The Conditionalist Faith of Our Fathers, vol. 2

VI. Fitch—Storrs’s First Ministerial Convert to Conditionalism

And finally there is CHARLES FITCH (1805-1844), first a Congregationalist minister, then Presbyterian, who was trained at Brown University, and successively served in three pastorates in Connecticut and Massachusetts. From there he went to the Marlboro Congregational church in Boston in 1836, and thence to Newark, New Jersey, and Haverhill, Massachusetts. His final post was in Cleveland, Ohio. He was a member of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions. CFF2 313.3

When Charles G. Finney’s giant Broadway Tabernacle Church in New York City, built to seat three thousand, was to be organized in 1836, the famous evangelist asked Fitch to preach the organization sermon. Fitch read the Declaration of Principles, Rules, Confession of Faith, and Covenant, to which they all gave consent. He then pronounced them a church, and offered the dedicatory prayer. ⁶⁷ This evidences the high esteem in which Fitch was held by Finney. ⁶⁸ Fitch died from overexposure after conducting a large October baptismal service in cold Lake Erie, at Buffalo, in 1844. (Picture on page 306.) CFF2 313.4

1. ADDS CONDITIONALISM TO SECOND-ADVENT EMPHASIS

In 1838 Fitch began preaching the second imminent advent of Christ, as based upon Bible prophecy. He was a cogent reasoner and a powerful preacher, and became the most prominent Advent herald on the western outpost. He held a series of meetings in the famous Oberlin College, in Ohio. Early in 1844 he accepted the doctrine of the mortality of man, the unconscious state of the dead, and the final destruction of the wicked, from George Storrs, becoming Storrs’s first ministerial convert to Conditional Immortality. On January 25, 1844, Fitch wrote to Storrs as follows:
“Dear Br. Storrs:—As you have long been fighting the Lord’s battles alone, on the subject of the state of the dead, and of the final doom of the wicked, I write this to say, that I am at last, after much thought and prayer, and a full conviction of duty to God, prepared to take my stand by your side.” ⁶⁹ CFF2 313.5

This decision created intense opposition among opposers of Life Only in Christ teaching. Dr. Josiah Litch especially protested Fitch’s preaching it. But in May Fitch wrote to Storrs that he was “fully convinced” and “could no longer withhold” its proclamation without “displeasing my blessed Lord and Master.” ⁷⁰ He was more concerned, he said, with “pleasing Him, than in pleasing all the world besides.” Thus the Conditionalist position continued to spread. CFF2 314.1