When Jesus cast the demons out of the maniac of Gadara, they begged Him not to send them back into the "deep," meaning the abyss or the place called Death. Jesus actually complied with their request and sent them into a nearby herd of swine. The swine went crazy and ran into the sea and drowned. The swine symbolized unrepentant sinners whom God casts into the Sea of separation from Him. All three regions of the dead are full of demons. The demons drove the swine into the Sea of Galilee which symbolized their desire to endure the lesser punishment of the Sea of separation rather than the terrible loneliness and emptiness of the bottomless pit called Death. Luke 8:23-35.
In Matthew 13:47-51, Jesus related a parable to His disciples which had a direct reference to some of them who had been fishermen. Jesus reminded them that in their former self-employment when they had caught a load of fish, they would keep the good fish and throw away any malformed or diseased fish. Jesus prophesied to them that something similar would happen in the end of the world. The end of the world cannot happen until God destroys the heavens and the earth and recreates them. Jesus' parable thus prophesied about a general resurrection of the living from the dead in the end of the world. This parable symbolizes the fact that God will recover all of His goodness and life He has ever put into all mankind within the regions of the dead, and He will cast only their total evil and deadness into the lake of fire. John 5:28-29; Revelation 20:5; Revelation 20:11-15; Revelation 22:11-12.
In Matthew 18:6 and Mark 9:42, Jesus related a parable in which He warned anyone who abuses innocent children that His punishment of them will always be worse than being drowned in the sea. Jesus informed child abusers that when He judges them following their physical deaths, He will certainly consign their souls and spirits to either the place called Death or to the fiery Hell, probably most often to the later.
In Matthew 21:21-22 and Mark 11:22-23, Jesus related a parable which pertains to the Church Age of grace. The mountain in this parable symbolizes the impossibility of any sinner to remove the mountain of sin from his life by personal effort. But if any repentant sinner puts his or her faith in Christ, then He will remove their mountain of sin from their lives and cast it into the Sea of forgetfulness. Christ holds the power through His death, burial, and resurrection to wash away the sins of any repentant sinner by His shed blood into the Sea of forgetfulness. God holds the power to separate the sins and deadness of any believer in Christ from him before he physically dies. John 5:24; Micah 7:19.
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