The Conditionalist Faith of Our Fathers, vol. 1

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO: Apocalypse Reveals Final Fate of Wicked

I. Teaching of the Apocalypse on Final Punishment

As we have seen, the Apocalypse is pre-eminently a book of life and death. As to the LIFE phase, we find the tree of life (Revelation 2:7; Revelation 22:2, 14), the book of life (Revelation 20:12, 15; Revelation 21:27; Revelation 22:19), the river of water of life (Revelation 22:1, 2), the crown of life (Revelation 2:10; Revelation 3:11), and the water of life (Revelation 21:6; Revelation 22:17). All of these are for the recipients of eternal life. CFF1 404.1

As to the DEATH (thanatos) aspect we find the “second death” four times portrayed, and defined as death in and through the “lake of fire” (Revelation 2:11; Revelation 20:14, 15; Revelation 21:8). It is also termed “killing with death” (apokteino, “to kill outright,” “to slay,” “to put an end to”); “destruction” (from daaphtheiro, “decay wholly,” “perish”—Revelation 11:18); and being “devoured” (katesthio, “denoting utter excision”—Revelation 20:9). These terms are always used in the sense of bringing to an utter end. As twice intimated in the Old Testament, the wicked will then “sleep a perpetual sleep, and not wake, saith the King, whose name is the Lord of hosts” (Jeremiah 51:57). There is identity of punishment in both Testaments. CFF1 404.2

Observe first that the universal “first” death, with its accompanying hades (gravedom), is cast into and swallowed up by the lake of fire (Revelation 21:8). Then Satan, the keeper of gravedom, which is the stated “house of his prisoners” (Isaiah 14:17), is at last consigned to the same fiery fate. But this all indicates, not endless continuance in misery, but the actual ending of existence itself. CFF1 404.3