The World and the Word

                                                          The Wheat and the Chaff

In Ezekiel 24:1-14, the prophet prophesied about that which God will do to the evil nation of Babylon because of their persecution of the Jews. God revealed that at some time in the future, He will use His fiery wrath to dissolve her system, but He will only burn her "scum" in His fire, meaning her evil nature. In verse 13, God revealed that He will purge all her filthiness. Something has to be purged. Something has to be cleansed. That something can only be her living souls and spirits that God created and loves. If in God's final Judgment, He purges all the evil natures from all of the good lives of all living Babylonians, then surely He will purge all living humans confined to the regions of the dead of all their evil natures. Revelation 22:11-12; Ecclesiastes 3:14.

In the first eight verses of Nahum 1:1-10, the prophet describes God's destruction of the world in the end with Nineveh as the example. But in His Judgment at that time, God will know those who trust in Him and those who do not. This prophecy of the final Judgment can only be about all humans confined within the regions of death who will repent and believe in the Lamb in a great worship service as recorded in Revelation 5:11-14. God will cleanse these living humans of all their sins and evil, raise them all from the dead, and recreate them to live on His recreated earth. I Corinthians 3:11-15; Revelation 20:5; Revelation 21:1-5.

God assures humans in verse 9 that He will bring "affliction" to and "utter end," meaning He will completely abolish all of the evil that has burdened humanity. In verse 10, God relates that He will devour only evil itself in the lake of fire. He likens this evil to "thorns" and to being "drunken," not the drunkards, and as "stubble," all of which are totally useless and empty and only fit to be burned in God's fiery wrath. All through the Bible, God likens evil to vanity. In the end of the world, God will use His fiery wrath to effect a complete separation of all that is good which He created from all that is evil. Romans 8:18-23; I Corinthians 3:11-15; Colossians 1:15-20; John 5:28-29; Romans 11:36; Revelation 20:5; Revelation 21:1-5; Revelation 22:11-12.