The Immortal Soul: The Devil's Principal Doctrine
The paper called the immortality of the soul "the devil's principal doctrine," an invention of Satan. The Bible shows conscious souls after death, crying out from beneath the altar.
By Rodrigo Custódio ·
The moment
On Thursday, January 13, 1881, the Signs of the Times published on page 20 of vol. 7, no. 2 the article "The Aim and Climax of Error," signed by Elder B. F. Cottrell. The text traced out a six-thousand-year satanic plan: from Eden onward, Satan had been perfecting the scheme of making men believe the "great lie" that man is immortal.
Cottrell cited the serpent — "ye shall not surely die... ye shall be as gods" — and even the commentator Adam Clarke, to argue that the immortality of the soul was the tempter's original bait in Eden. The ancient men of God, he said, opposed this doctrine decisively, declaring that the dead know nothing and that there is no work, nor device, nor wisdom in Sheol, the receptacle of all the dead.
According to the article, when the great apostasy developed and paganism was "baptized" with the Christian name, the immortality of the soul was adopted by the church out of self-interest — without it, purgatory, a source of vast revenue, could not exist. Modern spiritualism would then be the climax of the plan: the cornerstone of the structure Satan had spent six thousand years building.
And the final sentence left no room for doubt: "man's immortality by nature is the devil's principal doctrine." To believe that the soul survives death would be not merely one theological error among others — it would be to profess the chief doctrine of Satan himself, the first announced in Eden and the last to be consummated in spiritualism.
Serpent coiled around a staff with a skull and skeletons in an old engraving — atmospheric illustration.
The absurdity
The conscious survival of the soul becomes a theological crime: whoever believes that the soul continues to exist after death would be embracing "the devil's principal doctrine" — the same lie of the serpent in Eden. The historic Christian teaching on consciousness after death is criminalized as Satanism. Read the exact words of the printed page:
"Satan succeeded in first persuading the pagan world that death was not a reality, but that the soul is immortal, being an emanation from God, and consequently a little god."
"Man's immortality by nature is the devil's principal doctrine, and Spiritualism is the goal to which it naturally leads."
Source: Signs of the Times, vol. 7, no. 2, January 13, 1881 — p. 20.
Highlighted clipping of the printed page with the quoted passages, edition of January 13, 1881, p. 20.
Why this is serious
The first harm is to the Bible itself. Jesus told how Lazarus was carried "by the angels into Abraham's bosom," while the rich man, in Hades, "lifted up his eyes" in torment — conscious, speaking, remembering, pleading, arguing (Lk 16:22-28). John "saw under the altar the souls of them that were slain for the word of God, and they cried with a loud voice" (Rev 6:9-10). Souls that cry out, hear an answer and receive white robes do not sleep unconscious. To call "the devil's doctrine" what Scripture shows is to accuse Scripture of Satanism.
The second harm is the method of criminalization. The article does not merely disagree: it turns an exegetical divergence into an alliance with Satan. Whoever believes in consciousness after death is not merely someone who interprets Ecclesiastes differently — he is an adherent of "the devil's principal doctrine," one step away from spiritualism. It is the old tactic of shutting down debate by calling the opponent a Satanist.
The third harm is the caricature. The text says that Satan persuaded the world that the soul is "an emanation from God, and consequently a little god" — and it pastes this pantheistic caricature onto every Christian who believes in the survival of the soul. But the biblical teaching does not make the soul "a little god": it makes it a dependent creature, conscious and accountable before the Creator. To refute the caricature is not to refute the doctrine.
And there is the historical irony: the article cites Adam Clarke as a witness against immortality — but Clarke, a Methodist, believed in conscious existence after death; the quotation is torn from its context to serve a thesis that the one quoted would himself reject. It is the argument from authority turned upside down: invoking a respected name against what he himself defended. When even the witnesses must be distorted, the cause is lost.
Abandoned church with scrolls scattered on the floor in a cinematic photo — atmospheric illustration.
The verdict of the Scriptures
The Bible presents death as separation — from the body, not as the extinction of the person. "We are confident, and willing rather to be absent from the body, and to be present with the Lord" (2 Cor 5:8). Paul did not expect to sleep unconsciously for centuries; he expected to be with Christ — and considered that "far better" (Phil 1:23). Better than what, if the alternative were total unconsciousness?
Jesus himself promised the repentant thief: "To day shalt thou be with me in paradise" (Lk 23:43). Today — not after the resurrection, not after millennia of unconscious sleep. Christ's promise presupposes a conscious meeting on that same day. The 1881 paper calls the devil's doctrine what came from the mouth of the Savior.
As for the argument from Sheol in Ecclesiastes, the book describes death "under the sun" — the earthly perspective, in which the dead know nothing of what goes on down here. It is wisdom poetry about the vanity of life, not a systematic treatise on anthropology. To use Ecclesiastes 9 to nullify Luke 16 and Revelation 6 is to make the Old Testament silence the New — the reverse of progressive revelation, and a hermeneutic that no apostle would recognize.
And regarding spiritualism: condemning it is right — Scripture severely forbids it (Deut 18:10-12). But spiritualism does not follow from belief in the survival of the soul; it follows from the attempt to consult the dead, which the Bible forbids precisely because the dead are beyond our reach, with God, awaiting the resurrection. Conscious existence after death is biblical teaching; necromancy is sin. To confuse the two is to exchange refutation for panic — and to call diabolical what Christ taught.