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The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Third-day, August 6, 1867

Destroyed.

Acts iii, 23. And it shall come to pass that every soul that will not hear that prophet shall be destroyed from among the people.

THE prophet here mentioned is Christ, and the doom pronounced against those who reject him, is the doom of the finally impenitent. It is of consequence therefore to inquire into its import. The word “destroyed” [ἐξολοθρεύομαι], is peculiar. It occurs in no other place in the N. T., and is defined as follows, by all authorities: “To destroy utterly, to exterminate.” There is no possibility of deriving from this word the idea of continued life in suffering. Bloomfield in his Greek Testament with English Notes says on this point: “ἐξολοθρευθήσεται, is a word found only in the Septuagint and the later writers; signifying to ‘utterly exterminate.’”