Nahum 1:8 Commentary and Bible Study

What will happen to those who are lost in the last day of life, when they are reserved for judgment in that prison house of the lost, or when in the final day of judgment they are judged and sent away from God eternally? What will happen to them? ‘Oh,’ say some – and a few even who claim to be Bible believers say this – ‘what will happen is they will suffer for a while, and then God will change his mind and he will let them out of condemnation so that in the end everybody will be in heaven. But that is not what we read in the words of the prophet Nahum. ‘With an overrunning flood he will make an utter end of the place thereof, and darkness shall pursue his enemies.’ They will be lost forever. And this sentiment is repeated ten times in this short book: that their destruction will be utterly final. There will be no repenting of it, no changing of minds, nothing at all. So the day of judgment seals the fate of all of us, if we do not come to Jesus Christ for mercy and for forgiveness during this life. Nineveh is in mind again. Whether that overrunning flood is literal water, or whether it's a symbol, a metaphor, for the troops and the overpowering invasion is hard to tell. But Nineveh will be brought down, and the people who God will use to do it will be the Chaldeans, the Babylonians and they will bring down Nineveh in 621 BC with the Medes too (who captured Assur in 614 BC) and others, but they will bring Assyria’s dominance to a complete end, ‘and darkness shall pursue his enemies.’ It is probably a figure meaning that they will be eliminated, never to rise again. There will be nothing more to fear from them. There will be other enemies, but they too will be brought under judgment.