When I see people say this it makes me wonder if revelations is meant to be taken literally or not. The book was almost not even included in the bible at one point.
Personally, I think the book of Revelation is meant to be taken very, very seriously since this seems to be implied by John as he relates what the Angel has told him.
However, needless to say, most of the rest of Revelation right up to the very end is described in veiled, metaphorical terms, so it's difficult for us to really draw a comprehensive understanding about everything that is being told to us. God has decided not to tell us the future in upfront, ultra-literal terms. If he wanted to do that, He could have given us a specifically delineated calendar time-table without use of metaphor so it would be clear enough for us to not have to guess or wonder what the meaning of all of the visions really are meant to be.
I think this is important to understand, because it is this median way of conveying the future to us that ensures two things: 1) that we react with freewill because we can't fully see the nature of what is revealed until the 'End,' 2) and paradoxically---God retains His Full Sovereignty over all that He already knows without much in the way of disturbance provided by our partial understanding of how its all going to turn out.
The upshot of this is that Hades (Hell) is pictured as a metaphorical being, along with Death, and both are thrown into the Lake of Fire, which, if we maintain consistency, would also have to be metaphorical.
Now, I hope everyone keeps in mind, here, that I'm not attempting to be dogmatic about what I've just said, and there's always the possibility that I'm dead wrong, but from what I can tell, it would take could a leap in appraisal of Jewish literary motifs to prove that I am indeed in error. Also remember, to say that something in Revelation is given in metaphor is NOT to say that it doesn't mean something really significant will happen at each point in history which is symbolically depicted in the narrative; no, it just means that these catastrophic events will not be clear to us when they happen in history. We'll all be giving our individual, hopeful approximate guesses though in the meantime............and each of us will be right about a few things, and each of us will be wrong about a few other things.
That's my two cents.
Peace,
2PhiloVoid
