Lake of fire
The lake of fire appears in both ancient Egyptian and Christian religion as a place of after-death punishment of the wicked. The phrase is used in five verses of the Book of Revelation. In the biblical context, the concept seems analogous to the Jewish Gehenna, or the more common concept of Hell. The image of the lake of fire was taken up by the early Christian Hippolytus of Rome in about the year 230 and has continued to be used by modern Christians. Prior to Christianity, Plato identified the lake with Tartarus, where the souls of the wicked are tormented until it is time for them to be reborn, and where some souls are left.
Ancient Egyptian religion
has written:An image in the Papyrus of Ani, a version of the Book of the Dead, has been described as follows:
The 1995 edition of the International Standard Bible Encyclopedia says that the Egyptian lake of fire is too remote to be relevant to the use of "lake of fire" in the Book of Revelation.
Christianity
has Jesus himself use the image of a punishing unquenchable fire: "If your hand causes you to sin, cut it off. It is better for you to enter into life maimed than with two hands to go into Gehenna, into the unquenchable fire."Book of Revelation
The Book of Revelation, written sometime in the last half of the first century AD, has five verses that mention a "lake of fire"A commonly accepted and traditional interpretation is that the "lake of fire" and the "second death" are symbolic of eternal pain, pain of loss and perhaps pain of the senses, as punishment for wickedness. However, the Greek words translated "torment" or "tormented" in English come from the root βάσανος, basanos, with the original meaning of "the testing of gold and silver as media of exchange by the proving stone" and a later connotation of a person, especially a slave, "severely tested by torture" to reveal truth.
Denominational views
interpret the "lake of fire" and "second death" of the Book of Revelation as referring to a complete and definitive annihilation of those cast into it.Seventh-day Adventists believe in annihilation as well. They too believe that the lake of fire passage is referring to extinction, not to an eternal place of torment as understood in the mainstream Protestant interpretation.
Members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and other churches within the Latter Day Saint Movement read of a concept of the "lake of fire" in the Book of Mormon, in several passages of the record. The most descriptive instance of a "lake of fire" in the Book of Mormon occurs in Jacob 6:10, which reads, "Ye must go away into that lake of fire and brimstone, whose flames are unquenchable, and whose smoke ascendeth up forever and ever, which lake of fire and brimstone is endless torment." The Book of Mormon also refers to the lake of fire as a state of second death or spiritual death, where there is no hope for redemption or salvation until after the resurrection or, for sons of perdition, never.
Third century
pictured Hades, the abode of the dead, as containing "a lake of unquenchable fire" at the edge of which the unrighteous "shudder in horror at the expectation of the future judgment, already feeling the power of their punishment". The lake of fire is described by Hippolytus unambiguously as the place of eternal torment for the sinners after the resurrection.Twentieth century
The Catholic Portuguese visionary Lúcia Santos reported that the Virgin Mary had given her a vision of Hell as a sea of fire:Universalist eschatology
Early Christian Universalists, most notably Origen of Alexandria, and Gregory of Nyssa, understood the lake of fire as a symbolic purifying fire used to eliminate the dross from the gold, or a "refiner's crucible". Origen refers to the "lead of wickedness" that must be refined out of the gold. Origen obtained his Universalist views, known then as apocatastasis, from his mentor Clement of Alexandria, who was a student of Pantaenus. Origen explained the refining metaphor in response to a philosopher named Celsus who accused Christians of representing God as a merciless tormentor armed with fire.In the view of Origen,
19th-century scholar Charles Bigg summarized Origen's view as, "Slowly yet certainly the blessed change must come, the purifying fire must eat up the dross and leave the pure gold. One by one we shall enter into rest, never to stray again. Then when death, the last enemy, is destroyed, when the tale of his children is complete, Christ will 'drink wine in the kingdom of his Father.' This is the end, when 'all shall be one, as Christ and the Father are one,' when 'God shall be all in all.'"
In the view of Gregory of Nyssa, "when death approaches to life, and darkness to light, and the corruptible to the incorruptible, the inferior is done away with and reduced to non-existence, and the thing purged is benefited, just as the dross is purged from gold by fire."
Further evidence corroborating their interpretation of the lake of fire as a "refiner's crucible" is that the Greek word commonly translated as "lake" also refers to something small, like a pond or a "pool", as translated in the Wycliffe and New American Bible.
Also, the added detail of "sulfur" in the lake of fire is related to an ancient gold refining technique. Gold refining by sulphurization, also related to gold parting, is described in detail by ancient writers. When unwanted metals, such as lead and copper, are heated in the presence of sulfur, the chemical reaction reduces the unwanted metals into sulfides, such as lead sulfide and copper sulfide. Since sulfur is a much lighter element, atomic number 16 on periodic table, the new sulfide molecules easily float to the top of the crucible as dross. Sulfur is also part of the smelting process related to silver and gold and other metal ores and naturally occurs in these ores.