*** w65 3/1 p. 140 pars. 12-18 Who Will Be Resurrected from the Dead? *** of the same kind but on a more blameworthy scale? What does 2 Peter 2:6-10 say about this? We read: 13 “By reducing the cities Sodom and Gomorrah to ashes he condemned them, setting a pattern for ungodly persons of things to come; and he delivered righteous Lot, who was greatly distressed by the indulgence of the law-defying people in loose conduct—for that righteous man by what he saw and heard while dwelling among them from day to day was tormenting his righteous soul by reason of their lawless deeds—Jehovah knows how to deliver people of godly devotion out of trial, but to reserve unrighteous people for the day of judgment to be cut off [or, be checked], especially, however, those who go on after flesh with the desire to defile it and who look down on lordship.”—NW, margin, 1950 edition. 14 Lot was delivered from Sodom’s destruction, but he is not yet completely saved to everlasting life under God’s kingdom. He needs a resurrection to that end. Now notice, please, that 2 Peter 2:6 says that the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah was only a “pattern,” one that was full of instruction for godly Christians as to what would happen to them if they stayed faithful to Jehovah God and what was sure to happen to them if they followed a course like that of the people of Sodom and Gomorrah. 15 Were those Sodomites worse than the rest of the Canaanites? No; not according to Leviticus 18:21-28. And Peter does not say that the Sodomites and Gomorreans were destroyed everlastingly. However, the dedicated Christians, being in a position more responsible than the position of Sodom and Gomorrah, yes, more responsible than the position of unbelieving Capernaum, would be everlastingly destroyed. Hence 2 Peter 2:12, 13 says concerning the dedicated, baptized Christians who get corrupted: “These men, like unreasoning animals born naturally to be caught and destroyed, will, in the things of which they are ignorant and speak abusively, even suffer destruction in their own course of destruction, wronging themselves as a reward for wrongdoing.” They suffer a destruction like that of the lower animals. 16 Sodom and Gomorrah were wiped out for all time as cities; they did not remain as cities down to the very day of Jesus. But what about the destroyed inhabitants of those cities? We must have in mind what the Christian apostle Peter said above as we now read the following words: “So too Sodom and Gomorrah and the cities about them, after they in the same manner as the foregoing ones had committed fornication excessively and gone out after flesh for unnatural use, are placed before us as a warning example by undergoing the judicial punishment of everlasting fire.”—Jude 7. 17 So the inhabitants of Sodom and Gomorrah were made a “warning example,” because they were not allowed to continue existing till the day of Jesus Christ and of Peter and Jude and fellow disciples. Not that the people of Sodom and Gomorrah were condemned to Gehenna and were hurled into the “lake that burns with fire and sulphur”; but that they were made a warning example to unfaithful Christians (”ungodly persons”) who will be judicially punished with “everlasting fire” or everlasting destruction.—Rev. 20:14, 15; 21:8; 2 Pet. 2:6. 18 The people of Sodom and Gomorrah
Posted on: Thu, 15 Aug 2013 13:51:17 +0000
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