God’s Promise
Some take the promise in Genesis 8:21 to mean that God will never destroy every living thing, specifically with the case of hell. But that is not what the verse is saying. Let’s read the verse:
“Then Noah built an altar to the LORD… and offered burnt offerings on the altar… Then the LORD said in His heart, “I will never again curse the ground for man’s sake, although the imagination of man’s heart is evil from his youth; nor will I again destroy every living thing as I have done”.
Genesis 8:21
The divine response to Noah’s devoted worship was a resolve that the earth would never again be destroyed by a flood. This promise simply refers to the fact that a universal catastrophe such as the Flood would not overtake the human race and animals again.
But because “the imagination of man’s heart is evil from his youth,” the last final cleansing of sin will not be by water but by fire that is for “anyone not found written in the Book of Life was cast into the lake of fire” (Revelation 20:15).
The words of Genesis 8:21 did not remove the curse of Genesis 3:17 that stated, “Because you have heeded the voice of your wife, and have eaten from the tree of which I commanded you, saying, ‘You shall not eat of it’: cursed is the ground for your sake; in toil you shall eat of it all the days of your life.”
It is very clear that God doesn’t want any sinner to die. For He sent His own Son to die on their behalf and redeem them back from death (John 3:16). And the Lord declares in Ezekiel 33:11 “I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn from his way and live…For why should you die, O house of Israel?’”
The work of God has always been to save and not to destroy. Destroying the wicked in hellfire is so strange to God’s character that the Bible calls it His “unusual act” (Isaiah 28:21). God’s loving heart will be pained at the destruction of His children.
But if the sinners will insist on rejecting His love and following the devil, the Lord will respect their decisions and will have no choice but to destroy them with the devil when He cleans the universe of the deadly effects of sin by the fires of hell (John 5:28-29).
In His service,
BibleAsk Team
