3545 - Everlasting Punishment by Dudley Marvin Canright

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Sep 5, 1911

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 38, No. 35.

3545 — Everlasting Punishment

By Dudley Marvin Canright

The first verse reads, "Then shall He say also unto them on the left hand, Depart from Me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels." Verse 46 reads, "And these shall go away into everlasting punishment; but the righteous into life eternal."

Both teach the same thing. Both teach absolute finality of punishment, both teach everlasting destruction. The everlasting fire is the same as the eternal fire of Jude 7 and 2 Peter 2:6, which show that the eternal fire is that which burned up the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah. The everlasting fire carries us back to Isaiah 30, in which the prophet predicts the punishment of the wicked, and the punishment of the leader of all the wicked, Satan. He tells us that "the name of the Lord cometh from far, burning with His anger, and the burden thereof is heavy; His lips are full of indignation, and His tongue is a devouring fire." Verse 27. Verses 28 and 29 declare that the nations shall be sifted, that His own children will sing with gladness of heart; but of the other class, "the Lord shall cause His glorious voice to be heard, and shall show the lighting down of His arm, with the indignation of His anger, and with the flame of a devouring fire, with scattering, and tempest, and hailstones." Verse 30. "For Tophet is ordained of old; yea, for the king [Satan] it is prepared; he hath made it deep and large: the pile thereof is fire and much wood; the breath of the Lord, like a stream of brimstone, doth kindle it." That is the fire prepared for the devil and his angels; and when God shall come in His insufferable glory, His indignation against sin, that glory shall set on fire the very foundations of the earth, and shall burn up, root and branch, the wicked. Then, according to the third chapter of 2 Peter, that earth which has thus been purified by fire from sin, shall be restored again to a new heavens and a new earth, where God's people shall forever dwell. That "devouring fire" is the everlasting punishment.

Note what Paul tells us that punishment is, in 2 Thess. 1:7-9: "And to you who are troubled rest with us, when the Lord Jesus shall be revealed from heaven with His mighty angels, in flaming fire taking vengeance on them that know not God, and that obey not the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ; who shall be punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord, and from the glory of His power." All of which brings us to the one thought so concisely expressed by the apostle in another place: "The wages of sin is death." Rom. 6:23.