Lake of fire
Fiery rivers and lakes in the underworld are mentioned in works such as the Coffin Texts and the Egyptian Book of the Dead.
[1][2] Chapter 126 of the Egyptian Book of the Dead is associated with this vignette and the text is addressed to the "four baboons who sit in the prow of the Barque of Re.
The baboons who guarded the pool were a force that could refresh and protect the deceased if they knew the correct recitation or destroy them if they did not.
[4] Am-heh, whose name means "devourer of millions" or "eater of eternity",[5] is a hunting dog headed god from the underworld who lived in a lake of fire.
[6] The Book of Revelation has five verses that mention a "lake of fire" (Ancient Greek: λίμνη τοῦ πυρός, romanized: limne tou pyros): And the beast[7] was taken, and with him the false prophet[8] that wrought miracles before him, with which he deceived them that had received the mark of the beast, and them that worshipped his image.
[13][14][15][16][17][18] 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 a medium of exchange by the proving stone" and a later connotation of a person, especially a slave, "severely tested by torture" to reveal truth.
—1921 Garden City Confession of Faith (Mennonite Anabaptist)[20]Jehovah's Witnesses interpret the "lake of fire" and "second death" of the Book of Revelation as referring to a metaphor of a complete and definitive annihilation of those cast into it.
The Book of Mormon also refers to the lake of fire as a state of spiritual death, where there is no hope for redemption or salvation until after the resurrection or, for sons of perdition, never.
Hippolytus of Rome (d. 235) 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, (as if they were) already feeling the power of their punishment".
Plunged in this fire were demons and souls in human form, like transparent burning embers, all blackened or burnished bronze, floating about in the conflagration, now raised into the air by the flames that issued from within themselves together with great clouds of smoke, now falling back on every side like sparks in a huge fire, without weight or equilibrium, and amid shrieks and groans of pain and despair, which horrified us and made us tremble with fear.
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.
[29]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.
