When that terrible pall of darkness settled down over Christianity following the death of the apostles, one of its densest aspects was the humanly conceived limit which was placed upon the grace of God, a limit which said that salvation is restricted to those who believe before they gasp their last breath of this fitful and condemned life. And even worse than this was the sectarian construction which was put upon that word “believe.” To the Catholics it meant to believe the teachings of the Catholic Church. To the various Protestant groups it meant the acceptance of their particular interpretation of truth and how to practice it. To all and sundry it meant, “Come with us, and do it before you die, or you will be forever lost”—or at least suffer for hundreds of years in a terrible purgatory of torment, as the Catholic Church teaches.
This concept of the Gospel replaced love with fear as an incentive to believe and obey, and for this there is no Scriptural authorization. There isn’t a hint anywhere in the Bible that the opportunity to obtain salvation through Christ is limited to this present life. How we rejoiced in the largeness of the truth: that it enabled us to look with sympathy upon those who could not see as we do and to rejoice that when the time of their visitation comes, they would have a more favorable opportunity to believe than is now possible when Satan is abroad to deceive and blind the minds of those who believe not. Yes, we were proud of the truth! With Paul we could say, “I am not ashamed of the Gospel of Christ.”—Rom. 1:16
But what happened? Well, to start with, for example, through the “channel” there came a new interpretation of the Parable of the Sheep and the Goats. And the new interpretation was wrong. There’s no question about that. But more important than the erroneous interpretation it- self was the fact that it was a step into darkness because it began to take away that glorious hope of blessing for all the families of the earth. It hinted strongly that most of the ministers of denominational churches were going into the “second death.”
As we first learned the truth, the “second death” was merely one of its doctrines, a necessary one, to be sure, but somehow we did not think too much about it. We knew that all incorrigible sinners would go into the second death, but it hadn’t occurred to us that those who are unable to see the truth as a result of our stammering, bungling way of explaining it to them, and because there are a hundred other voices calling from other directions were incorrigible sinners.
So this comparatively obscure doctrine of the second death suddenly came to the fore, and as the new flashes of alleged light increased (?) in brilliance the brethren were told of more and more who were going into the second death. Among the classes for which there was no hope at all was the one made up of those who did not accept the “new” light from what was claimed to be the Lord’s exclusive channel of Divine truth. To leave this “channel,” therefore, was looked upon as the blackest of all sins which a mere mortal could commit. Those who did so were considered a part of the “man of sin,” the “son of perdition,” and certain to be punished with the second death.