The one who promised Adam life in disobedience was the great deceiver. And the serpent’s claim in Eden—“You will not surely
die”—was the first sermon ever preached on the immortality of the
soul. Yet this claim, resting only on Satan’s authority, echoes from
pulpits today, and most people accept it as readily as our first parents did. The divine sentence, “The soul who sins shall die” (Ezekiel 18:20), is made to mean, The soul who sins shall not die, but live eternally. If God had allowed Adam and Eve free access to the
[15] tree of life after their fall, sin would have been immortalized. But God has not permitted even one of the family of Adam to eat of the
life-giving fruit. As a result, there is no immortal sinner.
After the Fall, Satan instructed his angels to instill in people the
belief that they are naturally immortal. After persuading the people
to accept this error, evil angels were to lead them to conclude that
sinners would live in eternal misery. Now the prince of darkness
presents God as a revengeful tyrant who plunges into hell all who
do not please Him and looks down on them with satisfaction while
they writhe in eternal flames. In this way the one who started all evil paints the Benefactor of the human race with his own characteristics. Cruelty is satanic. God is love. Satan is the enemy who tempts us to sin and then destroys us if he can. How offensive it is to love, mercy, and justice to teach that God torments the wicked dead in an eternally burning hell, that for the sins of a brief life on earth they suffer torture as long as God shall live! A well-educated minister said, “The sight of hell’s torments will increase the happiness of the redeemed forever by making them conscious of how happy they are.”
Where can anyone find such teaching in God’s Word? Will the
redeemed exchange feelings of common humanity for the cruelty
of the savage? No, such things are not the teaching of the Book
of God. “‘As I live,’ says the Lord God, ‘I have no pleasure in the
death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn from his way and live.
Turn, turn from your evil ways! For why should you die?’” (Ezekiel
33:11).
Does God delight in witnessing unending tortures? Is He pleased
with the groans and shrieks of suffering creatures whom He holds in
the flames? Can these horrid sounds be music to the ear of Infinite
Love? What a terrible blasphemy! God’s glory is not increased by
keeping sin alive through ages without end.
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Source: Ellen G. White, The Great Hope, pp. 30-31