Unlocked Wisdom

 

Many preachers today speak about the Hell doctrine. Many “Fathers”, pastors, and evangelists from all walks of religious life, teach about Hell and use its strength to instill the fear of YHVH in lost or fleeting souls.

The Hell doctrine is a flawed assessment of what the Bible actually says. Many people fear eternal damnation, and this aspect of faith is what drives many to repentance or atheism.  Many atheists have told me that my God is one whom they wouldn’t respect. They say “what kind of Creator would give creatures free will and then force them to love him? Then, if these so called free creatures choose not to love him he casts them into eternal flames and torment?”

I diligently reply that they are deceived…because the notion of hell is nothing more than a pagan idea that stemmed from Hellenistic Greco-Roman mythological interpretations of Ancient Egyptian occultism (in origin).

The importance of knowing where the idea of Hell has come from, and then the truth behind what ‘hell’ truly is, will help you free yourself one more inch towards true salvation in Christ.

Once you realize that God our Heavenly Father is the one who created the entire world with all of its beauty, just for us sinners to live comfortably with joy. You can truly understand that He would never create us to make us suffer eternally. We are made in God’s image, so he loves us profoundly before anything. Hell is a ploy of the deceiver to keep people away from understanding the truth behind finding YHVH’S true love through Messiah Yeshua (Christ).

This article today will explain the truth about Hell. The book where this article has come from  can be downloaded here. Many available sources interpret the truth behind Hell. Here is an excerpt to get you started. If God is Love than he is unable to be Hate, God is not a contradiction, but men’s understanding is.

 

FOUR WORDS TRANSLATED HELL

(excerpt from The Bible Hell)

 

 

In the Bible four words are translated Hell: the Hebrew word

Sheol, in the original Old testament; its equivalent, the Greek word

Hadees, in the Septuagint; and in the New Testament, Hadees,

Gehenna and Tartarus.

 

SHEOL AND HADEES

 

The Hebrew Old Testament, some three hundred years before the

Christian era, was translated into Greek, but of the sixtyfour

instances where Sheol occurs in the Hebrew, it is rendered Hadees

in the Greek sixty times, so that either word is the equivalent of the

other. But neither of these words is ever used in the Bible to

signify punishment after death, nor should the word Hell ever be

used as the rendering of Sheol or Hadees for neither word denotes

postmortem torment.

According to the Old Testament the words Sheol, Hadees primarily signify only the place, or state of the dead.

 

The character of those who departed thither did not affect their

situation in Sheol, for all went into the same state. The word

cannot be translated by the term Hell, for that would make Jacob

expect to go to a place of torment, and prove that the Savior of the

world, David, Jonah, etc., were once sufferers in the prison house

of the damned. In every instance in the Old Testament, the word

grave might be substituted for the term hell, either in a literal or

figurative sense.

 

The word being a proper name should always

have been left un translated. Had it been carried into the Greek

Septuagint, and thence into the English, un translated, Sheol, a

world of misconception would have been avoided, for when it is

rendered Hadees, all the materialism of the heathen mythology is

suggested to the mind, and when rendered Hell, the medieval

monstrosities of a Christianity corrupted by heathen adulterations

is suggested. Had the word been permitted to travel untranslated,

no one would give to it the meaning now so often applied to it.

Sheol, primarily, literally, the grave, or death, secondarily and

figuratively the political, social, moral or spiritual consequences of

wickedness in the present world, is the precise force of the term,

wherever found.

 

Sheol occurs exactly sixty four times and is translated hell thirty two times, pit three times, and grave twenty nine times. Dr. George Campbell, a celebrated critic, says that "Sheol signifies the state of the dead in general, without regard to the goodness or badness of the persons, their happiness or misery."

 

 

 

So since we know that Hell is not a place that exists as of now, we must understand what everlasting means.

 

Understanding “Aionios”, or How Long Is ‘Everlasting’?

 

Surprising as it might seem, "eternal" and "everlasting" do not always mean never-ending, but can actually mean "agelasting," that is, lasting for a limited period. It is important to bear in mind that what we have are English translations of the Bible and that the Scriptures were originally inspired in Hebrew, Greek, and Aramaic. To study to show ourselves approved, we have to acquire some rudimentary understanding of the biblical languages. If we are going to pronounce authoritatively on certain complex doctrinal matters, we must be equipped.

There is an easy way to prove that aionios does not always mean never-ending and that it can mean eternal in its results and consequences.

In Jude 1:7 we read that Sodom and Gomorrah suffered the "punishment of eternal fire." Yet no one believes that Sodom and Gomorrah are burning now. The inhabitants suffered the punishment of eternal fire in the sense that they were completely destroyed; the fire was eternal in its results and effects; it left nothing to be consumed.

There can be no dispute about this for there are no cities named Sodom and Gomorrah burning today! Scripture does not say they suffered the punishment of Gehenna (hell) fire, so one cannot reason that perhaps they are suffering (unknown to us) in hell. They suffered the punishment of a literal fire which swept through the area. (One scholar points out that at least seventy times in the Bible the Greek word aionios qualifies objects of a temporary and limited nature.)

The Hebrew equivalent of aionios in the Old Testament is olam, which can also mean eternal or everlasting, but is also used in reference to a limited span of time. To prove decisively that "forever" or "eternal" do not always mean neverending, notice the following passages in which olam obviously means age-lasting or a limited time.

In Exodus 12:24 we read that the sprinkling of the blood at the Passover was to be "an ordinance for ever." The Aaronic priesthood was also said to have been a "perpetual statute" (Exodus 29:9; 40:15; Leviticus 3:17). Solomon’s temple was supposed to have been everlasting (1 Kings 8:13). The ritual of tending to the light in the tabernacle was to be "a statute for ever" (Exodus 27:21). All the sacrifices and circumcision were said to last "forever." Now how many Christians, even among law-keepers, are still practicing these rituals which the Bible clearly says should be observed forever, as part of an "everlasting covenant"? Clearly, the Hebrew word olam, the equivalent of aionios in the passages quoted, means agelasting, to be in force for the life of the Old Covenant.

Romans 16:25 talks about the revelation of the mystery which was kept secret "for long ages." What the reader of the English translations of the Bible would not know immediately is that the word translated "long ages" is aionios-the same word translated "forever" in the passages quoted about eternal fire and everlasting punishment. It is indisputable, therefore, that the word carries more than one meaning and cannot, under all circumstances, be interpreted as eternal in the sense of never-ending.

But then there is Matthew 3:12, pulled out by immortal soul advocates to prove their point. It refers to the "unquenchable fire" which will be unleashed on the lost.

Again, just as in the case of the "eternal" fire which destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah, the fire threatened by Jesus here is one which will accomplish its purpose of utter destruction, one whose purpose and mission cannot be thwarted by anyone or anything. This is the sense of the phrase.

To prove that this is not speculation, turn to Jeremiah 17:27 where a similar threat was made to a rebellious Israel. Hear the words of Yahweh: "But if you do not listen to me, to keep the sabbath day holy…then I will kindle a fire in its [Jerusalem's] gates, and it shall devour the palaces of Jerusalem and shall not be quenched."

Yahweh threatened an unquenchable fire that could not be put out by all the firemen in the world. It would achieve its purpose: the utter destruction of Jerusalem and its sinning inhabitants. The unquenchable fire, like the eternal fire, refers to the results and consequences of its action, not the duration of its time.

Isaiah 34:9,10 is a clincher. Notice the imagery of the punishment proposed for Edom: "And the streams of Edom shall be turned into a pitch, and her soil into brimstone; her land shall become burning pitch. Night and day it shall not be quenched; its smoke shall go up forever [notice this similarity with the Revelation texts quoted earlier], from generation to generation it shall lie waste; none shall pass through it for ever and ever."

Yes, there it is! The fire would completely destroy Edom; its smoke would proverbially go up forever, "from generation to generation." The land would be desolate-no more; it would be completely destroyed. That the fire would be "eternal" and "unquenchable" means a fire which no one would be able to quench until it achieved its purpose. See also Isaiah 1:30,31: "For you shall be like an oak whose leaf withers, and like a garden without water. And the strong shall become tow, and his work a spark, and both of them shall burn together, with none to quench them."

There it is-"none to quench them"-clearly meaning both will burn until they become extinct, annihilated!

As Clark Pinnock has suggested in his essay in the book Four Views on Hell, "I believe that the real basis of the traditional view of the nature of hell is not in the Bible’s talk of the wicked perishing, but an unbiblical anthropology that is read into the text. If a biblical reader approached the text with the assumption that souls are immortal, would they not be compelled to interpret texts that speak of the wicked being destroyed to mean that they are tortured forever since according to that supposition they cannot go out of existence?….[T]he belief in the immortality of the soul will necessarily skew the exegesis."

This is why we have dealt extensively in this booklet with the discussion of hell, for at the root of the traditional view of an ever-burning hell is the false doctrine of the immortality of the human soul.

 

 These two examples tell us that Hell is a contorted explanation of a scriptural punishment with everlasting effects. Live free by Loving God, find Christ to learn about the father, follow his law and be blessed in life.

In Christ,

Yahweh bless