Will the Wicked be Raised from the Dead?
By James White
BRO. SMITH: The following passage from the Prophet, seems to us to be to the point, Eze. xviii, 26: "When a righteous man turneth away from his righteousness, and committeth iniquity, and dieth in them, for his iniquity that he hath done, shall he die." As we read this text several mornings since, the following inquiries arose— 1. Does not this apostate die two deaths? If he does, then— 2. Does he not have a resurrection from the dead? The plainly stated facts are these— 1. He dies in his iniquity. 2. Then the future tense is employed to express a second death; "For his iniquity that he hath done shall he die." That is, he dies a second death. Therefore he must have had a resurrection from the dead. Is not the doctrine of the non-resurrection of the wicked held only by persons who also hold that the law of God is abolished? If so, the view that the wicked dead will not be raised up to receive the full and final penalty for the violation of God's law, must be to them "a wholesome doctrine and very full of comfort." The penal laws of the first covenant required death; but that death was not the full and final penalty for the transgression of God's law. For if it was, the transgressor, after suffering the penalty, was as free from guilt as though he had lived in obedience to the law. Must he not therefore have a resurrection from the dead in order to receive the full and final penalty of the law in the second death? Under the second covenant "sin is the transgression of the law," and "the wages of sin is death." Therefore the sinner must be raised from the dead in order to receive in his body the righteous retribution for the transgression of the law of God, which will be the second death, from which there will be no resurrection.