Matthew 25:46

46. And these shall go away Millenarians, who hold that the righteous are raised from the dead at a first resurrection one thousand years before the resurrection of the wicked at a second resurrection, are unable to explain this entire scene of judgment. Here at our Lord’s next advent, at an unknown distance, stand the righteous and the wicked at once before his bar, listen in common to each other’s trial and sentence before either pass to their final doom. The ordinary subterfuge is to say that this judgment day is a thousand years long. For this there is no support in the passage. Besides, by their view the righteous ought to be acquitted and glorified for a millennial kingdom before the wicked are tried, or even raised from the dead. Whereas by this whole description the wicked are raised, adjudged, and condemned before the righteous enter at all upon their reward.

Everlasting punishment. . . life eternal The words everlasting and eternal are here in the original precisely the same word, and should have been so translated. Hence the duration of the penalty of the wicked is defined by the same measurement as the duration of the reward of the righteous. One is just as long as the other. The pillars of heaven are no firmer than the foundations of hell. The celestial nature of saint and angels is no more immutable than the infernal nature of devils and sinners. And since the word used is the most expressive of perpetuity that the Greek affords, so we have the strongest assurance here that language can afford. And since the term is used as a measurement of divine duration, we may well infer that the foundations both of the divine rewards and the divine penalties are as perpetual as the foundation of the divine government. Clouds and darkness are indeed round about him; righteousness and justice are the basis of his throne.

The word αιων (we may suggest to scholars) is not derived, as Dr. Clarke, (quoting Aristotle) asserts, from αει , always, and ων , existing; for ων is but the noun termination added to αει . This noun termination is equivalent to the Latin termination um; so that the Latin aevum is (with a digamma inserted) the same word as αιων . The Latin word aevum is the same as our word ever, so that the Greek εις αιωνα is precisely forever. By adding the adjective termination ernus to αει we have (inserting a strengthening t) aeternus, eternal. So that αιων , ever, and eternal, are etymological equivalents.