(a) The use of fire for these purposes has led to the word being figuratively applied to the trials, especially in the form of severe persecutions, which the early Christians were called on to endure at the hands of their heathen oppressors (1 P V). From the searching ordeal by fire, it was the Divine design that their faith might emerge, more precious than gold, thoroughly tested and approved as genuine. In a later passage (4'^) the extremity of their sufferings, arising from the same cause, is compared to a burning or conflagration (Trvpoiiris) by which character is tested and purified ; and the sharp discipline they are undergoing is spoken of appropriately, considering its extreme severity, as judgment (Kplfia) already begun, from which the righteous escajje with.difficulty (v."'- ; cf. 1 Co 3^).
(b) The figure is used in a somewhat similar manner to describe the judgment by which the work of Christian teachers is to be tested at the Parousia. 'The day (of Christ's Second Coming) is to be revealed in fire' (cf. 2 Th 1"'-), 'and the fire itself shall prove each man's work of what sort it is ' (1 Co 3'^-'5 RV). The fire in which the whole fabric built on the One Foundation is involved, detects and exposes the flimsy and worthless materials by consuming them, but leaves uninjured the solid and durable materials that are fire-proof. In the one instance, the skilful builder has the gratification of seeing his work survive, and him- self rewarded. In the other, the unskilful builder has the mortification of seeing his work destroj'ed and his labour lost ; and although he himself esc'ijies, it is with difficulty, as one escapes from a Imrning house — 'saved, yet so as through fire.' The picture presented is that of a general con-
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flagration. It may have been suggested by ' the con- flagration of Corinth under -Munimins ; the stately temples standing amidst the universal destruction of the meaner buildings ' (A. P. Stanley, Epistles to the Corinthians'^, 1858, p. 67). The main point of the illustration is not the purification of character, but the decisive testing of the difference between solid and worthless achievement. The fire is not dis- ciplinary, and, needless to say, it contains no allusion to 'purgatorial fire, whether in this or in a future life' (J. B. Mayor, 'The General Epistle of Jude,' in EOT, 1910, p. 276).
3. Fire as an instrument of Divine punishment. — (a) In this section may be grouped together passages in which fire is a symbol of God's temporal judgments on human sin. Such passages have a close attinity with frequent references in the OT, in which God is represented ' as surrounded by, or manifested in, fire, the most immaterial of elements, and at the same time the agency best suited to re- present symbolically His power to destroy all that is sinful or i;nholy ' (S. K. Driver, Daniel [Cambridii^e Bible for Schools, 1900], p. 85 ; cf. Gn IS^^ Nu \&^, Ps 50», Is 3027 3314^ jer 44 211-, Ezk 2I»i, Dn 7"'-, Am 5^ 7^).
(a) In accordance with this usage, fire is employed in Jude^ to represent the present judgment which overtakes the second of the three classes enticed into licentious living by the antinomian teachers (cf. v.*}. There is no reference here to the fire of future judgment. There is an evident allusion in the phrase, 'snatching them out of the fire' (RV), to Am 4", where persons who had just escaped with their lives from the earthquake, are referred to ; and to Zee 3^ where the high priest Joshua is described as a brand plucked out of the Babylonian captivity. Fleshly indulgence exposes those ad- dicted to it to present penalties as well as to future ones, and it is from tliis perilous position that their rescuers are to snatch them hastily, and almost violently.
(§) Fire, as an image of God's temporal judg- ments, appears in the symbolism of the Apocalypse. When the Church was engaged in a life-and-death struggle with Imperial Home, her members re- garded terrible visitations, in the shape of the three historic scourges, war, famine, and pestilence, as signs of the approaching end of tiie age and Christ's Return. The NT Apocalyptist heightens the eflect of the lurid pictures in which he forecasts the judgments impending on the enemies of Christ and His Church, by the introduction of fire, in one case literal, material fire, as a token of those judgments. In answer to the prayers of suffering- saints, the angel fills the censer with fire from the altar, and casts tlie burning contents on the earth, as a sign that the Divine vengeance is about to descend upon it (Rev 8°; cf. Ezk 10^). The horror which the countless host of horsemen is fitted to inspire, is intensified by the circumstance that fire and smoke and brimstone issiie out of their mouths (9"'*). In 14^* it is the angel who has power over the fire — in this instance the symbol of Divine wrath — that brings the angel with the sickle the message that the vintage is to begin, because the world is ripe for judgment. The sea of glass before the Throne, by the side of which stand the victors in the conflict with the Beast, is flushed red with the fire of impending judgments — the seven last plagues which are the i)recursors of the downfall of Babylon (15"- ; cf. 17M.