Читать книгу The Second Death and the Restitution of All Things - Andrew Jukes - Страница 13

These are the words of Christ Himself, and they are in substance repeated just as strongly by His Apostles. St. Paul declares thawhile some are “saved” by the gospel, others “perish;”¹ that “many walk whose end is destruction;”² that “the Lord Jesus shall be revealed, in flaming fire taking vengeance on them that know not God, and obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ, who shall be punished with everlasting destruction³ from the presence of the Lord, and from the glory of His power, when He shall come to be glorified in His saints, and to be admired in all them that believe in that day.”⁴ To the Hebrews he says, “If we sin wilfully after that we have received the knowledge of the truth, there remaineth no more sacrifice for sins, but a certain fearful looking for of judgment and fiery indignation, which shall devour the adversaries;”⁵ that “it is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God,"⁶ for “our God is a consuming fire.”⁷ St. Peter repeats the same doctrine, that “judgment must begin at the house of God, and if it first begin at us, what shall the end be of them that obey not the gospel of God; for if the righteous scarcely be saved, where shall the ungodly and the sinner appear ?”⁸ He further says of “false teachers,” who “deny the Lord that bought them,” that they “shall bring upon themselves swift destruction," and, like the cities of Sodom and Gomorrha, “shall utterly perish in their own corruption.”⁹ St John's words are at least as strong, that “the fearful, and unbelieving, and murderers, and whoremongers, and sorcerers, and idolaters, and all liars, shall have their place in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone, which is the second death;”¹⁰ and that “those who worship the beast, and his image, shall drink of the wine of the wrath of God, and shall be tormented with fire and brimstone in the presence of the holy angels and the presence of the Lamb, and they have no rest day nor night, and the smoke of their torment ascendeth up for ever and ever.”¹¹

Words could not be stronger. The difficulty is that all this is but one side of Scripture, which in other places seems to teach a very different doctrine.For instance, there are first the words of God Himself, repeated again and again by those same Apostles whom I have just quoted, that “in Abraham's seed all the kindreds of the earth shall be blessed;”¹² words which St. Peter expounds to mean