Is Sin Eternal?

THERE are other instances of the use of the term, "unquenchable fire." In the threatening of God's judgments against Jerusalem, as revealed through the prophet Jeremiah, we read: "But if ye will not hearken unto me to hallow the sabbath day, and not to bear a burden, even entering in at the gates of Jerusalem on the sabbath day; then will I kindle a fire in the gates thereof, and it shall devour the palaces of Jerusalem, and it shall not be quenched." Jer. 17:27. No one, surely, will contend that those fires which destroyed the palaces of Jerusalem, are still burning; yet they did burn, and were not quenched until that city was in complete ruins.

The prophet Isaiah speaks also of the unquenched fire, in giving a description of the final melting of the earth. He says, "For it is the day of the LORD'S vengeance, and the year of recompences for the controversy of Zion. And the streams thereof shall be turned into pitch, and the dust thereof into brimstone, and the land thereof shall become burning pitch. It shall not be quenched night nor day; the smoke thereof shall go up for ever: from generation to generation it shall lie waste; none shall pass through it for ever and ever." Isaiah 34:8-10. But in the very next chapter these fires have ceased, and the prophet gives us a beautiful description of the new earth after the vengeance of God (verse 4) shall have come upon the wicked.

The Greek words for unquenchable fire, as in Matt. 3:12, are puri asbesto. It is not exclusively a Scriptural expression. We have a good illustration of its use in Eusebius' History, which was written in Greek. He has been styled by some, "the father of Ecclesiastical History." He became Bishop in A.D. 315. In his history, book vi., chapter 41, he speaks of those who suffered martyrdom at Alexandria. We quote from Cruse's translation of Eusebius: "The first of these was Julian, a man afflicted with the gout, neither able to walk nor stand; who, with two others that carried him, were arraigned. Of these, the one immediately denied, but the other, named Cronion, surnamed Eunus, and the aged Julian himself, having confessed the Lord, were carried on camels throughout the city—a very large one, as you know—and in this elevation were scourged, and finally consumed in an immense fire (Greek, puri asbesto). After these, Epimachus and Alexander, who had continued for a long time in prison, enduring innumerable sufferings from the scourges and scrapers, were also destroyed in an immense fire." (puri asbesto).

Dr. McCulloch, in his Analytical Investigations concerning the credibility of the Scriptures, vol. 2, p. 487, says: "This phrase, unquenchable fire, was understood only in the sense of an intense fire that totally consumed whatever was subjected to it. Thus Eusebius (Eccl. Hist., lib. 6, chap. 41) in two places, uses the very words of Matt. 3:12—unquenchable fire—which has been translated by Cruse, an immense, or intense fire, in which certain Christians were burnt in Alexandria by their persecutors."

Is the fire and brimstone in which the ungodly are to be punished, represented as of such intense heat as even to burn asbestos, to show the unending nature of the flame or the completeness of its work? What is cast into those flames? Is it some of the precious metals placed there to be heated and moulded into useful articles? We should expect to find it so, if the "eternal hope" theory is true. If we find, on investigation, such substances cast into this intense fire, as in their very nature will long resist the action of the flames, like the fabled "salamander," then we might conclude very differently; but we find the figures used, and the comparisons made require the shortest period for their combustion, as for instance in Psalms 1:4, the ungodly are compared to "chaff," so in the words of St. John the Baptist (Matt. 3:12), Christ will "burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire." Again, the Psalmist compares the ungodly to "the fat of lambs," and says "into smoke shall they consume away." Ps. 37:20. The prophet Malachi compares them to "stubble," and says, "All the proud and all that do wickedly shall be stubble, and the day that cometh shall burn them up." Mal. 4:1. In Isaiah we read, "And the people shall be as the burnings of lime; as thorns cut up shall they be burned in the fire." Isa. 33:12.

Immediately following this, is a question and answer having an important bearing on the subject before us. It represents the sinners and hypocrites as asking, "Who among us shall dwell with everlasting burnings?" Verse 14. Does the Lord answer that the ungodly must, and will thus dwell? Nay, verily, while the ungodly are devoured in those flames, as they come around the camp of the saints and the beloved city (Rev. 20), the righteous are protected from the surrounding flames by the great rocks of precious stones constituting the walls of the new Jerusalem city. Let us have the prophet's answer to the question, Who can abide when that flame is kindled? "He that walketh righteously, and speaketh uprightly; he that despiseth the gain of oppressions, that shaketh his hands from holding of bribes, that stoppeth his ears from hearing of blood, and shutteth his eyes from seeing evil; He shall dwell on high: his place of defence shall be the munitions of rocks: bread shall be given him; his waters shall be sure." Isa. 33:15, 16. So the righteous alone escape the ravages of those flames, like Noah from the ruin of the old world, while the ungodly are "consumed." Isa. 1:28.

It may be claimed that there is evidence of eternal misery to the wicked in what is said of the undying worm, "Where their worm dieth not." Mark 9:44, 46, 48. Let it be borne in mind that hell, in which the undying worm is to do his work, is gehenna. In the gehenna—in the vale of Hinnom—both the worm and fire were agencies accomplishing the consumption of the carcasses of animals, dead bodies of malefactors, and rubbish from Jerusalem. In that case, the fire might be quenched and the worm die, and thus the work of complete destruction be retarded. Not so in the fires of gehenna, where the wicked shall go. The fire shall not be quenched, and the worm—another element of their destruction, whatever it may be—shall not die.

The words of our Saviour in the above text seem to be a repetition of the language of the prophet Isaiah when speaking of the coming of the "new earth " state. He says, "And they shall go forth, and look upon the carcasses of the men that have transgressed against me: for their worm shall not die, neither shall their fire be quenched; and they shall be an abhorring unto all flesh." Isa. 66:24.

We are not surely to understand that such an abhorring scene is to exist in the new earth where St. John has told us there shall be no more curse. Neither can we say that the ungodly remain here to be thus tormented when Solomon has said, "The wicked shall be cut off from the earth, and the transgressors shall be rooted out of it." Prov. 2:22. The Lord has said to his people, "When the wicked are cut of thou shalt see it." Ps. 37:34. They see it as the perdition comes upon the ungodly (2 Peter 3:7) when they surround the beloved city, (Rev. 20:9.) As they behold, it's an abhorrence to them, but with the coming in of the new earth this scene ends, and bliss alone remains to the righteous occupants of those elysian fields.

In the fifty-first chapter of Isaiah we have a view of that time when the heavens and the earth having "waxed old" are to pass away, giving place to the new earth. Here the prophet shows us the excellency of those who have feared the Lord and loved his righteousness. God is their strength, and of course those who have made him their trust, will remain throughout all generations; but of the ungodly he says, (verse 8) "the moth shall eat them up like a garment, and the worm shall eat them like wool." This being the case, we may conclude with Isaiah that "The destruction of the transgressors, and of the sinners shall be together, and they that forsake the Lord shall be consumed." "And the strong shall be as two, and the maker of it (his work—margin) as a spark, and they shall both burn together, and none shall quench them." Isaiah 1:28, 31. The "strong man" is Satan, (Luke 11:18-22) his work is sin and sinners in the world. Satan, sin, and sinners are thus to be destroyed, and the whole universe of God will be once more pure and spotless, as though sin had never been found in it.

It is claimed that the words of Scripture, used in speaking of the final punishment of the ungodly, convey the idea of eternal suffering. Aside from the texts already noticed, those mainly relied on as teaching this doctrine may be summed up in the four following: (1) Dan. 12:2 : "Many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt." (2) Matt. 25:46: "And these shall go away into everlasting punishment; but the righteous into life eternal." (3) Rev. 14:11: "And the smoke of their torment ascendeth up forever and ever; and they have no rest day nor night, who worship the beast and his image," etc. (4) Rev. 20:10: "And the devil that deceived them was cast into the lake of fire and brimstone, where the beast and the false prophet are, and shall be tormented day and night forever and ever."

We will notice these texts in the order we have given them. The first, from Daniel, refers to persons raised from the dead. One class shall "awake to everlasting life," which very plainly implies that the other class will not live everlastingly. If we use life here in its most obvious and commonly accepted sense of conscious existence, then one class are to have such an eternal, conscious existence after the resurrection, and the other class will not have such existence, but in lieu thereof will have "shame and everlasting contempt." If they die the second death, and are cut off completely, as shown in former articles, it would be equally true that they awake to shame and everlasting contempt. The prophet Obadiah says of the ungodly: "Shame shall cover thee, and thou shalt be cut off forever." Obadiah 10. Christ, in that day, will be ashamed of them before his Father and his holy angels, Mark 8:38, and the shame of their own course of sin will indeed cover them. God will "pour contempt" upon them. Ps. 107:40. He will, as the word contempt signifies, "treat them as unworthy of regard." With the frown of God's wrath upon them they are brought to naught, and to all eternity remain cast aside as unworthy of his regard.

On the second text (Matt. 25:46), Canon Wilberforce, in his second discourse, said: "The word in the Greek, here rendered everlasting, did not and could not by any possibility be made to mean never ending. In no single instance in the New Testament, nor in the Old Testament, where its equivalent in Hebrew is used, does the word express the idea of never-ending duration—it always and invariably means and must mean as belonging to an epoch, or the epoch or age." Again, relative to the construction he had given the term, he "admitted the danger of this doctrine as apparently endangering that of the perpetual bliss of the redeemed, but said that those who were found faithful will be partakers of the endless life of God, who is everlasting."

Rev. A. Bradley, of All Saints Parish, Southampton, in his three printed sermons in opposition to the Canon, claims the eternal torment of the wicked from the word everlasting in this text. He says: "If the word is not the same as everlasting we will not thank them for the correction, for with it goes, perishes, the blessed hope which is given us in the text, of everlasting life, the Greek being, as I have already told you, precisely the same in both clauses; the everlasting punishment and the life eternal being both of them translations not of two different, but of one and the same Greek word."

The Reverends H.O. Mackey and H.C. Lake, in their sermons, take a similar position. We instance the words of the first discourse of the former. He said, "Much has been made of the fact that the words 'everlasting' and 'forever' might be translated so as to mean something else." He affirmed that "however long the punishment of the lost might be, it was identical with the blessedness of the saved."

While it may be true that the word everlasting, translated from the Greek word aion, can be rendered "age long" and refer directly to the age or time of duration of the object or being spoken of; the length of that age must correspond to the length of the existence of such object or being. It is true of the righteous, as the Canon informed us, "Those found faithful will be partakers of the endless life of God." The everlasting—"aion"—existence in their case must be endless.

The Scriptures make a clear statement relative to both the righteous and the wicked. "He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life; and he that believeth not the Son shall not see life; but the wrath of God abideth on him." John 3:36. If, then, the wicked are not made partakers of the endless life of God, how are they to live eternally? If we should admit, in this case, that the everlasting punishment is an eternal punishment, would that prove it to be eternal, conscious suffering? May it not rather be, as quoted in our last from the learned Dr Whitby, that the sinner is destroyed, never to be restored, and that such a destruction, from which there is no recovery, is an eternal punishment. In favor of this conclusion permit us to place by the side of this text St. Paul's testimony concerning the punishment of the wicked.

Matt. 25:46: "These shall go away into everlasting punishment."

2 Thess. 1:8-9: "Who shall be punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord, and from the glory of his power."

The punishment is everlasting. It is final. There is no recovery from it. What does St. Paul say this punishment is? "Destruction." He does not say that the wicked shall be to all eternity being destroyed and yet never destroyed, or as one advocate* of the eternal misery doctrine expressed it, "The wicked will be always dying, never dead." Such a statement is not admissible; a being could not be said to be dying unless a time was approaching when it might be said of him, He is dead. So of this everlasting punishment. St. Paul does not say that the wicked will be everlastingly destroying, but that they shall have "everlasting destruction." This punishment, then, is complete and total destruction, a destruction from which they are never again restored. "He that being often reproved hardeneth his neck, shall suddenly be destroyed, and that without remedy." Prov. 29:1. Such is an everlasting punishment.

*Rev. Thos. Vincent