What is
hell?
I do not propose spending much time on this. However, some comment is necessary. Might I suggest a short visit back to the
work of Douglas Ward on heaven. A
similar thing can be said concerning the word and the idea of hell.
In Greek, the word used is Geenna (often pronounced Gehenna).
According to W.E. Vine in his Expository Dictionary of New Testament
Words, it represents the Hebrew Gê-Hinnom
which translates as valley of Hinnom. It
was, many suggest, a place of perpetual fire in that it was one of Jerusalem’s
rubbish dumps. I have visited Uganda in
recent years and they have many such places in Kampala – places where the worm
never dies and people don’t put the fire out.
In Hebrew thought, it did not so much represent
eternal torment (as the expression “hell” has come to mean) as
destruction. And the idea of destruction
is neither perpetual torment nor annihilation, but that a thing is damaged to
the extent that it is not recognisable as what it was originally, and totally
unable to function in its original purpose and place – but not unredeemable.
In the New Testament, there is another word that is
sometimes (and incorrectly) translated ‘hell’: hades. This word corresponds
to the Old Testament sheol. It is believed that the word comes from the
Greek hado meaning all-receiving. The Hebrews believed that there is a
temporary place to “receive all” departed spirits between death and final
judgement and that place is sheol or hades.
Hades/Sheol, as W.E. Vine
makes clear, “never denotes the grave, nor is it the permanent region of the
lost.” Vine also comments that, “In the
A.V. of the Old Testament and the New Testament it has been unhappily rendered
‘hell’, ‘the grave’ and ‘the pit’.” In
Revelation 1:18 John records that Jesus has the keys of hades; in Revelation 6:8 it is personified – Vine suggests this
reference signifies “the temporary destiny of the doomed”; in Revelation 20:13
it is to yield up those in it; and in the next verse, John records that hades itself is to be cast into the
‘lake of fire’. Hell then (hades/sheol)
cannot be the same as the lake of fire.
The reference in 1 Corinthians 15:55 is more
accurately a reference to death rather than to hades or ‘hell’ or ‘the grave’ as the A.V. incorrectly translates
it.
There is one other reference to mention here: Matthew
25:41. Remember again this is Matthew’s
account, and Matthew seems to be writing with a specific bent towards the
Jews. The NASB says, “Then he will also
say to those on his left, ‘Depart from
me, accursed ones, into the eternal fire which has been prepared for the devil
and his angels…’”
Jay P. Green’s literal translation puts it, “Then
he will also say to those on the left, ‘Go
away from me, cursed ones, into the everlasting fire having been prepared for
the devil and his angels…’”. This
verse does seem to suggest that the lake of fire is specifically prepared for
the angels who rebelled and fell, but keep in mind that, though they are
created eternal beings, they are not human.
The bible gives us no indication if the devil and his angels can or will
be redeemed, so the lake of fire could be their eternal destiny. However, for humans, the lake of fire seems
to be, as Eby suggests below, a “lake of divine purification”.
The original texts of the New Testament do not seem
to contain a word that easily differentiates between an ‘age’ or an era or
epoch of history and eternity as I talk about it here – the zone where God
lives and moves and has His being. In
general, the words used are aion
meaning an age (a period of time having a beginning and an ending) and aionios meaning something like ‘ages of
ages’, possibly meaning endless.
There seems to be both a redemptive ‘lake of fire’
experience for humans who do not yield to the kingship of Jesus in this life,
possibly because they have never heard the good news of the kingdom of God but
only religion’s ‘gospel’…
[remember, Jesus did go and proclaim a message to
‘spirits in prison’: “Christ also died for sins
once for all, the just for the unjust, so that He might bring us
to God, having been put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the spirit; in
which also He went and made proclamation to the spirits now in prison.”
(1 Peter 3:18-19 NASB)]
… and an ‘eternal’ lake of fire prepared for the
devil and his angels which, it appears, some people do get to share.
In all my reading and study, no-one does a better
or more ‘inspired’ job of teaching on this matter than J. Preston Eby. You can find his work on the website, http://www.tentmaker.org/books/TheLakeOfFire-Eby.html#The
Lake Of Fire. I do not intend going into
detail in this blog, but I do highly recommend this work.
Our New Testament original was written in Greek and
we Westerners are far more Greek than we are Hebrew. Eby says this:
To any Greek, or any trained in the Greek
language, a ‘lake of fire and brimstone’ would mean a ‘lake of divine
purification.’ The idea of judgement
need not be excluded. Divine
purification and divine consecration are the plain meaning in ancient Greek. In the ordinary explanation, this fundamental
meaning of the word is entirely left out, and nothing but eternal torment is
associated with it.
I strongly suggest that it is not just the
‘ordinary explanation’ that is faulty, but also the bulk of our bible
translations available today.
At the beginning of this section of his article,
Eby says, “I believe every word that the bible says about the lake of fire; I
don’t believe what Rome says about it, nor what the apostate churches say about
it, nor what tradition says about it; but I certainly believe what the bible
says about it.” I guess I’m a bit like
Eby. I believe that our English
translations of the bible are skewed heavily in favour of Rome, apostate
churches and tradition, rather than a proper understanding of the meaning of
the original text.
A couple of days ago, I was watching an episode of
the hit drama, The Mentalist. One line caught my attention: the junior
detective Grace says to Patrick Jane, as if to persuade him, “the kingdom of
God is a real place.” American Culture
Christianity is quite visible in our TV dramas.
In this version of Christianity, “heaven” and the kingdom of God are the
same thing and they are an actual place as we understand a physical place in
daily life – it’s just out beyond the sky somewhere. And it is a “future” waiting for the death of
morally good people – morally good as defined by that culture.
But that’s not how the bible actually speaks of
it. The kingdom of God is the fixed and
permanent domain and dominion of God.
Like ‘eternity’, it has no beginning or end apart from God Himself. But it is utterly different from time – a
distinct and separate dimension. One way
of conceptualising it is to see the kingdom of God as, say, the United States
and man on earth in time and space as a US military base in Australia or the
Philippines.
This is why I keep coming back to the idea of an
exclave. Ecclesia is an exclave of the kingdom of God on earth. Jesus’ earthly life was an exclave of the
kingdom of God on earth. That’s why he
said things like, the kingdom of God is “near you” or “at hand”.
The New Testament does not offer
“heaven-when-you-die” as heaven is
popularly understood, neither does it promise “hell-when-you-die” as hell is popularly understood. That does not mean that heaven and hell are
not real. But it does mean that the
heaven and hell of church and the modern gospel are entirely culturally defined
aberrations – devices of various forms of Culture Christianity, defined and
administered by man.
Given the uncertainty of the true meaning of the
original texts; and given that there is little doubt that millions – perhaps
billions – of the world’s population have never experienced a clear
proclamation of the good news of the kingdom of God; and given that God is
perfectly just and all-knowing – I believe there must be a point at which the
justice of God will issue in a remedy for our mass-uncertainty and our
mass-incompetence in the matter of the good news.
If everyone, no matter what age they lived in, is
to be measured by their obedience to the good news of our Lord Jesus (2
Thessalonians 1:8), surely they all need to have heard it and experienced
it? And despite thousands of years of
‘church’, millions, perhaps billions, clearly have not. Referring to Jesus’ own words, the end cannot
come because His good news of the kingdom of God has not been proclaimed in all
the habitable world as a witness to all nations. So what is God’s remedy for this? Ecclesia – in all its glory!
Jesus, ecclesia
and the good news of the kingdom of God offer the kingdom of God and no
less. And they promise redemption
through purging fire: the baptism and/or the lake of fire that apostle John talks
about. But nowhere does it promise that
morally bad people (as defined by Culture Christianity) will burn in hell for
ever. That is as reprobate as the devil
himself.
In the next group of posts, I answer the question what is the good news of the kingdom of God? This is broken up into sixteen sub-points.
Cheers,
Kevin.
In the next group of posts, I answer the question what is the good news of the kingdom of God? This is broken up into sixteen sub-points.
Cheers,
Kevin.
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