Beyond the grave...

Contents

PAGE

Translator's Preface v

Author's Preface xi

I. A Clear Word of Prophecy 12

The Future Easter Morning 13

Redemption more than Immortality 16

Death not a Debt of Nature 21

Eternal Life 24

Why was Mention of a Resurrection so long delayed

in Scripture ? , 29

Hades the Porch of Heaven for Old Testament Saints. 36 Why a Hades for all the Dead before Christ ? . . 40 A Change beyond the Grave when Christ came . . 42 Why Old Testament Saints said so Little of Bliss

Expectation of Christ became Expectation of Resurrection 48

IV CONTENTS.

II. Page

Paradise Opened 52

What Christ's Resurrection Means 55

The New Epoch of Life 62

Resurrection Guaranteed by Inward Experience . 65

Bliss Possible while awaiting Resurrection ... 71

Hope of Resurrection promotes Sanctification . . 72

How Are the Dead Raised ? 73

The Resurrection of the Wicked 78

III. Resurrection Delayed that the Gospel may be

Preached 81

The Present Blessedness of Heaven 83

What Makes a Blessed Death ? 89

How are the Souls of Believers at Death made Perfect in Holiness ? 93

Are these Degrees of Blessedness ? 97

What now of Unbelievers beyond the Grave ? . . 99 Do the Torments of the Lost disturb the Bliss of

the Redeemed ? 102

Will There be a Restoration of All Things ? . . .103

Is Conversion after Death possible ? 104

Index 145

Texts 151

TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE.

THE title of the little book herewith presented to the public in an English translation is in the original as follows : " Concerning the State after Death; together with some Intimations Concerning the Death of Children, and Concerning Spiritualism!' This inconvenient title has been exchanged for a more attractive and equally descriptive one, given by the Author to a previous work, as noticed in his Preface which follows. The latter not having appeared in an English translation, there is not the same need of employing a new title for the present book.

Though this little book was published in Germany (Gutersloh, C Bertelsmann) in

VI TRANSLATOR S PREFACE. .

1883, the Translator only became acquainted with it in February of the present year. To read it was to have immediately the desire to prepare a translation of it for English readers, and a request was communicated to the Author for his permission to do so. Meanwhile, assuming that there would be no difficulty, especially that the request had not been anticipated in any quarter, the translation was undertaken and finished in a few weeks, and before receiving the Author's reply.

The letter to Dr. Cremer found him, alas ! at the death-bed of his second son, a young man of eighteen years. Thus he was actually needing, and doubtless experiencing also, the virtue of those consolations of the God of all comfort, wherewith, in this little book, he had been richly comforting in God others that had like trouble.

In the reply thus delayed, Dr. Cremer expressed his appreciation of the estimate put on his little book, adding that it had already enjoyed an exceedingly friendly re-

TRANSLATOR S PREFACE. Vll

ception in foreign lands, of which he had convincing proof in the appearance of a Swedish translation. Respecting the request for permission to translate it into English, he replied that " some months ago he had received a letter from the Rev. Geo. Z. Gray, D.D., Dean of the Episcopal Theological School, Cambridge, Mass., requesting him to give his approval of a translation into English, which he had accordingly given. Thus he was not in position to give approval to another translation. Otherwise it would have given him pleasure to do so."

Having received this reply, the Translator immediately communicated by letter with Dr. Gray, stating the situation, who, in his courteous reply, said, "I feel unwilling to stand in the way, as you have done so much of the work, or to insist on my prior right. Therefore I will withdraw."

It is a pleasure to acknowledge this courtesy, and the gratification the Translator has enjoyed in executing the work viii translator's preface.

thus resigned makes him appreciate Dr. Gray's withdrawal as an act of great generosity. Gratefully accepting this courtesy, he desires also to express his obligation to the publishers for producing the work in so attractive a form.

The Translator takes pleasure in acknowledging his indebtedness for the favor conferred by the Rev. A. A. Hodge, D.D., Professor of Didactic and Polemic Theology in Princeton Theological Seminary, in writing, at his request, an Introduction to the present work. The expediency and propriety of this Introduction will vindicate themselves. It is not improper, however, to remark, that the Translator shares the views of the Author (page 41) that are criticised in the Introduction. The criticism, on the other hand, is most welcome. It will cause the matter in question to be the more carefully scrutinized, and, like the light of the torch, which " the more it's shook it shines," so it will be with the truth in this matter, whatever it is.

TRANSLATOR S PREFACE. IX

Much that might have been proper for this Preface appears in the Introduction ; it is only necessary, therefore, to add the following notice to the reader :

The original of this book is divided into only three sections, which may be detected on pages 12, 52, and 81 ; on which follow the two supplements, " The Death of Little Children,'' page 119, and " Concerning Spiritualism," page 131. The present form, as broken into small chapters, with the headings attached, is .the Translator's work. This device, like the translation itself, seemed essential to an English literary form ; for English readers are as likely to revolt at a succession of unbroken pages, as much as at the long -extended sentences that seem quite acceptable to German readers.

Samuel T. Lowrie,

Author's Preface

FOR a number of years the publisher of my little book, entitled " Beyond the Grave " (Jenseits des Grades), which appeared in 1868, has wished me to prepare a new elaboration of it. It is only now that I have found it possible to do so. In my lecture (Barmen, 1870) on "The Resurrection of the Dead," I have not only treated especially the subject of the hope of resurrection, but also brought together nearly all the intimations, hints, and sayings of Holy Scripture concerning the state after death, and attempted to answer the questions thereby suggested in connection with what we know of faith and salvation. In view of these changes I have chosen a

Xll PREFACE.

somewhat modified title.* The present title may, at the same time, with respect to the friendly offering of the Danish physician and professor, Dr. Hornemann (" Concerning the Condition of Man shortly before Death"), serve as an admonition not to forget what is after death, so far as we can know about it.

Greifswald, August, 1883.

[* The Author entitles his present production " The State after Death." We have preferred for its English form the title of his original production. — Tr.]

Introduction

The Author of this book, Dr. H. Cremer, is one of the very foremost of the decidedly evangelical scholars of Germany. He is Professor of Dogmatic Theology in the University of Greifswald, in Northern Prussia ; he is associated with such well-known men as Luthardt, of Leipsic, Strack, of Berlin, Volck and Harnack, of Dorpat, Von Scheele, of Upsala, in the authorship of Zockler's " Manual of Theological Science. " The work by which he is best known is his very learned and valuable " Biblico-Theological Lexicon of the New Testament," which is now proceeding to its fourth edition. He stands very high in the estimation of English and American scholars for learning, judgment, and evangelical spirit.

The doctrine of this little book, with one exception clearly noted by the Translator, is perfectly in accord with the straitest

XIV INTRODUCTION.

standards of orthodoxy, and yet we believe that its contents will be found fresh and interesting to all intelligent readers. To be fresh and instructive within the realm of revealed truth, it is not necessary, as it is not permitted, to present matter absolutely original. It is sufficient that the matter of revelation, as old as the Bible itself, should be presented in some new measure of accuracy, fulness, and power. The special advantage of the present treatise results from the acknowledged learning, judicial balance and candor of its eminent Author, and from the purely biblical nonspeculative character of his method. The special studies of Dr. Cremer, which have rendered him in his department an authority recognized throughout the Christian world, qualify him for presenting an accurate statement of the real biblical teaching on this subject in the light of the most profound and comprehensive modern scholarship. This will be found to be highly reassuring, in view of the unsettling character of much of the pretentious learning and speculation of the present time.

INTRODUCTION. XV

The method of this treatise is rather that of biblical than of systematic theology. Systematic theology sums up, in a system of general conceptions and definitions, all that the Scriptures teach on every point upon which it declares the mind of God. It is concerned rather with the substance of the truth than with the words used by the Holy Ghost to express it, or with the forms in which in different periods and by different writers it has been presented in the Scriptures. Biblical theology, on the other hand, notes more closely all the phenomena of revelation, the gradual unfolding of every truth through successive dispensations, the characteristic terms in which it has been expressed in different ages and by different writers, and the various points of view in which it has been conceived and exhibited by different writers under different historical conditions. Each of these distinct methods possesses its own special advantage ; but the method of biblical theology is comparatively very unfamiliar to religious people. In spite of the fact that the Bible is held by us to be the very

XVI INTRODUCTION.

WORD OF God, the source of all our knowledge of divine things, and of the fact that a great deal of desultory study has always been devoted to the sacred text by Protestants, the generalized conceptions and definitions and technical terms of systematic theology have to a great degree taken the place, in the minds of most modern Christians, of the purely biblical language and form in which these truths have been severally set forth by the Holy Ghost in his own word. This tendency, natural and universal, has been intensified by the use of Confessions and Catechisms. For instance, among English-speaking Presbyterians it has been increased by the universal diffusion and long dominance of that most admirable of all statements of systematic theology embraced in the Westminster Confession and Catechisms.

Take, for example, the subject of this book. The Scriptures certainly teach two related truths : (i) That human probation ends with death, and that the state into which the soul enters immediately after death is, in its essential character, to remain

INTRODUCTION. XVU

unchanged forever. (2) That as a final result there are but two states — one of holiness and happiness, or one of sinfulness and misery — into which all the members of the human family are to be distributed. These are styled respectively Heaven and Hell, and are represented in Scripture, and necessarily conceived of by us, as being two distinct places as well as states. And the Westminster Confession follows Scripture faithfully in denying that there is any middle place or condition (e.g., purgatory) occupied by the disembodied spirits of men between death and the resurrection (ch. 32,

From this basis of unquestionable fact many draw the inference that these terms Heaven and Hell must always have had the same values in the usage of all parts of Scripture, and that the realities signified by these terms respectively must always, through all dispensations, have remained unchanged. That is, that the seat of bliss to which the Old Testament believer went immediately after death must always have been known as heaven, and must have been a

XV111 INTRODUCTION.

identical with that state and condition into which the New Testament believer departs when he dies ; and that the heavens of the Old Testament believer, before the first coming of Christ, and that of the New Testament believer, during the intermediate state between death and the resurrection, and that of all the redeemed after the final judgment, are all identical in respect to locality and condition.

All this involves a confusion of the different stages in which believers realize redemption here and hereafter, with its consummation. The true state of facts as to the manner in which these matters are set forth in Scripture is as follows :

I. The consummation of our redemption cannot occur until the resurrection and glorification of our bodies. The human person, subject at once of law and of redemption, essentially consists of soul and body. The body is necessary to the completion of the personality, and consequently to the full enduring of the penalty, or the complete experience of salvation. These identical bodies which have sinned and suffered

INTRODUCTION. XIX

here, modified but not exchanged, must be brought up out of the dominion of death, and the entire person reinstated as a child of God. Hence Paul says (Rom. viii. 23) that even we Christians who have already the first-fruits of the Spirit, nevertheless "groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our bodies." And hence the Holy Spirit, who now dwells in all believers, "seals them " not unto the heaven that comes immediately after death, but " unto the day of redemption," L e. y that day in which redemption shall be consummated in the resurrection and glorification of their bodies.

The hope of the Messiah included the hope of the resurrection of the body, as Paul teaches (Acts xxiv. 14, 15; xxvi. 6). The earthly work of the Messiah culminated in his own resurrection. The preaching of the gospel was the proclamation of the bodily resurrection of Christ, and hence of all his people. The work of redemption itself was completed in. the resurrection of Christ himself, and the realized redemption of his people is completed in the actual

XX INTRODUCTION.

resurrection of their own bodies. In the mean time the hope of the gospel is the hope of resurrection (Acts xxiii. 6). To this extent the new departure in theology, which denies the actual resurrection of the bodies of believers, is proved to be unbiblical. And to this degree is the prevalent religious faith of the day, which lays all its emphasis upon the salvation of the soul completed immediately after death, shown to be defective.

The Author has done us a great service in setting the resurrection of our bodies before us in the same prominent position which it occupies in the WORD OF GOD. The highest blessedness set before us in the gospel will not be attained until after the general resurrection. If this be so, it follows, that while Christians should contemplate what awaits them immediately after death with confidence and joy, since to be " absent from the body is to be at home with the Lord," they should nevertheless follow the apostolic example in lifting up their longing desires in anticipation of that completed redemption which

INTRODUCTION. XXI

can only follow those events which shall accompany and succeed the Second Coming of our Lord. The whole Church, as she waits either on earth or in heaven, finds the expression of her highest aspiration in the closing words of Scripture, " Even so, come, Lord Jesus." Only then shall we " be satisfied, when we awake in his likeness. ,,

It follows, also, that there is an Intermediate State, in which the condition of believing souls will be very different from anything they have experienced in this world, or will experience in their state of final glorification. The human soul is essentially constituted for personal union with a material body. This union conditions all its sensibilities and all its activities. While " absent from the body," the spirit will be conscious, holy, happy, and "at home with the Lord." Nevertheless, this ghost life is unnatural, incomplete, temporary, and a consequence of sin. As long as it lasts, believers, though in heaven, still continue as Christ w r as " till the third day," in part, " under the power of death."

XXII INTRODUCTION.

Whether there is an intermediate place, as well as an intermediate state, no living man knows. Location in space in such connection lies beyond all profitable thought. All we are told is that the believer, as soon as he dies, is "at home with Christ." That surely is enough. This is what the Westminster Confession calls (Larg. Cat., Ques. 86) " the highest heavens." But whether the seats of bliss remain in the same place, absolutely or relatively to other portions of the physical universe, is not revealed. The indications of Scripture are all the other way. If the persons of Christ and his people are eternally united to material bodies, heaven must be a part of the material universe, in which the physical conditions will be adjusted to the sensibilities and activities of the glorified bodies they environ: The testimony of Scripture seems to be, that as the body of the saint is to be modified in the process of glorification, so the glorified home is to be constituted by the modification of the heavens and earth that are now. For we are " looking for and earnestly desiring the coming of the day of

INTRODUCTION. XX111

God, by reason of which the heavens being on fire shall be dissolved, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat. But, according to his promise, we look for new heavens and a new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness" (2 Pet. iii. 12, 13).

II. In a similar manner modern Christians have generally supposed that the Scriptures taught that Old Testament believers, immediately after death, w r ere transformed into the same state, and admitted to the same place and relations that believers are admitted to since the death and resurrection of their Lord. The actual facts of the biblical teaching on this subject are as follows :

The word HEAVEN, which occurs very frequently, is never used in the Old Testament to designate the place or the condition to which believers are introduced at death."* It is never used as if the subject designated sustained any relation to man's future destiny. It always designates the

* With the single exception of Elijah (2 Kings ii. 1, Ii), who was, like Enoch, translated, and so delivered from death, the common experience of redeemed men.

XXIV INTRODUCTION.

dwelling-place of God. Heaven is his throne, while the earth is his footstool (Isa. Ixvi. i). He is always represented as reigning, looking, hearing, answering, acting, coming " from heaven/* But all men, good and bad, are said to go immediately to Sheol when they die (Dr. Hodge's " Systematic Theology/' pt. iv., ch. i., § 4).

This word " Sheol " occurs sixty-five times in the Old Testament, and, with two or three exceptions, is represented by the equivalent term Hades in the Septuagint Greek. This word " Hades"* occurs also eleven times in the New Testament, and throughout its usage in both Testaments maintains a perfectly plain and uniform sense. Sheol or Hades is the term used in the ancient dispensation by the Holy Spirit in the sense of the spirit-world, the invisible world, the land of shades, the under-world, into which the disembodied spirits of all men go immediately after death. It is a part of the

* See the veiy thorough, learned, and able " Excursus on Hades," by Dr. Elijah R. Craven, pp. 364-377 of the volume on Revelation, of the " Lange-SchafI Critical and Doctrinal Commentary."

INTRODUCTION. XXV

realm of death, and residence in it is a consequence of sin. Irrespective of the atonement of Christ, its condition would be purely penal and hopeless. To the Christless it was the vestibule of hell. But in view of his atonement and to all believers Hades was the vestibule of heaven, for he was " the Lamb that hath been slain from the foundation of the world " (Rev. xiii. 8). Hence there were in Hades separate regions and conditions of disembodied spirits. A place for the good, called Abraham's bosom, or Paradise, and a place for the evil, Gehenna, or " Hell," in the modern definite and exclusive sense of that word. And between these two places and conditions there was "a great gulf fixed," and no possible interchange, or even passage of persons from the one to the other (Luke xvi. 19-31). In the one condition they were comforted, in the other they were " in anguish."

The faith and hope of the Old Testament believer rested on the coming of the Messiah. When he came he " should redeem Israel." Abraham rejoiced to see his day,

XXVI INTRODUCTION.

and " he saw it and was glad." As the time advanced, and the work of preparation for the Messiah drew towards completion, the hope of the resurrection of the body and of the glorification of the entire person became more definite and certain. But in the mean time Hades always was regarded as a place of gloom and imperfect shadelife, and death was submitted to by the Old Testament believer with reluctance. The deliverance they longed for was in the further future, and from Hades, not in it. "Therefore my heart is glad, and my glory rejoiceth : my flesh also shall rest in hope. For thou wilt not leave my soul in Hades ; neither wilt thou suffer thine Holy One to see corruption. Thou wilt show me the path of life : in thy presence is fulness of joy; at thy right hand are pleasures for evermore " (Ps. xvi. 9-11 ; xlix. 15). It involves no denial of the Messianic character of this psalm to affirm the obvious fact that in the first instance it expresses David's personal hope, which he shared in common with all believers of his age. The question necessarily arises, whether

INTRODUCTION. XXV11

these gloomy, shadowy views as to the condition of believers in the spirit-world, waiting for the coming of the Messiah, are due to the imperfect revelation vouchsafed to living believers in Old Testament times, or to the actual condition of believing souls in Hades as then constituted. Dr. Cremer insists upon the latter view exclusively ; he holds that " the difference between the Old and the New Testament prospect of existence beyond the grave is not to be referred to an imperfect knowledge of the former concerning the life after death, but to the difference between the periods/' He founds this judgment upon the principle that the Old Testament believers could not have been actually redeemed before the redemption-price had been actually paid by Christ on earth. For " until there should come about a rightful redemption by means of a valid sacrifice, death, the wages of sin, reigned, and with it Hades, the continuation of death, even over those who looked for redemption " (page 41).

The writer of this Introduction believes that Dr. Cremer, as most other German

XXV111 INTRODUCTION.

scholars of Lutheran antecedents, greatly exaggerates a difference which really existed between the conditions of Old and of New Testament saints immediately after death, and that the ground upon which he rests this difference in the sentence above quoted is wholly unbiblical. The imperfect revelation, as compared with that of the New Testament, which the Old Testament saints enjoyed, will by itself explain much of the indistinctness and gloom which characterized their apprehensions of death and of the world immediately beyond. It is, on the other hand, certainly taught in Scripture that the then future atoning work of Christ, decreed and certainly foreknown, was made the meritorious basis of God's treatment of believers in Old Testament times, in this life and after death, just as really and as directly as in the case of any Christian since the advent. This in no degree depended upon the clearness of their knowledge or the brightness of their hope. The unconscious infant, the ignorant convert, the fearful doubter, the illuminated seer, the heroic martyr, all partake of the

INTRODUCTION. XXIX

same redemption and go to the same heaven. David rested on the atonement and was a beneficiary of its expiating virtue, however little he may have understood its nature. " Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered. Blessed is the man unto whom the Lord imputeth not iniquity." The entire Mosaic ritual was a symbolic expression of the fact and method of salvation through the coming Saviour. In these rites Christ was not only set forth, but also really apprehended and enjoyed. They, as well as we, were forgiven all their iniquities, their lives also were redeemed from destruction, and they were crowned with multitudes of lovingkindnesses and of tender mercies. They also were " saints," " holy men," and therefore they were regenerated and sanctified as well as justified. The identity of their religious life with ours is conspicuously demonstrated by the fact that the " Psalms of David " have for two thousand years expressed all the phases of the experience of Christians of all nationalities and of all ecclesiastical parties.

XXX INTRODUCTION".

It is in vain to say that God was in " Heaven " and not in " Hades.'* In his essence God is absolutely omnipresent. Even on earth Old Testament believers "walked with God," and found him " a very present help in trouble," and accepted him as their "portion forever." Even here God dwelt in his holy temple, and was visibly manifested in the "shekinah." It is simply incredible that the changes which believers underwent at and after death were of a retrograde order. These changes must have been, as are those experienced by a New Testament believer at his death, an advanced stage, though only a stage, in the progress of redemption applied and realized. Whatever may have been the unrevealed details of their condition, it is certain that they continued to be embraced in the covenant of redemption, and to be going on to experience ever more and more thoroughly the benefits thereby secured.

On the other hand, it is plain that in the actual, personal realization of salvation through Christ, and all that it involves in its fulness, believers in " Abraham's bosom "

INTRODUCTION. XXXI

must have come short in much of the measure of blessedness realized by Christians in what we call the intermediate state. It never could have been said by David or by Isaiah, " I am in a strait betwixt the two, having the desire to depart and be with Christ ; for it is very far better," for " we are willing rather to be absent from the body, and to be at home with the Lord." To us the full and satisfying conception of heaven is to be with Christ, the incarnate God. To the Old Testament believer after death this doubtless was a confident hope, but it could not have been an actual fact, before Christ was born and died. The entrance of Christ into the abodes of the blessed dead must have revolutionized them. Indeed it is a significant fact that these abodes of the blessed dead, whatever may have been their locality, were never called " heaven" in the language of inspiration until after this great crisis wrought in the spirit-world by the entrance of the Godman. Christians on earth count the ages of their terrestrial history from the date of their Lord's advent in the flesh ; and just

XXX11 INTRODUCTION.

so, on the other side, glorified souls in the spirit-world count the ages of heaven from the date of their Lord's advent into their sphere immediately after his crucifixion.

This event is expressed, agreeably to the language of the Old Testament, in the great historic creeds of Christendom as Christ's descent in inferna y or ad inferos, or elg rbv qSriv, i. e. y his descent into Hades. The English word Hell, by which Hades is represented in the ordinary versions of the Creed, translated that term accurately when first used, but has now come to be used exclusively in the restricted sense of Gehenna, the place of the damned. But the phrase in question, in its true historic sense, expresses a plain and important truth. " Hades" is the Old Testament designation of the spirit-world, to which all men went at death, the good being separated from the lost by an impassable gulf, in a region corresponding to their redeemed and spiritually elevated condition. Yet during the residence of their souls in Hades, separate from their bodies, even believers remain partially under the power of death. The disembodied

INTRODUCTION. XXX111

state is so far a consequence of sin and a condition of incompletely realized redemption. Now Christ must needs " taste death " to the dregs for us. His vicarious suffering includes the following stages : " He suffered under Pontius Pilate — was crucified — dead — buried — descended into Hades" So all his redeemed had gone before him. He went precisely where Abraham and all the true Israel w r ere waiting for him, and in so going he changed the redeemed side of Hades from being, as hitherto, the vestibule of heaven, into heaven itself for Old and New Testament saints alike.* .

* The present writer has preferred to speak as if the advent of Christ merely changed the condition rather than the locality of his waiting Old Testament saints. It is by no means intended to deny the opinion of many that Christ did change the locality and take his people out of Hades into another place called Heaven. The Scriptures always represent Heaven as high, and Hades as deep. "It is as high as heaven ; what canst thou do? deeper than Hades ; what canst thou know " (Job xi. 8). It is certain that the Old Testament saints before the death of Christ waited in Hades. It is certain that Christ is now sitting at the right hand of God in heaven, and that all his people who have departed this life are with him there.