The Wicked Turned into Hell.
By John Nevins Andrews
“The wicked shall be turned into hell, and all the nations that forget God.” Ps. 9:17. The word hell in this text is from the Hebrew word Sheol, the only word rendered hell in the Old Testament. It is exactly equivalent to the Hades of the New Testament. It signifies the place of the dead, whether they are righteous or wicked. Jacob expected to go down to it. Gen. 42:38. Job prayed to be hid in it. Job 14. Christ was brought out of it by his resurrection. Ps. 16; Acts 2. The righteous triumph over it at the resurrection. 1 Cor. 15. The wicked are silent in it. Ps. 31. The word grave in each of these texts is Sheol or Hades in the original. Such being the case that Sheol is the common receptacle of all mankind in death, whether they are righteous or wicked, how is it that the wicked are threatened with being turned into Sheol as though it were something peculiar to themselves? Sheol or Hades is not their punishment; for when the time comes of the end of the thousand years for the wicked to be punished in the lake of fire, “Death and hell, i. e. Hades or Sheol, delivered up the dead which were in them.” Rev. 20. Sheol is the invisible world or place of the dead. When this gives them up, they are brought out to view, and are no longer invisible. Death also gives up the dead, so that they are no longer dead men but living ones. Then each man who has lived in sin is to be cast alive into the furnace or lake of fire, where there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth. When the wicked are thus destroyed, death and Sheol or Hades both cease forever to have an existence. Sheol then, is not the place where the wicked are punished; for they come forth out of it in order to meet their just retribution. What then is the idea of the Psalmist that the wicked shall be turned into hell? If we read the connection with care we shall find that the Psalmist is treating of the final deliverance of the righteous. Thus we read:— “The Lord is known by the judgment which he executeth; the wicked is snared in the work of his own hands. For the needy shall not always be forgotten; the expectation of the poor shall not perish forever. Arise, O Lord; let not man prevail; let the heathen be judged in thy sight. Verses 16, 18, 19.”
When the righteous are thus delivered and their hope realized, they shall every one come forth from Sheol to immortal life. 1 Cor. 15. “The rest of the dead,” i. e. the wicked, shall remain in the congregation of the dead for the period of one thousand years. At the same time that the righteous are delivered, all the living wicked are cut off from the face of the earth and turned into Sheol to remain there till the time when death and hell give up the wicked dead.
May it not be true, then, that the Psalmist has reference to the fact that at the very time when the righteous all leave Sheol to receive immortal life, all the living wicked are consigned to this dark receptacle, there to remain with the wicked dead of all previous ages, for the one thousand years? Certainly it is worthy of notice that the time shall come when not one righteous man shall remain in that dark abode, and at that time every wicked person shall be found therein, to remain till the resurrection of the unjust.