HEAVEN%20AND%20HELL

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CHAPTER 3 HEAVEN AND HELL
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What do you think hell is like?
How comfortable are you with the concept of an
all loving God punishing people for an eternity
because the messed up for some portion of about
70 years?
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A Gallop poll shows that 70 of Americans want to
go and think they are going to heaven. They say
that the entrance requirement is being a good
person.
Do you believe that being a good person is
sufficient keep you out of hell?
Exactly what is a good person?
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The problem with the word hell in the Bible is
that different Greek and Hebrew words that all
translate as hell.
We have the Greek word Hades which is the same as
the Hebrew word Sheol. We have Tartarus which is
only used by Paul. We have Gehenna which except
for one occasion is only used by Jesus.
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Lets look at the evolution of the term hell from
the time of Jesus to today. Well concentrate on
just Hades and Gehenna since Tartarus is only
used once in the New Testament and thats by Paul
and the Hebrew word Sheol is essentially the same
as the Greek word Hades.
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Before Christ, pretty much everyone went to
Hades. Read Job 313-19
All the dead go down to Hades, and there they lie
in sleep together whether good or evil, rich or
poor, slave or free. They await the resurrection
of the dead.
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Basically Hades is a kind of "nothingness," an
existence that is barely existence at all, in
which a "shadow" or "shade" of the former self
survives. Nothing is mentioned of torment. We
have the soul, not the body in hell where they
sleep not being punished.
Punishments in Hades typically are spoken of in
terms of a physical punishment, so how would a
soul be punished?
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Read 1 Peter 318-20 46
So Jesus goes to Hades and takes those souls who
believe in Him to heaven. So now the holding
place for the souls of believers is heaven while
the holding place for unbelievers is Hades. But
we still hear nothing about punishment at this
point.
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Quote John 316
John 316 gives to options, eternal life or
perish, it says nothing about punishment.
So where does this idea of eternal punishment
come from if we see hell as just a holding place?
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There is another word that is translated as hell
in the New Testament. The Greek word is Gehenna
which is a translation of the Hebrew Ge Hinnom,
literally "Valley of Hinnom Hinnom is a valley
outside Jerusalem.
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Hinnom Valley
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In the Hebrew Bible, the site was initially where
apostate Israelites and followers of various
Caananite gods, including Moloch sacrificed
their children by fire. Read 2 Chronicles 281-3
Read Jeremiah 730-31
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In Jesus day, the Sadducees rejected the concept
of a resurrection and afterlife. The Pharisees
believed in the resurrection of the dead. There
were to major schools of thought in Jesus day,
the School of Hillel and the School of Shammai.
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Ge Hinnom was used by the Rabbis of Jesus' day to
reference the afterlife of sinners. Shammai and
Hillel both used Ge Hinnom to speak
metaphorically of a place of purification of the
soul for those who were not righteous enough to
directly enter Ga Eden which was a metaphor for
heaven. Shammai believed that only the
extremely righteous went to Ga Eden when they
died everyone else went to Ge Hinnom . Most
would rise to Ga Eden after being purified,
having their sins burnt up - similar to the
Catholic concept of Purgatory.
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Hillel taught that only the wicked went to
Gehenna. Both Shammai and Hillel taught that
the longest most people would stay in Gehenna was
11 months, and only the most wicked evil person
would stay longer, possibly as much as 12 months.
Nothing is said of eternal punishment.
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When Jesus talks about hell, He uses Gehenna
which is translated as hell and is confusing to
us. He uses the term 11 times. Gehenna is a
completely different concept than the neutral
hell of Hades.
Read Mark 943
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So how do you explain the two different hells,
the waiting place of Hades and the punishment
place of Gehenna? Did hell just change?
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Read Matthew 1028
No where in the Bible does it say that the soul
is immortal and here we see that the soul can be
destroyed. The Jews of Jesus day would have
understood what he meant by Gehenna and fire and
burning bodies,
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Read Revelation 2010-15
Here we see, among other things, Hades destroyed
in the fire. This lake of fire sounds a lot like
what Jesus was calling Gehenna. The fire burns
eternally, but things thrown in there are
destroyed.
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The Gospels were written in Greek so the words
Gehenna and Hades would have been used and thats
what early Christians would have been familiar
with. They would have understood about the term
Gehenna and its origin. In the late 4th
century when the Latin vulgate translation was
written the two terms were there also.
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When the first major English translation of the
Bible, Wycliffe Bible, appeared in the late
1300s the two words Hades and Gehenna both
appeared as hell. Remember that this
translation is written almost 100 years after
Dantes Inferno (Inferno is Italian for hell) is
written. Dantes inferno was representative of
the medieval concept of hell and consisted of a
lot of suffering. So this begins the meshing
of two concepts of hell, Hades and Gehenna, into
a single concept of hell with suffering.
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The 16th century Tyndale translation and the 17th
century King James translation both follow the
trend of translating Hades and Gehenna as
Hell. New 20th century translations such as the
NIV and Living Bible only use hell for Gehenna
and go back to using the word Hades. This is a
complete switch from the way hell was understood
in the days of Christ.