Melchizedek and Bob,
This is my combined reply to your last posts.
The Lake of Fire is the presence of Theion, the healing, transforming life of God. It is not a place of separation from God but the actual immersion into the purifying, healing presence of God. Healing is not punitive it is restorative—and even more so it is creative, a new creation. That’s right. It is not at all what has been falsely presented in the translations. The angels (messengers of God) and the Lamb are present on the shore of the lake (limnhn, the root of which is limen, which means “harbor” and it is associated with the nearness of the shore). The Lamb is there with them in the safe harbor of the healing, transforming presence of YHWH. The Lake of Fire is not about torment (basanizo is the testing by the touchstone to determine whether the metal/object is purified), either everlasting or temporary. It is to determine whether that which is immersed into the presence of YHWH and the Lamb has been freed/purified from all that oppressed and corrupted it and is made ready for the new birth of their life that is the new creation in Jesus Christ). All that is not in the book of the life of the Lamb is brought into intimate closeness with the very source of life, YHWH and the Lamb. They are embraced by the Life, freed from all that has tormented them with fear, abandonment, nihilism and hopelessness. Then they become like little children who enter into the new creation of God.
We all live in a state of death. Our daily sustenance depends on the taking of the life of others, whether it be animals or plants. We all partake in the Babylonian systems of exploitation and oppression of the living Earth and of those who are among the least and weakest. If we do not see this then we are in profound denial about the true state of this world. The only alternative to this world of death is a world made new by a Life freely given to all. Not a life forcefully or fraudulently taken from the powerless to stave off our own inevitable deaths, but a Life freely given to all by the sole possessor of Life, YHWH and the Lamb.
Is this “automatic” is this “magic?” No, it is the very essence of agape—the love of God.
The Book of Revelation is both about the Revelation given to Jesus Christ and the revelation of Jesus Christ. The Lamb discloses the true meaning of history and defines and rewrites the history of the world. The Lamb is in complete empathetic solidarity with all those who suffer the horrors and injustices of this reality. He is the Lamb who takes all of the suffering, injustice and death away from the history of the world. He makes way for the unimpeded outpouring of the Life of YHWH into the creation to heal, transform and make new all that has been lost, tormented and killed.
There is no rapture or escape from the suffering of this world, instead there is the Lamb immersing himself into the very depths of the world’s suffering, despair and death. He takes the source of Life into the very abyss of godforsaken nothingness to transform that godforsaken place into the wellspring of God’s living waters, which fills the creation with life all bountiful. It is the faithfulness of the Lamb which goes into those depths where the faithless have fallen into and like the good shepherd will not rest until that most godless are brought into the healing presence of the safe harbor of the living presence of Theion and the Lamb. All things will be made new, all things will be written with a new story and name into the Lamb’s book of Life—the Alpha and Omega of all creation.