896. "Hell fire" is thus in its absolute sense definitely not an "eternal" "punishment" or "vengeance" for "ungodliness" or "sins". That our perception of this is correct can be proved through the fact that the world redeemer expresses "hell" as "fire". It is impossible for fire to allow anything at all to be "eternal". Things are either flammable and "burn up" and are "destroyed", and consequently cannot be "eternal" phenomena, or they are inflammable and, like asbestos and other fireproof materials, will be totally unaffected by fire. As fire can exist only as a matter-transforming process, its existence demands that there must be matter of some kind that it can transform. We call this matter "fuel for the fire". Just as a waterfall cannot possibly exist without water, the matter-transforming process that we call "fire" cannot possibly exist without material or wood. If a human being is thrown into a fire, it will be able to keep this fire going only to the extent that the matter of its organism acts as fuel for the fire. As the fire transforms the matter of the organism into ashes or smoke or gaseous substances, it will inevitably go out by itself due to lack of fuel. No living being's organism can therefore keep a fire going for ever, but only for that amount of time it takes for the fire to transform the matter of the organism into other chemical compounds or into visible smoke and ashes. It is therefore absolutely impossible for anything at all to be able to burn "eternally". But as any process whatsoever, just like fire, can exist or be maintained only as long as it is fed by some kind of matter, (every process, movement or manifestation is in principle, like fire, a "transformation of matter" and can take place only as long as there is enough matter to feed the process) no being whatsoever, on account of its limited quantity of matter, could be subjected to an "eternal" "hell", regardless of whether the being appears in a physical organism or whether it is outside of the flesh and appears in organisms of "spiritual" matter. Both forms of organisms consist to the same degree of matter and are therefore subject to the laws governing matter. When such an outstanding and great being as a world redeemer uses the expression "hell fire", he could never under any circumstances have meant anything as illogical and foolish as the abandonment of a being to a torment, pain or fire that can never in all eternity cease. Such a naive idea or superstition is possible only when one has no cosmic insight whatsoever into the laws of energy and matter. A being that has such profound insight into the laws of movements and matter that he knows that he who takes the sword will perish by the sword, a being that knows that his persecutors, executioners or murderers "know not what they do", a being that knows that Providence or life pays everyone according to their actions, a being that knows that nothing is accidental and that even the "hairs of our head are numbered", such a being cannot be ignorant of such a small and obvious fact that every fire requires fuel and every process requires food in order to be able to endure.