What Is Hell In The Bible? |
These first two pictures, above, are Gehenna. The last one is a cemetery. That's the best I could come up with for Hades since it's meaning is the place of the dead or the "unseen". These are the two "hells" Jesus spoke of. He never used the English/Anglo-Saxon word hell, or at least we have no record in the Bible of it, and that's most likely because it didn't exist then. Below are paintings of Hell as the artist imagined It |
Try to see God as a father. Paul told the idol worshipers in Athens, "we are all His children". He was quoting one of their own poets, true enough, but if that had not been a true statement he missed a really good opportunity to offer correction and he offered none. Also note that not once did he say anything remotely close to the notion of hell to those heathens. Being the one chosen to carry the gospel to the gentiles, why would Paul not warn them of hell? Based on the knowledge that God is the father of all creation and the fact that He said all will come to know Him, that all men everywhere will repent, we should be able to at least question the teaching of eternal torment without feeling that we are being disloyal to the Bible.( I see God as father of all in that He created all, I don't believe that He indwells all men yet) John said God's wrath abides on those who do not believe. Paul said God's wrath is revealed from Heaven when He gives people over to their own desires. Proverbs says there is a way that seems right to a man but the end of that way is death. Paul said to turn a man over to Satan for destruction of the flesh that his spirit may be saved. Isaiah said that when the judgments of God are in the earth it's inhabitants will learn righteousness. Paul said Godly sorrow works repentance. * Are you seeing a pattern? * Could it be that God intends for His wrath to abide on one until they believe? Could it be that He gives them over to their own reprobate mind until they see that their way that seems so right is only bringing death and destruction and sorrow? Could it be that the wayward living of your prodigal son and it's consequences are bringing him right back to the safety and security and love of his heavenly Father in this life or the next? Remember, it's in Hell that the Pharisees have the change of heart that causes them to say "blessed is he that comes in the name of the Lord". Sheol 1) Early Old Testament view: Everyone returns to dust and goes down to Sheol together. 2) Later Old Testament view: Book of the Daniel contains the first unequivocal mention of resurrection, and life after death. (Before such ideas appeared in the very late Hebrew book of Daniel, those same ideas had already appeared in the holy books of Zoroastrianism, the religion of the Persians who allowed the Hebrews to return to their homeland after having been held captive by the Babylonians.) 3) Evangelical scholars disagree on what the New Testament teaches concerning the afterlife. In fact, Zondervan published a debate between three such scholars, titled, THREE VIEWS ON THE AFTERLIFE. Some evangelicals hold to eternal heaven and hell, others hold to a temporary hell which burns souls to death so they suffer only finite punishment, and the third view is based on hints of universalism in the N.T.(from" Sheol and the Afterlife"....Ed Babinski) In Matthew chapter 23 verse 15 Jesus calls the Pharisees children of Hell and their converts twice the children of Hell that they are. In verse 33 He asks them, "how can you escape the damnation of Hell?" Ahh, but look what He tells them in verse 39... "you won't see me again until you say..blessed is He that comes in the name of the Lord" Every knee will bow and every tongue will confess that Jesus is Lord. Everyone, from the serial killer to the goody two shoes sitting on the church pew judging everybody else. We can bow now and rule and reign with Christ or we can stiffen our neck and resist, perhaps go through hell, itself and be stripped of everything. But, in the end we all will bow, we all will know the Lord. All of the Hell words in Matthew 23 are from the Greek word Gehenna. Jesus is a Jew speaking to Jews. It just makes sense that if we want to understand "Hell" as He spoke of it here, we need to know what those 1st-century Jews considered it to be. Right? Doesn't that make more sense than trying to force our traditional English definition on it? **(see letter from a Jew answering this question on right) Think about it... If those Pharisees considered Hell to be a place of eternal torment, where, in the Old Testament, did they get that information? Daniel 12:2 is the first reference in the Old Testament to indicate a resurrection of rewards and punishments and he just calls it being raised to everlasting shame and contempt. It is interesting to note that Daniel was a later book to be written and it was written after the Hebrews came out of exile in Babylon, where they did believe in afterlife torments..... Gehenna was referred to in the Old Testament as the Valley of Hinnom or the Valley of the Son of Hinnom. This is a literal valley outside of Jerusalem that was used as a trash dump in Jesus' day. It is also where many children we offered to the god Molech as human sacrifices. In condemning this heinous practice, God, through the prophet Jeremiah said it never entered His mind to do such things. The first two pictures at the top of the page are of Gehenna Perhaps this is something close to what Gehenna looked like in Jesus' day. The trash dump. It was also the place where babies were sacrificed to the god Moloch Isaiah 66:24 speaks of the national judgment of Israel in Tophet or the valley of Hinnom And they shall go forth, and look upon the carcases of the men that have transgressed against me: for their worm shall not die, neither shall their fire be quenched; and they shall be an abhorring unto all flesh. This scripture is most likely why some believe that the saints will be able to look over into Hell and see people burning in agony. The word "carcases" seems to go completely unnoticed because of the preconceived notion of eternal torment |
I vividly remember where I was when
I realized that most of the people in
the world were going to hell and I
didn't care.
I realized that most of the people in
the world were going to hell and I
didn't care.
Hell...Who Cares?
find out that the word hell was not in the original languages of the Bible at all. I am curious to know which translation first had the word hell in it. If you know, send me some feedback, please. . There are four words in the Bible that are translated hell. They are: 2. Hades - Greek 3. Gehenna - Greek 4. Tartaroo - Greek Sheol Sheol is the Hebrew word that is translated hell among other words in the Old Testament. It is also translated grave and pit. Everybody went to Sheol when they died, the good, the bad, and the ugly :) According to Hebrew history, going to heaven or hell (traditional view) when they died was not something they were concerned with. Here are a couple of examples of the good going to Sheol: And all his sons and all his daughters rose up to comfort him; but he refused to be comforted; and he said, For I will go down into the grave unto my son mourning. Thus his father wept for him. (Jacob) Gen 42:38 This is prophetic of Christ, Himself: For thou wilt not leave my soul in hell; neither wilt thou suffer thine Holy One to see corruption Ps 18:5. For great [is] thy mercy toward me: and thou hast delivered my soul from the lowest hell. Ps 86:13 An example of the bad going to Sheol: But if the LORD make a new thing, and the earth open her mouth, and swallow them up, with all that [appertain] unto them, and they go down quick into the pit; then ye shall understand that these men have provoked the LORD. Nu 16:33 We'll call these guys the "ugly": The wicked shall be turned into hell, [and] all the nations that forget God. Ps 16: 10 Note: it is easy to see how this word "hell" could be misunderstood to be a place of punishment for the wicked because of how it is used. But, this word "Sheol" is not the same word used for the "hell" scriptures in the New Testament that refer to correctional punishment... That word is "Gehenna". It has a completely different meaning than Sheol. Proper translation clears a lot of misunderstandings up. This may be the one lots of people are familiar with: Therefore hell hath enlarged herself, and opened her mouth without measure: and their glory, and their multitude, and their pomp, and he that rejoiceth, shall descend into it. Is 5:14 It's obvious, isn't it, that "hell" in the Old Testament is not the hell we were taught about? It means, the state of death or the unseen. Death, in many instances, was punishment for the wicked, Hades
the Old Testament was translated into Greek, Sheol was translated Hades. This is the "hell" that Jesus said could not prevail against the church. It is also the "hell" that is to be cast into the lake of fire but before that is to be emptied. The rich man found himself in this particular hell when he died.
Paul's famous saying, "O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory? Death and grave are both translated from Hades. It wouldn't have done much to further the teaching of endless hell, though, if Paul had said, O hell, where is thy victory, would it? And thou, Capernaum, which art exalted unto heaven, shalt be brought down to hell: for if the mighty works, which have been done in thee, had been done in Sodom, it would have remained until this day. Mt 11:23 Here, Jesus tells a whole city that it will be brought down to hell, or brought to nothing. History bears this out, it was destroyed. And I say also unto thee, That thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. Mt 16:18
and Lazarus in his bosom. Luke 16:23
grave are translated from Hades in this verse.
and have the keys of hell and of death. Re 1:18 And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him. And power was given unto them over the fourth part of the earth, to kill with sword, and with hunger, and with death, and with the beasts of the earth. Re 6:8 And the sea gave up the dead which were in it; and death and hell delivered up the dead which were in them: and they were judged every man according to their works. Re 20:13 And death and hell were cast into the lake of fire. This is the second death. Re 20:14
long after I discovered that there were people who did not believe in eternal torment or endless hell, I was talking on the phone with Dr. Harold Lovelace, a teacher of universal reconciliation, about this wonderful discovery I had been privileged to make. He was the one to point out to me that after Jesus had condemned the Pharisees to hell in Matthew 23, He then, told them that they would not see him again UNTIL they said, "blessed is he that comes in the name of the Lord". (that's called repentance from hell) I have been a Bible reading Christian for 30 years now, and until Dr. Lovelace pointed that out to me, I never one time noticed it. That was astounding to me. And was also proof that we read the Bible with the bias that we are programmed with. Up until about five years ago, I never considered the possibility of hell having an end to it even after reading Matthew 23. It's as plain as the nose on your face but I couldn't see it. Read the whole chapter of Matthew 23 then pay close attention to the last verse. Can you see it? Romans chapter 11 goes hand in hand with it. Amazing!! But I say unto you, That whosoever is angry with his brother without a cause shall be in danger of the judgment: and whosoever shall say to his brother, Raca, shall be in danger of the council: but whosoever shall say, Thou fool, shall be in danger of hell fire. Mt 5:22 And if thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast it from thee: for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell .Mt 5:29 And if thy right hand offend thee, cut it off, and cast it from thee: for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell. Mt 5:30 And fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear him which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell. Mt 5:30 And if thine eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast it from thee: it is better for thee to enter into life with one eye, rather than having two eyes to be cast into hell fire. Mt 18:9 Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye compass sea and land to make one proselyte, and when he is made, ye make him twofold more the child of hell than yourselves. Mt 23:15 Ye serpents, ye generation of vipers, how can ye escape the damnation of hell? Mt 23:33
James uses it one time.
members, that it defileth the whole body, and setteth on fire the course of nature; and it is set on fire of hell. James 3:6 Literal fire? That would give new meaning to "burn the hairs off your tongue". Think about it.
consider Hell(Gehenna) to be. This was their reply to me.
Medieval) Christian sense. First thing you need to appreciate is that Jesus was himself a Pharisee. The term means, merely, those Jews who tended to follow the Rabbinate as religious leaders, rather than the Priesthood (the Sadducees). The roots and context and history of the split are complicated, but to cut a long story short, the Sadducee party later on fell from prominence, and essentially all modern Jews are Rabbinic (Pharisees) - so the term no longer has any "meaning" in the modern world. All that said, there is still not any one answer. The reason is because, on this one, neither the Pharisees nor the Sadducees nor the Essenes (a third group completely) nor the Zealots nor any other Jewish group of that time or any other time, has ever had a clear and unambiguous picture of the Afterlife. Like, we're not even agreed that there even IS one, in the Christian sense. There could be, and some think so, but maybe there isn't, and maybe there's an earthly resurrection "in the flesh" and, well, even if you pick one of those there are fifty different versions of how it might work. Bottom line, we don't know. See JewFAQ for the modern range of opinions. So. What was Gehenna to a 1st-century CE Pharisee? Certainly it was a valley, Ge-Hinnom, outside of Jerusalem. This was a despised place which had been, in various eras, a place of human sacrifice by the worshippers of Moloch; the place of execution of criminals by the Jewish courts; the garbage dump; a permanent open garbage-fire, sort of an iron-age incinerator; the burial ground of executed criminals; and generally speaking the worst place known to Jerusalemites and a figure of speech meaning "the worst thing anybody can think of, nasty, accursed, dangerous, unholy, despised, defiled a thousand ways, and generally the destination of all things unwanted." Today, it's just a neighborhood in the modern urban sprawl, southeast of the Old City. If you take a Christian tour of Jerusalem, you will certainly visit Golgotha/Calvary Hill. From there, look across at the Temple Mount; that valley in between is Gehenna. It was a figure of speech, meaning "everything bad." To "go to Gehenna" was to be taken out with the trash, at best. What did they think it meant, on a "spiritual" level? Tricky. Ideas of the afterlife were just beginning to be assembled in Judaism, and as that link makes clear, we sort of never finished choosing a model, in large part because our texts give almost no clues at all, and what clues DO exist have been looked at differently by different readers. But we have no "hell" and no "salvation" and no "damnation" and we never did. The only reference I can find in Mat ch 23, is the reference in v 15 (trans: KJV) where the Greek word rendered as "hell" is geennes, "Gehenna": Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye compass sea and land to make one proselyte, and when he is made, ye make him twofold more the child of hell than yourselves. Here we have a fascinating point; the period of proselytizing just preceding the first C. CE was the only active period in Jewish history, and it was a disaster - it brought us King Herod, of all the prize-packages the world had to offer us. So Jesus is not only calling them hypocrites and generally engaging in an extended excoriation of how badly they've failed their own standards - he's also pointing out how they've gone outside of the traditional Jewish "fold" to recruit what has become a horribly cruel dictator. A "child of Gehenna" or more probably in the Aramaic "bar gehinnom" - "son of Gehenna" is a person of the "lineage" or "nation" or "substance" of Gehenna. Compare "bar Mitzvah" or "bar Kochba." It has no reference at all to an eternal destination; rather it is a term of abuse meaning, roughly, "spawn of the garbage heap." Or, to use the fuller turn of phrase, "twofold more the bar-Gehinnom than yourselves." I guess you could say, he wasn't really very impressed with them that day ;-)
taught wrongly when it comes to Hell. Our churches use the threat of Hell to evangelize the unbelievers. Jesus used it to warn His followers not to become useless in His kingdom. Salt needs to be salty! Would you love someone because they threaten to torture if you don't? Or, would you love someone because they gave their own life to save yours? Think about it and study the scriptures to see if what you have been taught about Hell is true. |
| Article on Gehenna by Craig Nolin Craig's Website is Student of The Word
came out of that Valley. There is good examples here of what Gehenna is, though what is not addressed and probably more important is that the judgment represented more than what happened in 70AD, in fact I believe it was more talking about what Paul said in Romans. According to Isaiah, Jeremiah and the Chronicles and the Kings, the judgment that came out of Gehenna was the Israel, Judah, Jerusalem and the Temple being cut off and destroyed and Paul sets this up the very reason why the Gentiles are grafted in. If it were not for Gehenna, there would be no reconciliation of mankind and there would be no mercy upon the Gentile people
I ask then: Did God reject his people? By no means! I am an Israelite myself, a descendant of Abraham, from the tribe of Benjamin. God did not reject his people, whom he foreknew. Don't you know what the Scripture says in the passage about Elijah—how he appealed to God against Israel: "Lord, they have killed your prophets and torn down your altars; I am the only one left, and they are trying to kill me"? And what was God's answer to him? "I have reserved for myself seven thousand who have not bowed the knee to Baal." So too, at the present time there is a remnant chosen by grace. And if by grace, then it is no longer by works; if it were, grace would no longer be grace. What then? What Israel sought so earnestly it did not obtain, but the elect did. The others were hardened, as it is written: "God gave them a spirit of stupor, eyes so that they could not see and ears so that they could not hear, to this very day." And David says: "May their table become a snare and a trap, a stumbling block and a retribution for them. May their eyes be darkened so they cannot see, and their backs be bent forever." Again I ask: Did they stumble so as to fall beyond recovery? Not at all! Rather, because of their transgression, salvation has come to the Gentiles to make Israel envious. But if their transgression means riches for the world, and their loss means riches for the Gentiles, how much greater riches will their fullness bring! I am talking to you Gentiles. Inasmuch as I am the apostle to the Gentiles, I make much of my ministry in the hope that I may somehow arouse my own people to envy and save some of them. For if their rejection is the reconciliation of the world, what will their acceptance be but life from the dead? If the part of the dough offered as firstfruits is holy, then the whole batch is holy; if the root is holy, so are the branches. If some of the branches have been broken off, and you, though a wild olive shoot, have been grafted in among the others and now share in the nourishing sap from the olive root, do not boast over those branches. If you do, consider this: You do not support the root, but the root supports you. You will say then, "Branches were broken off so that I could be grafted in." Granted. But they were broken off because of unbelief, and you stand by faith. Do not be arrogant, but be afraid. For if God did not spare the natural branches, he will not spare you either. Consider therefore the kindness and sternness of God: sternness to those who fell, but kindness to you, provided that you continue in his kindness. Otherwise, you also will be cut off. And if they do not persist in unbelief, they will be grafted in, for God is able to graft them in again. After all, if you were cut out of an olive tree that is wild by nature, and contrary to nature were grafted into a cultivated olive tree, how much more readily will these, the natural branches, be grafted into their own olive tree! I do not want you to be ignorant of this mystery, brothers, so that you may not be conceited: Israel has experienced a hardening in part until the full number of the Gentiles has come in. And so all Israel will be saved, as it is written: "The deliverer will come from Zion; he will turn godlessness away from Jacob. And this is my covenant with them when I take away their sins." As far as the gospel is concerned, they are enemies on your account; but as far as election is concerned, they are loved on account of the patriarchs, for God's gifts and his call are irrevocable. Just as you who were at one time disobedient to God have now received mercy as a result of their disobedience, so they too have now become disobedient in order that they too may now receive mercy as a result of God's mercy to you. For God has bound all men over to disobedience so that he may have mercy on them all. Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable his judgments, and his paths beyond tracing out! "Who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has been his counselor?" "Who has ever given to God, that God should repay him?" For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be the glory forever! Amen Tartartoo For if God spared not the angels that sinned, but cast them down to hell, and delivered them into chains of darkness, to be reserved unto judgment; 2 Peter 2:4 For if God spared not the angels that sinned, but cast them down to hell, and delivered them into chains of darkness, to be reserved unto judgment; This is the only instance of tartaroo being translated hell. I have read that this term was borrowed from Greek mythology being the lowest part of Hades. There is really not a lot of information in the Bible about it. Whatever it is, it seems to be a holding place for the sinning angels as they await their judgment. How many people have you tried to keep out of Hell today? |
