Is Revelation 20:10 the Final Word on Eternal Torment?
There are people who cling to Revelation 20:10, which says, “The devil, who deceived them, was cast into the lake of fire and brimstone where the beast and the false prophet are. And they will be tormented day and night forever and ever.”
They treat this as the ultimate verse to prove eternal torment of the wicked, while overlooking what comes just before it—not only in the same chapter, but throughout the rest of Scripture, especially in the Old Testament.
Let’s take a closer look.
The Literalist’s View on Eternal Torment Leads to Contradictions
Revelation is written in highly symbolic language and is not meant to be interpreted word for word in a literalist way. If you do that, you end up with contradictions and theological confusion.
For example, Revelation 20:10 says the devil will be tormented forever and ever, but what about the people who followed him? Verse 9 says they were devoured by fire from God. The Greek word for “devoured” means to eat up, to consume, to destroy completely by fire. That’s not eternal torment. That’s annihilation.
Furthermore, Verse 14 says that death and hell are thrown into the lake of fire. If you’re reading that literally, then you have to ask: is death something that can feel pain? Is hell a conscious being that can be tormented forever?
If death is cast into the fire, and yet Revelation 21:4 says “there will be no more death,” then death cannot be burning forever. Something cannot both cease to exist and be tormented at the same time.
That same verse also says there will be no more pain. If there’s no more pain, how can anyone be in eternal torment?
Prophetic Parallelism: Isaiah and Jeremiah Define “Forever and Ever”
To understand Revelation 20:10, we need to let Scripture explain itself. The same kind of “eternal fire” language used in Revelation also appears in Old Testament prophecies about Edom and Babylon, but those passages include details that clarify the meaning.
Isaiah 34:9-10 says Edom’s “streams will be turned into pitch, its dust into sulfur, and its land will become burning pitch. It will not be quenched night or day. Its smoke will go up forever. From generation to generation, it will lie waste. No one will pass through it forever and ever.” But what happens after this “forever” burning? The answer? No one will remain there.
Jeremiah 49:18 makes it even clearer by comparing Edom to Sodom and Gomorrah and saying that “neither will a son of man dwell in it.”
This creates a serious problem for the literalist. If the fire is real and the torment is conscious, as some claim for Revelation, then the place should not be empty. But the prophets plainly say it is.
And it gets worse.
If someone insists that Revelation 20:10 must be taken literally, then that same rule must apply to “neither will a son of man dwell in it” (Jeremiah 49:18). This leads to an absurd conclusion: every human male except Adam, since he was not born of a man, would escape eternal torment. That would leave only women to suffer forever. That is nonsense.
The only consistent way to read this is that the place and its wicked inhabitants are destroyed forever. They are completely gone and will never return. The prophetic phrase “forever and ever” points to a permanent result, not endless suffering. The fire destroys, and the smoke shows that judgment is final, not that agony continues.
The wicked are devoured by fire from God. Not tortured. Not preserved. Devoured. That matches what we see throughout Scripture.
In other words, the result of eternal fire is literal: complete and final destruction. But the language used to describe it is symbolic.
The Old Testament Testimony: Wickedness Consumed to “Ashes” and “Smoke”
- Malachi 4:1-3 says the wicked will be burned up like stubble, leaving them neither root nor branch. They will become ashes under the soles of the righteous.
- Obadiah 1:16 says they will be as though they had never been.
- Psalm 37:20 says the wicked will perish, and into smoke they will vanish away.
- Isaiah 1:28 says the destruction of sinners and transgressors will be together, and they that forsake Yahweh will be consumed.
If you don’t bring in the Old Testament for meaning, you end up contradicting a mountain of verses that say the wicked are destroyed, consumed, devoured, perish, become ashes, or are no more.
The New Testament agrees with this.
Sodom and Gomorrah: A Clear Example of “Eternal Fire” That Ended
Jude 1:7 tells us that Sodom and Gomorrah are examples of eternal fire, and yet they are not burning today. If that fire was eternal in the way some claim, then it never should have gone out, and they should still be suffering in flames right now in the same location where fire came down from God (compare Genesis 19:24-25 with Revelation 20:9).
But they’re not still burning. They were wiped out. Second Peter 2:6 says Sodom was turned to ashes to show what’s coming for the ungodly (compare with Malachi 4:1-3).
The Second Death: Why Romans 6:23 Confirms Annihilation, Not Torture
Revelation 20:14 even tells you what the lake of fire is: the second death. Not the second life in pain. Death. That means the end of life, not the extension of it through torture. And as you may know, Romans 6:23 says the wages of sin is death, not everlasting suffering.
Annihilation is in Scripture. Not as a single word, but in hundreds of verses. And if we let the Bible define its own terms instead of importing Greek philosophy into the text, it becomes obvious.
But you won’t see it if you just scratch the surface. You need to dig into the Hebrew and Greek, look at the full testimony of Scripture, focus on key words to understand their depth, and use critical thinking. It’s the only way to avoid contradiction.