THE DESTINY OF THE WICKED.
By C. P. B.
THE nature and destiny of man is a subject of paramount importance, as it should be also of all-absorbing interest to every accountable member of the race. Numerous efforts have been made in every age of the world to solve the problem, and yet, unaided by divine revelation, men are as much in the dark to-day upon this important question as they were when men first forgot God, and would none of his counsel. Revelation alone answers the question, but in its pages the answer is so clear that the natural perversity of the human heart alone furnishes a clew to the reason why it has not been generally accepted. When man was created and placed in the garden of Eden, and forbidden to eat of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, the threatened penalty of disobedience was death; and the nature of that death is clearly indicated by the sentence pronounced upon Adam: "Dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return." Clearly, man was to return to his original elements. But even before the fall a doubt of this was instilled into the minds of our first parents. The tempter said to the woman, "Thou shalt not surely die," and believing Satan rather than God, she took of the forbidden fruit; and, though graciously granted a second probation, in time did die. But even in the face of certain death there was a divinely authorized hope for man, namely, the hope of the resurrection. How early this was made plain to our first parents we are not told, but it is clear from Job 19:23-27 that it was the hope of that patriarch who lived more than fifteen hundred years before Christ. Abraham, too, nearly two thousand years before Christ, must have been acquainted with the doctrine, for he died in full faith of the promise that with his seed he should inherit the earth, which would be possible only by a resurrection from the dead. But men forgot God and lost sight of his power, though they did not relinquish the hope of a future life. The apostle says: "When they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools, and changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image727made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and fourfooted beasts, and creeping things." Rom. 1: 21-23. In exalting the creature, they exalted themselves in their own minds, and arrogated to themselves some of the attributes of Deity, namely, wisdom and immortality. Death had his hold upon the race, and on every hand men were falling before him; but those who survived refused alike to believe the word of God and the testimony of their own senses, and said, It is not death; this which we see is only change; man has within him that which cannot die; we are immortal. And so men continue to say unto this day. But the Scriptures do not so teach, as anyone may speedily learn who will with an unprejudiced mind examine the question, not in the light of heathen philosophy, but in the light of revelation and sanctified reason. "The soul that sinneth it shall die," is the testimony of the word of God, and what is death but the extinction of life? Death is the cessation of all action and all perception. On this point Rev. E. Petavel, D.D., free lecturer at the university of Geneva, has aptly said:— "Fire, according to Scripture, is the agent by which the enemies of God are to be finally consumed. The waters of the deluge are also typical of destruction, and as such frequently alluded to in the Bible. Water and fire alike are elements in which human life cannot exist; but while water buries and conceals its victims, fire causes them to disappear still more effectually. Isa. 43: 2; Matt. 3: 11. "Fire symbolizes total destruction. Fire changes the diamond, hardest of all substances, into a subtle vapor, dissolves granite and converts it into lava. Referring to these dread phenomena of nature, impenitent sinners might well exclaim: ‘Who among us shall dwell with the devouring fire? who among us shall dwell with everlasting burning?’ Isa. 33: 14. The answer is, None! No sort of life is compatible with fire; and, according to the Bible, destruction by fire is the doom of the ungodly: ‘For, behold, the day cometh, that shall burn as an oven; and all the proud, yea, and all that do wickedly, shall be stubble; and the day that cometh shall burn them up, saith the Lord of hosts, that it shall leave them neither root nor branch.’” Mal. 4: 1. And again the same writer says:— "In twelve passages of the New Testament the last abode of impenitent sinners is termed gehenna, a word which, we know, signifies the ‘Valley of Hinnom,’ in allusion to a gorge, situated at the base of the southwestern wall of Jerusalem, part of which was called Tophet, or Vale of the Oven, where certain kings of Judah had once caused their children to be burnt alive in honor of Moloch. When King Josiah ascended the throne, he ‘defiled’ this valley by making it the receptacle of all the refuse of the city, and the spot where the dead bodies of criminals and beasts of burden were flung. Fires were kept constantly burning to consume these corpses; whence arose the term gehennan tou puros, translated in the usual version ‘hell fire.’ "Such were the images suggested by the word gehenna, which Jesus used in order to make his hearers understand the terrible and final death of impenitent souls. ‘Fear,’ he said, ‘him which is able to destroy both body and soul in hell,’ literally, ‘in gehenna.’” Matt. 10: 28. This opinion accords exactly with the Scriptures, which teach that utter destruction is the fate of hardened sinners. They are like sheep which, fleeing from their shepherd, fall a prey to the wolf, or to tormenting hunger and thirst, and die a miserable death. Authors of their own ruin, they shall "utterly perish," says the apostle Peter, "as natural brute beasts, made to be taken and destroyed." 2 Pet. 2: 12. "They shall be as though they had not been" (Obad. 16; compare Job 10: 19); "as the cloud is consumed and vanisheth away" (Job 7: 9); "as a dream when one awaketh" (Ps. 73: 20); "like a potter’s vessel dashed in pieces" (Ps. 2: 9; Rev. 2: 27; Rom. 9: 22; Matt. 21: 44); as "ashes under the soles of your feet" (Mal. 4: 3); as "smoke that consumes away" (Ps. 37: 20); "the workers of iniquity shall be destroyed forever." Ps. 92: 7; compare 2 Thess. 1: 9. Surely in the face of such testimony, not from men but from the Scriptures, there should be no doubt in the mind of the devout believer in the word of God, as to the final doom of the enemies of the Lord. C. P. B.