From theist to agnostic to atheist to agnostic to freethinker and...

[old man]

Dear Old man,

What do you believe hell is, and why it exists, how it came to exist, and why people MUSt be sent there? Is it eternal, please give biblical evidence to support your claim of it not being so?

Sorry for the late reply missluckie but my internet access provider packed up Thursday and Friday.

What do you believe hell is,

Hell or rather, "the lake of fire" (Revelation 20:14-15 KJV) in which death and hell (hades) finish up, is or rather will be, anything ranging from everlasting death to everlasting torment, depending on the knowledge and the gravity of the offence caused by each condemned soul.

and why it exists, how it came to exist,

The answer can be found in the answer to the question “how did evil come to exist?”

God's will means nothing if it is not free and from free will came evil. Love is good and without free will, love, especially the Spirit of pure and perfect love revealed through Jesus would mean nothing. It was through free will and a natural desire to experience the fascinating unknown which eventually allowed pride (remember pride?) and rebellion to bring into existence the first mind of evil. God's love means nothing without free will and from free will and from pride and rebellion came evil. It was through an unavoidable and disastrous misuse of free will did a free and perfect member of creation degenerate into a corruption beyond help, seducing and taking so many others with him. Thus the once perfect member of creation who is now known as Satan, did establish the way of the damned.


Rebellion can be an experience of ultimate freedom, be it against good or be it against evil; and rebelling against truth can reap an irrational extreme pleasure as self control is abandoned and the self and others are offended. This is what Satan and his followers must have first discovered. Worse still, there was absolutely nothing to stop them from degenerating beyond hope. When evil first came into existence it threatened the very existence of creation; and if so many of God's free and perfect children became corrupted into a hopeless demonic state once, then with no remedial action that same process which led to ultimate evil could just as easily happen again and again for as long as creation continued or until it was no more. Unless God moved with all wisdom and justice to prevent this from happening again, the perfect paradise born from the Father of free will would cease to exist. Evil would remain a very real threat to every new and glorious creation, and perfect joy would be no more.


And so the question must be asked, what must be done in order to save creation from such an endless nightmare?

One sure remedy is to allow those hopeless devils of ultimate evil who were also created to live forever and who know and hate what is good to run their course of corruption and deceit in a perfectly created finite arena called the world. There let their evil craving be so fulfilled that they may reach their destination of hopeless conflict and chaos. Then let the justified and undeniable reality of their hell, together with the unique lessons learnt by the redeemed, forever serve as a reminder and a warning to every new born free and perfect mind of reason never to go down that insane road of pride and rebellion again.

The degrees of condemnation will be justified and will forever be seen by all reasoning minds to be justified, the possibility of any more threats to God and paradise will therefore be removed forever. The God of reason and perfect love will do everything necessary to ensure no part of His creation will ever degenerate into evil again. His nature demands that no free and perfect member of creation as Satan once was, will ever again desire the way of the damned and then allow that desire to grow and bear fruit. But to cause or allow torment beyond what is necessary for the eternal well being of the Spirit of truth would be an offence to the Spirit of truth. To cause or allow any torment for no good reason would do no good and would therefore be an offence to the God of love and to all that is good.

and why people MUSt be sent there?

...because they will not be trusted.

Is it eternal, please give biblical evidence to support your claim of it not being so?

The first book of the Bible clearly tells us that in the beginning man was made mortal with the ability to gain immortality. Let us see then how God first began to teach His people the meaning of His justice.

Genesis 2:16-17, God's first and only warning to perfect man was, "Of every tree of the garden you may freely eat; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.". In this warning to Adam there is not even the slightest hint of a warning of everlasting torment. The only warning perfect man received from God before his ability to think rationally became corrupted, was the warning of death.


What I still see and hear being reasoned and preached by many in the Reformed Church however is that because Adam remained alive for many years after the day he ate the forbidden fruit, the word “die” in Genesis 2:17 cannot mean die as in the literal meaning of the word. Instead, what Reformed theology claims is that the word die in that context, actually means: man's soul, which includes his awareness, his senses and his ability to reason became separated from God but carried on living forever; and that unless man is converted and reunited with God before his physical body dies then he will remain separated from God and will ultimately be made to live forever in endless torment in a never ending fire.

But there is no good reason to change the meaning of the word “die” when there was a very real and obvious instant death on the day the perfect Spirit of truth ruling in Adam listened to Satan and ignored God. This perfect Spirit that was sovereign in the then perfect Adam was corrupted into a spirit of lies and rebellion against God. The pure and perfect Spirit that was the innermost ruling character in Adam was now dead in Adam, and it is this death that was completely ignored when forming the doctrine that speaks of an immortal soul being given to every man. When God said, “for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die”, that is exactly what happened: The perfect innocent and holy person that was Adam was no longer living, the word “die” in Genesis 2:17 therefore can easily be seen to mean exactly what the original Hebrew word “Muwth” says it means: to die, to wither, to decay, to be dead; to kill, to slay, to bring to death. This spiritual death was followed many years later by Adams physical death.


I will say again, there is no good reason to believe the meaning of the words “the day that you eat of it you shall surely die” should in any way be altered to mean “the day that you eat of it your soul, your senses, your awareness and your ability to reason and perceive, will be separated from God but will carry on living forever”. What is more, in Genesis 3:19, 22 and 24, we see that after Adam gave in to Satan's temptation and died spiritually through valuing his desire to know evil above his Father's warning, we are told of God's reactions and what He said: “By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return” Gen 3:19. Adam then is being told here that he is now going to return back into the state of dust before he was made and there is nothing here to suggest that that state was going to be anything other than the state before he was made into a living being! In fact, God then went on to say, “The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever” Gen 3:22. After God drove the man out from the Garden of Eden He then placed “cherubim and a flaming sword flashing back and forth to guard the way to the tree of life” Gen 3:24, in order to keep fallen man from eating and living forever. What I see written here then is that the Father of perfect love and compassion, mercy and predestination has made it perfectly clear that He was never going to see these newly loved, but lost and naïve self-deceiving children wander blindly into an everlasting life of conflict and torment in a lake of fire.

If man had been made with an immortal soul and his conscious mind of reason with all it's powers to sense and perceive was made to live forever, then it would make no sense for God to place cherubim and a flaming sword preventing man from eating and living forever.

Ezekiel 18:4 tells us, “Behold, all souls are mine; the soul of the father as well as the soul of the son is mine: the soul who sins shall die”. The word “die” here is from the same Hebrew word “Muwth” found in Genesis 2:17 and still means exactly the same: to die, to wither, to decay, to be dead; to kill, to slay, to bring to death.
The original Hebrew word for “soul” here is “nephesh”, which is also the same word used in Genesis 2:7 (“and man became a living soul” KJV) and can be seen clearly spoken of in Scripture as being mortal.

Ecclesiastes 9:5 “For the living know that they will die;
But the dead know nothing”... and they shall remain that way until they are made to live again, as and when God so wills, for as long as God so wills.


The Bible also explains that God alone is immortal, 1 Timothy 6:15-16, and that only through a true knowledge of Him shall immortality be gained, Romans 2:7. But God has also clearly warned of a greater condemnation, even everlasting torment coming upon the vilest of souls who, like Satan, know Him well and hate Him. Such as these, instead of wanting to live in harmony with Him and with all of His creation they prefer to hate Him with a passion, constantly seeking pleasure and ecstasy in feeding and satisfying their most depraved desires and needs which they know are the most offensive and most grieving to Him. Revelation 14:6 and verses 9-11, together with Rev 20:10 and Matthew 23:14, also help explain this.


Yes, the Bible clearly speaks of a condemnation of everlasting torment, but certainly not for all condemned souls. For the least knowledgeable or least offensive of them, the Father of reason through His Word and the Spirit of truth warns of everlasting death.