Ezekiel 3:19

Yet if you have warned the wicked and he does not turn from his wickedness or from his wicked way, he shall die in his iniquity; but you have delivered yourself.


John 8:21

Then He said again to them, “I go away, and you will seek Me, and will die in your sin; where I am going, you cannot come.”

Proverbs 11:7

When a wicked man dies, his expectation will perish,
And the hope of strong men perishes.

Jeremiah 34:5

You will die in peace; and as spices were burned for your fathers, the former kings who were before you, so they will burn spices for you; and they will lament for you, “Alas, lord!”’ For I have spoken the word,” declares the Lord.

2 Chronicles 36:11-13
Zedekiah was twenty-one years old when he became king, and he reigned eleven years in Jerusalem. He did evil in the sight of the Lord his God; he did not humble himself before Jeremiah the prophet who spoke for the Lord. He also rebelled against King Nebuchadnezzar who had made him swear allegiance by God. But he stiffened his neck and hardened his heart against turning to the Lord God of Israel.

The Destruction of the Wicked
The Bible leaves no room for doubt: God will destroy the wicked Thus in the Old Testament: "Though the wicked spring up like grass and all evildoers flourish, they will be forever destroyed" (Psalm 92). Jesus' testimony is: "Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather be afraid of the one who can destroy both body and soul in hell" (Matthew 10:28).

There is no doubt at all what "destruction" has traditionally meant for us. "Destruction" means "hell": it involves the eternal and conscious, mental and physical suffering of the unbeliever.

But nowadays not only do the Jehovah's Witnesses, for example, teach a contrary opinion, but even those once con­sidered sound in the faith have abandoned the traditional view. Destruction, they allege, involves the wiping out, the annihilation, of the wicked. They cease to exist. And, if you pause to con­sider the matter, "to destroy" something does tend to make us think of it being "wiped out" rather than kept permanently in existence. Indeed an English dictionary gives the meanings: "to put an end to, do away with, extinguish; to kill or annihilate".

On the other hand, the same dictionary also gives the mean­ings: "to ruin, spoil or render useless; to crush, subdue or de­feat". These latter meanings are quite consistent with the tradi­tional picture of hell.

So which meaning of the word "destruction" is the right one? It is not a case of choosing what fits our own outlook best. That would be to make our­selves gods. We must ask what the word means in the Scrip­tures. Nor is it a case of looking at what it means in English, but of asking what is conveyed by the Hebrew and Greek in which the Bible was originally written.

This is not an easy task, nor is it one that those unversed in the Biblical languages can fully perform for themselves. But a large part of that task is to take the Biblical words for "destruc­tion" and, aided by an appro­priate concordance, see how they are actually used in differ­ent Biblical settings. This can then help us to see what they mean when used in connection with the final state of the wicked. Here we will attempt to perform part of this task for the New Testament.

Applied to Death←⤒🔗
The word is applied to people being killed or dying. "Don't you care that we are "perish­ing"?" said the disciples to Jesus in the storm (Mark 4:38). They were in danger of being "de­stroyed", that is, of dying. Herod sought to "destroy", that is, to "kill" Jesus (Matthew 2:13).

But that doesn't contribute anything to the support of the view that, when applied to the "destruction" of the wicked, it means "annihilation". Rather the reverse. After all, in the Scrip­tures "death" doesn't mean "annihilation". It is a dissolving of the person into his constituent parts: the body lies in the grave; the spirit returns to God. If the "destruction" involved in the first (natural) death doesn't mean "annihilation", the burden of proof is on those that say that it means "annihilation" when it refers to the second death.

Already Destroyed←⤒🔗
According to the New Tes­tament believers are already "destroyed". The word fre­quently appearing as "lost" in the New Testament is really this word we are studying. Jesus sent his disciples to the "lost" sheep of Israel (Matthew 10:6); to these "lost" sheep he himself ministered (Matthew 15:24); he came, indeed, to seek and save "what was lost" (Luke 19:10). So he told stories about the "lost" sheep; the "lost" coin; and the "lost" son (Luke 15:4, 9, 24). Paul speaks of those who are "perishing" (1 Corinthians 1:18; 2 Corinthians 4:3; 2 Thessalo­nians 2:10). In all these cases the word is "destroyed". In other words, Jesus speaks of unbe­lievers being in a "destroyed" condition. Paul implies that they are being "destroyed".

We can therefore, with the utmost confidence, say that "destroy" when applied to the human condition does not mean "annihilate" — Jesus didn't come to save sheep that had been "annihilated"! It refers to the ruined, spoiled and frustrated condition of man in his sinful­ness.

The originally impressed divine image has been marred by the counter-impress of sin. Man's relationship with God, fully enjoyed in the Garden, has been completely disrupted. His happy connection with the en­vironment has been brought under curse and, in fulfilling the divine command to be God's ruler in the world, he is con­fronted with difficulty, frustra­tion and hostility. His relation­ships with others have been spoiled by the corrupting in­fluence of the sinful tendency. His heart is a battleground of conflicting malevolent influ­ences; a playground for a multi­plicity of sinful passions. Every­where you look there is distor­tion and warping, marring and spoiling. Man stands ruined by the ongoing influence of sin. To this Jesus refers when he calls people "lost", "destroyed". Man is set on a downward path in­volving increasing ruination, frustration and alienation. To this Paul refers when he speaks of unbelievers "perishing", "be­ing destroyed".

It is not surprising if, when we read that God will "destroy" the wicked, we understand it to refer, not to annihilation, but to the intensification of that alien­ation and frustration to which they are already subject.

Proverbs 14:32
When calamity comes, the wicked are brought down, but even in death the righteous seek refuge in God.