Lake of fire

A lake of fire appears, in both ancient Egyptian and Christian religion, as a place of after-death destruction of the wicked. The phrase is used in four verses of the Book of Revelation. Such a lake also appears in Plato's Phaedo, explicitly identified 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 forever. The image was also used by the Early Christian Hippolytus of Rome in about the year 200 and has continued to be used by modern Christians. Related is Jewish Gehenna which, among other things, like hell, is a valley near Jerusalem where trash was burned.

Richard H. Wilkinson has written:

An image in the Papyrus of Ani (ca. 1250 BC), 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.

The Book of Revelation, written some time 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.

Jehovah's Witnesses 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.

Christian Universalists interpret the "lake of fire" as an instrument of purification/refinement that will bring all people into a relationship with God. The word for "torment" in Revelation 14:10 is the Greek "basanizo" which has a primary meaning of testing with a touchstone. The lake of fire is not only for torment but for "testing": the analogy is in testing metal with a touchstone to make sure it is pure.

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