What The Bible Really Teaches About Hell

[Daystar]

Good post, Daystar- well-developed and researched. I think you might do with an intro paragraph and a conclusion to summarize though, since this is basically an essay.

Thatnks, lukec, I appreciate that.

I really like your point about the Valley of Hinnon, and how it was just a symbol for the people of that time that really captures the idea of a truly horrible place. But that leaves me wondering, if the original biblical word was simply “sheol,” and meaning more or less a gathering place for the dead (forgive me for the comparison, but I cannot help remembering in the book “The Amber Spyglass” they spend a good amount of time in what seems to be described very well by sheol). Why then does Jesus in the bible compare it with Hinnon?

Jesus didn't really compare sheohl with Hinnom. Hinnom, that is the Greek Gehenna, was a place that symbolized spiritual destruction whereas sheol was just the common grave. Gehenna was the literal place where they threw the corpses of animals and criminals who were thought not to deserve resurrection so they didn't deserve a proper burial.

I was also interested when I read

“For the living know that they die, and the dead know not anything, and there is no more to them a reward, for their remembrance hath been forgotten”

(Ecclesiastes 9:5, Young’s Literal Translation). I am a bit confused- is this saying there is no afterlife at all, or am I misreading?

The only afterlife is a resurrection to a possible everlasting life on earth and for a few spiritual resurrection to heaven. Earth was created for man and Heaven was created for God so the meek will inherit the earth and live forever upon it, but the few that go to heaven, 144, 000 (Revelation 7:4; 14:1-5) were selected to judge as princes with Jesus because in all fairness Jehovah and even Jesus doesn't really have an idea of what it is like to live with sin.

In 2 Thessalonians chapter 1, describing the second coming of Christ, it is written that Jesus will take vengeance on those who do not know God, and they “shall be punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord, and from the glory of his power” (Th. 7-9). Does this simply mean that the wicked are just... destroyed, and never to resurrected? I find it interesting that “everlasting” is included, since that implies that it’s not simply instantaneous, and that the punishment lasts forever. Hell is, in this case I suppose, simply being separated from god forever.

2 Thessalonians 1:7-9 - but, to you who suffer tribulation, relief along with us at the revelation of the Lord Jesus from heaven with his powerful angels in a flaming fire, as he brings vengeance upon those who do not know God and those who do not obey the good news about our Lord Jesus. These very ones will undergo the judicial punishment of everlasting destruction from before the Lord and from the glory of his strength

It is important to point out that there is often an importance or unspecified signifigance to 'knowing' or 'to know' something or someone in the Bible. Depending upon the context it could have an extremely wide range of variation in meaning. For example the people of Soddom wanted to 'know' the angels sexually, but Adam and Eve wanted to the fruit of the tree of 'knowledge' of what was good and bad which meant they wanted to judge for themselves what was good and bad. The ones that do not know God here are not simply those that are not aware of him. (compare Hosea 4:1 / John 7:28) Nor even that they are unrighteous, for there is a resurrection of the Righteous and the Unrightous. (Acts 24:15)

What this means is that there are millions of people who have not, for one reason or another, had the opportunity to judge God, to get to know if they want to be a part of his creation, of everlasting life. Judgement day is thought by many to be a terrible period of punishment, but it isn't. It isn't a pronouncement it is a judgement for those who have not had the opportunity to get to know God.

The wicked are those who don't coose to know God as having the right as creator to protect and guide us. Put simply it is a return to Paradise as it was meant to be. They reject him as Adam and Eve did, choosing to judge what is good and bad over him. They are destroyed forever. Fire is symbolic in the Bible as something being destroyed without the possibility of being remade.

So in that sense it is a separation from God, but hell itself isn't. God is in hell in a sense watching and waiting to resurrect the dead.

However, I’m not too sure how well this matches up with the idea that there are degrees of punishment. I’m talking about how knowingly doing wicked things earns you harder punishment than doing wickedness without knowing you are not supposed to (Luke: 47-48). There are no degrees of separation from God (one would think?) so they don’t mesh.

There are no degrees of punishment. I think that comes from Dante's Divine Comedy. Degrees of separation from God? You are either willing to live peacefully in his paradise earth or you are not. The destruction of death, sin, Satan, religion, governments, etc. comes from an unwillingness to be a part of it and if it were not for God we would undoubtedly destroy ourselves. God can't allow that. It is similar to the Nephilim in the days of Noah and the Flood.

Whether or not it’s in eternal torment, it would seem that there at least some promise in the bible of fiery punishment, maybe on the day of judgement, but regardless I don’t think that “sinners” are simply destroyed and done with.

We are all sinners, and I talked about judgement and the symbolic meaning of fire in the Bible above. Interestingly torment in the Greek verb basanizo is translated torment but can actually also be translated as jailers. The translation is interchangable. At Matthew 18:34 it is translated as jailers. So there is no literal fiery punishment - only a death that should be considered as torment due to what is the possible alternative.