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Word Gems
exploring self-realization, sacred personhood, and full humanity
The scripture itself indicates that
Satan is an abstraction, a symbol and
mythic figure, not a real person.
return to the main-page article on "Satan"
The book of Revelation speaks of a "lake of fire" into which is cast a defeated Satan.
However, the flames of this conflagration do not consume real people but only ideas, airy-fairy abstractions.
Death and Hades are also tossed into this fire. But Death and Hades are abstractions. Abstractions cannot die by fire. Death cannot die. Hades is a place and cannot die.
We are dealing here with metaphor. The "lake of fire" itself is metaphor representing the end of Evil in the world. This fire consumes abstractions, not real people.
Also consigned to the flames are Brute Force and Propaganda, two scourges of oppression in our world for thousands of years; and these, too, of course, are abstractions.
When the writer of Revelation asserts that Satan is relegated to fire, the context of his statement indicates that Satan is but one more abstraction, a symbol of Evil, that will one day be purged from the Earth.
See more discussion in the "lake of fire" article.
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