1912 Watch Tower - A2Z.org

penalties. The Bible proposition isthat God, having made Adam perfect, requiredperfect obedience as the condition ofhis continuance in Divine favor and everlastinglife. One act of disobedience brokethe covenant between God and Adam bywhich he was treated as a son and guaranteedeverlasting life. (Hosea 6:7, Margin.) As a sinnerhe dropped from favor immediately, under the sentence,"Dying thou shalt die."Nothing that Adam or his children could do subsequentlycould alter that sentence or recover to himcovenant relationship with God. The death penalty wasthe limit. It could not be increased by any subsequentsins, just as a murderer sentenced to be hanged could notreceive a more severe penalty, whether he had committedone murder or a thousand. By a law of nature, heredity,Father Adam transmitted to his race a share of what hepossessed, both good and bad. Hence we were all born insin and "shapen in iniquity; in sin did my mother conceiveme."--Psa. 51:5.As Adam could not increase his penalty, neither canhis children. As Adam could not restore himself tocovenant relationship with God, neither can his children.But as Adam could, by obedience to the Divine Law, prolongthe process of his dying, so may his children. Hewas nine hundred and thirty years dying before the deathpenalty was fully attained. But the impairment wroughtby sin has so progressed that many of Adam's childrendie in infancy, and few can maintain the struggle forexistence for a hundred years.DEATH THE CURSE--NOT TORTUREOur forefathers during the Dark Ages, before theday of printing and Bibles and general education, gotsome strange misunderstandings of the HeavenlyFather's character and Plan. And their errors of doctrinenaturally led them on to errors of conduct, that, tous, are abhorrent. Misunderstanding the Bible to teachthat God arranged for the eternal torture of all mankindexcept a saintly few, the true Church, they sought tocopy their misconception of Jehovah by torturing theirfellow-creatures. Some were stoned, some sawn asunder,some made outcasts, some tortured on the rack, some hadtheir tongues cut out by the roots, some were skinnedalive and some were roasted at the stake.But we must not think of these, our forefathers, asfiendish at heart, but as deceived by what St. Paul calls"doctrines of demons." (I Tim. 4:1.) We sympathizewith their godly intentions, but reprobate their devilishprocedures. It is because God's people have been graduallygetting back nearer and nearer to the teaching ofHis Word, and its spirit, that the horrible practises of thepast are no longer approved. But many have much yetto learn respecting the true Plan of God--the true teaching