CHAPTER SIX

NO CHANCE AFTER DEATH?

AT the back of this slogan of "no second chance" lies the idea that a person cannot hear the Gospel after death. Whatever the motive behind this doctrine, it is quite untrue. Peter tells us plainly in his first Epistle, that Our Lord Himself went down to the spirits in prison and preached the Gospel to them.1 These particular spirits were peculiarly wicked, for they had left their proper heavenly dwelling place and assumed human bodies, in order that they might live as men on earth and beget giants: yet even to these monsters, who had been plunged into darkness by God and encountered the judgement due to men, since they had chosen to live like men; even to these dangerous sinners, long since dead, was the Gospel preached by our Lord Himself, that they might once more "live to God". We do not know whether they accepted this salvation, but we know that for the first time "the Gospel was preached also to them that are dead" in order that they might live.1

The mere use of the word "chance" in connection with Eternal Punishment betrays a complete misapprehension of the character of God. He who knows the sparrows and numbers our hairs is not the one to leave to chance the eternal fate of those He died to save! Neither has He allowed the eternal destiny of human beings to be taken out of His Divine Power and put into the hands of fallible men. We have seen already that, to those who men could not reach, He Himself carried the Gospel. Yet it is erroneously imagined that at the Last Judgement, when all stand before The Saviour of the World, He will be unable to make known to those who have never heard of Him His undying love for them upon the Cross; or else will be obliged to explain to them that, since owing to one circumstance or another the Gospel did