The End of the Wicked in the Old Testament

The Old Testament has very much to say about the end of the wicked. Its poetic books of Job, Psalms and Proverbs repeatedly affirm the moral principles of divine government. The wicked may thrive now and the righteous suffer, these books tells us, but that picture will not be the final one. These books reassure the godly again and again that those who trust will be vindicated, they will endure forever, they will inherit the arth. The wicked, however proud their boasts today, will one day not be found. Their place will be empty. They will vanish like a slug as it moves along. They will disappear like smoke. Men will search for them and they will not be found. Even their memory will perish. Of these pillars of divine justice the world stands, and by these principles the Lord God governs His eternal kingdom.

The historical books of the Old Testament take us another step. Not only does God declare what He will do to the wicked; on many occasions He has shown us. When the first world became too wicked to exist, God destroyed it completely, wiping every living creature outside the ark from the face of the earth. That is a model of the fiery judment awaiting the present heavens and earth. When Sodom became too sinful to continue, God rained fire and brimstone from heaven, obliterating the entire wicked population in a moment so terrible it is memorialized throughtout Scripture as an example of divine judgment. From this terrible conflagration emerged not a survivor - even the ground was left scorched and barren. Only the lingering smoke remained, a grim reminder of the fate awaiting any an who attempts to quarrel with his Maker.

Cities and nations also tasted God's wrath. Edom and Judah, Babylon and Nineveh turn by turn came under His temporal judgments. Some were spared a remnant. Others were not. God described these divine visitation in terms of fire and darkness, anguish and trouble. Unquenchable fire consumed entirely until nothing was left. Again smoke ascended, the prophetic cipher for a ruin accomplished.

The inspired declarations of the prophets combine moral principle with historical fate. The details of actual destructions wrought on the earth became symbols for another divine visitation. The prophets speak to their own times, but they also stand on tiptoe and view the distant future. A day is coming, they tell us, when God will bring an end to all He has begun. That judgment will be the last. Good and evil will be gathered alike to see the rigtheousness of the Lord they have served or spurned. Again there will be fires and storm, tempest and darkness. The slain of God will be many - corpses will lie in the street. Amids this scene of utter contempt worms and fire will take their final toll. Nothing will remain of the wicked but ashes - the righteous will tread over them with their feet. God's kingdom will endure forever. The righteous and their children will inherit Mont Zion. Joy and singing will fill the air. All the earth will praise the Lord.

What traditionalist authros have never done is to take up the numerous passages in support of final extinction, then show where conditionalist have either misused the text, ignored the context, eliminated crucial information, or added data not found in the Word of God itself. They have themselves, on the other hand, ignored the rich taching of the Old Testament, falsely presumed a uniform intertestamental view, and interpreted the New Testament picutrees and language ont he basis of later philosophical tradition and ecclesiastical dogma rather than ordinary, accepted methods of Scritural exegesis.

... We wre reared on the traditionalist view - we accepted it because it was said to rest on the Bible. This closer investigation of the Scriptures indicates that we were mistaken in that assumption. A careful look discovers that both Old and New Testaments teach instead a rsurrection of the wicked for the purpose of divine judgment, the fearful anticipation of a consuming fire, irrevocable expulsion from God's presens into a place where they will be weeping an grinding of teeth, such conscious usffering as the divine justice individually requires - and, finall, the total, everlasting extinction of the wicked with no hope of resurrection, restoration or recovery. Now we stand on that, ont he authority of the Word of God.

We have changed once and do not mind changing again, but we were evidently wrong once thorugh lack of careful study and do not wish to repeat the same mistake. Mere assertions and denunciations will not refute the evidence presented in this book, nor wil a recital of ecclesiastical tradition.

This case rests finally on Scripture. Only Scripture can prove it wrong. (Pages 435-436.)

Warning: This subject is potentially inflammatory. That can be taken two ways. Not only is the destination of the wicked often described in the Scritpures as a fiery state or place, the issues which relate to their fate and final state consititute a burning subject. Frankly, the view presented is somewhat controversial, mainly because of the age-long Platonic view of the destiny of man. Any inquiry into the final state of the unredeemed is particularly hotly contested (no pun intended). Tradtion resists and even resents probing and questioning. What is said in Edward Fudge's book is by no means a "trail balloon" performance. It has been presented and aired openly in ppublic forums and lectureships, and in churches both large and small. To my knowledge no one who has heard it out has gone forth to castigate its exegesis and conclusions on the final state of the unredeemed verses the state of the redemmed. All will not agree, but the consensus has been that a viable option worthy of further study has been provided in his book. We learn little, if anything, from those with whom we agree wholly. Within the framework of honest inquiry, reverence for the Scritures and commitment to God's will, the exposure of reader to divergent viewpoints can be a learning experience. So, let us learn from each other. We can be agreeable even though in disagreement.

Don’t you realize we have been in the Great Tribulation for years already?

What's that to do with the subject of what's posted?

As for "Great Tribulation", well, it's been going on ever since the beginning. It depends upon what you mean by those words, right?

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