The
Punishment of the Wicked
by Octavius
Winslow
What will you say when He shall punish you?—Jeremiah 13:21
As we pass through life many sad and solemn scenes meet our eye—the
natural result of the fall and the bitter fruit of sin. But, perhaps,
no spectacle is invested with a solemnity so appalling as that of a criminal
at the bar of justice, awaiting the judgment of the court, to whom the
Judge, wearing the awful symbol of condemnation, addresses the terrible
question, “Prisoner at the bar, what have you to say why the sentence
of death should not be passed upon you?” Awfully impressive as is
this scene, it is but the faint shadow of a spectacle infinitely more
appalling which awaits this fallen world—the final and eternal condemnation
of the wicked.
That such an event is reasonable the light of nature teaches, and that
it is certain, the Book of Revelation declares. Reason would teach us
that, living under a moral government—a government of rewards and
punishments, if we do well, it is accepted of God, and that if we do not
do well, sin lies at the door and is righteously punished. Thus by the
dim light of nature we may learn that, that must be an unholy government
which would allow sin to pass unpunished, and that, that must be an unjust
government that would allow good to go unrewarded.
But, in proof of a judgment to come we have stronger evidence than that
of reason. Divine revelation comes to our aid, and affirms emphatically
and solemnly that, “We must all appear before the Judgment Seat of
Christ, that every man may receive the things done in the body, according
to what he has done, whether it be good or bad.” That, “God
has appointed a day in which He will Judge the world in righteousness.”
That, “the Lord comes with ten thousand of His holy ones to execute
Judgment upon all, and to convince all who are ungodly of all their unrighteous
deeds which they have ungodly committed, and of all their hard speeches
which ungodly sinners have spoken against Him.”
Such are some of the Scripture declarations concerning this momentous
subject. It is to one particular view our present reading will be restricted—namely,
the final, awful, and everlasting punishment of the ungodly. If we saw
a friend, arraigned in a criminal court of justice about to be tried for
his life, we would naturally and anxiously inquire, “Are you well
prepared with your defense? Have you carefully weighed every jot of the
evidence, and thoroughly examined the nature of the plea you purpose to
adduce?” To the sinner speeding to the judgment seat of Christ we
address a similar but an infinitely more momentous inquiry, “Are
you prepared for your trial? With what plea are you provided in arrest
of judgment? What have you to say why the sentence of eternal death should
not be pronounced upon you? Have you any excuse for your sins, any palliation
of your crimes, any reason for your rejection of His Son, which the Judge
will accept? What will you say when He shall punish you?—what plea,
what excuse, what extenuation will you allege when the Judge shall proceed
to pronounce the awful sentence of eternal doom?” Such is the solemn,
awakening subject, which now asks your serious and prayerful attention.
May the Holy Spirit aid and bless our meditation.
First, with regard to the CERTAINTY of the punishment of the wicked.
No truth is more clearly revealed in the Bible than that it is God’s
solemn purpose to punish the ungodly. It must, from the very necessity
of the case, be so. God is holy, and if just to Himself He must, from
the holiness of His nature, punish sin. Were the ungodly, the impenitent
and the unbelieving to go unpunished, what a lowering of His moral government,
and what an indelible dishonor to Himself would present itself to the
eyes of all the holy beings in heaven. Sin can never go unpunished. God’s
holiness, and justice, and truth must be vindicated, either in the person
of the sinner or in the person of a substitute.
A few declarations from God’s Word will be sufficient to set this
momentous question at rest. That of our text is decisive—“He
shall PUNISH you.” “He will by no means clear the guilty.”
“The Lord Jesus shall be revealed from heaven with His mighty angels,
in flaming fire, taking vengeance on those who do not know God, and do
not obey the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ: they shall be PUNISHED with
everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord and from the glory
of His power.” “The Lord knows how to deliver the godly out
of temptations, and to reserve the unjust unto the day of judgment to
be PUNISHED.” “How can you escape the damnation of hell?”
“Who has warned you to flee from the wrath to come? “”How
shall we escape if we neglect so great salvation?”
What need we further evidence of the awful truth that, God will most surely
punish the wicked? The Bible is replete with awful examples confirmatory
of the fact. The destruction of the antediluvian world by water, of the
Cities of the Plain by fire, of Jerusalem by the invasion of Titus, and
countless other examples testify to His hatred of sin and of His inexorable
justice in punishing it.
And, were it possible to unveil the bottomless pit, and for a moment penetrate
the “mist of darkness” that enshrouds the damned, with what
startling and convincing force would the terrible fact flash upon every
skeptical mind, hitherto wont to regard hell as a myth and to make sport
of its quenchless fire! Nothing, my unconverted reader, has kept you from
increasing the countless witnesses to the truth that, God will by no means
clear the guilty, but His infinite patience. “The patience of God
is salvation.”
It has been thus far your salvation from immediate destruction, into which
at any moment of its suspension, and at any hour of your being, you may
inevitably and irremediably be plunged. There is no lack of power on the
part of God to do this. More easily than you can crush a worm, or snap
a thread, can God cast you into hell. He but “looks upon the earth
and it trembles,” and, “at His rebuke the rocks are thrown down!”
It is no security against this awful infliction of God’s power that
there are no visible means of death at hand, no apparent prospect of immediate
destruction. They are at hand, however unseen by you.
When you go forth in the morning in an unrenewed state, your whole path
throughout the day is on the very brink of an eternity of woe, and along
the very mouth of the bottomless pit. The bow of death is bent, and the
arrow, pointing at your heart, is upon the string, waiting but God’s
word to bid it fly. There is no necessity that God should suspend a single
law of nature in order to remove you from the world. He has but to unveil
His power, to withdraw His restraints, and the slightest hair, an atom
of matter, a simple vapor, a drop of blood, could send your soul into
eternity.
Over the abyss of hell God holds you in His hand, as you would hold a
deadly scorpion over burning coals, ready to let it fall. What are you
in His sight, viewed as in your sins and guilt and rebellion, but as a
loathsome thing, more repulsive and hateful to Him than to you is the
most venomous serpent that drags its slimy form across your path.
No, more, you are under present condemnation. “He that believes not
is condemned already.” The sentence is not yet executed, the law
has not yet taken effect; but like a criminal condemned to die, you only
wait the solemn knell that announces the awful moment has arrived. Again
I remind you that nothing but the good pleasure of God that keeps you
any moment out of hell. No robustness of health, no watchful guards posted
along the avenues of life, no adroit evasion of the pestilence, no running
from danger, no preservatives against, or palliatives of, disease, no
remedy or skill, can prevail when God ceases His patience and withdraws
His power.
Then will He “laugh at your calamity and mock when your fear comes.”
“I will tread them in My anger and trample them in My fury; and their
blood shall be sprinkled upon My garments, and I will stain all My clothing.”
O solemn thought, that the Omnipotence of God will so crush out the blood
of ungodly men, that it shall sprinkle and stain His very garments! Can
any image convey to us a more appalling idea of the destruction of the
wicked? “What if God, willing to show His wrath and to make His power
known, endured with much patience the vessels of wrath fitted to destruction?”
What if that patience should in a moment cease?—that moment you are
in hell!
All the ministers of grace on earth, and all the angels of God in heaven,
could not help you when the pit opens its mouth to swallow you up. Presume
not, then, upon the patience of God. Persist not in sin and rebellion.
“Because sentence against an evil work is not executed speedily,
therefore the heart of the sons of men is fully set in them to do evil.”
God grant that this may not be your presumption and your end!
The punishment of the wicked will be TERRIBLE in the extreme. The
imagination of man cannot conceive any calamity so appalling as the final
condition of a lost soul. The Italian poet Dante, with his intensely vivid
imagination and marvellous powers of description, has drawn an appalling
picture of hell; but no picture is so appalling, and none so true, as
that presented to us in the Word of God. What are some of the expressions
and images employed by the sacred penmen, to delineate the place and condition
of the lost?
Listen to them attentively, my reader, ponder them thoughtfully, and pray
over them earnestly—it is for your life! The hell of the wicked is
described as–
“the outpouring of God’s wrath”
“the lake of fire”
“fire and brimstone”
“the “bottomless pit”
“the worm that dies not, and as the fire that shall never be quenched”
“damnation”
“the perdition of ungodly men”
“torment”
“an impassable gulf”
“outer darkness “
“the gnashing of teeth”
“destruction from the presence of the Lord”
“the winepress of the wrath of Almighty God “
“the smoke of their torment ascending up forever and ever.”
Surely we need not multiply these appalling expressions, so vividly and
truly descriptive of the terrible condition of sinners falling into the
hands of a holy, just, and angry Lord God. Will not this suffice to arouse,
alarm, and induce you to pause and reflect upon what may be, upon what
must be, the final end of your present course of sin and rebellion against
God—of the rejection of Christ, and of the self-destruction of your
own soul. Dying unconverted, dying with the weapons of hostility against
God in your hands—terrible witnesses to your treason and your crime!—how
can you escape the damnation of hell?
The punishment of the wicked, thus terrible, will yet be most RIGHTEOUS.
No truth will flash upon the condemned mind with more overwhelming force
in the last great day than this—the perfect righteousness of God
in the condemnation of the ungodly. Sinners will read in the lurid light
of the quenchless flames of hell, as they never read before, the strict
JUSTICE of their doom. In their eyes, God’s throne, though awful,
will appear guiltless; His justice, though severe, most just; and the
sentence, though more terrible than thought can conceive, or language
describe, based upon the principles of the divinest equity.
O sinner, you neglecter of the great salvation, you despiser and rejecter
of Jesus, you slave of Satan, you servant of sin, you Sabbath-breaker,
you profane, you unclean, you who makes and loves lying, how will these
sins then rise before you in all their measureless magnitude, indescribable
blackness, and ineffaceable guilt! You will then remember—for no
faculty of the mind will be in such awful force as memory—you will
then remember the glorious Gospel that you heard but to turn from it;
the faithful sermons but to reject them; the life-boat of salvation that
floated to your aid but to reject it; the convictions you had but to stifle
them; the hand of God outstretched to you but to spurn it; the loving,
beseeching Savior inviting you but to disbelieve, despise, and reject
Him!
Then will you see that you preferred sin to holiness, Satan to God, yourself
to Christ, hell to heaven, eternal woe to eternal happiness! Will not
your condemnation, then, be strictly just? In giving you what you asked,
in granting you what you preferred, in assigning to you a doom you yourself
intelligently, deliberately, solemnly chose, will you not be most equitably
judged, and most righteously condemned? Most assuredly! Every lost soul
shall acknowledge that he himself, and not God, was the author of his
ruin—“I am here,” he will exclaim, “in this insufferable
agony, in this interminable torment, in this quenchless fire, because
I chose it. I am a moral suicide. I loved my sin, and served Satan, and
followed the world; made a covenant with death, and an agreement with
hell, and I now receive the due reward of my choice. The wages of sin
is death: I faithfully earned my wages, and the just payment thereof is
mine. You are righteous, O Lord, in that You have judged thus.” This
conducts to another and a yet more solemn thought.
The punishment of the ungodly will be ETERNAL. That there should
be those who deny this truth is no marvel. Satan has left no art unemployed,
and no effort untried, to lessen in the eyes of sinners the terribleness
of their appalling doom. One of his most ingenious and successful devices
is, the denial of the eternity of future punishment. If he can succeed
in palming upon his victims the fiction that hell is a myth; or, if this
idea is too monstrous to believe, that it is, at the least, but a place
of temporary purification, washed in whose flames, and purified by whose
sufferings, the soul is fitted to enter Paradise, he has done much to
lessen the apprehension of its terrors, and to reconcile the sinner to
the thought of his dread doom. Hence the popular notion of a brief purgatorial
state of punishment, so welcome to the depraved nature, the sin-loving
heart of man.
But no sophistry of Satan, and no ingenuity of error, and no self-deception
of the human heart touches the revealed doctrine that the future punishment
of the wicked is endless. In vindication of this all-momentous and all-solemn
subject, human reason shall be silent. Let God’s Word alone speak.
His voice only shall be heard. And even here we are compelled to place
a limit. A few Scripture proofs only must suffice. To the law and to the
testimony let us refer a doctrine, involving interests outweighing the
worth of ten thousand worlds like this. Listen devoutly and believingly
to the following declarations—
“The Lord Jesus shall be revealed from heaven with His mighty angels,
in flaming fire taking vengeance on those who know not God, and that obey
not the Gospel; who shall be punished with EVERLASTING DESTRUCTION from
the presence of the Lord, and from the glory of His power.” “And
many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake; some to
EVERLASTING life, and some to shame and EVERLASTING CONTEMPT.” “Depart
from Me, you cursed, into EVERLASTING FIRE, prepared for the devil and
his angels.” “And these shall go away into EVERLASTING PUNISHMENT,
but the righteous into ETERNAL life .” “If your hand offend
you cut it off, it is better for you to enter into life maimed, than having
two hands to go into hell, into the fire that NEVER shall be quenched;
where their worm DIES NOT, and the fire is NOT QUENCHED.” “To
whom the mist of darkness is reserved FOREVER.” “And her smoke
rose up FOREVER AND EVER.” Let these awful statements suffice to
prove the scripturalness of the doctrine, of the endlessness, the eternity
of future punishment.
O! what imagination can conceive the terribleness of never-ending woe!
How dreadful and indescribable the anguish of one moment’s endurance
of hell fire! Imagine then, if it be possible, what interminable ages
must be millions and millions of years rolling round, and yet millions
and millions more to roll, and still no nearer the end of suffering than
when it first began! O who can adequately portray the state of the soul
in such a woe as this?
And yet see how sinners risk eternal happiness, and court everlasting
torment, and rush into quenchless flames, for the carnal, sensual, worldly
enjoyment of a moment! Listen, O listen, to the searching, solemn question
of our Lord: “What will it profit a man if he gain the whole world
and lose his own soul?” The loss of the soul! What can compensate
for such a catastrophe? What make up for such a loss? Not present wealth—nor
fame—nor pleasure—nor anything that earth can give, when once
the soul is cast away forever! O whatever else you lose, do not lose your
precious, priceless, immortal soul. Once lost, it is lost FOREVER!
“Lord, shall we part with gold for dross,
With solid good for show!
Outlive our bliss, and mourn our loss
In everlasting woe!
“Let us not lose the living God
For one short dream of joy,
With fond embrace cling to a clod
And fling all heaven away.
“Vain world, your weak attempts forbear,
We all your charms defy,
And rate our precious souls too dear
For all your wealth to buy.”
But God propounds a personal, searching, and solemn question: “What
will you say when He shall punish you?” In other words, “What,
sinner, will be your excuse, what your line of defense, what your plea
in arrest of judgment when God shall arise to punish?” What should
we think of the wisdom of a man about to stand in a court of justice to
meet a charge imperiling his most precious interests, who had bestowed
no reflection whatever upon his line of defense? Or, yet more, what would
be our opinion of the sanity of a criminal arraigned upon a capital charge,
whose proposed proofs of innocence and pleas of defense should be of the
most senseless and childish, even of a most treasonable and criminating
nature? But such will certainly and inevitably be the position of every
unconverted sinner cited to appear at Christ’s tribunal in judgment.
What then will you say? You will not, as a rational being, with your mental
faculties unimpaired, and your consciousness of right and wrong unclouded,
be able to plead exemption from punishment on the ground of irresponsibility.
Nor can you plead that you possessed no Bible—had not been favored
with a preached Gospel—had not heard of Christ—had not been
warned by providence, nor admonished by conscience, nor moved by conviction,
nor stirred by the Spirit. You cannot offer the plea that you had no time
to seek salvation; that your incitements to sin were irresistible, your
evil passions irrepressible, your position in life surrounded by influences
with which you had no power to combat. None of these pleas—even if
you had the brazenness to present them—would avail to arrest the
stern and terrible arm of Divine law and justice.
What then will you say when He shall punish you? Alas! like the intruder
at the marriage feast, not having on a wedding garment, to this solemn,
heart-searching appeal you will be “speechless.” You have now
your ready excuses, your plausible arguments, your ingenious pleas why
you should not be a Christian. You can start objections, and indulge in
cavils, and postpone to a more convenient season the great work of conversion,
the duty of repentance and faith, but what will you do in the solemn day?
What will you answer Him when God shall punish you? Will you dispute His
authority, defy His power, or flee from His presence? This you cannot
do. All beings will then bend to Him the knee, and all nations will be
prostrate at His feet.
Escape from Him you cannot. No rocks, or mountains, or hills move at your
call, to veil you from His eye, or shield you from His wrath. Speechless
and self-condemned, bound hand and foot, you are led away, and “cast
into outer darkness, where there is weeping and wailing and gnashing of
teeth.” Inquire, in the language of Job—“What then shall
I do when God rises up? And when He visits, what shall I answer Him?”
But must this be your terrible and inevitable doom? Listen to the touching
message of God: “As I live, says the Lord God, I have no pleasure
in the death of the wicked; but that the wicked turn from his way and
live—turn, turn from your evil ways; for why will you die!”
“Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts:
and let him return unto the Lord, and He will have mercy upon Him; and
to our God, for He will abundantly pardon.”
In proof of this, God has provided an expedient most glorifying to Himself
and suitable to us, by which the greatest sinner, repenting of his sins
and believing in Christ, may be saved. It is revealed in those wondrous
words: “God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son,
that whoever believes in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”
Accept, in penitence and faith and gratitude, this marvellous message
of love; abandon your excuses; cast away your weapons of rebellion against
God; turn from your evil ways; look to the Cross; accept the Savior; believe
and be saved!
God now commands you to repent, and Christ now invites you to believe.
Why, then, should you perish? Is there no balm in Gilead, and no Physician
there? Is there no life-boat that will rescue you from the yawning abyss,
no plank that will float you safely to the shore? Oh yes! There is a Physician—it
is Jesus. There is balm—it is His precious, sin-atoning blood. There
is a plank that will snatch you from death—it is the Cross of Calvary.
There is a life-boat that will bear you through the surging billows in
safety to the shore of Heaven—it is the Savior who, upon the Cross,
died for the chief of sinners, and of whom it is recorded that, “He
is able to save to the uttermost those who come unto God by Him.”
Why then will you, why should you die?
Believer in Jesus! that day of wrath, that scene of punishment will have
no woe nor terror for you. The day that will “rain upon the wicked
snares, and fire, and brimstone, and an horrible tempest,” will be
to you a day of salvation, of glory, and of triumph. You will be found
in Christ, robed with His righteousness, and washed from every stain in
His blood.
Your present faint love will then be found true love; your weak faith,
real faith; your trembling hope, firm as the throne. Christ has engaged
in covenant to bring home all that the Father gave to Him. There will
not be one stray sheep from His fold, not one missing jewel from His cabinet,
not a soul lost for whom he shed His atoning blood. All will be there
when He comes in majesty, glory, and power to receive and to present His
Bride to His Father.
Oh, what a day of glory, of bliss, of triumph will that day be to you!
From myriads of voices—and your’s will swell the harmony—the
anthem of salvation, the shout of joy will ascend and roll through the
mansions of heaven: “Lo, this is our God, we have waited for Him,
and He will save us! this is the Lord, we have waited for Him; we will
be glad and rejoice in Him.”
The very elements which will be employed in the everlasting destruction
of the wicked, will be the very elements which will unite in the everlasting
salvation of the righteous. The waters which drowned the antediluvian
sinners, bore Noah and his family in safety to the shore. What proved
a grave to the one, proved as an ark to the others. Terrible as the last
day will be to the ungodly, it will be a day of consummate glory to the
saints. In the person and face of the Judge you will recognize the form
and countenance of the Savior. The eye that will flash indignation and
vengeance upon His enemies, will beam love and kindness and welcome upon
His friends. The voice, louder and more piercing than ten thousand thunders;
which will say to them “DEPART!”—sweeter and more melodious
than the united harps of angels, will say to you “come!”
The Lord grant that we may find mercy of Him in that day. “Who among
us shall dwell with the devouring fire? who among its shall dwell in everlasting
burnings?” Not one who has fled as a poor, lost sinner to the Cross,
and has hid in the wounded side of the Savior. Covered within a cleft
of this Rock, he shall be safe in the great, the terrible Day of the Lord.
Reader! are you there? then, go forth and live and labor, and if need
be, suffer and die for Christ! If not there, give no sleep to your eyes,
or slumber to your eyelids, until you know that you are! “Agree with
your adversary quickly, while you are in the way with him; lest at any
time the adversary deliver you to the judge, and the judge deliver you
to the officer, and you be cast into prison. Verily I say unto you, You
shall by no means come out of there, until you bast paid the uttermost
farthing.”
“How will your heart endure
The terrors of that day,
When earth and Heaven before His face
Astonished, shrink away?
“But before the trumpet shakes
The dwellings of the dead,
Hark! from the Gospel’s gentle voice
What joyful tidings spread.
“You sinners seek His grace,
Whose wrath you cannot bear;
Fly to the shelter of the Cross
And find salvation there.”