The Conditionalist Faith of Our Fathers, vol. 1

CHAPTER SIXTEEN: Christ Portrays Doom of Wicked as Utter Destruction

I. Seventeen Graphic Illustrations of Doom of Wicked

In concluding the witness of Christ, let us examine His inerrant testimony on the fate of the wicked. Christ ever “taught them as one having authority,” and “not as the scribes” (Matthew 7:29; cf. John 7:26). These learned men always deferred and referred to tradition or to what some noted teacher had said. But Christ—Creator, Saviour, Priest, judge, and returning King—is the supreme authority of all time in this field. He knows man’s frame and man’s destiny. He cannot err and will not mislead. Let us reverently hear and believe His witness. Here is what He says: CFF1 286.1

1. ILLUSTRATIONS FROM INANIMATE LIFE

Jesus gave seventeen graphic illustrations, drawn from both inanimate and animate life, to portray comprehensively the doom of the wicked. They are strikingly conclusive. (Some are repeated, evidently for emphasis.) Christ’s terse allusions were both vivid and inescapable. They divide themselves into two all-encompassing groups. Here is the initial group, in their English rendering. In eight different figures Christ declares the single truth. CFF1 286.2

A house built on sand falls (Matthew 7:26, 27).
Tares are gathered and burned (Matthew 13:30, 40).
Bad fish are cast away (Matthew 13:48).
Harmful plants are rooted up (Matthew 15:13).
Worthless trees are cut down (Luke 13:7). Withered branches are burned (John 15:6).
Debtor is held in prison (Matthew 5:26; Matthew 18:34). ¹
Offender is cast into outer darkness (Matthew 8:12; Matthew 22:13; Matthew 25:30).

In each case (save the last two, given for another purpose) the destruction is declared complete, leading to utter and final disintegration. The doom of the wicked was never portrayed by Christ as an endless life in torment. The “tree which bringeth not forth good fruit,” He declares, “is hewn down, and cast into the fire” (Matthew 3:10). That signifies its final and complete destruction and disappearance. CFF1 287.1

2. SECOND GROUP BASED ON HUMAN LIFE

In His second group of illustrations, based upon human life—thus obviating any misunderstanding or evasion—the Master declares: CFF1 287.2

The wicked husbandmen are destroyed (Matthew 21:41; Luke 20:16).
The rejector is ground to powder, scattered as dust (Matthew 21:44).
The evil servant is cut asunder (Matthew 24:51).
The wicked will perish like the Galileans (Luke 13:2, 3).
They are stain like those crushed by Siloam’s tower (Luke 13:4, 5).
They are destroyed like the victims of the Flood (Luke 17:27).
They are destroyed by fire like men of Sodom and Gomorrah (Luke 17:29).
They will die, as in the fate of Lot’s wife (Luke 17:32).
The rebellious “citizens” are slain (Luke 19:14, 27).

These portrayals, individually and collectively, all denote capital punishment. They signify sudden, swift, violent death—attended with greater or less suffering. They are set forth as fit illustrations of the coming second death for the stubbornly recalcitrant sinner. CFF1 287.3

3. ALL PORTRAY TOTAL AND FINAL EXTINCTION

Thus of the seventeen different illustrations employed by the Saviour to depict the doom of the wicked, all but two portray utter and ultimate destruction, or dissolution, under the second death, whereas the other two indicate the certainty of that doom. Here is a case in point: “When the lord therefore of the vineyard cometh, what will he do unto those husbandmen? ... He will miserably destroy [apollumi] those wicked men” (Matthew 21:40, 41). CFF1 287.4

According to the witness of Christ, then, there is eternity of result but not of process, of punishment but not of punishing of men. Apollumi and apoleia and the cognate Greek terms Christ employs all involve complete destruction. CFF1 288.1

The lesson is obvious: As rivers separated from their source, as trees with neither roots nor branches, as dry bundles of tares, as corpses eaten by worms, so the incorrigibly wicked will go to destruction in Gehenna—the refuse heap, as it were, of lost men. Christ asserts, then, without qualifications, the final and total extinction of the entire man in fire that cannot be quenched, as the fate of the impenitent. CFF1 288.2