Revelation 20:14 Commentary and Bible Study

The second death is the death from which there is no resurrection. God allows his saints to experience physical death for reasons that are wise and advantageous, nevertheless he will raise them from it. But the second death has no such corresponding resurrection. The saints may escape from the first death because their souls have been redeemed. Death claims them unjustly in a sense, and so the Lord will not allow its claim to stand. At the resurrection at the end of the world, he will triumphantly raise them up and put death to shame. He will, at a single stroke, vindicate his great power over Satan in doing so. He allows death to make this claim for a limited time, to teach the saints to trust alone in the God who raises the dead. They can look to him alone with confidence for deliverance from such an enemy. It teaches them the transient nature of this life. It teaches them to view all their good as being in heaven and not on the earth. But the second death is irrecoverable. There is no Saviour to redeem those who have entered that place. It is true that in order to redeem the elect, Christ had to go to that awful realm himself and suffer in our place the terrible agony of that eternal fire. But he did so that we might be spared. He is the only One who will ever come out of hell. All others who enter are there forever.The second death is the death of the soul and the body together. The wicked have already experienced physical death, but now the terrible finality of death will be emphasised again for them. There is a difference between the first and the second death. The first death involves the separation of the soul and the body, the dissolution of man’s nature. In the second death, man is sent body and soul into that place of torment. His body will have been raised up from the first death just so that this is possible. There must therefore be a physical element to the second death. The first death is an event which comes at the end of life. It is the transition into the next world, moving us into a state of death. But the second death is continuous; it goes on forever. How can death continue forever? Doesn’t death destroy finally? How can there be anything left after we have been destroyed? We are too used to thinking of death as a single event to find it easy to understand this. Yet Revelation teaches that the lost will join the devil and his angels in the lake of fire, where they will suffer forever. Though such an experience in this life would be self-terminating and would release us to another world, this will not be the case here. God will somehow preserve body and soul in existence to allow this terrible punishment to continue.