Heaven vs. Hell vs. God's Address

[DeistPaladin]

Any substance to this? Or just another one of the billions of Christians with his own idea on how the bible should be read.

As you might expect, it depends on which part of the Bible you read.

If you focus on Revelation, the first NT book written, it does seem that the dead are in the grave and then when Jesus comes back the dead will rise to face judgment. It's at that point that those who are not found in the Book of Life (according to their works, not faith) will be tossed into the "Lake of Fire".

Paul, who's epistles came next in chronological order, apparently wrote in First Thessalonians that the "dead in Christ shall rise first" when judgment day comes. The dead are described as "asleep", which would imply they're in the grave.

It's only with the introduction of the Gospels that we get any ideas that people immediately go to Heaven or Hell upon death. Jesus in Luke tells the story of Lazarus and the rich man in Hell, which would distinctly suggest immediate departure to either locale.

As for the stuff about Purgatory or Limbo, these are Catholic fabrications.

My analysis:
Ideas about the Lake of Fire and "asleep" (in the grave) hearken back to the OT. The ancient Hebrews had no concept of Hell and the earliest writings denied there was any afterlife. The world "Sheol" is sometimes mistranslated as "Hell" when in fact it means "the grave". It was a metaphor for oblivion. You die, you stay dead and that's that.

Later, with the Book of Samuel, there developed vague ideas of the afterlife, ones which weren't fleshed out much. King Saul consults with a medium who conjures the spirit of the deceased Samuel to ask his council. The spirit of Samuel demands to know why his rest has been disturbed, indicating some place for the afterlife. Where or what this place was, I'm not sure but it sounds a bit like the Greek Hades.

It therefore makes sense that the earliest versions of Christianity believed that to die was to "sleep" in the grave only to be later summoned to Jesus to stand trial after the second coming.

With the Book of Jeremiah, we have his condemnation of the worshipers of Maloch who's temple was in the Valley of Gehenna. Moloch is condemned as an evil god and his cruelties reviled. The ancient Hebrews believed the valley to be corrupted by the evil which had been done there. They converted the valley into a garbage dump where they burned their refuse. Eventually, they established a ritual of dumping the bodies of executed criminals in with the burning garbage as a sort of final insult.

Hence the wicked dead being tossed into a "lake of fire".