used with full unequivocal meaning by Esther, when she had dared, unbidden, to enter

the presence of the king, "If I perish, I perish" (Esther 4: 16). The perishing here is

again explained by the words of verse 11, "All the king's servants. . . . do know that

whosoever. . . . shall come unto the king into the inner court, who is not called, there is

one law of his to put him to death, except such to whom the king shall hold out the

golden sceptre, that he may live." Esther dared the death penalty, and expressed her

feelings by the words quoted, "If I perish, I perish." The multiplication of terms in

Esther 7: 4 is striking, "For we are sold, I and my people, to be destroyed, to be slain,

and to perish. But if we had been sold for bondmen and bondwomen, I had held my

tongue." Here it is evident that perishing is much more than the horrors of eastern

slavery; it is used in connection with destruction and death, not life in misery.

In Jonah 1: 14 the cry of the storm tossed sailors is no jugglery with words when they

said, "Let us not perish for this man's life." They did not intrude any idle speculation

concerning "after death," they knew they were in immediate peril of drowning, hence

their cry. So also with the gourd which sprang up over Jonah, "which came up in a night

and perished in a night."  The gourd had withered, and as far as its purpose was

concerned it was the same as if it had been destroyed by fire.

In Deut. 9: 4 we read, "How He made the water of the Red Sea to overflow

them. . . . and how the Lord hath destroyed them unto this day." What this destruction

was like we may read in Exod. 14: 28, "There remained not so much as one of them."

They had perished, they had been destroyed, although their bodies were seen by the

Israelites "dead upon the sea shore." We say nothing about "annihilation;" that word is

used by those who wish to cast a slur upon the teaching of the Word in order to keep their

own traditions. The dead bodies were there, but life, conscious being, enmity or love,

sorrow or joy, were gone; as conscious beings they were destroyed, even although their

carcasses lined the sea shore.

Turn again to another passage, Deut. 12: 2, "Ye shall utterly destroy all the places,

wherein the nations which ye shall possess served their gods." How were they to destroy

them? Were they to sit down and argue concerning the "indestructibility of matter"?

Certainly not; their instructions were definite, "Ye shall overthrow their altars, and break

their pillars, and burn their groves with fire, and ye shall hew down the graven images of

their gods, and destroy the names of them out of that place" (verse 3). Surely words

cannot be more explicit.

When Athaliah waded through a sea of blood to the throne, we are told that she

"destroyed all the seed royal." When we hear the doom of the "cherub of the anointing"

(satan) uttered in Ezek. 28: 16, we find the words are, "I will destroy thee, oh covering

cherub, from the midst of the stones of fire," but this destruction is explained in verses 18

and 19 by these words, "I will bring forth a fire from the midst of thee, it shall devour

thee, and I will bring thee to ashes upon the earth. . . . and never shalt thou be any

more!"