Divine destruction.
I. GOD CAN DESTROY HIS OWN WORK. What he made he can unmake. People dogmatize about the indestructibility of matter, of atoms, of souls. How do we know they are indestructible? Is God's omnipotence limited by the properties of his own works? But apart from all metaphysics, the complex world, being constructed, is plainly subject to destruction. It is monstrous to think the universe is a huge Frankenstein, able to escape from the power of its Maker.
II. GOD HAS A RIGHT TO DESTROY HIS OWN WORK. There is no property so clearly belonging to a person as the work of his own hands. All things that exist were made by God, and all belong to him. What he gave us he has a right to withdraw. His gifts are loans, talents to be used for a season and then returned. No creature has a right to its own life before God. He freely gave it; he may withdraw it. Much less have we sinful creatures any such right.
III. GOD WILL NOT DESTROY HIS OWN WORK WITHOUT GOOD REASON. A power is not necessarily always put forth nor a right in perpetual exercise. God does not act capriciously nor cruelly. He is the Creator rather than the Destroyer. He delights in creating because he loves his creatures. He takes no pleasure in destroying, but will only do it under urgent necessity.
IV. NEVERTHELESS THERE ARE CIRCUMSTANCES UNDER WHICH GOD WILL DESTROY HIS OWN WORK. All things were good when they came from their Maker's hands. But some have been corrupted. When a thing is hopelessly corrupt there is no reason for preserving it and much for destroying it. See this in earthly experience—the Flood, the destruction of Jerusalem, and m greater judgments—the wages of sin, death, and the final destruction of the world. Therefore let us not presume that any work or institution is eternal because it was established by the eternal God, that any possession of ours must be permanent because it came from him, or that our own life is safe because God breathed it into us.