Revelation 21:8 Meaning But for the Cowardly

Fear heads the list because cowardice meant denying Christ aloud to save your skin. Unbelief stands next: both refuse to trust him once trusting costs something. Lying closes the list, one breath from murder and sorcery, so no one gets to call their dishonesty minor.

Their part is an allotted share, and God allots it, answering the inheritance he promised whoever overcomes. What he hands these people burns. Calling it the second death sets it apart from the death everyone dies. The first ends a body; the second falls on the person as God's verdict, and nothing reverses it.

The catalog of the condemned names inward states, not persons standing before a court. Fear, unbelief, the appetites of the whoremonger and the lies of the liar are conditions of a mind still ruled by the flesh, and they collect in the lower emotional body, the burning water where feeling churns without spirit to still it. Brimstone is the raw sulfur of the body's own chemistry, and the fire is the heat of desire feeding on itself. The second death is the extinction of the awakened self a person once began to build, sinking back under the senses until the higher life in them goes out.

Lake of fire: the lower emotional body, where feeling boils and churns without spirit to calm it Brimstone: the raw sulfur of the body's own chemistry, the crude combustible matter of the flesh Second death: the loss of the awakened self, the higher life going out in one who sinks back under the senses