Then, too, Revelation 20:14, 15 does not say that the lake is literal. Rather, we read that the “lake of fire” is itself a sign or symbol of “second death.” The same point is made at Revelation 21:8: “As for the cowards and those without faith and those who are disgusting in their filth and murderers and fornicators and those practicing spiritism and idolaters and all the liars, their portion will be in the lake that burns with fire and sulphur. This means the second death.”

Since the lake of fire is a symbol of second death, the casting of death and Hades into it is simply a symbolic way of saying that these will be forever destroyed. This agrees with the Bible’s statement that ‘the last enemy, death, is to be brought to nothing.’ (1 Corinthians 15:26) And, since Hades, the common grave of mankind in general, is emptied and “death will be no more,” that means that Hades ceases to function, passes out of existence.​—Revelation 20:13; 21:4.

However, those who must undergo the “second death” do not have the comfort of a resurrection hope. Theirs is not a sleep. They never awaken from destruction in second death. As this hopeless state keeps hold of them, they are ‘tormented forever’ in the sense of being eternally restrained from having any conscious existence or activity. That their restraint in “second death” is compared to torture by being confined in prison is shown by Jesus in his parable of the ungrateful, merciless slave. Concerning the action his master took against him, Jesus said: “And in his anger the master handed him over to the torturers till he should pay all his debt.” (Matthew 18:34, Jerusalem Bible) The New World Translation shows who these tormentors are by reading: “With that his master, provoked to wrath, delivered him to the jailers [marginal reading: tormentors], until he should pay back all that was owing.”

The very fact that the “lake of fire” is a symbol of “second death” rules out the idea of its being a place of conscious torment. Nowhere does the Bible even suggest that the dead can experience conscious torment, but the dead have lost all sensations. Of those dead in the common grave of mankind, the Bible says: “There the wicked themselves have ceased from agitation, and there those weary in power are at rest. Together prisoners themselves are at ease; they actually do not hear the voice of one driving them to work. Small and great are there the same, and the slave is set free from his master.”​—Job 3:17-19.

Just as the death to which humans in general continue to be subject ends all sensations and feeling, so does the “second death.” However, no forgiveness of sins or ransoming is possible for those punished with “second death.” That reproachful state is their lot forever. Memory of them is as rotten.​—Isaiah 66:24; Proverbs 10:7.