Jesus Christ, not for the omission of deeds of charity. Even supposing we allowed the expression

"everlasting punishment" the full force demanded by orthodox teaching, even then we should be without

the slightest warrant for taking the punishment attached to one set of conditions, and applying it to sinners

of all times and dispensations. The eagerness with which this passage is quoted, but all its terms brushed

aside, is itself evidence of the poverty of the position that can fall into such methods, crying aloud at one

minute against a false gospel of works, and the next forgetting its protest so that the wages of sin shall be,

not as Paul was inspired to declare, "death", but eternal conscious torment.

The question of the meaning of the words rendered "eternal" and "everlasting" comes up again in these

pages under the headings of olam and aion.

Orthodoxy mutilates both Romans 6 and Matthew 25. It takes eternal life as being the gift of God, and

rejects the wages of sin as being death. It takes the wages of sin from Matthew 25 as being everlasting

punishment, and rejects the grant of eternal life and righteousness as a result of good works. Surely it will

be manifest to the most zealous advocate of eternal torment,

that to overleap all dispensational boundaries,

make a mixture of law and grace, faith and works,

violate all demands of context, and

ignore all limits of time, place and circumstance,

is to show oneself disapproved before God, and, so far as interpretation and service arising out of this

doctrine is concerned, to prepare one for shame in His presence through failure to divide aright His Word

of truth.

Dr. Young in his Concordance defines the word punishment by "restraint", and the literal meaning is

"cutting off" as of "pruning", which explanation contains a truth that would yield far more profit by an

hour's meditation than all the indiscriminate repetition of Matthew 25:46 can ever produce.

The fire into which these rejected nations go is said to be the one "prepared for the devil and his angels".

This is evidently the same as that of Revelation 19:20 and 20:10, which, when it is associated with men, is

defined not as a place of never-ending torment, but as "the second death" (Rev. 20:14,15). Matthew 25 is

parallel with Psalm 37:22:

"Come, ye BLESSED of My Father, INHERIT the kingdom .... Depart from Me, ye CURSED ... into

everlasting PUNISHMENT" (Matt. 25:34-46).

"such as be BLESSED of Him shall INHERIT the earth; and they that be CURSED of Him shall be CUT

OFF" (Psa. 37:22).

Of those who have seen the necessity for rightly dividing the Word, but who have, till now, hesitated

about the application of Matthew 25, we ask whether the following is a fair statement of truth? The

gospel of the kingdom ends at Acts 28; evidential miracles end at Acts 28; the hope of Israel ends at Acts

28; but eternal punishment is the one exception that must not be given up.

Two other expressions must be considered briefly before we pass from Matthew to a wider survey, viz.,

"torment" and "gnashing of teeth".

"And his lord was wroth, and delivered him to the tormentors, till he should pay all that was due unto

him" (Matt. 18:34).

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