The Lake of Fire - Where is it Located. by Ernest L. Martin [1981]

A hundred years before Strabo, there is the record of a Jewish author who described the Dead Sea area. "Wisdom saved a man [Lot] from a destruction of the godless, and he escaped the fire that came down on the Five Cities, cities whose wickedness is still attested by a SMOKING waste" (Wisdom of Solomon 10:7). This historical reference indicates that the Dead Sea region was then, back at that time, still smoking from subterranean fires. Diodorus Siculus, who also lived in the first century B.C., said: "The fire which burns beneath the ground and the stench render the inhabitants of the neighboring country sickly and very short-lived" (Book 11,48 ).

A few years later, in the time of Christ's childhood, the Jewish writer Philo gave witness to the burnings and smoke that was still ascending. "The fire is most difficult to extinguish, and creeps on pervading everything and smoldering. And a most evident proof of this is to be found in what IS SEEN TO THIS DAY: for the smoke which is still emitted, and the brimstone that men dig up there" (On Abraham XXVII).

This fire and smoke was also seen coming from the midst of the Dead Sea as well. The geographer Strabo called the Dead Sea a lake (as did Josephus, the early Jewish historian War IV,8,4), and described the fiery characteristics which came from its center. "In the midst of the lake is the source of the fire and also there are great quantities of asphalt in the middle. The eruption is uncertain, because the movements of fire have no order known to us, as it is of many other gases.

[...]

"The lake was formed by earthquakes and boiling outbursts OF FIRE, and hot water impregnated with bitumen and brimstone [sulfur]" (Strabo, Book XVI,764). It is interesting to note that the eruptions of fire, smoke, and asphalt were not of continuous duration. Only at irregular times did such phenomena occur, but the occasions were frequent enough that eyewitnesses around the time of Christ and the apostles called it a lake of fire and smoke. In actual fact, we are told by Henry Maundrell (an English traveler to Palestine in A.D. 1697) that most of the map makers prior to the seventieth century show "smoke ascending above the surface of the water" (see A Journey from Aleppo to Jerusalem in 1697, p.454, Bohn Edition). However, when Maundrell visited the area, no smoke was seen by him. Yet the explorer Volney in A.D.1787 was told that smoke periodically could be observed coming out of the Dead Sea.

[...]

The first scientific investigation of the Dead Sea by Lynch in A.D.1848 recounted that there was "a strong smell of sulfuretted hydrogen," a "fetid sulfurous odor in the night," "the north wind was quite fresh and accompanied with a smell of sulfur" (Journal of R. Soc. vol. XVIH,p.127). This describes some of the factors comprising "The Lake of the Fire and Brimstone [Sulfur]" in the Book of Revelation, but, of course, there was no actual smoke seen by Lynch. He did, however, on another occasion report a strange phenomenon that happened. At one time there "appeared" to be smoke coming from the center, though Lynch attributed it to an illusion.

[...]

The prophecies, however, suggest (and we will show this later in the article) that a new and more violent eruption of sulfurous fire and smoke is destined to emerge from the lake and surrounding areas, and that "The Lake of the Fire" mentioned in the Book of Revelation will be very much active at the time of Christ's Second Advent to this earth. Such a possibility should surprise none of us moderns because we have all witnessed the eruption of Mount St. Helens in Washington state within the last year. The Dead Sea area may well be getting ready for a renewal of its fiery activity.