The Bible Hell

Although in practice only a few sects now hold to the doctrine of eternal torment, there is still a widespread belief amongst Christians that God does intend to punish sinners everlastingly, and that to all eternity they will remain in a state of conscious misery. Believing that this is the Bible teaching, many hold to this dogma whilst knowing that it is quite irreconcilable with the character of a God of love.

In point of fact, the Bible does not teach that the penalty for sin is eternal conscious misery of any kind. It does teach that the penalty for sin is death and that death is the extinction of life.

"Hell" in the Old Testament is translated from the Hebrew word sheol, the death state. There are certain symbolic passages where sheol is depicted as a state of consciousness, but the metaphorical character of these texts is easily appreciated upon examination. Sheol, translated "hell," "grave," and "pit," is in reality the unconscious condition of the dead, knowing nothing and feeling nothing.

New Testament teaching is the same. "Hell" is translated from hades and gehenna. Hades was the death state, and although in New Testament days the infiltration of Greek thought had made general belief in hades as a conscious state much more common, its usage in the New Testament, especially as the word for sheol in quotations from the Old Testament, show that Jesus and the apostles looked upon it as did their ancestors. "Gehenna" was the name of a valley to the south of Jerusalem where perpetual fires were kept burning to destroy the refuse of the city, and in the New Testament is used to describe the ultimate death, the "Second Death," which overtakes those who refuse to come into harmony with God after all the opportunities of the coming Age, the "Millennial Age," have been offered.

Job prayed to be hidden in sheol. David was left in hades. Our Lord Himself descended into hades and on the third day "rose again from the dead." All such references can only be understood by realising that the Bible Hell is the death state; that when men die they go into the death state, hades or sheol, awaiting the resurrection, and that when the Kingdom of our Lord Jesus Christ is set up and all return from death to be offered the way of everlasting life, the wilfully wicked will again go into the death state, gehenna, from which there is no resurrection. Thus seen, there is a real penalty for sin, but it is not torment. It is the withdrawal of that life which God gave, but of which the recipient will not make rightful use.

AOH