Revelation 20:10

For the first time in the history of the race (from Genesis 3 to Revelation 20) we have an earth without a single sinner on its surface. Satan now has to be dealt with. He is allowed to see the end of all his heartless scheming. He is foiled and defeated. His doom was fixed seven thousand years before it was carried out (Genesis 3:15). His head is bruised by the woman's seed.

The dragon was first cast out of heaven, then shut up in the abyss, and now cast into the lake of fire. As the dragon he is shut up; as Satan he is loosed; and as the devil he is cast into the lake of fire. Satan, which means adversary, is the open and declared enemy of God, of Christ, of the saints, of Israel… But as the devil, the deceiver and tempter of men, he is cast into everlasting torment.

It was the shining out of His coming that destroyed the beast and the false prophet. They were taken and both cast alive into the lake of fire… But it was not yet the time for the last and most terrible judgment of Satan. God's testing of the world was not quite over.

Into it the beast and the false prophet were cast as the millennial age began, and now at the end of that age we read that there they still "are," and not that they were. The fire had not destroyed them.

Two human beings were cast alive into the lake of fire a thousand years before. At the close of this long period they are found there, still in existence! How clear it is that this fire is not like material fire, but something completely different! What can remain a thousand years in the lake of fire unconsumed may remain, as far as one can see, forever. Some object that no verb stands here: the sentence reads simply, "where the beast and the false prophet." Fill the gap with "were cast," they say, and it tells us nothing about how long they stay. But what of the closing words? "They" — the word is plural — "will be tormented day and night forever and ever."

Here that meaning is impossible. At this very time the world comes to an end… These words stand at the door of a boundless eternity. No measuring line of dates and periods reaches across it. In that eternity Scripture declares that God, who exists of Himself, lives "for ever and ever." In that eternity Scripture says the torment of the lost lasts "for ever and ever." Those saved by grace should not argue back against God. We should bow our heads in silence before this mystery we cannot fathom, and adore the goodness that has delivered us by such a ransom from so fearful a doom.

Somewhere in the universe of God there will be a restricted area ("a lake"). Evil will be confined and punished there for ever. No sinning can go on there, though hatred of heart towards God and His Son must remain. Neither new birth nor repentance is possible in hell.

We know fire well and what it does to material objects; but as far as we know, it has no effect on spiritual beings. So we judge the phrase to be symbolic, like so much else in this book. Yet it stands as the symbol of God's burning displeasure, His scorching judgment.