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NASB | Revelation 20:14 Then death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. This is the second death, the lake of fire. |
AMPLIFIED 2015 | Revelation 20:14 Then death and Hades [the realm of the dead] were thrown into the lake of fire. This is the second death, the lake of fire [the eternal separation from God]. [Matt 25:41; 1 Cor 15:26] |
Subject: Hell/Lake of Fire |
Bible Note: HELL. This is the word generally and unfortunately used by our translators to render the Hebrew Sheol, or:"aidhs, and once Uanatos, 2 Sam. xxii. 6: Inferi or Inferna, or sometimes Mors). We say unfortunately, because although, as St. Augustine truly asserts, Sheol,with its equivalents Inferi and Hades, are never used in a good sense (De Gen. ad Lit. xii. 33), yet the English word Hell is mixed up with numberless associations entirely foreign to the minds of the ancient Hebrews. It perhaps have been better to retain the Hebrew word Sheol, or else render it always by " the grave " or " the pit." Ewald accepts Luther's word Holle; even Unterwelt, (the underworld, place of the dead) DR. WILLIAM SMITH'S DICTIONARY OF THE BIBLE; Page 1038 In the parables of The Tares and The Drag Net, especially in the former, we are warned that in the future history of the kingdom there will appear a revolting and unnatural mixture of good and bad men, Christians and anti Christians, The evil are to resemble the good as "tares" (zezavia,bearded darnel) resemble wheat, the resemblance being so close that till the plants reach the ear they cannot easily be distinguished. (Mat 13:28 And he saith to them, A man, an enemy, did this; and the servants said to him, Wilt thou, then, that having gone away we may gather it up? YLT) They are in the kingdom and bear the Christian name. But they are not the better on account of this external similitude, but rather the worse ; counterfeit citizens of the kingdom, children of darkness wearing the guise of children of the light, wolves in sheep's clothing, Christians in name, only Of course the impulse of faithful servants is at once to get rid of the intruders: " Wilt thou then that we go and gather them up ?" " Out with the heretics "has been the watchword of nearly all faithful men ; and the result is, that instead of one Church in the world an approximate realization of the divine kingdom, there are hundreds of Churches, each, in theory at least, justifying its own separate existence by accusing all the rest of being tares. This consummation might be reached in either of two ways : either by all men being transformed into genuine sons of the kingdom, or by a judicial separation between Genuine and counterfeit,' between friends and foes. In the recorded sayings of Christ relative to this subject, purity is represented as being reached by separation. So in the parable of The Tares: Let both grow together until the harvest : and in the time of harvest I will say to the reapers, Gather ye together first the tares, and bind them in bundles to burn them : but gather the wheat into my barn; and in its interpretation : As therefore the tares are gathered and burned in the fire ; so shall it be in the end of this world. The Son of Man shall send forth His angels, and.." Whosoever shall deny Me before men, him will I also deny before My Father which is in heaven..But the children of the kingdom shall be cast out into the outer darkness. (Mat 13:38 The field is the world; the good seed are the children of the kingdom; but the tares are the children of the wicked) The everlasting fire does not necessarily imply perpetual existence of the individual. The furnace in the parable of the Tares consumes the tares as waste. From the point of view of that parable, the wicked are the waste of the moral world, and they are cast into the consuming fire, not so much to punish them, as to get rid of them. How far the category of waste can be properly applied to human souls is a question of the same sort as that which ask*, Can a being endowed with freewill fitly be compared to clay in the hands of a potter? BRUCE, The Kingdom of Heaven |