Chapter 18

McClymond on Revelation 20–22: The Lake of Fire and the New Jerusalem

If you want to know how a story really ends, you read the last chapter. That is basic. You do not stop two-thirds of the way through and announce the conclusion. You do not skip the final pages because the middle was frightening. You read all the way to the end, and you let the author have the final word.

The book of Revelation is the final chapter of the Christian Bible. It is the place where every thread in the grand story of Scripture—creation, fall, judgment, redemption—comes together in one explosive, breathtaking vision. And what we find in those final chapters is not what many Christians have been taught to expect. We find judgment, yes. We find fire, absolutely. But we also find open gates. We find healing leaves. We find the kings of the earth walking into a city they once fought against. We find an invitation that never expires. And we find a God who declares, from His throne, “Behold, I am making all things new” (Rev. 21:5).

Not some things. All things.

Michael McClymond treats the closing chapters of Revelation as among his strongest cards against universalism. He points to the lake of fire, the second death, and the description of those “outside” the city as proof that the Bible teaches a permanent twofold outcome—the saved in bliss and the lost in unending torment.¹ He argues that the voices of the wicked in Revelation—blaspheming God, worshiping the beast, crying out to the mountains to hide them—show a depth of alienation that simply cannot be overcome.² In McClymond’s reading, the book of Revelation slams the door shut on hope for the lost. The story is over. The fire burns forever. End of discussion.

I believe McClymond has misread the ending.

In this chapter, we will do something McClymond does not do carefully enough: we will read Revelation 20–22 as a whole. We will pay attention not only to the lake of fire but to the gates that are never shut. Not only to the second death but to the tree whose leaves heal the nations. Not only to those outside the city but to the kings of the earth who somehow end up inside it. When we read these chapters together—patiently, carefully, and honestly—the picture that emerges is not one of permanent division. It is a picture of God’s final, complete, and breathtaking victory over everything that opposes Him—including death itself.

A. McClymond’s Argument: Revelation as Proof of Permanent Division

McClymond’s use of Revelation in The Devil’s Redemption follows a familiar pattern. He identifies the most frightening images in the book—the lake of fire, the torment of the beast-worshipers, the separation of the wicked from the New Jerusalem—and treats them as the final, definitive word on the fate of the lost. He cites Revelation 20:10–15 and 22:14–15 as evidence for a permanent twofold outcome.³

His argument has several layers. First, he points to Revelation 20:10, where the devil, the beast, and the false prophet are thrown into the lake of fire and “tormented day and night forever and ever.” McClymond reads this as a description of unending, conscious suffering. Second, he notes that in Revelation 20:14–15, Death and Hades are also thrown into the lake of fire, along with “anyone whose name was not found written in the book of life.” The lake of fire is identified as “the second death.” McClymond takes this as the permanent, irreversible end for the unsaved. Third, he cites Revelation 22:15, which mentions those “outside” the city—the immoral, the sorcerers, the idolaters, the liars—as proof that some people are permanently excluded from God’s presence.⁴

Beyond these specific texts, McClymond makes a broader argument about the book of Revelation as a whole. He traces the Greek word phōnē (voice) through the book, noting that we hear not only the voice of angels, the voice from the throne, and the voice of the martyrs, but also the voice of the wicked. They cry out, “Who is like the beast?” (Rev. 13:4). They beg the mountains to hide them from God’s face (Rev. 6:16–17). When judgment falls, they blaspheme God rather than repent (Rev. 16:9, 11, 21). McClymond argues that these voices reveal a depth of alienation that cannot be smoothed over. The wicked do not just passively suffer—they actively, defiantly reject God even under His judgment.⁵

McClymond pushes this further with a philosophical argument. He suggests that the universalist desire for a harmonious ending is really a product of modernist thinking—a craving for “closure, coherence, consistency, and explanatory totality” that reality does not owe us. He asks: “What if reality is not smoothly shaped? What if it is more like a jagged shard of glass?”⁶ In other words, McClymond argues that the universalist reading of Revelation is too neat, too tidy, too hopeful. The real world—and the real text—is messier than that.

This is a rhetorically effective move, but it proves too much. If we should distrust theological conclusions simply because they are coherent, then we should also distrust the doctrine of the Trinity, the hypostatic union, and the resurrection itself—all of which are deeply coherent theological claims. The question is not whether a conclusion is tidy but whether it is true. And the truthfulness of the universalist reading of Revelation is determined by the text, not by a philosophical prejudice against hopeful outcomes.

McClymond also takes aim at Robin Parry’s universalist reading of Revelation in The Evangelical Universalist. He calls Parry’s interpretation of the book “one of the more problematic aspects” of his work.⁷ He challenges Parry’s claim that there is “a continuous flow from outside the City (clearly the lake of fire) … into the [heavenly] City.”⁸ He argues that Parry misses what McClymond calls the “representative universalism” of Revelation—the idea that God saves people “from every nation” (Rev. 7:9; 5:9), not every nation as a whole.⁹ He finds Parry’s handling of the Lamb’s book of life unconvincing, arguing that the book has “names written before the foundation of the world” (Rev. 13:8) and cannot be treated as a flexible list with an add-and-delete function.¹⁰

Finally, McClymond charges that the universalist reading of Revelation relies on a “hermeneutics of diminishment”—a pattern in which the surface-level meanings of the biblical text are replaced by something softer and less threatening. The lake of fire becomes purifying fire. The second death becomes the death of death. The threatening fire becomes healing fire. McClymond finds this suspicious. He asks whether such readings are driven by the text itself or by a prior commitment to universalism that forces the text to say what the interpreter wants it to say.¹¹

That is McClymond’s case. Now let us examine it.

B. Identifying Weaknesses: What McClymond Misses

McClymond’s reading of Revelation has the advantage of sounding commonsense. Lake of fire sounds permanent. Second death sounds final. “Outside the city” sounds like permanent exclusion. But the commonsense reading falls apart the moment you actually sit down and read Revelation 20–22 as a connected narrative rather than as a collection of isolated proof texts. McClymond’s treatment suffers from three major problems: selective reading, failure to account for the genre of apocalyptic literature, and a deep inconsistency within the text of Revelation itself that his interpretation cannot resolve.

1. Selective Reading

McClymond’s most fundamental problem is that he reads the judgment texts in Revelation while ignoring—or at least drastically minimizing—the restoration texts that sit right next to them. He gives full weight to Revelation 20:10–15 (the lake of fire) but almost no weight to Revelation 21:24–25 (the kings of the earth bringing their glory into the city through gates that are never shut). He emphasizes Revelation 22:15 (those “outside”) but does not seriously grapple with Revelation 22:17 (the Spirit and the Bride issuing an open invitation: “Come!”). He points to the blasphemy of the wicked but does not explain how the very same “nations” who were deceived by the beast end up walking by the light of the Lamb (Rev. 21:24).

This is not careful exegesis. This is cherry-picking. And it is the kind of cherry-picking that would be immediately recognized as such if anyone did it with a different topic. Imagine a reader who read the story of the prodigal son and focused exclusively on the moment the son was starving among the pigs—and then announced that the story teaches permanent alienation from the father. You would say: “Finish the story!” The same applies here. Any reading of Revelation 20–22 that accounts for the judgment texts but cannot explain the restoration texts is incomplete at best.

2. Genre Blindness

McClymond’s reading also suffers from a failure to take the genre of Revelation seriously. Revelation is apocalyptic literature. It communicates through vivid, symbolic imagery drawn from the Old Testament prophets, from Jewish apocalyptic traditions, and from first-century political reality. Its images are not blueprints. They are not literal geography. They are theological pictures designed to communicate spiritual truths in the most powerful way possible.

This does not mean the images are meaningless. Far from it. But it does mean we need to interpret them carefully, asking what spiritual reality each image points to rather than treating every detail as a one-to-one literal description. When Revelation says the street of the New Jerusalem is made of pure gold “like transparent glass” (Rev. 21:21), no one takes this as a literal construction specification. When it says the city is a perfect cube measuring 12,000 stadia on each side—roughly 1,400 miles (Rev. 21:16)—no one thinks this is a measurement you could verify with a tape measure. These are symbols pointing to something glorious beyond our ability to describe in literal language.

The same principle applies to the lake of fire. It is a symbol—a powerful, terrifying, deeply meaningful symbol—but a symbol nonetheless. The question is not whether the image is real in the sense of pointing to a real spiritual reality. Of course it is. The question is: what does the symbol mean? And here McClymond simply assumes it means unending, purposeless torment. He does not demonstrate this from the text. He imports it.

Consider how the image of fire functions throughout Scripture. Fire in the Bible is almost never merely destructive. When God appears to Moses, it is in a burning bush that is not consumed (Exod. 3:2). When Israel is led through the wilderness, God goes before them as a pillar of fire (Exod. 13:21). When Isaiah is cleansed for prophetic service, it is a burning coal that touches his lips and purges his sin (Isa. 6:6–7). Malachi describes the coming Lord as “a refiner’s fire” who will “purify the sons of Levi and refine them like gold and silver” (Mal. 3:2–3). Paul tells the Corinthians that each person’s work will be tested by fire, and “if it is burned up, the builder will suffer loss but yet will be saved—even though only as one escaping through the flames” (1 Cor. 3:15). The biblical pattern is overwhelming: God’s fire purifies. It does not merely destroy. To assume without argument that the lake of fire in Revelation is the one exception to this pattern—the one time God’s fire has no redemptive purpose—is a claim that requires far more justification than McClymond provides.

3. The Incoherence Problem

Here is the deepest problem with McClymond’s reading, and it is one he never adequately addresses: his interpretation creates an irresolvable contradiction within Revelation 20–22 itself.

In Revelation 19:19–21, the kings of the earth and their armies gather to make war against the Lamb. They are defeated. In Revelation 20:7–10, the nations are deceived by Satan and march against the camp of God’s people. Fire comes down from heaven and devours them, and the devil is thrown into the lake of fire. In Revelation 20:15, anyone whose name is not in the book of life is thrown into the lake of fire.

But then—just a few verses later—in Revelation 21:24, the kings of the earth are bringing their glory into the New Jerusalem. And in Revelation 21:26, the glory and honor of the nations are brought into the city.

Wait. The kings of the earth? Those kings? The same ones who made war against the Lamb? The same ones who stood with the beast and the false prophet? Now they are walking into the holy city with gifts?

McClymond never adequately explains this. His “representative universalism”—the idea that God saves people from every nation but not every nation as a whole—does not solve the problem, because the text does not say “representatives from the kings of the earth.” It says “the kings of the earth.” And as Parry correctly points out, throughout the book of Revelation, “the kings of the earth” is a consistent title for the enemies of Christ.¹² For John to suddenly use the same phrase to mean something entirely different, without any explanation, would be confusing—and John was not a confused writer.¹³

4. The “Hermeneutics of Diminishment” Charge Backfires

McClymond accuses universalists of practicing a “hermeneutics of diminishment”—softening the hard texts to fit their theology. But this charge cuts both ways, and it actually applies more forcefully to McClymond himself. By focusing exclusively on the judgment passages and minimizing the restoration passages, McClymond is doing the very thing he accuses universalists of doing: he is diminishing one set of texts to preserve his reading of another set.

When the text says “the gates shall never be shut” (Rev. 21:25), McClymond diminishes this to a symbol of safety rather than an ongoing invitation. When the text says the leaves of the tree of life are “for the healing of the nations” (Rev. 22:2), McClymond either ignores it or explains it away. When the text says “Behold, I am making all things new” (Rev. 21:5), McClymond limits “all things” to mean “all things except the people in the lake of fire.” That is a hermeneutics of diminishment if ever there was one.

The universalist does not diminish the judgment texts. We take them with full seriousness. The lake of fire is real, terrifying, and agonizing. But we insist—because the text itself insists—that the judgment texts must be read alongside the restoration texts. And when you read them together, the picture is not permanent division. It is purification unto restoration.

C. The Universalist Response: Reading Revelation 20–22 as a Whole

Now we come to the heart of this chapter. I want to walk through Revelation 20–22 carefully, verse by verse where necessary, and show that these chapters—read as a unified narrative—present one of the most powerful visions of universal restoration in all of Scripture. We are not softening anything. We are not diminishing anything. We are reading the text as it actually stands.

1. The Lake of Fire: What It Destroys and What It Does Not

Let us start with the passage McClymond leans on most heavily. Revelation 20:14–15 says: “Then Death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. The lake of fire is the second death. Anyone whose name was not found written in the book of life was thrown into the lake of fire.”

Notice something crucial here that often gets missed. Death and Hades are thrown into the lake of fire. Stop and think about that. Death is not a person. Hades is not a person. They are not conscious beings capable of experiencing punishment. So what does it mean for Death and Hades to be thrown into the lake of fire?

Paul gives us the answer. In 1 Corinthians 15:26, Paul declares: “The last enemy to be destroyed is death.” The lake of fire is the place where death itself is finally destroyed. This is not punishment for punishment’s sake. This is the destruction of the last enemy.¹⁴

Thomas Talbott makes the point beautifully. If Death and Hades are not persons who can be punished, then the most natural reading is that the lake of fire represents the place where death is consumed and destroyed. The text even names this event: it is “the second death.” But what does “the second death” mean? Talbott argues—and I think he is right—that the second death is the death of death itself. It is the place where Death dies.¹⁵

And here is the key move. In Pauline theology, death is not merely a physical process. Death is a spiritual condition. Death includes everything that separates us from union with God—sin, rebellion, hardness of heart, spiritual blindness. If the lake of fire destroys death, and death includes everything that separates us from God, then the lake of fire destroys everything that separates us from God.¹⁶

This is not a hermeneutics of diminishment. This is a hermeneutics of amplification. We are taking the image of the lake of fire more seriously than McClymond does, not less. McClymond reads the lake of fire as purposeless suffering. We read it as the most powerful act of divine purification imaginable—the place where God finally and completely destroys the last enemy. That is not a soft reading. That is a terrifying and magnificent one.

2. “Anyone Whose Name Was Not Found Written in the Book of Life”

But what about the people? Revelation 20:15 says that “anyone whose name was not found written in the book of life was thrown into the lake of fire.” Does this not settle the matter? These are real people, not abstractions like Death and Hades. They are thrown into the fire alongside the abstractions. Does this not mean they are destroyed or tormented forever?

Not necessarily. And here we need to pay very close attention to what the text says and what it does not say.

The text says people whose names are not in the book of life are thrown into the lake of fire. The text identifies the lake of fire as the second death. What the text does not say is that these people remain in the lake of fire forever. It does not say they are annihilated. It does not say their suffering is unending. It does not say they are beyond the reach of God’s mercy. It does not say the book of life is permanently closed.¹⁷

As Ilaria Ramelli notes in her analysis of these passages, sinners are said to be cast into the lake of fire, “but nowhere is it said that they will remain there forever.”¹⁸ Even the devil is said to be tormented “for ages and ages” (Rev. 20:10), which Ramelli and other scholars argue denotes a very long time, encompassing all the future ages prior to the eventual apokatastasis—the restoration of all things. But “ages of ages,” in the understanding of many Greek-speaking early church fathers, is not the same as “absolutely without end.”¹⁹ We addressed the meaning of aionios and aion language in detail in Chapter 15, and that discussion applies directly here.

James Beilby raises a critical point about the book of life. McClymond treats it as though the names were permanently fixed before creation, allowing no additions. But Beilby points out that Revelation 13:8’s reference to names “written before the foundation of the world” does not actually tell us the book is closed. The timing of when a name was written tells us nothing about whether additional names can be added. If God is sovereign over the book of life, and if God desires all people to be saved (1 Tim. 2:4), then the question is not when the names were written but why. If God writes names based on His foreknowledge of who will respond to the gospel—and if the postmortem opportunity is real—then the book of life can include names of those who respond after death.²⁰

Beilby goes further. He argues that the description of the great white throne judgment in Revelation 20:11–15 does not rule out a postmortem opportunity for salvation. The judgment itself can be understood as a presentation of the gospel—a moment when every person stands face to face with Christ and sees the truth about themselves and about God. Millard Erickson’s objection that “there is no offer of any sort of salvation” in this passage is, as Beilby notes, at best an argument from silence.²¹ The text tells us people are judged. It does not tell us that judgment excludes the possibility of mercy.

3. The Gates That Are Never Shut

Now we arrive at what may be the most important—and most neglected—detail in Revelation 21. After the vision of the new heaven and new earth, after the descent of the New Jerusalem, after the stunning declaration “Behold, I am making all things new,” John describes the holy city in exquisite detail. And then he says this:

“On no day will its gates ever be shut, for there will be no night there. The glory and honor of the nations will be brought into it” (Rev. 21:25–26).

The gates of the New Jerusalem are never shut. Never. Not sometimes open and sometimes closed. Not open during business hours. Never shut.

McClymond and Beilby both acknowledge this detail, but they interpret it differently than the universalist does. Beilby suggests the open gates symbolize safety and security, not ongoing entry. A city whose gates are always open is a city with no enemies to fear.²² McClymond does not address the gates in detail.

The safety interpretation has some merit. Open gates in the ancient world certainly could symbolize peace. But there is a critical problem with reading the open gates as only a symbol of safety: John tells us what comes through the gates. The glory and honor of the nations are brought into the city. This is not a static image of a peaceful city sitting quietly with open doors. This is an image of movement, of traffic, of ongoing entry.

And where does this image come from? It comes directly from Isaiah 60:11, which says: “Your gates will always stand open, they will never be shut, day or night, so that people may bring you the wealth of the nations—their kings led in triumphal procession.” In Isaiah, the open gates explicitly serve the purpose of allowing the nations to enter. John is quoting Isaiah. The purpose of the open gates in Isaiah is entry. The purpose of the open gates in Revelation is entry.²³

Parry makes this argument with great force. In Isaiah 60, the gates are left open for a specific reason—to allow the nations to come in. And these are not just any nations. They are the very nations who once opposed Israel. Isaiah 60:14 says: “The children of your oppressors will come bowing before you; all who despise you will bow down at your feet.” Former enemies become willing worshipers. That is the context John is drawing from.²⁴

4. The Kings of the Earth: From Enemies to Worshipers

This brings us to one of the most remarkable—and most overlooked—details in Revelation 21. Verse 24 says: “The nations will walk by its light, and the kings of the earth will bring their glory into it.”

I cannot overstate how significant this is. Throughout the book of Revelation, “the kings of the earth” is a technical term for God’s enemies. In Revelation 6:15, the kings of the earth hide in caves, begging the mountains to fall on them. In Revelation 17:2, they commit sexual immorality with Babylon. In Revelation 18:3, they grow drunk on her wine. In Revelation 19:19, they gather to make war against the Lamb.

And now, in Revelation 21:24, these same kings are bringing their glory into the New Jerusalem.

Vernon Eller put it memorably: John had used these titles—“the kings of the earth” and “the wealth and splendor of the nations”—consistently enough and with enough pointed overtone that “it simply is inconceivable that he could have written them this time offhandedly, carelessly, without thinking of what he was doing.” Something has happened to these kings in the lake of fire that “makes them entirely different people, gives them an entirely different significance than they had before.”²⁵

Think about that. The kings of the earth—the very worst people in the book of Revelation, the ones who stood with the beast and made war against the Lamb—are now entering the holy city as transformed worshipers. From where did they come? If only the New Jerusalem and the lake of fire remain as the two realities in John’s vision, then these kings must have come from the only other place there is: the lake of fire. Something happened to them there. Something changed them. They were purified.²⁶

McClymond’s “representative universalism”—the idea that Revelation teaches God saves people “from” every nation, not every nation as a whole—does not work here. The text does not say “some reformed former kings” or “representatives from the nations.” It says “the kings of the earth” and “the nations.” The very terms Revelation has used consistently for the enemies of Christ are now applied to those entering the city. Something has changed. And the only way to account for that change is to recognize that the lake of fire did its work.²⁷

5. The Healing of the Nations

Revelation 22:2 gives us another stunning detail: “On each side of the river stood the tree of life, bearing twelve crops of fruit, yielding its fruit every month. And the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations.”

The leaves of the tree of life are for the healing of the nations. The Greek word translated “healing” here is therapeia—from which we get our English word “therapy.” It means treatment, care, restoration to health. And the nations who are being healed are not the saints already inside the city. They are the nations—the same nations who appear throughout Revelation as those opposed to God.²⁸

As Ramelli notes, the tree of life alludes to Genesis and perhaps to Christ’s cross, and its leaves produce “the therapy/healing of the nations (i.e., those who are still outside Jerusalem).”²⁹ The imagery is striking. Healing implies a process. You do not heal something that is already whole. You do not offer therapy to someone who is already well. The nations need healing, and the tree of life provides it. This is restoration language, pure and simple.

If the nations outside the city were permanently damned, why would God provide for their healing? If the gates were shut—if the story were truly over—why would the tree of life bear fruit every month, and why would its leaves be for the healing of those outside? The imagery makes no sense in a permanent-separation framework. It makes perfect sense in a restorative one.

6. The Open Invitation: “Come!”

Revelation 22:17 is among the most beautiful and hopeful verses in the entire Bible: “The Spirit and the bride say, ‘Come!’ And let the one who hears say, ‘Come!’ Let the one who is thirsty come; and let the one who wishes take the free gift of the water of life.”

This is the final invitation of the Bible. The Spirit of God and the Bride of Christ are both crying out: Come! The water of life is free. Anyone who is thirsty can drink.

McClymond reads this as an invitation to the readers of Revelation in the first century—and, by extension, to all who hear the gospel now. But is that really all it is? If the gates of the New Jerusalem are never shut, and if this invitation stands at the very end of the Bible as the last word of God’s self-revelation, then why should we limit its application to pre-death hearers? The invitation has no expiration date. There is no asterisk. There is no fine print. “Let the one who is thirsty come.”³⁰

Parry argues—and I believe he is correct—that this invitation extends to all who are outside the city, including those in the lake of fire. After all, if only the New Jerusalem and the lake of fire remain as realities in John’s final vision, then the invitation “Come!” must be addressed to those in the only other location: the fire. Where else would the thirsty be? Everyone in the city already has the water of life. The thirsty ones are outside. And they are invited in.³¹

7. Those “Outside”: Revelation 22:15

McClymond points to Revelation 22:15 as proof that some are permanently excluded: “Outside are the dogs, those who practice magic arts, the sexually immoral, the murderers, the idolaters and everyone who loves and practices falsehood.”

On first reading, this sounds like a permanent state. But notice several things.

First, the verse describes the people outside by what they do, not by an unchangeable identity. They practice magic arts. They love falsehood. These are behaviors, not ontological states. Behaviors can change. People can repent.³²

Second, verse 15 comes just two verses before the great invitation of verse 17. If the people in verse 15 were permanently and irrevocably excluded, why would the Spirit and the Bride immediately issue an invitation to “anyone who is thirsty”? The placement matters. The description of those outside is followed immediately by the call to come in. This is not a closing door. It is an open one.

Third, Revelation 21:27 says that “nothing unclean will enter it.” This is sometimes read as a permanent ban. But it can just as easily—and I would argue more naturally—be read as a condition: nothing unclean will enter while it remains unclean. If the unclean are purified—if they “wash their robes” (Rev. 22:14)—then they have the right to enter through the gates and eat from the tree of life.³³

Thomas Talbott asks the obvious question: if those outside the city must wash their robes to gain the right to enter, where would they wash them except in the lake of fire—the only reality outside the city? “Clearly, then, something like that must happen in the lake of fire to enable the kings of the earth and others to enter the city from the only possible position outside its gates, and that something is surely repentance and a thorough cleansing.”³⁴

8. “Behold, I Am Making All Things New”

We come now to the verse that gives this book its title. Revelation 21:5 records the words of the One seated on the throne: “Behold, I am making all things new.”

All things. Not some things. Not most things. Not all things except the people in the lake of fire. All things.

This is the climactic declaration of the entire Bible. From the opening words of Genesis—“In the beginning God created”—to this moment, the story has been building toward one cosmic reality: God will renew everything He made. The creation that fell will be restored. The death that entered will be destroyed. The separation that fractured humanity from its Creator will be healed.

If God is making all things new, and some creatures remain permanently unredeemed, then God has not made all things new. He has made most things new. He has renewed the cosmos but left an open wound in it—a pocket of eternal misery that His love could not reach and His power could not heal. That is not “all things new.” That is “some things new, and other things permanently broken.”³⁵

David Bentley Hart makes this argument with devastating force. If God is truly the Creator of all things, and if He is truly making all things new, then nothing in creation falls outside the scope of His redemptive work. A God who creates in love and redeems in love does not leave any of His creatures in permanent ruin. To do so would be to admit that evil has won a partial victory—that some portion of creation has been permanently wrested from God’s hands. And that is simply not what Revelation 21:5 says.³⁶

9. The End of Every Curse

One more detail that deserves attention. Revelation 22:3 says: “No longer will there be any curse.”

This is an echo of Genesis 3, where the curse entered creation through Adam’s sin. The curse brought death, separation, toil, pain, and broken relationship with God. In Revelation 22:3, all of that is reversed. Every curse is removed. Every consequence of the fall is undone.

But if some people remain permanently in the lake of fire—permanently separated from God, permanently suffering the consequences of sin—then the curse has not been fully removed. It still operates on them. The promise of Revelation 22:3 is either true universally or it is not true at all. If the curse is gone, it is gone for everyone.³⁷

Ramelli puts it this way: “The radical destruction that is announced in Revelation does not involve creatures, but evil and death. The fire that will destroy evil is the same that will purify sinners precisely by eliminating evil.”³⁸ God destroys evil. God destroys death. God does not destroy the creatures He made in His own image. He purifies them.

10. The Lake of Fire as God’s Purifying Presence

If we step back and look at the whole picture, a powerful reading of the lake of fire emerges. The lake of fire is not a place where God is absent. It is the opposite. It is the place where God’s presence is experienced in its full, unmediated, unbearable intensity by those who have spent their lives running from Him.

Talbott develops this idea extensively. God’s love is like fire. For those who have opened themselves to that love, the fire is warmth, light, and joy—the “refreshing times” that come “from the presence of the Lord” (Acts 3:19). But for those who have built their lives on rebellion, selfishness, and falsehood, the same divine presence is agony. Not because God is punishing them with some special punishing fire, but because His very love is unbearable to those who have rejected everything He is.³⁹

Think of it this way. Imagine someone who has spent decades lying to everyone—lying to friends, family, even themselves. Now imagine that person suddenly standing in the presence of perfect, absolute Truth, with every illusion stripped away and every lie exposed. The experience would be agonizing. Not because Truth is cruel, but because the liar has become so twisted that truth itself feels like torment.

That is what the lake of fire represents. God’s holy presence, experienced by the rebellious as unbearable torment. But here is the hope: the torment is not pointless. It is purifying. It burns away the lies, the rebellion, the selfishness—everything that is not of God. And when the purification is complete, what remains is a creature made in God’s image, finally free to receive the love it was created for.⁴⁰

This reading is not soft. It is not sentimental. The lake of fire is real, and it is terrible. No one in their right mind should want to go there. But it has a purpose. And that purpose is not destruction. It is restoration.

11. Revelation 14:9–11 and the Smoke That Rises

Before we move to counter-objections, we need to address one more passage that McClymond leans on. Revelation 14:9–11 describes those who worship the beast: “The smoke of their torment rises for ever and ever. There is no rest day or night for those who worship the beast and its image, or for anyone who receives the mark of its name.”

This is one of the strongest texts against universalism in the entire Bible. We should not pretend otherwise. The language is severe and frightening.

But several observations are in order. First, this passage describes the experience of beast-worshipers during the time of their punishment. It says there is no rest “day or night”—language that implies a temporal experience within the framework of created time. Revelation 21:25 tells us that in the New Jerusalem, “there will be no night there.” The “day and night” framework of Revelation 14 belongs to the present age, not to eternity.⁴¹

Second, the phrase “for ever and ever” translates the Greek eis tous aiōnas tōn aiōnōn—“into the ages of the ages.” As we discussed in Chapter 15, this phrase denotes an immense, age-spanning duration, but the early Greek-speaking church fathers did not always understand it as absolutely endless. Origen, for example, understood it as encompassing all future ages prior to the final restoration.⁴²

Third, notice that the text says the smoke rises forever. Smoke is a byproduct of burning. When a fire has done its work and the fuel is consumed, the smoke may linger long after the fire has gone out. Parry suggests that the smoke rising forever may function as a permanent memorial to God’s judgment—a lasting reminder that evil was defeated—without requiring that the actual suffering continues endlessly.⁴³ McClymond ridicules this as “two different kinds of smoke: punishment smoke and memorial smoke.”⁴⁴ But the concept is not as strange as McClymond makes it sound. Isaiah 34:10 uses identical language about the smoke of Edom rising “forever,” yet no one believes the literal land of Edom is still on fire today. The language of ascending smoke is prophetic imagery signifying the completeness and finality of judgment, not necessarily its unending continuation.

I want to be honest here. Revelation 14:9–11 is a difficult text for universalists. I do not pretend it is easy. But it is not impossible, and it must be weighed against the equally clear restoration language in Revelation 21–22. The question is: which vision represents the final state? A text in the middle of Revelation describing the experience of beast-worshipers during the age of judgment? Or the grand climactic vision at the end of the book, where God makes all things new, the gates are never shut, the nations are healed, and the invitation “Come!” rings out to anyone who thirsts?

I believe the ending has the final word.

D. Counter-Objections

Objection 1: “The book of life is fixed. Names cannot be added after death.”

This is one of McClymond’s strongest objections. The Lamb’s book of life contains names “written before the foundation of the world” (Rev. 13:8). If the book is fixed from eternity, then no one who dies without their name in the book can ever be saved.

But as Beilby demonstrates, this objection confuses the timing of inscription with the finality of its contents. The fact that names were written before the foundation of the world tells us about God’s foreknowledge, not about the closure of the book. If God knew before creation that a particular person would ultimately respond to the gospel—even through a postmortem encounter with Christ—then that person’s name could be written in the book from the foundation of the world precisely because God foreknew their eventual response.⁴⁵

Revelation 3:5 actually suggests the book is flexible. Jesus says: “The one who is victorious will, like them, be dressed in white. I will never blot out the name of that person from the book of life.” The warning implies that names can be blotted out. If names can be removed, there is no reason in principle why names cannot also be added.⁴⁶

Talbott offers an additional insight. He suggests that the language of receiving a “new name” (Rev. 2:17; 3:12) has theological significance. In the Bible, name changes signal transformation: Abram becomes Abraham, Jacob becomes Israel, Simon becomes Peter. The old name represents the old person; the new name represents the new creation. It is the new name—the transformed identity—that is written in the book of life. Those who pass through the lake of fire and are purified receive a new name. That new name is written in the book.⁴⁷

Objection 2: “Revelation teaches that the wicked actively blaspheme God even under judgment. This shows they are incapable of repentance.”

McClymond makes much of the fact that in Revelation 16:9, 11, and 21, the people under God’s judgment refuse to repent and instead blaspheme God. He takes this as evidence that human alienation from God can become so deep that it is irrecoverable.

But this objection confuses a stage in the process with the final outcome. Of course the wicked blaspheme under judgment—that is what rebellion looks like when it is confronted by holiness. The initial reaction of a rebellious heart to God’s purifying fire will always be resistance. The addict does not welcome the pain of withdrawal. The liar does not celebrate the exposure of their lies. Resistance is expected. But resistance does not last forever when it is met by the infinite patience and power of God.⁴⁸

Talbott makes the point that no one can resist the full, unmediated experience of God’s love and truth forever. Sin is bondage, not freedom (John 8:34, treated fully in Chapter 25). The sinner who blasphemes God is not exercising genuine freedom. They are acting out of the very bondage from which God’s purifying fire is designed to liberate them. The blasphemy is a symptom of the disease, not proof that the disease is incurable.⁴⁹

Think of a child having a tantrum. In the middle of the tantrum, the child screams at the parent, says hateful things, and refuses all comfort. If you took a snapshot of that moment, you might conclude the child is permanently alienated from the parent. But any parent knows better. The tantrum is a stage. It passes. Love wins. God is a better parent than any earthly parent, and His patience is infinite.

Objection 3: “The universalist reading makes Revelation incoherent. If everyone is saved, why does John bother with the judgment scenes?”

This is a fair question. If everyone ends up in the New Jerusalem, what is the point of the terrifying judgment imagery in Revelation?

The answer is that the judgment is real, serious, and purposeful. It is not theater. People really do face God’s purifying fire. People really do experience agonizing confrontation with their sin. The judgment imagery in Revelation is not weakened by the universalist reading; it is given greater depth and meaning. Under the ECT reading, judgment is purposeless suffering. Under the universalist reading, judgment has a goal: the restoration of the person being judged.⁵⁰

The fact that the ending is hopeful does not make the middle painless. A doctor who performs surgery to save your life causes real pain—but the pain has a purpose. The surgery is not diminished by the fact that it leads to healing. In the same way, the judgment scenes in Revelation are not diminished by the fact that they lead to restoration. If anything, they are enriched. The fire is not meaningless. It is doing something. It is burning away everything that stands between the creature and its Creator.

Think about the book of Revelation from the perspective of its original readers—persecuted Christians in the Roman Empire who were facing imprisonment, torture, and death. They needed to know that God would judge their persecutors. They needed to know that the beast and the false prophet would face the fire. The judgment passages are not there to satisfy a theological need for permanent retribution. They are there to assure suffering believers that God sees, God cares, and God will act. The judgment is real. The justice is real. But the purpose of that justice, from Genesis to Revelation, has always been to set things right—not merely to punish wrongdoing forever without end.

Objection 4: “Revelation 20:10 says the devil will be tormented forever and ever. If the devil suffers forever, surely human beings in the lake of fire do too.”

This objection draws a parallel between the fate of the devil in Revelation 20:10 and the fate of human beings in 20:15. Since the devil is said to be tormented “for ever and ever,” the assumption is that human beings thrown into the same lake of fire experience the same duration of torment.

But the text treats the devil differently from human beings. The devil, the beast, and the false prophet are mentioned specifically and separately from human sinners. The beast and the false prophet may not even be personal beings in the way individual humans are—they represent systems of evil, political tyranny, and false religion. As Parry notes, it is possible to distinguish between the symbolic defeat of evil systems (which is permanent and irreversible) and the fate of individual human persons (which involves purification and restoration).⁵¹

Furthermore, even if we take “for ever and ever” at face value as describing the devil’s torment, the universalist is not required to extend this to every individual human soul. The text says the devil is tormented forever. The text says humans are thrown into the lake of fire. But the text does not say humans are tormented in the lake of fire forever. The lake of fire is described as “the second death”—and for humans, the second death can mean the death of everything in them that is opposed to God, after which they are made new.⁵²

I want to note that this is one area where conservative universalists differ. Some, like Parry, leave open the possibility that the devil’s punishment is truly permanent. Others, following Origen and Gregory of Nyssa, hold that even the devil may ultimately be restored. I personally hold that the scope of restoration for demonic beings is an open question on which Scripture is not entirely clear, while the restoration of all human beings is taught plainly and repeatedly. The fate of the devil need not determine the fate of every human soul.⁵³

Objection 5: “You are reading restoration into Revelation from outside. The text itself does not teach universal restoration.”

This is McClymond’s most fundamental objection, and it deserves a direct answer. Is the universalist reading something we bring to the text, or something we find in it?

Consider what the text of Revelation 20–22 actually says, without any theological framework imposed from outside. God judges. Death is destroyed. The lake of fire consumes everything opposed to God. A new heaven and new earth appear. God makes all things new. The curse is removed. The gates of the holy city are never shut. The nations are healed. The kings of the earth bring their glory in. The Spirit and the Bride invite anyone who thirsts to come and drink freely.

I am not reading restoration into the text. The text is saturated with restoration. The burden of proof is on McClymond to explain how “all things new,” “never shut gates,” “healing of the nations,” and “Come!” can coexist with a permanent, unredeemable population in the lake of fire. He has not done this. He simply privileges the judgment texts and minimizes the restoration texts.⁵⁴

And notice something else. McClymond accuses universalists of practicing a “hermeneutics of diminishment.” But what is his own reading if not a diminishment of the restoration texts? When God says “all things new,” McClymond diminishes “all” to mean “some.” When the text says the gates are never shut, McClymond diminishes this to a mere symbol of safety. When the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations, McClymond either ignores the detail or strips it of its plain meaning. When the Spirit and the Bride cry “Come!” McClymond limits the invitation to those who are already inside the story’s time frame. If there is a hermeneutics of diminishment operating in the interpretation of Revelation 20–22, it is not the universalist who is practicing it.

The universalist reading does not ignore the judgment. It takes it with full seriousness. But it reads all of Revelation 20–22, not just the parts that fit a preexisting framework. And when you read the whole thing, the trajectory is unmistakable. It moves from judgment to restoration. From fire to healing. From death to life. From the lake of fire to the New Jerusalem with its open gates.

Conclusion

McClymond calls the book of Revelation one of his strongest arguments against universalism. I believe the opposite is true. When you read Revelation 20–22 carefully and completely, it becomes one of the most powerful witnesses for universal restoration in the entire Bible.

Yes, there is a lake of fire. Yes, it is real and terrifying. But the lake of fire exists within a story that ends not with permanent division but with total renewal. Death is destroyed. The curse is removed. The nations are healed. The gates are never shut. The invitation “Come!” echoes into eternity.

Think about what McClymond’s reading requires you to believe about the end of the story. It requires you to believe that God makes “all things new”—but not really all things. It requires you to believe that the curse is completely removed—but it still operates on billions of people. It requires you to believe the gates are never shut—but no one ever walks through them after the judgment. It requires you to believe the leaves of the tree of life are for healing—but no one outside the city is ever actually healed. It requires you to believe the Spirit and the Bride cry “Come!”—but the invitation is purely ceremonial, extended to people who can never accept it. That is not a coherent reading of the text. It is a reading that takes every hopeful detail in Revelation 21–22 and quietly empties it of meaning.

The universalist reading does not require such gymnastics. It takes the judgment texts at face value: the fire is real, the suffering is real, and no one escapes confrontation with the holy God. And it takes the restoration texts at face value: the gates are really open, the healing is really happening, the nations really do come in, and God really is making all things new. Both sets of texts are true. The fire serves the healing. The judgment serves the restoration. The death of death is the birth of everything God always intended.

The God who sits on the throne does not say, “Behold, I am making some things new.” He says, “Behold, I am making all things new.” And then He adds—with the weight of divine authority behind every syllable—“These words are trustworthy and true” (Rev. 21:5).

I take Him at His word.

In the next chapter, we will turn to the Gospel of John and discover that the same trajectory we have found in Revelation—from judgment to restoration, from darkness to light, from death to life—runs through the Fourth Gospel from beginning to end.