Only God Is Immortal; Satan Will Be Destroyed
The paper teaches that only God has immortality and that Satan will be annihilated with his works. But the Bible says the devil will be tormented day and night forever and ever.
Por Rodrigo Custódio ·
The moment
On Thursday, March 3, 1881, the weekly Signs of the Times, founded by James White and published in Oakland, California, carried on page 98 the series "The Personality of the Devil." It was a sequence of letters from Pastor J. N. Loughborough, of Southampton, to a friend in Somerset, responding to a lecture by Robert Roberts, of Birmingham, England — published "by request," as the series header states.
The issue header records vol. 7, no. 9, with James White, J. N. Andrews, and Uriah Smith as editors, and J. H. Waggoner as resident editor. The debate over the nature of the devil thus occupied the pages of the movement's official organ — and what was propagated there was the doctrine of conditional immortality.
The context is this: Roberts had denied the existence of a personal devil, reducing him to sin in the human heart; Loughborough quotes the lecture at length to respond point by point. In the middle of the quotation stands the thesis that concerns us: only God has immortality, and He grants it on the principle of obedience — disobedience, which is sin, He would not tolerate, visiting it in every case with death. The biblical reference cited in the passage is itself wrong in the original — the verse about God having immortality is 1 Timothy 6:16, not 6:17 — a detail that reveals the paper's care with the Scriptures it invokes.
The practical outcome of the doctrine is annihilationism: creatures would not be immortal by nature; immortality would be the reward of obedience; the disobedient — Satan included, with his works — would simply be destroyed, visited with death. Published in the official paper, the passage normalized for thousands of readers the idea that the end of the wicked is to cease to exist.
Demonic figure crumbling into rubble before a rural house — period watercolor illustration.
The absurdity
Only God would be immortal; immortality would be granted by obedience; and disobedience would be visited with death in every case. That is: not even Satan would escape — he would be annihilated with his works, instead of suffering eternal punishment. The exact words of the printed text:
"'Only God has immortality' (1 Tim. 6:17); and He grants it on the principle of obedience. Disobedience, which is sin, He will not tolerate; in every case He visits it with death."
Source: Signs of the Times, vol. 7, no. 9, March 3, 1881 — p. 98.
Highlighted clipping of the printed page with the cited passage, March 3, 1881 issue, p. 98.
Why this is serious
The first harm is directly to Scripture: the Bible declares Satan's final destiny without ambiguity — he will be cast into the lake of fire and sulfur, where "they will be tormented day and night forever and ever" (Rev 20:10). Tormented, not annihilated. Forever and ever, not until they are extinguished. The paper's doctrine flatly contradicts the verse.
The second harm is to the doctrine of judgment. Jesus said that the fire was "prepared for the devil and his angels" (Mt 25:41) — and called it "eternal fire." Eternal fire that annihilates instead of tormenting is a contradiction in terms: if the punishment ends in extinction, it is not eternal. Annihilationism empties the terror of judgment and, with it, the seriousness of Christ's warning.
The third harm is more subtle: making immortality a reward of obedience turns eternal life into wages. If God "grants" immortality "on the principle of obedience," then eternity is earned — and we are back to salvation by works, now disguised as eschatology. The Bible says that eternal life is the gift of God (Rom 6:23), not payment for good behavior.
And there is the perverse symmetry of the thesis: if the wicked simply cease to exist, the most heinous sin and the oldest rebellion end in the same nothing — the relief of nonexistence. The devil, who has deceived the nations for millennia, would receive as "punishment" the rest of extinction. It is divine justice reduced to flipping a switch — and a gospel that needs no cross, for there is no eternal wrath from which to be saved.
Cemetery under the full moon, with a chapel on the hill — period paper-cut art.
The verdict of the Scriptures
Revelation 20:10 is the fatal blow to the thesis: "And the devil, who deceived them, was cast into the lake of fire and sulfur, where the beast and the false prophet are; and they will be tormented day and night forever and ever." Three marks of conscious eternity: tormented (not extinguished), day and night (without pause), forever and ever (without end). No honest reading extracts annihilation from that verse.
Jesus confirms it with His own words: "Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels" (Mt 25:41). The fire is eternal and was prepared for the devil — the devil's destiny is the eternal fire, not extinction. And the same chapter contrasts the destinies: "these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life" (Mt 25:46). The parallelism is intentional: if the life of the righteous is eternal, the torment of the wicked is also.
Revelation reinforces it: "the smoke of their torment goes up forever and ever; and they have no rest, day or night" (Rev 14:11). Smoke that rises forever presupposes fire that never goes out and victims who never cease to exist. The Bible knows no annihilation; it knows conscious and endless punishment — which is precisely why the cross was necessary.
As for immortality "granted by obedience," Scripture responds that eternal life is a gift, not wages: "the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life, through Christ Jesus our Lord" (Rom 6:23). Free gift — received by faith, not earned by obedience. The paper exchanged the gift for the prize, grace for performance, and eternal torment for nothing. In every exchange, it lost the gospel.