Punishment of the wicked after death puzzles many. For instance, in Matt. 25: 41, 46, it reads as though the wicked were punished forever and ever by fire. Please explain the text. Our querist truly wonders if God can punish so severely and still be loving and merciful, and asks if the Bible does not say that God loves us with even greater love than a mother, and remarks, that even a mother would not punish her child by burning it, let alone forever and ever, however erring that child must be. No, God does not punish in that way. All His punishments are just and right. He has more than a mother's love. Isa. 49: 15. There is another way to look at this term "everlasting fire," as found in Matt. 25: 41, or as the Revised Version gives it, "eternal fire," prepared for the devil and his angels. The fire is not eternal in its burning, but eternal in its effects. It does a work for all eternity. For instance, Jude 7 declares that Sodom and Gomorrah are now suffering the punishment of eternal fire—not that the people are in eternal torments, or that the people are now burning, but that those cities are suffering the vengeance of eternal fire. But where are those cities now?—They were burned up, whelmed with fire, and the Dead Sea rolls in sluggish waves over the beautiful valley where those cities stood. The fire was eternal in its effects but not in its infliction. It is so with the punishment of Matt. 25: 46, "And these shall go away into everlasting punishment." That is, the punishment is a completed process. The text does not say, "into everlasting punishing," a process going on but not completed; but, "everlasting punishment," a completed process, one that is set over against eternal life. One class has eternal life, the other has eternal punishment. Paul puts it this way: "The wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life"—the one, eternal life; the other, eternal death. Rom. 6: 23. In another passage: "Who shall suffer punishment, even eternal destruction from the face of the Lord and from the glory of His might." 2 Thess. 1: 9, A. R. V. Explicitly we are told that the "punishment" is "eternal destruction." And Malachi tells us (chapter 4: 1) that the wicked will be burned up root and branch. In other words, God has given to man life; man has the privilege of so using that life that it may continue forever; if he will not use it to God's glory and his own good, God deprives him of that life. That is just. All Christians will find help, we are sure, in the little tract No. 111 of "The Bible Students' Library," entitled "Tormented Forever and Ever."