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From A.W. Pink's "Eternal Punishment"
The Destiny of the Wicked
There is deep need for us to approach this solemn subject impartially and dispassionately. Let writer and reader cry earnestly to God that all prejudices and preconceptions may be removed from our minds. It ill becomes us to sit at the feet of Infinite Wisdom determined to hold fast to our foregone conclusions! Nothing can be more insulting to God than to presume to examine His Word, professing a desire to learn His mind, when we have already settled to our own satisfaction what it will say. Someone has said that we ought to bring our minds to the Scriptures as blank paper is brought to the printing press, that it may receive only the impress of the type. May such grace be vouchsafed to us all, that we may ever present our minds to the Holy Spirit’s teaching, that only the impress may be left which God has designed. May our only desire be to hear, “What saith the Lord?”A. The Certainty of Their Judgment
It is written, “It is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment” (Heb 9:27). This is one of the many verses that refute the errors of the Annihilationists, who make the judgment of the sinner to be, itself, death. But here, death and judgment are clearly distinguished: the one follows the other. The fact of a future judgment for sinners is established by numerous passages. In Ecclesiastes 11:9 we read, “Rejoice, O young man, in thy youth; and let thy heart cheer thee in the days of thy youth, and walk in the ways of thine heart, and in the sight of thine eyes: but know thou, that for all these things God will bring thee into judgment.” Again, in Ecclesiastes 12:14 we are told, “For God shall bring every work into judgment, with every secret thing, whether it be good, or whether it be evil.” The New Testament witnesses to the same truth: “He hath appointed a day, in the which he will judge the world in righteousness by that man whom he hath ordained” (Act 17:31). The judgment itself is described in Revelation 20:11-15.Of the certainty of this coming judgment we are left in no doubt: “The Lord knoweth how to deliver the godly out of temptations, and to reserve the unjust unto the day of judgment to be punished” (2Pe 2:9). It will be impossible for the sinner to evade it. Escape there will be none: “How can ye escape the damnation of hell?” (Mat 23:33). Resistance, individually or collectively, will be futile: “Though hand join in hand, the wicked shall not be unpunished” (Pro 11:21). No confederacy of His foes shall hinder God from taking vengeance upon them.
B. Death Seals the Sinner’s Fate
1. “Proof texts” explained
Scripture teaches plainly that man’s opportunity for salvation is limited to the period of his earthly life. If he dies unsaved, his fate is sealed inexorably.17 There are two passages in the New Testament most generally relied upon by those who affirm that there is for the lost a hope beyond death. These are both found in the First Epistle of Peter. A brief notice then shall be taken of them.“For Christ also hath once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh, but quickened by the Spirit: By which also he went and preached unto the spirits in prison; Which sometime were disobedient, when once the longsuffering of God waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was a preparing” (3:18-20). But these verses make no reference whatever to any preaching heard by those who had already passed out of this life. They simply tell us that the Spirit of God preached through Noah, while the ark was being built, to those who were disobedient; and because they refused to respond to that preaching, they are now “spirits in prison.” It was not Christ Himself Who “preached,” but the Holy Spirit, as is plain from the opening words of verse 19: “By which also”—the “by which” points back to “the Spirit” at the end of verse 18. That the Holy Spirit did address Himself to the antedeluvians18 we know from Genesis 6:3, “my Spirit shall not always strive with man.” The Spirit strove through Noah’s preaching. That Noah was a “preacher,” we learn from 2 Peter 2:5.
The second passage is found in 1 Peter 4:6, “For this cause was the gospel preached also to them that are dead.” But this need not detain us. The gospel was preached, not as now being
preached, or will again be preached to them. That such passages as these are appealed to only serves to show how untenable and impossible is the contention they are supposed to support.
That death seals the doom of the lost, we may prove negatively by the fact—and this is conclusive of itself—that we have not a single instance described in either the Old Testament or the New of a sinner being saved after death. Nor is there a single passage that holds out any promise of this in the future. But there are passages that contain positive teaching to the contrary. Several of these are now submitted.
2. What the whole Bible says
We turn first to Proverbs 29:1: “He, that being often reproved hardeneth his neck, shall suddenly be destroyed, and that without remedy.” This is so explicit19 and unequivocal, it needs no words of ours either to expound or enforce it. Once the rebellious sinner is “cut off,” he is “without remedy.” Nothing could be clearer: at death his doom is sealed.Again, in Matthew 9:6 we read, “But that ye may know that the Son of man hath power on earth to forgive sins, (then saith he to the sick of the palsy,) Arise, take up thy bed, and go unto thine house.” Why did not the Lord simply say, “The Son of Man hath power to forgive sins,” and then stop? That would have been sufficient reply to His critics. The only reason that we can suggest why the Saviour should have added the qualifying words, “The Son of man hath power on earth to forgive sins,” was because He would give us to understand that after a sinner leaves the “earth,” the Son of Man (Christ in His mediatorial20 character) has not the “power” (or “authority,” as [the original Greek] exousia really means) to forgive sins!
A similar instance to the above is found in John 12:25: “He that loveth his life shall lose it; and he that hateth his life in this world shall keep it unto life eternal.” Notice that the antithesis would be complete without the restricting words “in this world”: “He that loveth his life shall lose it; and he that hateth his life shall keep it unto life eternal.” Again, we say, that the only reason we can see why Christ added the qualifying clause, “He that hateth his life in this world shall keep it unto life eternal,” was in order to show that destiny is fixed once we leave this world.
In 2 Corinthians 5:10, which speaks of believers, we have another example of this careful employment of qualifying language: “We must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ; that every one may receive the things done in his body.” The saints are to be dealt with not merely according to what they have done, but that they may receive “the things done in the body.” What they have done after they left the body and prior to the resurrection is not taken into account.
In John 8:21, it is recorded how that Christ said to His enemies, “I go my way, and ye shall seek me, and shall die in your sins: whither I go, ye cannot come.” Observe carefully the order of the last two clauses. Once they died in their sins, it was impossible for them to go to heaven. The solemn force of this verse comes out even more clearly if we contrast with it John 13:36: “Simon Peter said unto him, Lord, whither goest thou? Jesus answered him, Whither I go, thou canst not follow me now; but thou shalt follow me afterwards.” Mark the absence of the qualifying “now” in John 8:21. To Peter it was said, as to a representative saint, “Thou shalt follow me [to heaven] afterwards”; but to the wicked, Christ declared, “Whither I go, ye cannot come”!
God Vindicated
In what has been before us, we learn how the character and throne of God will be vindicated. What can be too severe a judgment upon those who have despised so great a Being as the Almighty? If he that is guilty of treason against an earthly government deserves to lose his life, what punishment can be great enough for one who has preferred his own pleasure before the will and glory of a God Who is infinitely good? To despise infinite excellence merits infinite misery. God has commanded the sinner to repent; He has courted him with overtures of grace; He has bountifully supplied his every need; and He has presented before him the Son of His love, His choicest treasure—and yet men persist in their wicked course! No possible ground, then, will the sinner have to appeal against the sentence of the Judge of all the earth, seeing that He not only tendered mercy toward him, but also bore with him in so much patience when He might justly have smitten him down upon the first crime he ever committed and removed him to hell upon the first refusal of His proffered grace.That God shall punish every rebel against Himself is required by the very perfections of His high sovereignty. It is but meet32 that He should display His governmental supremacy. The creature has dared to assert its independency, the subject has risen up in arms against his King; therefore, the right of God’s throne must be vindicated—“I know that the Lord is greater than all gods: for in the thing wherein they dealt proudly he was above them” (Exo 18:11). When Pharaoh dared to pit himself against Jehovah, God manifested His authority by destroying him at the Red Sea. Another king He turned into a beast, to make him know that the Most High ruleth in the kingdom of men (Dan 4:25). So, when the history of this world is wound up, God will make a full and final manifestation of His sovereign majesty. Though He now endures (not “loves”) with much longsuffering the vessels of wrath fitted to destruction; it is that in the coming Day He may “shew his wrath” and “make his power known” (Rom 9:22).
B. Mankind’s Folly Exposed
What has been before us serves to expose the folly and madness of the greater part of mankind, in that for the sake of present momentary gratification, they run the serious risk of enduring all these eternal torments. They prefer a small pleasure, or a little wealth, or a little earthly honor and fame (which lasts but “for a season”) to an escape from the Lake of Fire. If it be true that the torments of hell are everlasting, what will it profit a man if he “gain the whole world, and lose his own soul” (Mat 16:26)? How mad men are who hear and read of these things and pretend to believe them, who are alive but a little while, a few short years at most—and yet who are careless about what becomes of themselves in the next world, where there is neither change nor end! How mad are they who hear that if they go on in sin, they shall be eternally miserable; and yet are not moved, but hear it with as much indifference as if they were not concerned in the matter at all! And yet for all they know to the contrary, they may be in fiery torments before another week is at an end!How sad to note that this unconcern is shared by the great majority of our fellows. Age makes little difference. The young are occupied with pleasures, the middle-aged with worldly advancement, the aged with their attainments or lack of them. With the first it is the lust of the flesh, with the second it is the lust of the eyes, with the third it is the pride of life (1Jo 2:16)—which banishes from their minds all serious thoughts of the life to come. “The heart of the sons of men is full of evil, and madness is in their heart while they live, and after that they go to the dead” (Ecc 9:3). O the blinding power of sin! O the deceitfulness of riches! O the perversity of the human heart! Nothing so reveals these things as the incredible sight of men and women enjoying themselves and being at rest, while they are suspended over the eternal burning by the frail thread of mortality, which may be snapped at any moment!
