Part2
Hell to the world
At the turn of the 21st century various surveys show that in
America about half of the population believes in a hell of some
sort.
Some believe in the basic, popular hell of Catholic and Protestant
Christianityan ever-burning place of torment and punishment for
the immortal souls of wicked people. They're firmly convinced that
the Bible teaches that kind of helleven though it was not part of
Christian doctrine until nearly two centuries after Christ!
Others can't conceive that a loving God would administer such a
heinous punishment for eternity. They reason that since God is so
loving, everyone, no matter how evil and demented, will receive
eternal life and no one will go to hellnever mind that such a
philosophy has no basis in Scripture, and its logical conclusion
would be that nothing is really wrong or evil.
Hell in the Bible
The truth is, there are actually three "hells" mentioned in the
Bible as it is commonly translated into Englishand not one of them
matches either of the above schools of thought. The confusion
arises when the usual Christian theology swirls the three "hells"
together into one great muddled mass. Let's look at each as the
Bible explains it and sort out fact from fiction.
Hell #1: Hades or Sheol. Hades is the Greek word often rendered as
"hell" in the New Testament, and sheol is the corresponding Hebrew
word used in the Old Testament. Both words simply mean "the
grave."
The classic example drawn from the beautiful,
Shakespeareansounding King James Version is in Acts 2:27: "Because
thou wilt not leave my soul in hell, neither wilt thou suffer thine
Holy One to see corruption." The word translated "hell" is the
Greek hades.
This verse is a direct and inspired quotation from one of King
David's psalms in the Old TestamentPsalm 16:10. There the Hebrew
word translated as "hell" is sheol. Both passages refer to the fact
that Jesus as Messiah would not remain in the grave, but would be
resurrected.
We will all go to this kind of "hell," for it is appointed for all
men to die once (Hebrews 9:27). But the grave is not a place of
constant conscious torture and torment!
Solomon wrote of the grave like this: "Whatever your hand finds to
do, do it with your might; for there is no work or device or
knowledge or wisdom in the grave [ sheol ] where you are going"
(Ecclesiastes 9:10). The grave is simply a place of very dead sleep
until the resurrection, which itself is another story. You will
find no Popsicles in this hell.
Hell #2: Tartaroo. This Greek word, found and translated only once
in the New Testament as "hell," has a very clear and specific
application: "God did not spare the angels who sinned, but cast
them down to hell and delivered them into chains of darkness, to be
reserved for judgment" (2 Peter 2:4).
Fallen or sinning angels do exist. They are called demons and the
chief one is Satan the devil. God has justly prepared a condition
of spiritual restraint or imprisonment for them today. This is the
idea behind the use of the term tartaroo in this passage.
However, there are no human beings who will experience the hell of
tartaroo. Yet much of Christianity thinks that the traditional
ever-burning hell will be like tartaroo, where they think the
immortal souls of bad human beings will suffer forever.
Here's the bombshellthey're wrong because human beings have no
such thing as an immortal soul! But that is a huge, other
story.
Hell #3: Gehenna. Now we have arrived at the business end of the
biblical hell. God will offer the gift of eternal life in His great
Kingdom to every last human being. But to accept the sacrifice of
Christ for our sinsand to live God's way of life of
overcomingforces each of us to make a choice. Do we want to live
forever or not? The answer should be obvious, right?
But "should be" sometimes gets slippery. The bottom line is that
those few who ultimately rebel against their Creator and refuse to
change their ways to embrace His ways will die in the true hell of
the Bible. God means what He says: "The wages of sin is death"
(Romans 6:23, emphasis added), not eternal life in some bad
place.
Completely contrary to the hellfire of many religions and certainly
most of Christianity, the hell of the Bible simply ends the life of
the wickedit does not torture and torment them forever. After all,
how could an average 70-year life of a sinner equal a never-ending
eternity of heinous agony?
The true hell reflects both God's justice, by enforcing His divine
laws of life, and His mercy, by swiftly ending the existence of the
unrepentant few who choose to be the evil, the covetous, the
thieving, the cowardly, the unbelieving, abominable, murderers,
sexually immoral, sorcerers, idolaters and liars (1 Corinthians
6:9-10; Revelation 21:8 ).
continued...