evidence from all sources that testifies to the accuracy of the Bible we hold in our hand.

REFERENCES

¹ The Epistles of John by B. F. Westcott, 4th edition, 1902, page 202.

² The Works of N. Lardner, volume 3, page 68.

³ Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum, volume 18, 1889, by G. Schepss, page 6.

⁴ The Codex Montfortianus, A Collation, by O. T. Dobbin, 1854, page 9.

⁵ A Full Inquiry into the Original Authority of the Text, 1 John 5:7 . . . (second edition) by T. Emlyn, 1717, page 72.

⁶ The New Testament in Greek and English, 1729, volume 2, page 934.

⁷ The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by E. Gibbon, chapter 37, Chandos edition, volume 2, page 526.

⁸ The Westminster Version of the Sacred Scriptures, volume 4, page 146.

⁹ Principles of Textual Criticism by J. Scott Porter, 1848, page 510.

¹⁰ A Plain Introduction to the Criticism of the New Testament by F. H. A. Scrivener, 4th edition, 1894, volume 2, page 407.

A Cool Hell

A FIERY hell of excruciating torments has been envisioned, for centuries, by religious leaders of Christendom as the certain destiny of sinners. From pulpits and in religious publications they have used unrestrained imaginations to describe in gruesome detail the awful torments that the “damned” are thought to suffer eternally in hell. This they have done without having been eyewitnesses of a fiery hell and without having found in God’s written Word the descriptions of it that they have given. The subject is still popular among some religious groups, but the growing tendency among clergymen is to think of a cool hell rather than a literally hot one.

Commenting on how theologians are beginning to view hell today, clergyman John Mellin of New York’s First Presbyterian Church remarked: “Today, most theologians define hell as being shut off from God. It is a present experience and a continuous process, true now as well as after death. More and more people are getting away from the idea of a physical realm of crackling fires.” Clergyman P. M. Dawley of the Episcopal General Theological Seminary said: “The medieval picture of hell as a place of flaming torment which held the minds of men for some generations was inadequate.” More than “in adequate,” the concept of a fiery hell is unscriptural. But Mellin’s saying that hell is “a present experience,” while he is expressing a common worldly view, is not an improvement from the standpoint of the Bible. People ought to know what God’s Word teaches about hell.

There are passages in the Bible that speak of hell, torment and fire, but these passages do not state that unrepentant sinners are confined eternally in a fiery hell where they experience conscious torment as punishment for sins. The Bible states that death, not torment, is the punishment for sin. (Rom. 6:23) The often-quoted verses in the sixteenth chapter of Luke that tell about a rich man and a beggar named Lazarus speak of hell or Hades,