No it’s clearly not the Bible; it’s the writings of the church fathers which are very valuable pieces of history and important writings.
Not when they go against the Bible, people began to see what the Bible said that was against these ideas of men and the traditions that had crept into the church, especially that of the immortality of the soul and cannot die.
Herman Olshausen (1796-1839) was professor of theology at Königsberg, Ostpreussen in Germany. He wrote:
"The doctrine of the immortality of the soul and the name are alike unknown in the entire Bible." [Biblical Commentary on the New Testament, Vol. 4, 1860, p. 381.]
Henry Constable (died 1894) was canon and prebendary of Cork, Ireland. He also believed:
"The immortality of the soul, and the name, are alike unknown in the entire Bible." [Hades: or the Intermediate State of Man; Restitution of All Things; The Duration and the Nature of Future Punishment.]
William E. Gladstone (1809-1898) was a British Prime Minister and Theologian. In a searching criticism of Bishop Butler's Analogy and its defense of innate immortality, Gladstone contended:
"[It is only] from the time of Origen that we are to regard the idea of natural, as opposed to that of Christian, immortality as beginning to gain a firm foothold in the Christian Church." [Studies Subsidiary to the Works of Bishop Butler, (1896 ed.), p. 184.]
"The doctrine of natural, as distinguished from Christian, immortality had not been subjected to the severer tests of wide publicity and resolute controversy, but had crept into the Church, by a back door as it were; by a silent though effective process; and was in course of obtaining a title by tacit prescription." [Ibid., p. 195.]
"Another consideration of the highest importance is that the natural immortality of the soul is a doctrine wholly unknown to the Holy Scriptures, and standing on no higher plane than that of an inegeniously sustained, but gravely and formidably contested, philosophical opinion." [Ibid., p. 197.]
"The character of the Almighty is rendered liable to charges which cannot be repelled so long as the idea remains that there may by His ordinance be such a thing as never-ending punishment, but that it will have been sufficiently vindicated at the bar of human judgment, so soon as it has been established and allowed that punishment, whatever else it may be, cannot be never-ending." [Ibid., p. 241]
Joseph Parker (1830-1902) was a Congregationalist pastor of the `City Temple' of London. He stated,
"Glorious to me is this idea of asking man whether he will accept life and be like God, or whether he will choose death and darkness for ever. God does not say to man, `I will make you immortal and indestructible whether you will or not; live for ever you shall.' No; he makes him capable of living; he constitutes him with a view to immortality; he urges, beseeches, implores him to work out this grand purpose, assuring him, with infinite pathos, that he has no pleasure in the death of the sinner, but would rather that he should LIVE. A doctrine this which in my view simplifies and glorifies human history as related in the Bible. Life and death are not set before any beast; but life and death are distinctly set before man - he can live, he was meant to live, he is besought to live; the whole scheme of Providence and redemption is arranged to help him to live - why, then, will ye die?"[Joseph Parker, The People's Bible, Vol. 1, p. 126.]
Dr. W.A. Brown (1865-1943) was of the Union Seminary in New York. he believed:
"From Israel came the doctrine of resurrection, and of the advent; from Greece, the doctrine of natural immortality." [The Christian Hope, 1912.]
Dr. J. Agar Beet (1840-1924) was a Wesleyan professor. He stated:
"The following pages are ... a protest against a doctrine which, during long centuries, has been almost universally accepted as divine truth taught in the Bible, but which seems to me altogether alien to it in both phrase and thought, and derived only from Greek Philosophy. Until recent times, this alien doctrine has been comparatively harmless. But, as I have here shown, it is now producing more serious results ..."
"It will of course be said, of this as of some other doctrines, that, if not explicitly taught in the Bible, it is implied and assumed there ... They who claim for their teaching the authority of God must prove that it comes from Him. Such proof in this case, I have never seen." [Last Things - Preface to The Immortality of the Soul: A Protest, 5th ed., 1902.]
Dr. R. F. Weymouth (1822-1902) was the headmaster of Mill Hill School and translator of New Testament in Modern Speech. He said:
"My mind fails to conceive a grosser misrepresentation of language than when five or six of the strongest words which the Greek tongue possesses, signifying to destroy or destruction, are explained to mean `maintaining an everlasting but wretched existence.' To translate black as white is nothing to this." [Cited by Edward White in Life in Christ, (1878), p. 365.]
In his book in a note on 1.Corinthians 15:18 he says:
"By `perish' the Apostle here apparently means `pass out of existence'."
On Hebrews 9:28 we read:
"The use in the N.T. of such words as `death', `destruction', `fire', `perish', to describe Future Retribution, point to the likelihood of fearful anguish, followed by extinction of being, as the doom which awaits those who by persistent rejection of the Saviour prove themselves utterly, and therefore irremediably bad." {Ibid., 7800]
On Revelation 14:11:
"There is nothing in this verse that necessarily implies an eternity of suffering. In a similar way the word `punishment' or `correction' in Matthew 25:46 gives itself no indication of time."
On Revelation 20:10:
"The Lake of fire implying awful pain and complete, irremediable ruin and destruction." [The New Testament in Modern Speech, by Richard Francis Weymouth.]
Dr. Lyman Abbott (1835-1922) was a Congregationlist pastor and editor of Christian Union and The Outlook. He wrote:
"Outside of the walls of Jerusalem, in the valley of Gehenna, was kept perpetually burning a fire, on which the offal of the city was thrown to be destroyed. This is the hell fire of the New Testament. Christ warns his auditors that persistence in sin will make them offal to be cast out from the holy city, to be destroyed. The worm that dieth not was the worm devouring the carcasses, and is equally clearly a symbol not of torture but of destruction." [That Unknown Country, 1889.]
"The notion that the final punishment of sin is continuance in sin and suffering is also based in part on, what seems to me, a false philosophy of man. This philosophy is that man is by nature immortal. The conviction has grown on me, that according to the teaching of both of science and Scripture, man is by nature an animal, and like all other animals mortal; that immortality belongs only to the spiritual life; and that spiritual life is possible only in communion and contact with God; that, in short, immortality was not conferred upon the race in creation whether it would or not, but is conferred in redemption, upon all those of the race who choose life and immortality through Jesus Christ our Lord."
Dr. Edward Beecher (1803-1895) was a Congregationalist theologian and president of Illinois College. He stated:
"If [the Bible] does not recognize, nay, it expressly denies the natural and inherent immortality of the soul. It assures us that God only hath immortality. (1.Timothy 6:16). By this we understand that He has immortality in the highest sense - that is, inherent immortality. All existence besides Himself He created, and He upholds. Men are not, as Plato taught, self-existent,
eternal beings, immortal in their very nature. ... There is no inherent immortality of the soul as such...[Doctrine of Scriptural Retribution, p. 58.]
Greek and paganism crept in by mans ideas and false traditions, we need to look at Christ and His Word, not mans. Christ was in the grave, that is the heart of the earth for three days, just as Jonah was in the belly of the whale for three days and nights. Jonah's description of his experience in the belly of a whale is certainly no description of paradise, nor does it seem to depict a place of
eternal torment. Yet this experience was said by Christ to be a sign for those who were seeking proof of Christ's divinity, that is that He would be delivered from the power of the grave, or death.
Matthew 12:39-40 King James Version (KJV)
"39 But he answered and said unto them, An evil and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign; and there shall no sign be given to it, but the sign of the prophet Jonas:40
For as Jonas was three days and three nights in the whale's belly; so shall the Son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth."
Christ, as we know, died of a broken heart.
John 19:31-34 King James Version (KJV)
"31 The Jews therefore, because it was the preparation, that the bodies should not remain upon the cross on the sabbath day, (for that sabbath day was an high day,) besought Pilate that their legs might be broken, and that they might be taken away.
32 Then came the soldiers, and brake the legs of the first, and of the other which was crucified with him.
33 But when they came to Jesus, and saw that he was dead already, they brake not his legs:
34 But one of the soldiers with a spear pierced his side, and forthwith came there out blood and water."
He was certainly dead as the soldier was testing it with his spear to make double sure. Now as to man having a immortal soul, notice what Christ says in the following verses.
John 14:1-3 King James Version (KJV)
"1 Let not your heart be troubled: ye believe in God, believe also in me.
2 In my Father's house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you.
3 And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also"
In verse three Christ says that He will come again and receive us unto Himself. This is a clear reference to his second coming, at which time the saints in the grave (as well as those living) will all be gathered together to be with Him forever more. Christ did not say, when you die you will be with me, he said when I come again, I will receive you unto myself.
The wicked will not live eternal in some place under the ground, they will perish, forever.