care and keeping, 
 and they were divinely anointed with authority 
 and power to establish it everywhere. 
 
 But in Millennial Dawn this "little flock" text 
 figures about as conspicuously as the "seed of 
 Abraham blessing all the families of the earth," 
 and we believe all out of proportion to its im- 
 portance; for, according to Millennial Dawn, the 
 only thing that has chiefly concerned God from 
 the creation of the world to the end of time is 
 the "little flock." The patriarchal dispensation, 
 the Hebrew dispensation, and the Christian dis- 
 pensation — all these are for the one supreme pur- 
 pose of selecting the "little flock." So scarcely 
 a page is printed without the "little flock" ap- 
 pearing upon it. And by such a course of padding 
 and exaggeration things that in the gospel are 
 inconspicuous and apparently unimportant are 
 crowded to the fore and allowed to obscure more 
 important truth, or to dazzle the eyes of the seeker, 
 as it has dazzled the eyes of Millennial Dawn. 
 The fact is that, in common with their country- 
 men, these disciples were looking for the kingdom. 
 They were almost feverish with desire. These 
 words were spoken for their reassurance. They 
 shall have the kingdom, so fear not, "little flock." 
 He often used this metaphor in reference to His 
 84 
 
THIS GOSPEL AGE 
 
 disciples. He was the Shepherd and they were 
 the flock. He used it on their way to Gethsemane. 
 Speaking of His arrest and crucifixion, He said, 
 "All ye shall be offended because of Me this night, 
 for it is written, I will smite the Shepherd and 
 the sheep of the flock shall be scattered abroad." 
 (Matt. 24:31.) They understood Him correctly, 
 whether Millennial Dawn does or not, that they 
 should have the kingdom, and that they were the 
 "little flock." They fully understood after Pente- 
 cost that the kingdom had been solemnly committed 
 to their care, and they never after proclaimed 
 that the kingdom was "at hand," but went every- 
 where "preaching the kingdom of God." 
 
 While the kingdom which was given to them 
 was not the kind of a kingdom which they had been 
 looking for, nevertheless its spiritual power and 
 glory so far transcended anything of which they 
 had ever dreamed, that we hear no more of the 
 semi-political kingdom which the Jews were hop- 
 ing for. There were some Jewish Christians in the 
 early Church who could not quite give up the old 
 Messianic hope of an earthly kingdom. They 
 would interpret Christianity as a Reformed Juda- 
 ism. They would put the new wine of the king- 
 dom into the old, dried-skinned bottles of the 
 Jewish system. But the bottles broke, and they 
 were defeated in the First Council held in Jeru- 
 salem. (Acts 15.) They and their successors 
 then shifted their hopes to a Millennium, and 
 have been looking for one ever since. 
 
 85 
 
THE MILLENNIAL DAWN HERESY 
 
 The True Kingdom of God 
 
 But the vast majority of the followers of Jesus 
 Christ in all ages have had no sympathy with 
 these false, semi-political, earthly, and material 
 views of the kingdom of God. They believe that 
 the kingdom of God is a real kingdom; that it 
 is as old as eternity; that it is as vast as the uni- 
 verse of God; that its capital is heaven; that its 
 King is God Almighty ; that the Son and the Spirit 
 are associated with the Father in upholding its 
 authority; that its subjects are all the intelligent 
 beings in the universe who believe, love, and obey 
 God; that every human soul that is redeemed and 
 saved by the power of Jesus Christ, together with 
 all angels and glorified beings are the subjects of 
 this divine kingdom, and belong to its citizenship. 
 The Bible is not the kingdom; the Church is not 
 the kingdom ; the gospel is not the kingdom. These 
 all are means which God is employing to establish 
 the kingdom in the hearts of men and to reinstate 
 its authority over this earth. The kingdom of 
 God is one, and not one kingdom for each planet. 
 It is the moral and spiritual and eternal system 
 of the entire universe. It is to establish its author- 
 ity over all beings, all worlds, suns and systems. 
 It is not to be established anywhere for a hundred 
 or a thousand or a million years. It is co-exten- 
 sive with creation. It began in the dawn of eter- 
 nity, and will continue as long as God sits on 
 the throne of heaven. Christ is now engaged in 
 86 
 
THIS GOSPEL AGE 
 
 establishing this kingdom over this world — a re- 
 bellious province. He is now reigning in His 
 kingdom, and He will continue to reign until He 
 has put all enemies under His feet. Then His 
 mediatorial work will be done, He will return to 
 this world to raise the dead, judge the world, close 
 the volume of human history on this planet, and 
 "deliver up" the kingdofn of God, who will be 
 forever all and in all. Jesus had much to say of this 
 kingdom, but never one word in behalf of a per- 
 sonal, temporal, semi-political reign on this earth 
 for a thousand years! And any man or system 
 that is forever trying to inject that nonsense into 
 the heads of deluded followers does not represent 
 Christ at all. His whole propaganda forever be- 
 littles the thought of the real glory of Christ and 
 the splendor of His eternal kingdom. 
 
 87 
 
IV 
 
 THE MILLENNIUM 
 
"It is appointed unto men once to die, 
 And after this — the Judgment!" 
 
 — Hebrews 9:27. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 THE MILLENNIUM 
 
 Millennial Dawn is the Propagation op an Un- 
 scriptural Fiction op Second Probation, 
 Evangelization, Trial, Judgment, and Mil- 
 lennium all in One 
 
 This strange program is founded chiefly upon two 
 propositions — that there is to be a Millennium; 
 and that probation is to continue beyond this life. 
 This chapter will be devoted to a discussion of the 
 first, namely, Is there to be a Millennium and a 
 personal reign of Jesus Christ on this earth, to 
 begin at the time of the Second Advent, and to 
 continue one thousand years? 
 
 The only apparent Biblical support, so far as 
 we know, which this millennial idea has is found 
 in the first eleven verses of the Twentieth Chapter 
 of Revelation. To this we will first direct our 
 attention. "We place here the passage in full, as 
 found in the American Revision: 
 
 "And I saw an angel coming down out of 
 heaven, having the key of the abyss and a great 
 chain in his hand. And he laid hold on the dragon, 
 the old serpent, which is the devil and Satan, and 
 bound him for a thousand years, and cast him into 
 the abyss, and shut it, and sealed it over him, that 
 91 
 
THE MILLENNIAL DAWN HERESY 
 
 he should deceive the nations no more, until the 
 thousand years should be finished: after this he 
 must be loosed for a little time. 
 
 "And I saw thrones, and they sat upon them, 
 and judgment was given unto them: and I saw 
 the souls of them that had been beheaded for the 
 testimony of Jesus, and for the Word of God, and 
 such as worshiped not the beast, neither his 
 image, and received not the mark upon their fore- 
 heads and upon their hands; and they lived and 
 reigned with Christ a thousand years. The rest 
 of the dead lived not till the thousand years should 
 be finished. This is the first resurrection. Blessed 
 and holy is he that hath part in the first resur- 
 rection: over these the second death hath no 
 power: but they shall be priests of God and of 
 Christ, and shall reign with Him a thousand years. 
 
 "And when the thousand years are finished, 
 Satan shall be loosed out of his prison, and shall 
 come forth to deceive the nations which are in the 
 four corner^ of the earth, Gog and Magog, to gather 
 them together to the war, the number of whom is 
 as the sand of the sea. And they went up over 
 the breadth of the earth, and compassed the camp 
 of the saints about, and the beloved city : and fire 
 came down out of heaven, and devoured them. 
 And the devil that deceived them was cast into 
 the lake of fire and brimstone, where are also the 
 beast and the false prophet; and they shall be 
 tormented day and night for ever and ever." 
 
 Millennialists the world over camp in this chap- 
 92 
 
THE MILLENNIUM 
 
 ter, and Millennial Dawn has pitched its tent here 
 also. If we are to consider the thousands of diver- 
 gent, often fantastic, and sometimes beligerent 
 attempts to interpret this passage, we shall reach 
 the conclusion that it is a difficult problem, and 
 that probably no one has yet made it plain. Why 
 this difficulty? It is a chapter filled with figures 
 and symbols, in probably the most figurative and 
 pictorial book of the Bible. The book is prophetic 
 chiefly. It relates to things that "must shortly 
 come to pass." Some of these things have already 
 taken place; some are still future. Prophetic 
 writings have generally been understood when they 
 were fulfilled, not before. So we presume it will 
 be with this famous chapter. To take this chapter, 
 with its figures and symbols, and interpret all the 
 rest of the Bible by it, as Millennial Dawn does, 
 is to reverse the divine law of interpretation, 
 which is to interpret figurative passages by literal 
 statements found elsewhere in the Scriptures. This 
 principle we pointed out at length in the first 
 chapter of this book, and showed that it was the 
 method of Joseph, Daniel, Paul, and Jesus. Mil- 
 lennialists generally interpret this chapter as a 
 literal statement of what is to take place in this 
 world. Let us proceed on that theory and see how 
 far we get. 
 
 The angel, the chain, the key, the abyss, the 
 dragon, the beheaded souls, the wicked nations, 
 camps and armies — Gog and Magog — and all the 
 rest are literal persons and things. "I saw an 
 93 
 
THE MILLENNIAL DAWN HERESY 
 
 angel come down from heaven." "Who was that? 
 All Millennialists say, "That was Christ." But 
 the Book says it was "an angel." "Yes," they 
 say, "but the angel is a figure of Christ." The 
 angel is a "figure" of Christ, is he? Well, if the 
 very first verse is figurative, who knows but the 
 whole chapter is figurative? And if the whole 
 chapter is figurative, how can any one get a literal 
 Millennium out of it? Thus the literal interpre- 
 tation which is so much relied upon to establish 
 the doctrine of the Millennium, and without which 
 no one can possibly get a Millennium into this 
 chapter, breaks down with the very first sentence. 
 
 There is no resurrection of saints mentioned 
 in this chapter. The saints that are mentioned 
 are disembodied souls, specially designated as 
 those "who had been beheaded for the testimony 
 of Jesus, and for the Word of God, and such as 
 worshiped not the beast, neither his image, and 
 received not the mark upon their foreheads and 
 upon their hands." These specifications indicate 
 that the souls whom John saw were martyrs and 
 eminent saints, singled out and set apart for this 
 great and high honor, that they should "live and 
 reign with Christ a thousand years." Perhaps 
 this is Millennial Dawn's "little flock." We have 
 no doubt of its ability to appropriate them and so 
 to twist its interpretation of this chapter as to 
 make them fit perfectly into its "Plan." But not 
 without some difficulties. 
 
 In the first place, the "little flock" that Jesus 
 94 
 
THE MILLENNIUM 
 
 assured of the kingdom was the disciples who sat 
 at His feet when He delivered the ordination 
 "Sermon on the Mount" to them; while the com- 
 pany whom John saw evidently contained many 
 who were not on earth at that time. 
 
 In the second place, this company are souls, 
 disembodied souls; and Millennial Dawn's "little 
 flock" are not to be disembodied souls, but resur- 
 rected saints! In the third place, these are emi- 
 nent saints and martyrs, singled out from all the 
 world for special glory and honor. In the fourth 
 place, Millennial Dawn's "little flock" are not to 
 be disembodied souls with nothing to do, but resur- 
 rected saints having the entire race to evangelize 
 and instruct. That is exactly what Millennial 
 Dawn has been selecting them for from Allegheny 
 to Sweden since 1877! It does not go much to 
 the heathen for them. It finds that it can get 
 them faster and with much less expense to invade 
 Churches and Christian communities for them. In 
 the fifth place, these disembodied souls who "lived 
 and reigned with Christ a thousand years" did all 
 this while the rest of the saints, together with the 
 infinite multitudes who have lived since Adam, 
 were all "asleep in their graves — in oblivion" — 
 and all this during the very time that the "little 
 flock" was expected to evangelize them! To just 
 an ordinary uninspired reader all this looks in- 
 congruous, not to say impossible. But it will not 
 bother Millennial Dawn a bit; it has skated over 
 thinner ice than that a thousand times. 
 
 95 
 
THE MILLENNIAL DAWN HERESY 
 
 The account tells us that "the rest of the dead 
 lived not till the thousand years should be fin- 
 ished." This is the most damaging statement of 
 all for Millennial Dawn, and it fully realizes how 
 fatal this sentence is; for, if everybody except the 
 "little flock" — all the infinite multitudes who have 
 ever lived since Adam — are to remain "asleep in 
 the grave," in "oblivion," then the whole cam- 
 paign of world-wide and age-long evangelism that 
 was to crowd the business of the "Thousand 
 Years" falls flat! No wonder Millennial Dawn 
 feels the full force of this terrible blow, and winces 
 sorely ! But it meets it with fortitude. To almost 
 any open-minded seeker after truth this would 
 be quite sufficient to discredit the entire system, 
 and he would give up, feeling that he was on the 
 trail of an error. Not so Millennial Dawn! It 
 does not give up that easy. Not it. It has found 
 two holes by which it can crawl out of the diffi- 
 culty. 
 
 Crawfishing 
 
 On page 288 of "The Divine Plan of the Ages" 
 is a footnote telling us that the sentence, "The 
 rest of the dead lived not till the thousand years 
 should be finished," is spurious! That is the 
 easiest known way out of a difficulty; but is it 
 either candid or brave to rip a text out of the Bible 
 simply because it strangles your pet hobby? Pre- 
 cisely that is what Millennial Dawn has done in 
 this instance. We are told that this sentence is a 
 96 
 
THE MILLENNIUM 
 
 spurious addition to the sacred text because three 
 or four manuscripts do not contain it. One of 
 these mentioned — the Codex Sinaiticus — is earlier 
 than the Fifth Century, while the other numbers — 
 1160 and 1209 of the Vatican library — also omit 
 it. And upon this slim foundation Millennial 
 Dawn arises and solemnly pronounces the sentence 
 "spurious!" "We affirm that the sentence in ques- 
 tion is just as genuine as the rest of that chapter, 
 and for the following reasons: 
 
 1. There are seventeen hundred Greek MSS. 
 of the New Testament, all of them more or less 
 fragmentary; not one of them has the New Testa- 
 ment complete. A portion of Scripture is not dis- 
 credited because it is not found in one or even 
 several manuscripts, provided it is found in others 
 equally valuable. And that is the case with this 
 sentence in question. Three or four MSS. do not 
 have this sentence; sixteen hundred and ninety- 
 seven of them do contain it if they have the book 
 of Revelation at all. 
 
 2. Millennial Dawn tells us that the Codex 
 Sinaiticus does not have this sentence, and since 
 that MSS. is earlier than the fifth century, there- 
 fore the sentence in question is "spurious." Ad- 
 mitting that the sentence is not in the Codex Si- 
 naiticus, yet it must be remembered that we have 
 several other manuscripts of practically equal value 
 with it — Codex Alexandrinus (London), Codex 
 Vaticanus (Rome), Codex Ephraemi Rescriptus 
 (Paris), all of about the same age as the Codex 
 
 7 97 
 
THE MILLENNIAL DAWN HERESY 
 
 Sinaiticus ; and none of these famous MSS. put any 
 discredit upon the sentence in question. 
 
 3. The sentence is found in all of the Greek 
 New Testaments issued by those famous, world- 
 renowned Biblical critics — Griesbach, Wordsworth, 
 Lachmann, Tregelles, Alford, Tischendorf, and 
 Westcott and Hort, the last named authors now 
 recognized the world over as furnishing the un- 
 challenged standard of the New Testament text. 
 It was Tischendorf who found the Codex Sinaiticus 
 at the convent of St. Catherine, Mt. Sinai, in 1859 ; 
 and he issued eight editions of the Greek New 
 Testament during his lifetime, and Tischendorf 
 never pronounced this sentence spurious. Yet Mil- 
 lennial Dawn sets itself up against all this array 
 of the best Biblical scholarship which the world 
 has ever seen! 
 
 4. The sentence in question is found in the 
 Authorized Version of the English Bible, in the 
 Revised Version, and in the American Revision; 
 and there is not a note or reference anywhere 
 that calls its genuineness in question. The Revised 
 Versions are the result of the very best scholarship 
 and critical skill which the world has been able to 
 produce in the last five hundred years; and any 
 portion of Scripture that is found in these ver- 
 sions may be set down once for all as having a just 
 place in the Sacred Canon. If it is not in these 
 versions, one may be certain that it is not entitled 
 to a place in the Sacred Volume. This sentence 
 under consideration is found in all these versions. 
 
 98 
 
THE MILLENNIUM 
 
 There is therefore not a cloud upon its title to this 
 honor. 
 
 5. Finally, the sentence fits into the Twentieth 
 Chapter of Revelation perfectly, and its omission 
 would mar the whole or render it unintelligi- 
 ble. 
 
 These reasons are sufficient, we believe, to settle 
 forever the genuineness of the sentence under 
 examination, and we challenge Millennial Dawn to 
 cite a respectable Biblical authority on earth that 
 puts this sentence in dispute. Now, if Millennial 
 Dawn thinks it can build up its "Plan of the 
 Ages" upon so "spurious" a foundation as that, 
 it has some surprises coming to it ! 
 
 Hunts Another Hole 
 
 But Millennial Dawn evidently feels that it has 
 not quite succeeded in escaping through that hole, 
 so it hunts another, and here it is. On page 289 
 of the same volume is the footnote which shows 
 us the hole into which Millennial Dawn finally 
 crawled : 
 
 "However, the repudiation of this clause is not 
 essential to the "Plan" as herein set forth; for 
 the rest of the dead — the world at large — will not 
 live again in the full sense, in the perfect sense 
 that Adam lived before he sinned and came under 
 the sentence, 'dying thou shalt die.' Perfect life 
 without weakness or dying is the only sense in 
 which God recognizes the word life. From this 
 standpoint all the world has already lost life; it 
 99 
 
THE MILLENNIAL DAWN HERESY 
 
 is dying, and might now be more perfectly de- 
 scribed as dead than as alive." 
 
 There you have it! Let the sentence stand if 
 it must ; Millennial Dawn is not going to down just 
 for one little Scripture that stands in its way! 
 Has it not wriggled and twisted through a hun- 
 dred worse textual difficulties than that? Of 
 course it has. But who does not feel saddened 
 and humiliated that the Word of God has to be 
 subjected to such jugglery as that — and all in the 
 name of Christian truth and honor! 
 
 But let us look again into the hole into which 
 Millennial Dawn last crawled. Although it juggles 
 with its terms and confuses their meaning, yet 
 it means, if it means anything, that these infinite 
 multitudes of dead "lived not again" in the re- 
 generated life, moral and spiritual life, until the 
 thousand years were ended. This is a flat confes- 
 sion that there was no regenerated life, no moral 
 and spiritual life given to these countless multi- 
 tudes until the thousand years were ended. So 
 here again Millennial Dawn is cheated out of 
 its Thousand- Year-Evangelistic-Campaign. Not a 
 thing done to "bless all the families of the earth" 
 during the entire Millennium ! No one really 
 lived, no one converted, no one evangelized, no one 
 saved, no one raised from spiritual death to spirit- 
 ual life during the entire thousand years. 
 
 Surely that must be the meaning of the sen- 
 tence, for Millennial Dawn says it is; and by that 
 admission it unwittingly confesses that its entire 
 100 
 
THE MILLENNIUM 
 
 scheme of world-wide evangelization during the 
 Millennium has resulted in the conversion and 
 spiritual resurrection of not one human soul ! If 
 Millennial Dawn is willing to leave it there, we 
 are. Take which horn of the dilemma you choose, 
 or crawl into whichever hole you prefer, your Mil- 
 lennial Dawn scheme of Universalism has gone 
 where a thousand other silly inventions of men 
 have gone! 
 
 Millennium Without a Kingdom 
 
 Nearly all Millennialists insist that Christ's 
 reign on this earth for a thousand years is in His 
 kingdom. But no kingdom is mentioned in this 
 chapter, no throne but judgment thrones, no 
 crown, no capital, no court, no inauguration, no 
 setting up of a kingdom. All those ideas and 
 many more have been read into this chapter from 
 without. Indeed, there is very little in the chap- 
 ter that even suggests a kingdom. It says that a 
 special class of martyrs and eminent saints "lived 
 and reigned with Christ a thousand years, ' ' says it 
 twice, but does not tell us where this occurred. 
 And there is not one word in the chapter to indi- 
 cate that it took place on this earth. 
 
 The common Millennial notion is that when 
 Christ comes again He will raise all the saints and 
 set up His kingdom on this earth and reign over 
 the saints for a period of one thousand years ; that 
 at the close of this period the unsainted dead will 
 be raised, and that all will then be judged; the 
 101 
 
THE MILLENNIAL DAWN HERESY 
 
 saints will then be admitted to heaven, and the 
 sinners will be banished from His presence for- 
 ever, and human history on this planet will have 
 come to an end. This is a fine program, but most 
 of it is not even hinted at in the chapter under 
 consideration. 
 
 Now Millennial Dawn comes forward with an 
 exceedingly plausible and unscriptural "Plan," 
 and insists that there are two resurrections, but 
 that they are not separated in "time," but in 
 honor; the first resurrection is a "choice" resur- 
 rection, that is a resurrection of the saints — the 
 "little flock;" the second resurrection, occurring 
 at the same time, is of the non-Christian people of 
 the whole world, all who have ever lived on this 
 earth from the creation of Adam to the coming of 
 Christ at the end of time. Immediately following 
 the resurrection, the kingdom of Christ will be set 
 up on this earth, and in this kingdom Christ will 
 reign with His saints over the rest of mankind 
 for one thousand years. During this period the 
 evangelization of all mankind will be prosecuted 
 with great vigor until the last rebel shall have a 
 chance to surrender to King Jesus. 
 
 Of course this fine program has been read into 
 this chapter, for it is not there, nor even a hint 
 of it. There is no suggestion of any such evan- 
 gelistic campaign in this chapter, nor anywhere 
 else in the Bible. We can find no statement be- 
 tween the lids of the Bible that creates the least 
 expectation that at Christ's coming there will be 
 102 
 
THE MILLENNIUM 
 
 any one converted, or any attempt to convert any 
 one. The vast multitudes that are to turn unto 
 the Lord at the time of the Second Advent are all 
 in the imagination of Millennial Dawn. That the 
 Lord is coming here to spend a thousand years in 
 directing a vast missionary propaganda is also in 
 the same place! 
 
 But there is something quite definite upon the 
 subject in the Scriptures, and that can be found 
 in Luke 4 : 18, 19. Our Lord made His inaugural 
 address in His home town, Nazareth, near the be- 
 ginning of His ministry, quoting as the basis of 
 His authority from Isaiah 61, "The spirit of the 
 Lord is upon Me, because He anointed Me to preach 
 good tidings to the poor: He hath sent Me to pro- 
 claim release to the captives, and recovering of 
 sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are 
 bruised, to proclaim the acceptable year of the 
 Lord. ' ' That was Christ 's mission, and that is and 
 has been the message of the gospel for nearly nine- 
 teen hundred years; and that will continue to be 
 the proclamation of salvation to all "families" and 
 "nations" till Christ comes again. 
 
 Now, if Millennial Dawn will turn to that 
 chapter from which Christ took His text, it will 
 find that Jesus did not quote the entire passage. 
 He closed the quotation with that item of the 
 prophecy which said, "to proclaim the acceptable 
 year of the Lord." That was indeed the business 
 of His first visit; but the prophecy says more: 
 "And the day of vengeance of our God." That 
 103 
 
THE MILLENNIAL DAWN HERESY 
 
 part of the prophecy is reserved for the Second 
 Advent. It must be fulfilled then or the prophecy 
 utterly fails. It will not fail. When He comes 
 again, it will not be to evangelize as at the first, 
 but to sit upon a throne of judgment and to de- 
 clare, ■ ' The day of vengeance of our God ! ' ' That 
 is the business of His Second Coming, and it does 
 not look much like Millennial Dawn's thousand 
 years of probation and evangelism! How a little 
 honest Scripture punctures such an inflated 
 "Plan" and dispels the fog that has gathered in 
 the "Dawn!" 
 
 Inauguration op the Kingdom 
 
 Believing what we have already several times 
 pointed out, that the figurative portions of Scrip- 
 ture must be interpreted by literal statements 
 found elsewhere in the Scriptures also, and with 
 the full purpose of applying this canon of inter- 
 pretation to this famous chapter, we come now 
 to ask, When was Christ's kingdom inaugurated 
 or set up ? Is that past, or is it still future ? Our 
 answer is that Christ's kingdom, called by Mat- 
 thew the "kingdom of heaven," by all the other 
 writers "the kingdom of God," was "set up" 
 during Christ's first visit to this world. It was 
 formally inaugurated at Pentecost. We base this 
 affirmation upon the following literal statements 
 of Scripture: 
 
 1 — The Grant of Authority to Set up a King- 
 dom. — About the first glimpse we get of the king- 
 104 
 
THE MILLENNIUM 
 
 dom is in the vision of Daniel the Prophet. (Dan. 
 2 : 13, 14. ) "I saw in the night a vision, and be- 
 hold, one like the Son of man came with the clouds 
 of heaven, and came to the Ancient of Days; and 
 they brought Him near before Him ; and there was 
 given Him dominion and glory and a kingdom; 
 that all people, nations, and languages should 
 serve Him; His dominion is an everlasting do- 
 minion, which shall not pass away, and His king- 
 dom that which shall not be destroyed." 
 
 This seems to be a scene of splendor in the 
 throne room of heaven. The Ancient of Days — 
 God the Father — is on the throne; before Him is 
 brought one like the Son of man — that is Christ 
 the Son; a kingdom is given unto Him — that we 
 may suppose is His commission and authority to 
 proceed to the earth and reinstate the Kingdom 
 of God which man by rebellion had overthrown. 
 It is one of the first scenes in the drama of the 
 world's redemption. 
 
 If our most distant planet, Neptune, should 
 conclude to defy the sun's authority and break 
 away from his power, choosing a path of its own 
 tangent to its present orbit, what could be done to 
 restore the sun's authority? Should the entire 
 solar system leave its present place and pursue the 
 rebellious wanderer? Or should the planet Jupi- 
 ter, next in power and glory to the sun itself, be 
 commissioned to pursue, overtake, and by his su- 
 perior attraction, call back the rebellious Neptune 
 and restore him to his orbit; and when this task 
 105 
 
THE MILLENNIAL DAWN HERESY 
 
 is completed, deliver up his commission to the 
 great monarch of the solar system, that the sun 
 may be all and in all? This in the material uni- 
 verse is analogous to what our Lord was commis- 
 sioned to do in the spiritual universe — to win back 
 a world that had broken from its orbit of obedience 
 and become a moral wanderer, to restore it to its 
 orbit of love and loyalty to the Throne and Person 
 of God. In Scriptural language, it is the setting 
 up of the Kingdom of God on earth. 
 
 2 — Nebuchadnezzar's Dream. (Daniel 2.) — 
 This was a dream of a metallic image, whose 
 head was of gold ; breast and arms of silver ; belly 
 and thighs of brass; legs of iron; feet of iron and 
 clay. "And the form thereof was terrible." A 
 stone was cut out of the mountain, smote the 
 image upon its feet, toppled it over, ground it to 
 powder, which the wind blew away; the stone 
 grew to be a great mountain, and then it filled 
 the whole earth. 
 
 Biblical scholars generally agree that the head 
 of gold meant the king and kingdom of Babylon; 
 the silver breast and arms the Medo-Persian em- 
 pire; the brass belly and thighs the Macedonian 
 or Greek empire ; the iron legs the Roman Empire ; 
 the feet the provinces or kingdoms into which the 
 Empire was finally broken up. In reference to 
 the Stone smiting and crushing the image, Daniel 
 says, "In the days of these kings shall the God 
 of heaven set up a kingdom," etc. This is gener- 
 ally recognized as the kingdom of Christ. The 
 106 
 
THE MILLENNIUM 
 
 time of the setting up of this kingdom was "in the 
 days of these kings, ' ' or while the image was yet 
 
 STANDING IN THE PERSON OP THE ROMAN EMPEROE. 
 
 That means that Christ's kingdom was set up in 
 connection with His first visit to this world. If 
 it was set up at that time, it is not waiting to be 
 set up at some future time. 
 
 All Millennialists fly into a passion at this 
 point, for they recognize how damaging these facts 
 are to their pet hobby. They forever insist that 
 His kingdom is to be set up when He comes again. 
 But how is it possible to make His next visit 
 occur "in the days of these kings?" If they could 
 only keep that image standing, all the rest would 
 be easy. So they resort to every possible device 
 to accomplish it. Rev. Uriah Smith does it easy 
 enough. The two iron legs of the image represent 
 the Eastern and the "Western divisions of the 
 Roman Empire. The ten toes represent the prov- 
 inces or kingdoms into which the Empire crumbled. 
 The ten modern European nations are those ten 
 kingdoms. Therefore, the image is yet standing: 
 How easy! Beautiful! The first fault with this 
 is that it is not true ; and the second fault is that 
 it puts all ten toes on one foot, and none on the 
 other! "We do not wonder that Daniel said to the 
 king, "The form of the image was terrible." 
 
 Millennial Dawn — always long on fancies and 
 short on fact — has the usual two holes to crawl 
 out of ; and here is the first one : ' ' The iron empire, 
 Rome, was by far the strongest, and continued 
 107 
 
THE MILLENNIAL DAWN HERESY 
 
 longer than its predecessors. In fact, the Roman 
 Empire still continues, as represented in the na- 
 tions of Europe. The division is represented in 
 the ten toes of the image." ("Plan of the Ages," 
 page 253. ) This is the same hole that Uriah Smith 
 went into. Is not that bright? Might as well say 
 that the Medo-Persian Empire still stands as rep- 
 resented by the nomadic tribes of "Western and 
 Southern Asia. Any man who knows history, and 
 has an honest purpose not to deceive, knows that 
 such an interpretation is childish, not to say false. 
 
 Millennial Dawn evidently feels that way some- 
 what, and so it crawls out of this hole also: "And 
 in the days of these kings [the kingdoms repre- 
 sented by the toes, the so-called 'Christian king- 
 doms,' or 'Christendom'] shall the God of heaven 
 set up a kingdom," etc. Image standing for 
 twenty-five hundred years on its toes! And those 
 toes the Christian nations as the representatives 
 of the Roman Empire! The bright brain that is 
 capable of conceiving all that will have no trouble 
 with any Biblical problem. Indeed, it should not 
 be compelled to waste its talents on mere Bible 
 problems; it should engage its energes upon Plato 
 or Butler's Analogy, or the Fourth Dimension. 
 
 But how far all these makeshifts miss the mark. 
 Look again at verses 34, 35. The Stone that was 
 cut out of the mountain smote the image upon its 
 feet and broke the clay, iron, brass, silver, and 
 gold to pieces, and ground it to powder so that 
 the wind blew it all away! That describes an 
 108 
 
THE MILLENNIUM 
 
 event that never could happen unless the image 
 was yet standing in the integrity of one of those 
 four empires. It did happen while the image was 
 represented by the Roman Empire. If not, then 
 we have the absurdity of the Stone crushing the 
 image which had already been "dust which the 
 wind blew away, ' ' for fifteen hundred years ! This 
 attempt to "galvanize" the dust- fragments of the 
 Roman Empire so as to keep the image yet stand- 
 ing is about equal to the absurdity of organizing, 
 for a somewhat similar purpose, during the Middle 
 Ages, "The Holy Roman' Empire," which was not 
 an empire, not Roman, and not holy. 
 
 3 — The Kingdom Proclaimed as at Hand. — (1) 
 By John the Baptist (Matt. 3:1, 2), "In those 
 days came John preaching in the wilderness of 
 Judea and saying, Repent, for the kingdom of 
 heaven is at hand." 
 
 (2) By our Lord Himself (Matt. 4:17), 
 1 ' From that time J esus began to preach and to say, 
 Repent, for the kindom of heaven is at hand." 
 
 (3) By the Twelve (Matt. 10:7), "And as 
 you go, preach, saying, The kingdom of heaven is 
 at hand." 
 
 (4.) By the Seventy (Luke 10:9), "And say 
 unto them, The kingdom of God is come nigh 
 unto you. ' ' 
 
 The Greek word which is here translated "at 
 hand" is eggizo, which means to be near in time 
 or place; and when uttered by each of these four 
 persons or companies, it was a very emphatic 
 109 
 
THE MILLENNIAL DAWN HERESY 
 
 proclamation of the nearness of the kingdom. It 
 was close by, at hand! And it created exactly 
 that impression, and aroused the whole country to 
 a fever of expectancy. The immediate inaugura- 
 tion of the kingdom therefore becomes a very nec- 
 essary part of this program. If it was not set up 
 at that time then these almost delirious procla- 
 mations become farcical in the extreme. No other 
 event could possibly satisfy the expectations which 
 these announcements created. 
 
 So plain was this message and so fully was it 
 understood by the disciples that they never ceased 
 expecting that the kingdom would quickly be es- 
 tablished. They constantly looked for it, and fre- 
 quently talked about it. The very day that our 
 Lord ascended from Mount Olivet they asked Him, 
 "Lord, wilt Thou at this time restore the kingdom 
 to Israel?" After Pentecost there is no instance 
 of any one proclaiming, "The kingdom of heaven 
 is at hand." Pentecost fulfilled all the conditions 
 of that proclamation. The message ended. The 
 kingdom had come. No one is now authorized to 
 go forth proclaiming, "The kingdom of heaven is 
 at hand!" And Millennial Dawn knows it — and 
 dare not make that proclamation. If it does, it 
 speaks without the authority of God, and in spite 
 of His authority. 
 
 4 — The Kingdom Was to be Established While 
 Some of the Disciples Were Yet Alive. — Matt. 
 16:28, "Verily I say unto you, There be some 
 standing here that shall not taste of death till they 
 110 
 
THE MILLENNIUM 
 
 have seen the Son of man coming in His king- 
 dom. ' ' 
 
 Mark 9:1, "Verily I say unto you, There be 
 some that stand here which shall not taste of death 
 till they have seen the kingdom of God come with 
 power. ' ' 
 
 Luke 9:27, "But I tell you of a truth, that 
 there be some standing here which shall not 
 taste of death till they see the kingdom of God." 
 
 These texts are very literal and sufficiently 
 plain. "The kingdom of God," "The kingdom 
 of God coming with power, ' ' and 1 ' The Son of man 
 coming in His kingdom" all refer to the same 
 event. That was fulfilled in every particular at 
 Pentecost, when some of them — all except Judas — ■ 
 "saw the Son of man coming in His kingdom;" 
 when they saw "the kingdom of God come with 
 power." All Millennialists feel the overwhelm- 
 ing force of this, and of course wriggle around 
 and endeavor to neutralize its power. Millennial 
 Dawn is especially fruitful in its usual makeshifts. 
 It finds the usual two holes to crawl out of, and 
 here is the first : 
 
 "The Church at present, therefore, is not the 
 Kingdom of God set up in power and glory, but 
 in its incipient, embryo condition," ("Divine Plan 
 of the Ages," pages 282, 284.) So what Christ 
 really meant was not that they should see "the 
 Son of man coming in His kingdom" at Pente- 
 cost, but they should see the kingdom come in an 
 "incipient" stage in the Church. Christ was mis- 
 Ill 
 
THE MILLENNIAL DAWN HERESY 
 
 taken when He said that they should see "The 
 kingdom of God come with power;" what He 
 should have said was that they were to see the king- 
 dom of God in an "embryo condition" in the 
 Church. That is, the Church is the egg which will 
 hatch out the kingdom in the Millennium ! This 
 might do for a Roman Catholic, but we know of 
 no respectable Protestant in the world who iden- 
 tifies the Church as the kingdom. The universal 
 doctrine of Protestantism is that the Church is not 
 the kingdom, but a means only to the kingdom. 
 
 The other hole out of which Millennial Dawn 
 crawls is this: The promise of Christ that His 
 disciples should "see the kingdom of God," "the 
 kingdom of God come with power," and "the Son 
 of man coming in His kingdom," was fulfilled in 
 the Transfiguration, when Jesus was transfigured 
 before the disciples. That is the common escape 
 for all Millennialists, and it is so superficial that 
 it seems hardly entitled to serious attention. The 
 fact is that there is not one suggestion of a king- 
 dom in the entire account of the Transfiguration. 
 Besides that, Millennial Dawn, on another occa- 
 sion, in order to get rid of the reality of Moses and 
 Elijah in the Transfiguration (for the reader will 
 remember that Millennial Dawn has Moses in his 
 grave and Elijah in "oblivion" till the resurrec- 
 tion), tells us that the Transfiguration was not 
 real ; it was only a ' ' vision. " So if the ' ' kingdom 
 of God came with power ' ' and ' ' Christ came in His 
 kingdom" in the Transfiguration, it was not real 
 112 
 
THE MILLENNIUM 
 
 at all — only a "vision!" But the disciples did 
 not understand it that way, and so they kept on 
 asking when the kingdom should come, never for 
 once dreaming that they had already seen it 
 
 COME IN THE TRANSFIGURATION ! 
 
 This proposition that Christ "came in His 
 kingdom ' ' at Pentecost is also confirmed by another 
 very powerful declaration of His to the twelve 
 disciples when He sent them out two by two to 
 visit the cities of Israel: "But when they persecute 
 you in this city, flee ye into another; for verily I 
 say unto you, Ye shall not have gone over the 
 cities of Israel till the Son of man be come." 
 (Matt. 10:23.) They could visit all the cities of 
 Israel in a very few weeks, but He would "come" 
 even before that time had elapsed. In what sense 
 could He "come" when He was already there with 
 them f There is only one simple, direct, and honest 
 answer possible : He would ' ' come in His king- 
 dom, " as He did at Pentecost. 
 
 5 — The Kingdom Was Inaugurated or Set Up 
 at Pentecost. 
 
 "But tarry ye in Jerusalem until ye be endued 
 with power from on high." (Luke 24:49.) 
 
 "But ye shall receive power, after that the 
 Holy Ghost is come upon you ; and ye shall be wit- 
 nesses unto Me both in Jerusalem and in all Judea, 
 and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost parts of 
 the earth." (Acts 1:8.) 
 
 "And when the day of Pentecost was fully 
 come they were all with one accord in one place. 
 
 8 113 
 
THE MILLENNIAL DAWN HERESY 
 
 And suddenly there came from heaven a sound as 
 of a rushing mighty wind, and it filled all the house 
 where they were sitting. And there appeared unto 
 them cloven tongues as of fire ; and it sat upon each 
 of them. And they were all filled with the Holy 
 Ghost, and began to speak with other tongues as 
 the Spirit gave them utterance." (Acts 2:1-4.) 
 
 This was the baptism of power and the Holy 
 Ghost. It was what Jesus had promised them. It 
 was "the kingdom of God come with power." It 
 was Christ "coming in His kingdom" as He had 
 promised to do during their lifetime. No other 
 event but Pentecost in the world's history could 
 possibly satisfy these promises which led up to 
 it. Pentecost abundantly fulfills every item prom- 
 ised and every expectation created. 
 
 6 — After Pentecost Christians Claimed to Be 
 in the Kingdom. 
 
 "Who hath delivered us from the power of 
 darkness and hath translated us into the kingdom 
 of His dear Son; in whom we have redemption in 
 His blood, even the forgiveness of sins." (Col. 
 1 : 12-14. ) Forgiveness and conversion then put 
 one into the kingdom of God! 
 
 At the harvest, which is the end of the world, 
 Jesus will send forth His angels and they shall 
 gather out of His kingdom the tares, which are 
 the children of the wicked one — notice: it is not 
 "gather the wheat (the 'little flock') out of the 
 world for His kingdom; but gather the tares, the 
 children of the wicked one, out of His kingdom!" 
 114 
 
THE MILLENNIUM 
 
 (Matt. 13:41.) Then the kingdom must be here 
 in this world before the harvest, which is the end 
 of the world or age ! Will Millennial Dawn please 
 take notice of this? 
 
 7 — After Pentecost the Message was not — "The 
 Kingdom of Heaven is at Hand," but the Kingdom 
 is Now Here! 
 
 "But when they believed Philip preaching the 
 things concerning the kingdom of God, and the 
 name of Jesus Christ, they were baptized, both 
 men and women." (Acts 8:12.) 
 
 "And Paul went into the synagogue and spake 
 boldly for the space of three months, disputing 
 and persuading the things concerning the kingdom 
 of God." (Acts 19: 8.) 
 
 "And now behold, I know that ye all among 
 whom I have gone preaching the kingdom of God 
 shall see My face no more." (Acts 20:25.) 
 
 "There came many to Him into His lodging, 
 to whom He expounded and testified the kingdom 
 of God." (Acts 28:23.) 
 
 "And from the days of John the Baptist until 
 now the kingdom of heaven suffereth violence, and 
 the violent take it by force." (Matt. 11:12.) 
 This is Christ's own declaration that multitudes 
 were rushing into the kingdom. 
 
 8 — Christ is Now Reigning in His Kingdom. 
 "Therefore being by the right hand of God 
 
 exalted, and having received of the Father the 
 promise of the Holy Ghost, He hath shed forth 
 this which ye now see and hear." (Acts 2:33.) 
 115 
 
THE MILLENNIAL DAWN HERESY 
 
 "The Lord said unto My Lord, Sit thou on My 
 right hand until I make Thy foes Thy footstool." 
 (Acts 2:34.) 
 
 "For He must reign until He hath put all 
 enemies under His feet." (1 Cor. 15:25.) 
 
 "But this man, after he had offered one sacri- 
 fice for sin forever, sat down on the right hand 
 of God, from henceforth expecting till His enemies 
 be made His footstool. ' ' ( Heb. 10:13.) 
 
 "Jesus Christ, whom the heavens must receive 
 until the time of the restitution of all things which 
 God hath spoken by the mouth of all His holy 
 prophets since the world began." (Acts 3:21.) 
 
 These five texts refer to and describe one and 
 the same event — Christ 's present reign in His king- 
 dom. He is sitting upon His mediatorial throne 
 where "He ever liveth to make intercession for 
 us." By the active agency of the Holy Spirit He 
 is striving to reconcile men to God. He will con- 
 tinue in this work till the last enemy has been put 
 under His feet. That is the "restitution of all 
 things" which Millennial Dawn has so much to 
 say about. 
 
 Paul and Peter both tell us that we must inter- 
 pret Scripture by the "analogy of faith," as we 
 pointed out in the first chapter of this book. That 
 means that no one can be allowed to take this fifth 
 text out of its natural meaning, and out of its har- 
 monious relation with all the others and make it 
 mean something altogether other and different 
 from the rest ; in short, to put it into utter antag- 
 116 
 
THE MILLENNIUM 
 
 onism to all the others, as Millennial Dawn always 
 does when it forever insists that the "restitution of 
 all things ' ' can only take place in the Millennium ! 
 By doing that it violates hoth common sense and 
 a divinely-inspired canon of interpretation. (Rom. 
 12:6; 2 Pet. 1:20.) Why does it do that? Not 
 hecause any honest necessity of Scripture inter- 
 pretation requires it, but to make business for 
 its supposed Millennium ! 
 
 9 — For What Purpose is the Second Coming? 
 
 (1) It is not to reign in a kingdom. Jesus gave 
 fifty parables, but never in any one of them even 
 remotely taught that He ever intended to return 
 to this earth for the purpose of setting up and 
 reigning in a kingdom. Neither did He ever 
 teach that in any other form. "When that very 
 thing was pressed upon Him by His disciples and 
 by the Jews He rejected the suggestion almost with 
 indignation. This was especially the case imme- 
 diately after feeding the five thousand. 
 
 (2) It is not to "set up" but to "deliver 
 up" a kingdom. 
 
 "For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ 
 shall all be made alive; but every man in his own 
 order: Christ the first fruits, afterward they that 
 are Christ's at His coming; then cometh the 
 end, when He shall deliver up the kingdom to God 
 even the Father, when He shall have put down 
 all rule and all authority and power; for He must 
 reign till He hath put all enemies under His feet." 
 (1 Cor. 15:22-26.) 
 
 117 
 
THE MILLENNIAL DAWN HERESY 
 
 So at His coming He will not set up a king- 
 dom, but will deliver up the kingdom to God the 
 Father. That will end human history on this 
 planet, and there will be no Millennium about it. 
 
 (3) The Purpose of the Second Coming is to 
 Raise the Dead and to Judge the World. 
 
 "When the Son of man shall come in His glory, 
 and all the holy angels with Him, then shall He sit 
 upon the throne of His glory, and before Him 
 shall be gathered all nations, and He shall separate 
 them one from the other as a shepherd divideth 
 the sheep from the goats." (Matt. 25-31-46.) 
 
 "For the Son of man shall come in the glory 
 of the Father with His angels, and then shall He 
 reward every man according to His works." 
 (Matt. 16:27.) 
 
 "Behold, the Lord cometh with ten thousand 
 of His saints to execute judgment upon all." 
 (Jude 14.) 
 
 "And the day of vengeance of our God!" 
 (Is. 61:2.) 
 
 "For the Lord Himself shall descend from 
 heaven with a shout, with the voice of the arch- 
 angel and with the trump of God ; and the dead in 
 Christ shall rise first; then we which are alive 
 and remain shall be caught up together with them 
 in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air; and so 
 shall we ever be with the Lord." (1 Thes. 4: 16- 
 17.) 
 
 "And then shall appear the sign of the Son of 
 man in heaven; then shall all the tribes of the 
 118 
 
THE MILLENNIUM 
 
 earth mourn; and they shall see the Son of man 
 coming in the clouds of heaven with power and 
 great glory. And He shall send forth His angels 
 with a great sound of a trumpet; and they shall 
 gather together His elect from the four winds, and 
 from one end of the heaven to the other." (Matt. 
 24:30, 31.) 
 
 "So shall it be at the end of the world. He 
 shall send forth His angels and they shall gather 
 out of His kingdom all that do iniquity," etc. 
 (Matt. 13:41.) 
 
 10 — This Gospel Age is the Last Time — The 
 Last Days. 
 
 "And it shall come to pass in the last days, 
 saith God, that I will pour out My Spirit," etc. 
 (Acts 2:17.) "When Peter said this in his great 
 Pentecostal sermon, he evidently believed that he 
 was then in "the last days," though he was at 
 the very beginning of the Christian Era. 
 
 "God, who at sundry times and in divers man- 
 ners spake in time past to the fathers by the 
 prophets, hath in these Last Days spoken to us by 
 His Son," etc. (Heb. 1:1.) 
 
 It will not be necessary to quote at length other 
 Scriptures to show that the sacred writers every- 
 where and always speak of this Gospel Age as the 
 Last Time, or the Last Days. In proof of this let 
 any one examine the following passages: 2 Tim. 
 3 : 1 ; 1 Pet. 1 : 20 ; 2 Pet. 3 : 3 ; 1 Jn. 2 : 18 ; Jude 18. 
 The necessary implication from this is that if this 
 Gospel Age is the "last," then there is no more 
 119 
 
THE MILLENNIAL DAWN HERESY 
 
 to follow on this planet. There may be "ages on 
 ages" to come. That is but another name for 
 eternity. But on this planet human history will 
 end with the present Age — the Last Time, the Last 
 Days. There is no provision in any of the Sacred 
 Scriptures for Millennial Dawn's thousand years 
 of Evangelization-probation scheme! If it ever 
 takes place the expenses of it will have to be pro- 
 vided for out of the funds of the "Watch-Tower 
 Publication Society. 
 
 A Mathematical Difficulty 
 
 Millennial Dawn insists that all the people who 
 have ever lived or ever will live on this planet 
 will be resurrected and take part in the Millen- 
 nium. Now, no one can tell how many people have 
 already lived on earth since Adam, but the whole 
 number must be prodigious. Millennial Dawn 
 tells us that the heathen world, not counting 
 deaths, has doubled in number during the past 
 fifty years; so it would seem safe to assume that 
 the human race has doubled in numbers, counting 
 the living and the dead, each century. There were 
 sixteen and one-half centuries from Adam to the 
 Flood; beginning over again after the Flood with 
 eight persons, and counting forty-three and one- 
 half centuries more, the entire number of people 
 who have ever lived on this planet would be nearly 
 two hundred and fifty -two trillion! Give them 
 each just one square yard on which to live and 
 they would cover over the fifty million square 
 120 
 
THE MILLENNIUM 
 
 miles of land on this planet so thickly that they 
 could not all sit down at the same time ! This is 
 the multitude that Millennial Dawn must make 
 provision for. Some millions of years hence there 
 will probably be no more sea than there is now on 
 the moon; when that time arrives there will be 
 three times as much room for them. But if the 
 business is to begin in 1914, as Millennial Dawn is 
 announcing with such persistent, almost clamorous 
 urgency, then this planet will not "accommodate 
 the crowds that will attend." To most healthy 
 minds which are apt to look at things as they are, 
 this Millennial Dawn performance does not make a 
 very serious appeal. And if it were not for the 
 weak who might be harmed, w r e might let it pass 
 in silence. 
 
 An Astronomical Protest 
 
 Before Copernicus it was easy for people to 
 think that Christ would come to this world and 
 set up a throne and kingdom upon it and reign 
 among His people. Why not? This was believed 
 to be the only world in the universe. All the 
 heavenly bodies revolved around it every day. The 
 Bible said that the sun, moon, and stars were made 
 to minister to it. It is the world where the Son 
 of God came and offered His life a sacrifice to 
 redeem its inhabitants. He had promised to come 
 again shortly. Why should He not desire to have 
 His throne in the very center of the universe, and 
 upon the only habitable world in space? The 
 121 
 
THE MILLENNIAL DAWN HERESY 
 
 limited astronomy of the times before Copernicus 
 lent almost unchallenged support to that program. 
 So when the early Church was struggling with 
 Roman heathenism, suffering persecution, it was 
 easy for them to believe that Christ would come 
 quickly, destroy His enemies, and vindicate His 
 suffering saints. So Dr. Shedd tells us in his 
 "History of Christian Doctrines," that the 
 "blooming age" of Millenarianism was during 
 the century between A. D. 150 and A. D. 250. 
 At the close of the first thousand years of the 
 Christian Era there was a great revival of this 
 doctrine ; and so will there be again probably when 
 the Twenty-first Century dawns, as that will be 
 believed to be the beginning of the seventh thou- 
 sand years since Adam. 
 
 But since Copernicus all this is changed. "We 
 are in another Universe — a Universe so vast that 
 light which travels twelve million miles a minute 
 will go around the world seven and one-half times 
 in a second, to the moon in a second and a quarter, 
 to the sun in eight minutes, to Neptune — our 
 most distant planet — in four hours, to the nearest 
 star in four years and four months; and, accord- 
 ing to Professor Simon Newcomb, it will require 
 not less than three thousand years to reach the 
 most distant star in space, moving all the time at 
 the same rate ! Here then is a universe so vast 
 that light which started from one frontier of cre- 
 ation on the day that God created Adam will not 
 122 
 
THE MILLENNIUM 
 
 reach the opposite frontier of the universe for a 
 century yet to come ! 
 
 Still more. By means of stellar photography 
 we believe that the stars must be numbered by 
 billions; and spectrum analysis proves that each 
 and every star is a sun composed of practically 
 the same material or chemical elements as our sun. 
 In case of a few that are nearest to us the great 
 telescopes reveal their secondaries or planets re- 
 volving around these central suns. And more are 
 being created all the time. Among the million or 
 more of nebulae — clouds of glowing gas, most of 
 them tumultuous and chaotic, "without form and 
 void,"— Keeler photographed many thousand 
 which show forms, indicating ring, spiral, or whirl- 
 pool motion, marking stages in the process of 
 world-building that is constantly going on before 
 our eyes. These are new solar systems that are 
 all the time being added to the muster roll of the 
 galaxy. Now, to a healthy mind, it is simply 
 unthinkable that Jesus Christ, the Second Person 
 of the Trinity, would leave the Central Throne of 
 a universe so vast, with such stupenduous con- 
 cerns upon His hands and heart, and come down 
 to this little world — which is only a grain of sand 
 in a universe so vast — and set up a throne and 
 reign here over a little handful of His saints for 
 a thousand years! Belittle Himself to the level 
 of a petty, earthly kaiser, just to gratify the whims 
 of Millennial Dawn ! The Christ we worship is too 
 123 
 
THE MILLENNIAL DAWN HERESY 
 
 glorious in person and too majestic in moral splen- 
 dor to engage in such a belittling performance. 
 He can not reign in any world in any other sense 
 than He now reigns in the hearts of those who 
 love Him. He came to this planet once to redeem 
 it. He would go anywhere to save a world and at 
 any cost or sacrifice. He will come again to judge 
 the world; but our moral sense revolts at the sug- 
 gestion that we must reduce Him to the level of 
 the manager of a missionary campaign, when He 
 has committed that glorious work to His Church; 
 and if we are unable or unwilling to accept the 
 responsibility He will call others who will. Every 
 hour that Millennial Dawn keeps on with its silly 
 ' ' thousand years of probation and evangelization, ' ' 
 personally conducted by Jesus Christ, it simply 
 degrades and belittles the Only-Begotten Son of 
 God whom the Christian world loves to exalt and 
 honor. 
 
 124 
 
V 
 
 PROBATION AFTER DEATH 
 
"Once to every man and nation 
 
 Comes the moment to decide, 
 In the strife of Truth with Falsehood, 
 
 For the good or evil side; 
 Some great truth — God's new Messiah — 
 
 Offering each the bloom or blight, 
 Parts the goats upon the left hand, 
 
 And the sheep upon the right, 
 And the choice goes by forever 
 
 'Twixt that darkness and that light," 
 
 — Lowell. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 Millennial Dawn is the Propagation op the 
 Unscriptural and False Doctrine op Pro- 
 bation After Death for all Mankind 
 
 This life is probation. Our first ancestors were 
 placed upon probation immediately after their 
 creation — Adam even before the creation of Eve. 
 They were permitted to eat of the fruit of all trees 
 save one. It was wholly a question of obedience. 
 Attached to obedience was the reward of life and 
 happiness; to disobedience, the penalty of death. 
 The awful issues of their moral freedom were fully 
 set before them. By obedience they could rise in 
 the favor of God and enjoy His fellowship and 
 that of spiritual beings; by disobedience they 
 would sink into sin, depravity, physical, moral, 
 and spiritual death. 
 
 We are on probation exactly as they were. 
 Before us all there is set the choice — to rise and 
 reign, or to sink and die. Obedience to God and 
 His Holy Law mean eternal life; diobedience and 
 sin mean eternal death. We are on trial to decide 
 whether we will accept the offer of eternal life, 
 and, by obedience to God, rise from a state of sin 
 and moral death to a state of moral and spiritual 
 life and glory; or whether we will reject the offer 
 127 
 
THE MILLENNIAL DAWN HERESY 
 
 of life and salvation in Jesus Christ and reap the 
 awful retribution of sin at last. 
 
 Millennial Dawn denies that all people are on 
 probation during this present life; but that in the 
 Millennium all except the "little flock" will have 
 their probation and their chance to obtain im- 
 mortality. Those who remain impenitent and in- 
 corrigible will, at the close of that period, pass 
 into annihilation. 
 
 As we have abundantly shown that there is no 
 Biblical ground for this Millennial fiction, so now 
 we deny that there is any Scriptural basis for the 
 assumption that any of the race of Adam are 
 exempt from probation in this life, but that all 
 who have arrived at the years of moral account- 
 ability are on probation for their moral and spir- 
 itual character and eternal destiny. To prove this 
 would be to quote the entire Bible. There is not 
 a text found anywhere against this proposition. 
 The whole Bible proceeds upon the theory that 
 God is dealing with a race of moral beings whose 
 conduct, character, and moral choices in this life 
 determine what their destiny shall be hereafter. 
 ' ' I call heaven and earth to record this day against 
 you, that I have set before you life and death, 
 blessing and cursing; therefore choose life, that 
 thou and thy seed may live." (Deut. 30:19.) 
 This doctrine is finely set forth in the First Psalm, 
 which traces the conduct, character, and rewards 
 of the righteous and the wicked in sharp contrast. 
 It is also the doctrine of the teachings of Jesus, 
 128 
 
PROBATION AFTER DEATH 
 
 especially that of the Prodigal Son, the Rich Man 
 and Lazarus, the Ten Virgins, and the Wheat and 
 the Tares. To-day God is saying to every human 
 being as His prophet said to Israel at Carmel: 
 "How long halt ye between two opinions? If the 
 Lord be God, follow Him ; if Baal, then follow 
 him." And every sane man knows that upon his 
 own choice hang the awful issues of his moral 
 freedom. This probationary principle was intro- 
 duced at the very threshold of man's career on 
 this planet: "Of every tree of the garden thou 
 mayest freely eat ; but of the tree of the knowledge 
 of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it, for in 
 the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely 
 die." (Gen. 2:17.) 
 
 This is not a life of retribution. God does 
 not in this world settle with us for our sins. There 
 is much evil — physical, mental, moral — in this 
 world, all of which may be the consequence of 
 sin, but it is not sent to punish sin. It is result 
 but not penalty. It may vindicate in some meas- 
 ure, but it does not close the divine administration. 
 There is a broad difference between the conse- 
 quences of sin and the penalty of sin. The inno- 
 cent are constantly suffering the results of sin, 
 none but the guilty can possibly receive punish- 
 ment for sin. In the Ninth Chapter of John is 
 the story of a blind man whom Jesus and His 
 disciples saw, the sight of whom instantly drew 
 from the disciples this question, "Master, who did 
 sin, this man or his parents, that he was born 
 
 9 129 
 
THE MILLENNIAL DAWN HERESY 
 
 blind?" Jesus answered, "Neither," and pro- 
 ceeded to show them that the man's blindness was 
 not sent to pnnish anybody's sin, but was per- 
 mitted to "manifest" the works of God — to fur- 
 nish the occasion for the display of God's mercy 
 and power. Job's friends constantly reiterated 
 that old falsehood, that his sufferings were sent 
 to punish his sins, but Job steadily denied the 
 implication. He was right, and God vindicated 
 him. The presence of evil in this world can be 
 traced to no other cause than the abuse of our 
 moral freedom. And it is permitted to remain 
 chiefly because this life is probation; the life that 
 is to come is retribution. 
 
 What God intends to do for infants, idiots, 
 and others who may not have had the conditions 
 of a fair probation in this life, we have no in- 
 formation; and the theory of Millennial Dawn, 
 with its difficulties, absurdities, and impossibilities, 
 is no solution of the problem. If God has not seen 
 fit to reveal His plan for them, it is the part of 
 modesty as well as of piety for us to wait until it 
 is made known. It is quite enough for us that 
 we know that "now is the acceptable time; that 
 to-day is the day of salvation." If there is any 
 probation for any one beyond this life, it must be 
 in sheol, hades. 
 
 The Intermediate State 
 
 That is between death and the resurrection, 
 and was quite fully considered in the second chap- 
 130 
 
PROBATION AFTER DEATH 
 
 ter of this book. No one who accepts the Sacred 
 Scriptures as his guide could possibly locate pro- 
 bation beyond the Resurrection and General Judg- 
 ment. If anywhere it must be in that state of 
 existence into which all mankind pass at death, 
 and in which they will remain until the Judgment 
 of the world — a state of happiness, of spiritual 
 life and enjoyment, and probably of growth and 
 advancement for all those who are saved in Jesus 
 Christ; a state of conscious helplessness and mis- 
 ery for all who have rejected God's love and 
 mercy in this life; a state of existence which, so 
 far as the human race is concerned, began with 
 the death of Abel, and will continue till the day 
 of the Resurrection ; a state of existence which has 
 covered more than five thousand years of history, 
 and will reach on till the Judgment throne is set 
 — this is the Intermediate State, and if probation 
 extends beyond the limits of this life, it must be 
 sought for here. With the torch which God has 
 graciously given us in His revealed Word, let us 
 explore this region and seek what light it sheds 
 upon probation. Once in the Old Testament and 
 once in the New are we permitted to gaze beyond 
 the uplifted curtain into that world. These two 
 scenes are in the Fourteenth of Isaiah and the 
 Sixteenth of Luke. The first represents a scene 
 in sheol: 
 
 "Sheol from beneath is moved for thee to meet 
 thee at thy coming; it stirreth up the dead for 
 thee, even all the chief ones of the earth; it hath 
 131 
 
THE MILLENNIAL DAWN HERESY 
 
 raised up from their thrones all the kings of the 
 nations; and they shall speak and say unto thee, 
 Art thou also become weak as we? Art thou be- 
 come like unto us? Thy pomp is brought down 
 to sheol, and the noise of thy viols; the worm is 
 spread under thee, and worms cover thee. . . . 
 How art thou fallen from heaven, 0 Lucifer, son 
 of the morning!" (Is. 14:9-15.) 
 
 This is a prophetic account of the reception 
 which the King of Babylon — probably Belshazzar 
 — was to receive in Tartarus, the lower sheol, 
 when his kingdom should be overthrown and him- 
 self slain. It represents a state of consciousness, 
 of misery, and of abject helplessness. The wicked 
 king is taunted for his pride and crime which now 
 come to him with torturing remembrance. It is 
 like that other scene where Abraham says to the 
 Rich Man in Hades, "Son, remember that thou in 
 thy lifetime had the good things," etc. So im- 
 perfectly was the doctrine of sheol developed in 
 the Hebrew mind that we do not wonder that 
 there are some material incongruities about it ; but 
 two or three things stand out large and clear: It 
 is a state of consciousness; of anguish and misery 
 for the sinner; and it is not a state of Probation. 
 We have a right to expect that the New Testament 
 account of the same state will be more fully de- 
 veloped. So we turn to it: 
 
 "There was a certain rich man which was 
 clothed in purple and fine linen, faring sumptu- 
 ously every day; and a certain beggar named 
 132 
 
PROBATION AFTER DEATH 
 
 Lazarus was laid at his gate, full of sores, and 
 desiring to be fed with crumbs which fell from 
 the rich man's table; yea, even the dogs came and 
 licked his sores. And it came to pass that the 
 beggar died and that he was carried away by the 
 angels into Abraham's bosom; and the rich man 
 also died, and was buried. And in Hades he lifted 
 up his eyes, being in torments, and seeth Abraham 
 afar off, and Lazarus in his bosom. And he cried 
 and said, Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and 
 send Lazarus, that he may dip the tip of his finger 
 in water, and cool my tongue ; for I am in anguish 
 in this flame. But Abraham said, Son, remember 
 that thou in thy lifetime receivedst thy good 
 things, and Lazarus in like manner evil things; 
 now he is comforted and thou art in anguish. And 
 besides all this, between us and you there is a great 
 gulf fixed, that they which would pass from hence 
 to you may not be able, and that none may cross 
 over from thence to us. And he said, I pray thee 
 therefore, father, that thou wouldst send him to 
 my father's house; for I have five brethren; that 
 he may testify unto them, lest they also come into 
 this place of torment. But Abraham saith, They 
 have Moses and the prophets: let them hear them. 
 And he said, Nay, father Abraham; but if one 
 would go to them from the dead, they will repent. 
 And he said unto him, If they hear not Moses and 
 the prophets, neither will they be persuaded, if 
 one rise from the dead." (Luke 16:19-31; Am. 
 Rev.) 
 
 133 
 
THE MILLENNIAL DAWN HERESY 
 
 This is perhaps the most important Scripture 
 which we shall consider in our issue with Millen- 
 nial Dawn. The author of that system of error 
 feels keenly how damaging this story is, because 
 it teaches three truths, all of which are fatal 
 to Millennial Dawn. These truths are: The Im- 
 mortality of the Soul; No Soul-Sleeping in the 
 Grave nor in "Oblivion;" and No Probation After 
 Death. Establish these glorious truths and Millen- 
 nial Dawn has no standing. Therefore, if this 
 great story which Jesus told is allowed to be heard 
 in court and its time meaning acknowledged, it 
 will bury Millennial Dawn in "oblivion." No 
 wonder that its author moved earth and heaven 
 to discredit this story, or so to interpret it as to 
 rob it of its natural meaning. Has he not put his 
 stilted interpretation of it into a pamphlet entitled, 
 ' ' The Rich Man in Hell ; Lazarus in Abraham 's 
 Bosom," and has he not issued it in a dozen lan- 
 guages and distributed it in front of every church 
 door, and put it under every door-mat in Chris- 
 tendom? 
 
 Of all the fifty stories and parables in the 
 Gospels, why so feverishly anxious about this one? 
 Reason enough. If this story is true, and means 
 what it says, then Millennial Dawn is false! Both 
 can not be true, for each tells a different story. 
 It is as if Millennial Dawn were on trial for 
 murder, and is now moving creation to impeach 
 and discredit the only witness on earth who saw 
 him commit the crime. No wonder that Millennial 
 134 
 
PROBATION AFTER DEATH 
 
 Dawn employs all its ingenuity and all its great 
 ability for sugar-coating error and making it look 
 plausible, to overthrow the testimony of the story 
 of "The Rich Man and Lazarus." 
 
 Two More Holes than Usual 
 
 In its interpretation of this great story, Millen- 
 nial Dawn finds four holes to crawl out of — two 
 more than its usual number; but the necessity is 
 unusual, and it will need them all, and then some. 
 
 First Hole. — We are told that this "parable" 
 has always been misunderstood, but will now be 
 made plain. In past ages it has been employed 
 by the Church to teach that all sinners and non- 
 Christian people will be tormented in hell forever. 
 Now, since we — Millennial Dawn — have shown 
 that eternal punishment is not true, it follows that 
 this "parable" does not mean what it says. Its 
 meaning must be sought elsewhere. This is sub- 
 stantially the first thing brought forward to 
 weaken the testimony of this great story. And to 
 it we reply: 
 
 Millennial Dawn is exactly as much to blame 
 for the cruel teaching of eternal torment by the 
 Church in past ages as any man now living. It 
 seems to think that it is the only cult in all the 
 world that is not now preaching eternal torment 
 for all unsaved people. Practically all of the mate- 
 rialistic cruelty has disappeared from the teachings 
 of Protestant pulpits, and preaching the love of 
 God has taken its place, and all this years before 
 135 
 
THE MILLENNIAL DAWN HERESY 
 
 the Watch Tower Publications began to illuminate 
 the world. In this matter Millennial Dawn grossly 
 misrepresents both the letter and the spirit of the 
 modern evangelical message. There is probably 
 not a Protestant pulpit in the world that repre- 
 sents "the Father taking a fiendish delight in 
 creating millions of humanity with the foreknowl- 
 edge of a precarious existence in the present life 
 of a few years and their eternal torture." One 
 who misunderstands and misrepresents modern 
 Christendom as badly as that we suspect is ill fitted 
 to represent the gospel of Jesus Christ to lost men. 
 
 But all this senseless chatter about "eternal 
 torture" misses the mark a million miles; and it 
 is injected here to divert attention from the real 
 meaning of the story — which is not punishment, 
 but Probation ! The central aim of the story is 
 to show what chance, if any, a bad man has in the 
 life to come. Ten times as much stress is laid 
 upon that point as is laid upon the rewards which 
 a good man shall have. The first scene of the 
 story is laid in this world; the second is laid in 
 Hades, that intermediate world between death and 
 the Resurrection. And what we supremely want 
 to know is whether there is any probation for un- 
 saved men in that state. That is precisely what 
 Jesus told the story for — to put forever at rest 
 that question. That feature of the story we shall 
 discuss presently. 
 
 Second Hole. — Millennial Dawn calls this a 
 "parable" and then tells us that "in a parable 
 136 
 
PROBATION AFTER DEATH 
 
 the thing said is never the thing meant!" In 
 other words, This is a parable and does not mean 
 what it says, but what Millennial Dawn says. 
 
 Our emphatic answer is, that this is not a para- 
 ble, but a story, the statement of an historical fact. 
 It was told by Jesus Himself, and means exactly 
 what it says. It is never called a parable by our 
 Lord, nor by any other sacred writer or speaker. 
 That it is a true fragment of history is made 
 certain by our Lord giving the names of two of 
 the three persons mentioned in it, as well as plain 
 and literal facts connected with their lives here 
 and of their condition hereafter. "We might as 
 well call everything that Jesus said parables as 
 to call this one. It is not fiction but fact, and its 
 mighty moral and spiritual import is plain, literal, 
 and unmistakable. That is exactly what makes it 
 a great story, and what enables its testimony to 
 crush Millennial Dawn's hope of Soul Sleeping in 
 "oblivion" and of Probation after Death, and 
 many other silly inventions of men. But, suppose 
 it is a parable, that does not shift its meaning 
 one hair's breadth, nor give Millennial -Dawn li- 
 cense to torture it into the strained and meaning- 
 less fiction to which it has resorted in order to 
 destroy the meaning of the story. 
 
 Third Hole. — Millennial Dawn attacks the lit- 
 eralness of the story. It tells us humorously how 
 impossible it would be for Abraham to hold Laza- 
 rus in his bosom, much less the multitudes, etc. 
 Here again it purposely misses the true meaning, 
 137 
 
THE MILLENNIAL DAWN HERESY 
 
 tries to deflect attention from the simple natural- 
 ness of the account, and from the nerve and central 
 idea of the story. Now, as a matter of Biblical 
 truth, Abraham's bosom is not a figure at all, but 
 a literal name for the home of the saved in sheol. 
 It is the Paradise of the New Testament — the 
 place where Jesus went from the cross bearing 
 with Him the soul of the penitent thief. Among 
 the Jews "it was quite usual to describe a just 
 person as being with Abraham, or lying upon 
 Abraham's bosom." (McClintock and Strong's 
 Cyclopedia. ) 
 
 Then again, Millennial Dawn declares that it 
 must be figurative, else our Lord would teach that 
 the Rich Man was damned because he was rich, 
 and Lazarus was blessed because he was poor, 
 which amounts to saying that "wealth makes sin- 
 ners and poverty makes saints." But Millennial 
 Dawn can not destroy the direct and awful im- 
 port of this story by arguments as superficial as 
 that. One does not have to know his Bible very 
 well to find out that it was not his wealth that 
 our Lord condemned in Dives, but the use he made 
 of it. God's Word tells us of the pardon of 
 thieves, adulterers, and murderers; but few if any 
 of those who once set their hearts on riches. 
 There is little hope for any man who dethrones 
 God and worships gold either in tins world or 
 the next. Our Lord makes it plain in the story 
 that this Rich Man was proud, selfish, and covet- 
 ous, never ministering to the sick man who starved 
 138 
 
PROBATION AFTER DEATH 
 
 to death at his gate. He was less humane than 
 the dogs which licked the sick man's sores. Yet 
 Millennial Dawn has never been able to see any 
 reason why this rich bog should be sent to a place 
 of retribution! It was his pride, selfishness, and 
 greed that put him into the class upon wbich God's 
 curses rest. We respectfully invite Millennial 
 Dawn's attention to several other members of the 
 same class; Achan (Josh. 7:20, 21); Gehazi (2 
 Kings 5: 20-27) j Ahab and Jezebel (1 Kings 21) ; 
 The Rich Fool (Luke 12:18-20); Rich Young 
 Ruler (Luke 18:18-24); Judas (Matt. 26:15); 
 Ananias (Acts 5:5) ; Sapphira (Acts 5:10) ; and 
 Simon Magus (Acts 8: 17-20). We have not very 
 much admiration for a man's spiritual insight who 
 can not see that the Rich Man of the story belongs 
 in this class. Such a man has little light to shed 
 upon the path of benighted men. We do not 
 wonder that he should clamor for the greater 
 effulgence of the Millennium ! 
 
 Fourth Hole. — This is Millennial Dawn's bril- 
 liant attempt to interpret the story, and it charac- 
 terizes its own remarkable performance by these 
 words, "Greatly misunderstood parable made 
 plain. " (!) Now watch and see how plain he 
 makes it. So he proceeds and makes "the thing 
 meant" to be anything under heaven but "the 
 thing said." A man in wildest delirium could not 
 have gotten them any wider apart. Lazarus, poor, 
 sick, starving, dying, stands for the heathen world, 
 which at that moment was the great, strong, all- 
 139 
 
THE MILLENNIAL DAWN HERESY 
 
 conquering, world-ruling Roman Empire. One 
 does not need two eyes to see what a perfect fit 
 that is ! Wonder we had not thought of it before. 
 The Rich Man, great, opulent, strong, means the 
 poor, weak, dejected, and despised Jews. The won- 
 der grows that it should have escaped us so long. 
 It is so appropriate and obvious when one really 
 sees it. But wait: The beggar, the great and 
 mighty Roman Empire and all the rest of the 
 heathen world, died, and was carried by the angels 
 into Abraham's bosom — how easy and simple and 
 nice of the angels. Wasn't much room for Laza- 
 rus before, but Abraham's bosom is big enough 
 now. The Rich Man, that is the Jews, died and 
 was buried in Hades, the grave, "oblivion." That 
 means that the Jews "took sick" at the Crucifixion 
 and were thirty-six years in dying. Even then 
 they did not die. It was only the "Nation" that 
 died, not the individuals. The "Nation" has been 
 in torment ever since ! How easy it all seems when 
 once you know ! 
 
 Just put Millennial Dawn's interpretation into 
 it and see how natural and probable it comes out : 
 "There was a certain Jewish Nation which was 
 clothed in purple and fine linen and fared sump- 
 tuously every day ; and there was a certain Gentile 
 Nation named Lazarus, which was laid at the gate 
 of the Jewish Nation, full of sores. Moreover, 
 the dogs, that means 'the heathen dogs,' our 
 Lord thus used an aphorism of that time and 
 country under which the Jews spoke of all Gentiles 
 140 
 
PROBATION AFTER DEATH 
 
 as 'heathen dogs.' " (Did He not use a similar 
 aphorism when He spoke of Abraham's bosom?) 
 The dogs, the Gentiles, came and licked the sores 
 of the Gentile Nation. And it came to pass that 
 the Gentile Nation died, and was carried by the 
 angels into Abraham's bosom (exactly the place 
 that all Gentile Nations are looking for) ! The 
 Jewish Nation also died and was buried in Hades, 
 the grave; and in "oblivion" "it lifted up its eyes, 
 being in torments!" That is quite enough to ex- 
 pose the folly and insincerity of such a manufac- 
 tured interpretation. It was resorted to by Mil- 
 lennial Dawn only to save its life, and not because 
 any principle of fair interpretation or any neces- 
 sity of exegesis required it. 
 
 "We have carefully read this strange interpre- 
 tation of the great story of our Lord, thinking that 
 there must be some great moral or spiritual truth 
 hidden in the story in order to justify such a 
 strained and irrational exposition, some sun-burst 
 of glory that had hitherto escaped ordinary Bible 
 students, something left for a mighty thinker to 
 rescue from "oblivion" and bring forth for the 
 enlightenment of mankind. But what have we? 
 Nothing! Suppose Millennial Dawn's extrava- 
 gant interpretation is true, what contribution does 
 it make to our knowledge of truth ? Nothing ! It 
 leaves us worse in the fog than when we began. 
 
 To one who has entered into the purpose and 
 spirit of Luke's Gospel this Millennial Dawn in- 
 terpretation of the great story of our Lord is noth- 
 141 
 
THE MILLENNIAL DAWN HERESY 
 
 ing short of amazing. When we fully understand 
 that Luke's Gospel is a masterpiece of character 
 study, that every story, parable, person, and inci- 
 dent is conceived and told from that standpoint 
 alone, that it is all intended to lead up to the great 
 character — the climactic man, Jesus the Son of man 
 — then any ethnic, institutional or ecclesiastical, 
 meaning becomes incongruous and silly. Luke 
 wrote the Book of Acts. Here, in the organization 
 of the Primitive Church, was an opportunity, one 
 might almost think a necessity, to go into details 
 about the institution. But what have we ? Almost 
 nothing in that line. Persons, doctrines, charac- 
 ters, abound and fill the pages to the very close. 
 Now, for one to come along and tell us that this 
 great story which our Lord told, and which was 
 foreign to Matthew's Gospel, which deals chiefly 
 with nations and kingdoms, but so far entered into 
 the plan and purpose of Luke 's Gospel that he gave 
 it a central place — for one to tell us that the Rich 
 Man means the Jews and that Lazarus means the 
 Gentiles, is little short of disgusting. This would 
 be robbing the great story of its deep moral mean- 
 ing just to advance the fortunes of a hobby-rider. 
 
 Probation or Retribution — Which? 
 
 If probation extends beyond the limits of this 
 life it must manifest itself by some token in Hades, 
 for no Biblical scholar would ever think of placing 
 it beyond the General Judgment, or of carrying 
 the torch of hope to any lost soul beyond the Res- 
 142 
 
PROBATION AFTER DEATH 
 
 urrection. If it is anywhere it is in the Inter- 
 mediate State. That this scene does not represent 
 a state of probation, but rather one of retribution 
 — a state where character seems crystallized and 
 destiny forever established — appears certain from 
 the following pregnant facts which the story ex- 
 hibits : 
 
 1. Between the two compartments of Hades — 
 the home of the saved and of the lost — is fixed a 
 "Great Gulf" which can not be crossed from either 
 side. This may be a moral gulf; but whatever it 
 is it points unmistakably to the fixity and change- 
 lessness of character in that world. Character 
 fixed and destiny closed do not constitute elements 
 of a probationary state. That is passed. 
 
 2. Prayer is no longer availing in the home 
 of the lost soul. Two earnest requests were made 
 by this Rich Man, one of them the smallest favor 
 that could possibly be asked in any world — for 
 one drop of water ! And the other, the most plaus- 
 ible prayer that could be offered in any world — ■ 
 that Lazarus might be permitted to go down to 
 earth and warn his five brethren, "lest they also 
 come to this place of torment!" Both of these 
 prayers were denied him. Does a world where 
 prayer can not be answered represent a state of 
 moral probation? On eartii sinners often brace 
 up each other's courage by saying, if they are all 
 sent to perdition together, "Misery likes com- 
 pany!" But from this scene it would seem that 
 when a human soul stands stark before the awful 
 
 143 
 
THE MILLENNIAL DAWN HERESY 
 
 realities of eternity and under the terrible hand 
 of God's righteous retribution, it does not want 
 any company. Where prayer ends probation also 
 ends, and retribution begins. 
 
 3. Though the Rich Man was suffering griev- 
 ous "anguish" (Am. Rev.), and seemed to believe 
 that he was still where prayer could be heard, yet 
 this lost soul did not pray for himself nor ask 
 for mercy or pardon. He wanted his brothers to 
 repent, not for the sake of Christ, nor for the glory 
 of God, but simply to escape what he was suffering. 
 He wanted them to escape, but was unwilling 
 himself to repent. No moral change comes to his 
 rebellious heart. 
 
 4. Instead of repenting or showing any sor- 
 row for sin, or exhibiting any desire to change 
 either his conduct or his character, he was still re- 
 bellious; and when informed that his brethren on 
 earth had Moses and the prophets, which if they 
 would hear, they would be saved, this old rebel in 
 Tartarus says, "Nay, father Abraham, but if one 
 went unto them from the dead they will repent." 
 His soul was still stubborn, rebellious, and Satanic. 
 Like all other incorrigible sinners, he still insisted 
 that his way was better than God's way. That at- 
 titude is the very nerve of sin. 
 
 5. This story also teaches that while all means 
 of salvation are unavailing in Hades, on earth 
 they are abundant and adequate. We have Moses 
 and the prophets; we have Christ the Savior, and 
 the Holy Spirit the Comforter; we have, in com- 
 
 144 
 
PROBATION AFTER DEATH 
 
 mon with all human beings, "the Light that light- 
 eneth every man that cometh into the world;" — 
 means which God has freely furnished us, and 
 which are adequate for the salvation of every man 
 and woman who will obey them. If we neglect or 
 refuse them, we forfeit our right to ask or to ex- 
 pect another chance in the life to come. This 
 man had clearly despised God's provisions of 
 mercy in this world, had rejected 1 ' Moses and the 
 prophets" as he did when in the place of "an- 
 guish," and had therefore wasted his only oppor- 
 tunity, as millions are doing. God simply treated 
 him as one who by such a course had forfeited 
 his right to ask for another chance. 
 
 6. This story teaches finally, that no other 
 means, no other "work, nor device, nor knowledge, 
 nor wisdom, ' ' beyond what the divine love has pro- 
 vided for the salvation of lost men here and now, 
 can be offered them in the life to come. Almost in 
 despair the Divine Father says, "What more can 
 I do for My vineyard that I have not already 
 done?" "If they hear not Moses and the prophets, 
 neither will they be persuaded though one rose 
 from the dead." 
 
 If there is any probation provided for lost men 
 beyond this life we would expect to find some token 
 of it in this remarkable story — one that gives us 
 the completest exposition of the Intermediate State 
 to be found anywhere in the Bible. If we fail to 
 find probation here, we shall look in vain for it 
 anywhere else. A world where prayer can not be 
 
 10 145 
 
THE MILLENNIAL DAWN HERESY 
 
 answered — where character can not change — 
 where repentance never enters the soul — where 
 all salvation-means are withdrawn and denied — 
 where the only experience is fruitless "anguish" 
 — where guilt produces no contrition, and memory 
 only remorse — is not a world of probation. It is 
 a lost world. It is a world of retribution, where 
 "Alas, the fruit of our forbidden tree begins to 
 fall!" 
 
 This is our explanation of our Lord's great 
 story of "The Rich Man and Lazarus;" — a story 
 whose moral implications are so clear, the meaning 
 of whose dramatic incidents are so obvious, that 
 to smother them as Millennial Dawn attempts to 
 do, with a bungling, far-fetched, and labored na- 
 tional meaning, is simply to offend the moral judg- 
 ment of mankind. This story is one of the most 
 far-resounding moral notes ever sounded in this 
 world. 
 
 Additional Texts Examined 
 
 Phil. 2:10, 11; "Wherefore God hath highly 
 exalted him and given him a name that is above 
 every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee 
 should bow, of things in heaven and things on 
 earth, and things under the earth; and that every 
 tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, 
 to the glory of God the Father." A part of this 
 is a quotation from Isaiah 45 : 23, "I have sworn 
 by myself, the word has gone out of my mouth in 
 righteousness, and shall not return, That unto 
 146 
 
PROBATION AFTER DEATH 
 
 Me every knee shall bow, every tongue shall 
 swear." It seems clear that Paul quoted this pas- 
 sage, not to prove that all men should be saved, 
 but to show that at the exaltation of our Lord, 
 every being in heaven, in earth, and in hell 
 should be compelled to acknowledge the exalted 
 Name and Authority of Jesus Christ. That seems 
 exactly what Paul intended to say. On another 
 occasion Paul quoted the same passage — Rom. 14: 
 11 — not to prove that all men should be saved, 
 but to show that all men should be judged: "For 
 we shall all stand before the judgment seat of 
 Christ ; for it is written, As I live, saith the Lord, 
 every knee shall bow to Me, and every tongue 
 shall confess to God. So then every one of us shall 
 give account of himself to God." 
 
 Some have based their hope of a probation 
 after death or of a final restoration of all men 
 upon these and similar texts: "It is not the will 
 of your Father that one of these little ones should 
 perish." (Matt. 18:11.) God "who will have 
 all men to be saved, and to come to the knowledge 
 of the truth." (1 Tim. 2:4.) These and similar 
 texts do not express God's will in the sense of 
 purpose, but in the sense of desire. The Greek 
 word relied on in both instances is the one which 
 Jesus used when weeping over sinners whom He 
 woidd but could not save: "0 Jerusalem, Jerusa- 
 lem, thou that killest the prophets and stonest them 
 that are sent unto thee! How often 'would' I 
 have gathered thy children together even as a hen 
 147 
 
THE MILLENNIAL DAWN HERESY 
 
 gathers her chickens under her wings. But ye 
 would not! Behold, your house is left unto you 
 desolate ! ' ' 
 
 That mysterious boundary that runs between 
 probation and retribution is often reached and 
 crossed in this life. In relation to a thousand 
 things probation ends and retribution begins even 
 here. Persistent violation of the laws of health 
 lead irresistibly on to disease and death. It seems 
 quite certain therefore that many people reach and 
 cross the line that fixes their eternal destiny while 
 yet treading the pathway of this life. If you see 
 a man confirmed in habits of indolence and dis- 
 honesty, you know that his financial proba- 
 tion has closed. If you find one confirmed in 
 habits of unbelief — mind sealed, conviction settled, 
 investigation closed, and his whole nature in a 
 state of moral collapse — you feel certain that the 
 probation of faith is closed for him. If you meet 
 one whose character is degraded into incorrigible 
 habits of sin, and who bitterly scorns all further 
 offers of mercy, you can not well resist the feeling 
 that his candidacy for heaven and eternal life is 
 ended. No Judgment throne will ever reverse the 
 decision which such a man deliberately passes upon 
 himself. 
 
 "There is a line by us unseen, 
 That crosses every path — 
 The hidden boundary between 
 God's patience and His wrath. 
 148 
 
PROBATION AFTER DEATH 
 
 "There is a time, we know not when, 
 A point, we know not where, 
 That marks the destiny of men, 
 For glory or despair." 
 
 A Probationless Millennium 
 
 It seems to us that Millennial Dawn's concep- 
 tion of probation is fundamentally wrong. Its 
 Millennium is one without any of the elements of 
 probation. Probation means moral choice, not for 
 traditional reasons, nor because the crowd is going 
 that way. Politicians create excitement and fury 
 to keep men from thinking and vote them in 
 crowds. The awful issues of eternity can not be 
 settled in that way. Probation means choice of 
 right because right is right and God is God. It 
 means persistent pursuance of the right through 
 the fiery ordeal of opposition and moral resistance. 
 It means development of character. It means 
 moral and spiritual gymnastics. To crowd the 
 entire human race together in a vast plain or pa- 
 vilion, bind Satan a thousand years, withdraw 
 every evil suggestion and every tempting influence, 
 bring to bear the moral influence of the entire 
 community, silence the howling winds of winter, 
 and fan the brow with the balmy breezes of per- 
 petual summer, make life for a thousand years one 
 long-drawn-out campaign of evangelism, and call 
 that a real probation for one's eternal character 
 and destiny is about like the farce of attempting to 
 raise oak trees in a hot-house! In the helps and 
 149 
 
THE MILLENNIAL DAWN HERESY 
 
 hindrances of this present life God has furnished 
 the necessary conditions of a fair probation. Mil- 
 lennial Dawn, wiser than God, invents a Millennial 
 probation where all this is reversed. Its hopes for 
 successful issues in that campaign are based upon 
 the ground that it has everything exactly different 
 from that which God's wisdom ordained for this 
 life. Our feeling is that this manufactured thing 
 called a probation is not that at all, but just a 
 gigantic Sunday school picnic. 
 
 The personal presence of Christ conducting 
 such a campaign would embarrass freedom of ac- 
 tion, stultify motives, and rob the whole perform- 
 ance of the intrinsic elements of a real probation. 
 Jesus Himself said, "It is better for you that I 
 go away." The presence of all the holy men and 
 women, prophets, apostles, martyrs, and eminent 
 saints of all ages would take from such a move- 
 ment the nerve of moral choice and the very fiber 
 of self-denying consecration. What would it mean 
 to say to your neighbor, "Deny thyself, take up 
 thy cross and follow Jesus?" 
 
 Such a campaign would result, we may sup- 
 pose, in the turning to God of vast multitudes with 
 flabby muscles, cotton sinews, anemic blood, and 
 mushy souls. It is a conception utterly at va- 
 riance with the Word of God, antagonistic to that 
 Word, and distasteful to the thought of sturdy 
 and sincere men. The New Testament abounds 
 in ideas of the heroic in God's service, but it has 
 150 
 
PROBATION AFTER DEATH 
 
 not one word of sympathy for this school of molly- 
 coddles. 
 
 Boom for Worldlings and Sinners 
 
 It would be impossible for one to contrive a 
 more welcome scheme for worldlings and sinners 
 than this of Millennial Dawn. The supreme sin 
 of every age is worldliness — love for things secular, 
 distaste for things sacred. And this unscriptural 
 scheme just meets a "long-felt want." Every 
 motive for virtue, holiness, consecration is robbed 
 of its power, its voice silenced, and its effectiveness 
 reduced to zero. Every passion for the world and 
 for a life of self-indulgence is inflamed. Every 
 desire for worldly pleasure is gratified. Every 
 hope for another chance in some future and far- 
 off life where the influences will be more auspi- 
 cious and the moral resistance weakened is im- 
 mensely enhanced. 
 
 "Who then having ears will take pains to hear? 
 Who, loving the world, will have any motive for 
 giving it up? Who that hates cross-bearing will 
 hasten to engage in it? Who that hates God and 
 loves sin will be likely to repent or reform ? Post- 
 pone the crisis for a thousand years, give loose rein 
 to passion and universal license to sin, and how 
 quickly humanity will sink into the lowest degra- 
 dation of heathenism. That is the legitimate fruit 
 of this ungodly scheme. 
 
 The vice of procrastination is well-nigh uni- 
 151 
 
THE MILLENNIAL DAWN HERESY 
 
 versal. This wild scheme robs it of its moral dan- 
 ger. Tell worldlings and sinners that they have 
 no need of anxiety about their souls ; that they will 
 have a thousand years in which to get ready for 
 heaven, and there is not one in a million but will 
 hail the news with delight. Most of them would 
 say : ' ' It 's a glorious doctrine ! I '11 spend nine 
 hundred and ninety-nine of those years in the 
 pleasures of worldliness and sin." This scheme 
 would be quickly and universally adopted if men 
 could believe it. But the fact is that, morally 
 blind and stupid as human nature is, this unreas- 
 onable proposition outrages their moral judgments. 
 In the very depths of their moral natures they 
 know that it is not true! How any man, pro- 
 fessing to be a follower of the Holy Christ, and 
 knowing the weakness of human nature, can be a 
 deliberate party to this un-Christlike and unscrip- 
 tural propaganda is more than we can make out. 
 Not for a thousand worlds would we dare to invite 
 God's displeasure by such an unholy act. 
 
 Conclusion 
 
 "We do not think it necessary to pursue Millen- 
 nial Dawn further. We have challenged every 
 doctrine, and assailed every distinctive feature of 
 the scheme. We have shown plainly how untrue 
 it is and how out of harmony with the Word of 
 God. That is enough. The "Plan" has put itself 
 before the world in six volumes, each several times 
 larger than this, and in pamphlets, tracts, and 
 152 
 
PROBATION AFTER DEATH 
 
 weekly publications now for years. It is needless 
 to try to answer them all. That would be a waste 
 of time. There is, however, not much to answer, 
 for these publications are everlasting repetitions 
 of the chief features of the scheme. We have met 
 the issue fairly and squarely, and shown that these 
 doctrines are false. When we have shown that 
 its denial of the natural immortality of the soul 
 is not true; that the soul does not "sleep in ob- 
 livion" between death and the Resurrection; that 
 there is no probation after death provided for 
 anywhere in the Word of God ; there is not to be a 
 Millennium ; that Christ has never proposed to set 
 up a kingdom on earth and reign in it for a thou- 
 sand years; that this Gospel Age is one of pro- 
 bation for all people ; that it is false to teach that 
 none but the "little flock" can be saved during the 
 present era ; that now is the acceptable time for all 
 men, and that now is the day of salvation — we 
 feel that we have done all that needs to be done 
 with Millennial Dawn. If we have exposed the 
 errors of these doctrines and shown that they are 
 unscriptural and untrue, we need not waste the 
 time of our readers with The Divine Plan of the 
 Ages, The Great Pyramid of Egypt, Napoleon 
 Bonaparte in Prophecy, The Time of Restitution, 
 nor Setting the Day in 1914. If the foundation 
 is rotten, the whole scheme of Millennial Dawn will 
 fall. We have pointed out its rotten foundation, 
 and have little interest in the rickety structure 
 reared upon it. 
 
 153 
 

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