"So when we read in Heb. ii, 14, 15, "that through death he might bring to nought [destroy, in Authorized Version] him that had the power of death, that is, the devil; and might deliver all them who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage," we are not to consider this to be an annihilation of the devil, but merely a reference to the cessation of his power over those in whom he had produced this fear of death." (pp 146.147)

 "We grant that a resurrection was to occur at the parousia, but deny that it was to be visible to the eyes of mortals, and therefore insist that it must have taken place just as the Scriptures assert it did; and that, being thus an invisible transaction, it may be still proceeding, as a legitimate part of the events which mark the reign of the Lord Jesus Christ as the One who sits on the throne of authority and power to judge and give life—eternal life—with spiritual bodies to all who are believing in him as the years roll on."

(On II Tim. 2:16-18)
"There is a text in Second Timothy which may demand some attention here: "But shun profane babblings: for they will proceed further in ungodliness, and their word will eat as doth a gangrene: of whom is Hymenaeus and Philetus; men who concerning the truth have erred [have missed the mark, darc^ew], saying that the resurrection is past already, and overthrow the faith of some" (2 Tim. ii, 16-18). "The precise meaning of this expression [the one italicized in the quotation] is by no means clearly ascertained; the most general, and perhaps best founded, opinion is that they understood the resurrection in a figurative sense of the great change produced by the Gospel dispensation. . . . Now, as the doctrine of the resurrection of the body was found to involve immense difficulties even in those early days (Acts xvii, 32; I Cor. xv, 35), while, on the other hand, there was so great a predisposition in the then current philosophy (not even extinct now) to magnify the excellence of the soul above that of its earthly tabernacle, it was at once the easier and more attractive course to insist upon and argue from the force of those passages of Holy Scripture which enlarge upon the glories of the spiritual life that now is, under Christ, and to pass over or explain away allegorically all that refers to a future state in connection with the resurrection of the body" (Mc- Clintock and Strong, art. "Hymenaeus").

This explanation being accepted, it is at once perceived that the error of these men was not that there had been a resurrection of the body; and therefore those who now maintain such a doctrine are not properly classed with these heretics.

"Even if they had maintained that a resurrection of the body had taken place, it is to be remembered that this was before the parousia of Christ, and therefore such teaching might then have been erroneous, while now it may be, and, as we believe, is, the only correct teaching, and such as should not subject one to the spear of the heretic hunter.

The faith which was overthrown was doubtless a faith in an actual resurrection of a body into the eternal life of the future. This the upholders of our theory do not interfere with, but sustain with all their powers; only it is maintained also that, this resurrection being necessarily invisible to the bodily eye, it has already occurred, according to the plain and incontestable teachings of Holy Writ." (pp 261-262)

"Our death is the immediate exchange of the visible physical for the invisible physical like unto the ascension. Death is our assumption into the invisible physics; the assumption is the service which death gives us; it is instant on death, the spring of another existence without a wintry ghostly interval. In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, we repossess our body in death; death is our ingression into the spiritual body without a leap or break. 'To-day shalt thou be with me in paradise.' We know that when our earthly house of this temporal residence is dissolved we have—not shall have —a building of God, a residence of eternal elements in the heavens."  (p. 284)

"So our hope in Christ is resplendent with the glories in store for us as we look for our own immediate manifestation with him in the heavenly places so soon as we cease to bear the image of the earthy and begin at once to bear the image of the heavenly. " (p. 284)

(On the judgment)
"We therefore conclude that those who here appear before the throne of the Son of man are the nations of Palestine, the individuals of which received or rejected him in the person of his brethren, and that the rejecters stood there to be judged and doomed, according to Matt. xxii, 6, 7, while the receivers of his disciples entered into the kingdom. " (p. 94)

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