Scripture presents the lake of fire as eternal because it is described with the same unqualified duration language used for God’s own life and for the believer’s eternal destiny. Jesus stated, “These will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life” (Matt. 25:46). The parallelism is decisive. The same adjective modifies both destinies. If eternal life is unending, eternal punishment must be unending as well. Any attempt to limit the duration of the punishment logically undermines the permanence of life. Scripture gives no contextual indicator that the term shifts meaning within the same sentence.