Out of context and read with the pathetic philosophical errors of assumptions in mind, there are a small handful of Biblical verses that might seem to say that eternal suffering awaits all of God's enemies, which is everyone who sins and does not repent or commit to Christ. Isaiah 33:13-14 is one of these, containing a brief mention of everlasting burning: "'Who of us can dwell with the consuming fire? Who of us can dwell with everlasting burning?" This burning is equated with divine wrath on evil. This much is affirmed by the text earlier in verses 10-12. Moreover, it is the sinners who should be terrified (33:13). With other passages clarifying what hell and God's final punishment for evil as a whole really is, and the latter is not eternal agony, Isaiah 33 itself does not teach eternal conscious torment of any kind despite the word fire being similar to how Jesus talks of hell in the gospels.
Which of the sinners can dwell with everlasting burning? No one! Not only does Isaiah 33 not actually say anything that contradicts the blatant annihilationism of numerous, very direct verses throughout the Bible saying that God will punish evildoers with death of the mind, but the rhetorical implication after the comparison of humans to chaff and straw (33:11-12) is that fallen people simply cannot eternally exist with the everlasting burning of God's power consuming them. The wrath of the God who will kill body and soul (Matthew 10:28)--in justice, not out of mercy--is not something mortal humans can outlast, and thus their bodies will be reduced to mere ashes as their consciousness is forever exiled to nonexistence (2 Peter 2:6). They will perish, eternally left without another resurrection, the final condition of their mind being as if they had never come into existence (John 3:16).
Yes, just two verses before verse 14, much like the parable of the sowers in Matthew 13 where Jesus compares weeds that are burned to the wicked at the end of the age, Isaiah says the unrighteous of whom he speaks will be burned like thornbushes, which do not burn indefinitely on Earth, nor do the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah that are an example of what will befall the unrighteous (again, 2 Peter 2:6). In the eschatological day of the Lord, repeatedly referenced in scattered details, the wicked are described as stubble that will burn to ashes (Malachi 4:1-3), and not "'a root or branch will be left to them.'" There is no everlasting burning of these sinners here, and the other passages that explicitly call the fate of the wicked death of the soul (Ezekiel 18:4), separation from an omnipresent deity (2 Thessalonians 1:6-10), and the second death (Revelation 20:15), some of these passages specifically mentioning the lake of fire or its alternative name hell (Matthew 10:28), are consistent with even some of the more vague or overlooked Old Testament passages about cosmic justice.
What everlasting burning could there be for sinners when their destiny is to be burned up, to ashes, never again to partake in the blessings of conscious life with its nonsinful pleasures that are far more in number than what legalists of all centuries realized? Even though the fires of hell itself might last forever (Matthew 18:8), it would not logically follow that everything or even that anything thrown inside will also last forever, and the Bible already specifies that this is not the case for all except possibly some demonic beings and the like (Revelation 20:10). Since even passages like Ezekiel 28:11-19, though it might speak of a different demon than Satan, predict that even beings like at least one major corrupt cherub will be burned to nonexistence, Revelation 20:10 might be figuratively exaggerating--something that it nonetheless does not do with the fate of collective unsaved humanity (Revelation 20:11-15).
If eternal conscious torment is unjust, then the only logically possible way for it to exist is if it at the whims of some amoral being and not at the whims of the moral nature of the uncaused cause, if it has one as the Bible teaches. If morality exists at all, then at least this much is unjust for the general humans the Bible says will not receive it, as it would involve the greatest kind of suffering for an endless duration despite all sins being finite in scope and time, and yet if eternal conscious torment is inherently unjust, it would be the same for the most malevolent, arrogant demon. The lake of fire is not an afterlife at all for the demons who are punished there without first undergoing a biological death; for humans, the lake of fire, though it could exist eternally rather than the people inside it, is not an afterlife without end. People in the grip of traditionalist assumptions and fallacies, in many cases, would have to ignore the dire and often logically impossible ramifications of their misconception of Yahweh's justice in order to not live in extreme terror for themselves and others. Who really could bear truly everlasting burning if even a much less severe fate is a cosmic horror?
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