What the Hell? A Study of Origins
Today you can download my lectures on the origin of the idea of Hell. Why not? It’s the perfect time of the year to find out where this fearful concept actually started.
CLICK HERE to purchase
Today you can download my lectures on the origin of the idea of Hell. Why not? It’s the perfect time of the year to find out where this fearful concept actually started.
CLICK HERE to purchase
Perfect!
It is too bad this isn’t free since today is my birthday. It would have been a wonderful present. It sounds like this is a one day only. Hopefully, it will come around again. Maybe next time.
It is available from now on, but since it is your birthday, I’ll send the link to you. Congratulations.
I didn’t get the link, but thanks.
I found some more scriptural references and studies into how hell was originally referenced at, www dot auburn.edu/~allenkc/tbhell dot html which ties in nicely with this topic.
Any study/critique of the doctrine of “Hell’ must include the passages regarding the “lake of fire” (Rev 19:20, 20:10, 20:13-15, and especially 21:8—the words of “the One Who Sits upon the Throne” [21:5] = God the Father), as well as Yeshua’s words in Matthew 18:8-9. One may debate whether or not this is annihilation (but see 20:10’s eis tous aiōnas tōn aiōnōn) or an existence of unending punishment by an unquenchable fire, but one cannot say these verses do not speak of the “Christian” idea of “Hell”.
Or one could just adopt the words of the song “Lake of Fire” by Curt Kirkwood of the band Meat Puppets:
Or perhaps one could adopt John Entwistle’s (late of the band The Who) words in “Heaven and Hell”:
Thank you for the additional information. I am personally convinced that if someone believes in Heaven they automatically accept their is an opposite which we have labelled hell. What I read of in scripture does not create either beyond the now and here…
I don’t see a problem if heaven represents life and hell represents death.
If the idea was only a “representation” (i.e., symbol), then it wouldn’t be a problem. But that’s the problem. Both are considered places, that is, physical locations where events occur. And that’s a problem, for a lot of reasons.
I guess you are saying that hell=sheol or hades. I have problems with the word hell since it is found nowhere in the Bible. Would the burning of the First Temple and the destruction of Jerusalem figure into the concept of hell? It seems like a “practical” approach to judgment. Would this not figure as prominently if not more so than pagan concepts? I am not saying that these are symbols. We are living in the Kingdom of Heaven or God now and waiting for the Messiah to return. And so we are called to walk as Yeshua walked. And no we don’t know what happens after we die. But are you saying that when a person dies he/she is in Hades in some “form” awaiting judgment? I would say David pondered as we all do what happens after we die. Psalm 16:9-11 seems to suggest that David had hope of more than just this life. And I heard you say in another discussion that Moses will sing not sing the Song of Moses implying he had hope of more than just this life. If I am misquoting or misunderstanding you, it is not intentional.
I wanted to make one more comment on this topic. I did not realize until this morning when looking at the word Hades in Scripture that Peter uses Psalm 16 in Acts 2:27-31 to talk about the Messiah. It seems he is saying that David did know about the coming of a resurrected Messiah or maybe Peter is employing a remez using this Psalm. Either way it is fascinating.
Peter’s use of David’s words is not the same as David’s use.
That is why I mentioned he was employing a remez. But what about these two verses especially verse 31? Are they translated incorrectly?
[Act 2:25 NIV] David said about him: ” ‘I saw the Lord always before me. Because he is at my right hand, I will not be shaken.
[Act 2:31 NIV] Seeing what was to come, he spoke of the resurrection of the Messiah, that he was not abandoned to the realm of the dead, nor did his body see decay.
But, still, isn’t David an acknowledged prophet? Judging by the 20/20 hindsight Peter, Yeshua and others used about his writing, he had to have been shown some things, even if he might not have always understood them (which was common for prophets, I think). You can’t just throw all the prophecies out because the prophets (along with their ‘original audiences’, too) might not have understood it all up front, right?
Ah, but who decides when the prophet can only be understood by an audience that he is not addressing. This seems like paradigm interpretation after the fact, which I believe, it is. That doesn’t mean it is wrong to interpret David’s words as if they were about the Messiah, but that’s not the same as saying that David KNEW they were about the Messiah. Prophecy in the Bible is NOT history in advance.
Prophecy in the Bible may not be history in advance, but that does not mean
it cannot be depended upon in the future. I have yet to see anybody AFTER THE FACT OF MESSIAH, that is, point to something – anything – in the Tanakh that differs from what He lived. It may not have been fortelling as we think of it, but it got nothing wrong.
If we get out of the Greek stream (or river) of time, and examine how prophecy actually works, it starts to get a whole lot more interesting for me, anyway. Time, free will, all the subjects you have been bringing out, look very different if the subjects that prophecy is directed toward have a hand in it. I read Luke 9: 44, 45 where Yeshua tells exactly what is going to happen, but the target audience doesn’t get it, presumably so that “all things may be fulfilled”.,
44 “Let these sayings sink down into your ears: for the Son of man shall be delivered into the hands of men.
45 But they understood not this saying, and it was hid from them, that they perceived it not: and they feared to ask him of that saying”.
He makes this point several times in regards to the nation as a whole, too. They COULD have “let these sayings sink down into (their) ears”, and some, like Peter, did, (somewhat), but prophecy is a hindsight endeavor, for sure. That is one of your better points, for me, anyway.
Skip, where is the physical location of hell? I just want to say I disagree strongly with hell=hades or sheol. Hell is an added word that doesn’t belong in Scripture. If you and others want to believe otherwise, that is fine. But it is misleading and dishonest to leave the word “hell” in Scripture as it is not in there. Sheol and Hades are speculations by people in the Bible and we who are living now about what happens after we die. The only evidence we have of what happens after we die is the resurrection of Jesus. That is it. Everything else is speculation. If you want to believe in a God who will punish people for infinity for what they fail to do in a finite period of time, that is your choice. But people should be given the actual words, not scholars or Bible translators personal biases. And the Scriptures in modern translations only put the word, hell, in Jesus’s mouth where he clearly would have said in Hebrew, the valley of Hinnom. Now what people choose to believe about this whether metaphorically or literally should be the individual’s right to learn and decide.
Deu 4:2 tells us not to add or subtract from the Word. Hell is an added word and concept that in my opinion has no Scriptural support. It is funny to me that if this is the fate of so many people that a loving God would fail to provide direct warning to all of us in all times and cultures that we could understand in simple words .We have to rely on scholars and language experts in Greek and Hebrew to tell us the truth. All of this proof of hell being based on complicated, technical, language specific explanations that involve only a few verses of Scripture. No, I don’t think so. i reject that totally. The Scripture used to justify hell is again all speculation. All we can derive from Scripture is judgment. Again, anything else is speculation. Whatever Revelation means, the only evidence there is the resurrection of Jesus.
Marsha,
To be fair to the translators of the (often faulty) KJV, the word “hell” in 1611 did not automatically carry with it, the Catholic baggage of uniting and identifying it with, the lake of fire in Revelation. The word only meant a covered or concealed place. That is why we still use the phrase, “like a bat out of hell”, because bats fly out of caves at night, not out of lakes of fire.
The KJV translates the OT Hebrew word’ “sheol” with the word “hell” 31 times BUT it also translates it “grave” another 31 times, and, “pit” 3 times. It was never translated, lake of fire. The point being, it had no such connotation, and essentially, these scholars knew there was no difference between being in a grave and being in hell. EVERYONE goes to hell. Yeshua was in hell three days and nights when He was enclosed in His tomb. Even the Catholic Apostle’s Creed admits that.
The KJV also translates the NT Greek word, “hades” correctly, with the word “hell” meaning exactly the same as “sheol”.
BUT what IS incorrect in the KJV, is when they translate “the valley of Hinnom” into “hell”. That place WAS a fiery open air garbage dump and it must not be confused with the benign, “sheol”, and, “hades”, but that is exactly what the KJV has done. (The NT Greek, “tartarus” is also incorrectly translated as “hell”.)
As you stated, (some better) modern translations only use “hell” when they are translating “the valley of Hinnom”, but better yet, they should never use the word “hell” as it confuses the several different and distinct words. The word should be transliterated into something like, Gehenna, the onetime valley of garbage, and child sacrifice, on earth, on the fringe of Jerusalem.
Nevertheless, the “Lake of Fire” must be also dealt with, but that is a completely different story.
It seems like a few verses in Scripture to come up with a doctrine of eternal torture would not align with a merciful, compassionate, loving Creator. And as someone else pointed out, Revelations is apocalyptic literature.
I think judgment is clear but what that will be like isn’t even clear. But we could go back to the measure for measure.
Should we just disregard the entire book of Revelation, including the Water/River of Life in chapter 22? The New Jerusalem (and Water of Life) of chapter 21?
Should we think that God would not destroy the devil by throwing him into this lake of fire eis tous aiōnas tōn aiōnōn (“into the ‘ages of the ages’ [forever and ever]”)? (If one thinks “the devil” is just a euphemism for our own ‘bad side’, then such a one has a lot of Scripture to eisegete [read this thought into] in order to work this out.)
Shall we discard the blessing we are to receive in reading and heeding the words in Revelation, because it appears just too difficult to understand? (All verbs in Rev 1:3 are in continuous tense, except for “written” which is in the perfect, the latter meaning, essentially, ‘past action with present continuing results’.)
Justice and Judgment are two sides of the same coin. Justice requires Judgment, whether positive or negative. The just receive their just rewards, the unjust their ‘unreward’. And a belief in eternal damnation need not entail a belief in a literal, physical place for this.
If the One Who sits on the Throne in Revelation 21 promises the thirsty an inheritance to drink from the Water of Life (21:6-7; cf. 22:1-5), why is it unfathomable to conceive that He would condemn the rest to “the second death” (21:8)? And does this not roughly parallel the words of Yeshua in John 5:28-29?
How should we understand Rev 22:8-20. As this will determine which class soul we are…
Again all is about the now and here, read in line with the teachings of Lazarus and the rich man as well as As the tree falls so shall it stay and its works shall follow…
The tormenting in the eternal fire is what? Burning being scorched with no end. That I read is only intended for 3 entities; Devil, the beast and the false prophet. The other categories are thrown into the fire the second death no mention of tormenting… That would be reading into the scriptures unless the specific portions were originally recorded differently and translated shorthand.
So what remains is either an eternal life or a permanent death for human beings or souls.
Should we maybe first understand what life relates to and death to determine what is implied… That could mean life is living according to God’s will and death distanced from God. Or life is drinking of the water or not being able to drink… Or life is trying to take control of thoughts as thoughts determine actions and actions determine consequences and it is only consequences that follow us after death… Ànd the verses in Revelation 22 render the outcome as washing our clothes or rather purifying or making holy what we do. Not what we read or teach others… What we do the example we set the legacy we add towards creating. Or should we settle for John 1:1-14 and John17:3 to determine what is life and what is death.
Skip and others have warned against addiction or repetitively doing something from the tacit mind. Just doing or following a lifestyle because it is said to be the right thing without understanding why is also a dead deed a lifeless activity. And just doing a deed because it’s outcome helps me accumulate or accomplish something also seems to be a waste and dead end…
Elvis, Beetles, etc legacy lives on as does Ford and other modern changes while progress and fashion trends exist. All these come to pass when our need for these stop then the need for a spiritual realm. For this the repeated reminder throughout the scriptures not to rely on the arm of the flesh. So the question is what should we be doing. Surviving, struggling, accumulating, saving souls or other humans in dispair or just living in the moment for our life to be recorded in the book of life, or is it being an example unto others which seems to be the only way we can cleanse ourselves or ensure we take heed of the teachings to find life.
What must be remembered is that the idea of a burning fire is the burial ritual of those executed on death sentences that existed during the era of the NT and these realities were most probably used to explain things. The same is found with convictions and lifestyles that influenced the words of the prophetic reasons in the entire biblical records.
If we need to literally interpret these records it would imply that individuals cremated have already been sentenced to the second death…
While Paul explains the second death as unto sin, a choice we need to make now to ensure we have life in Christ or through anointing. Rom 6-8 and 1 Cor. 15. Based on John 1 and Det. 4-6
Craig all very confusing for me when I apply my mind and understanding into it for that reason I accept the intent is simplicity in hearing, understanding and doing when called to Rom 10. NB not when I choose to… Stay in Jerusalem until the Holy Spirit has called or revealed what must be done.
Just be careful of a tacit habitual lifestyle it is an addicted one which may torment when I have no body to apply the lifestyle to…
Seeker,
Yes, you are correct, those who receive the second death (Rev 20:6, 14; 21:8) are not specifically mentioned as being tormented ‘forever and ever’ (as the devil, beast, and false prophet) in the book of Revelation, but might we find out more elsewhere?
Jesus compares those who will feast with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven (Matt 8:11) with others who “will be cast out into the outer darkness; in that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth” (8:12; cf. Luke 13:27-28). In Jesus’ explanation of the parable of the weeds, “all stumbling blocks, and those who commit lawlessness” will be thrown into “the furnace of fire” (Matt 13:42). It surely seems to me that “the furnace of fire” here is the same one mentioned in Revelation, and, according to Jesus here, the fate of those cast into this will be one of actively experiencing ‘weeping and gnashing of teeth’, which I construe as being tormented.
That’s not to mention the three different parables (and I’m not sure all qualify as ‘parables’ here) that also mention ‘weeping and gnashing of teeth’ (Matt 22:11-13; 24:44-51; 25:14-30).
You wrote: “If we need to literally interpret these records it would imply that individuals cremated have already been sentenced to the second death…” I’m sorry, but that’s a non sequitur. A physical burning whether in an accident or by cremation after physical death is not necessarily the same as the ultimate fate of the disobedient.
Thank you for the response Craig. To heed to his word is the objective so I will not question these.
Maybe I should consider what is a parable – for me a teaching through using current realities, and what is intended as end time prophecies. As you are doing, thanks for the advice.
Back to the Bible I go…
Your discussions on the development of the concept of hell were very helpful not just in how the idea developed, but also in better understanding why one needs to go back to what the original audience would have understood about the text. I appreciate the comments on how the rabbis developed reward and punishment from ideas they incorporated from other cultures, and how these ideas developed over time. I would like to explore some of the rabbinic material. Since the Temple is so important to the Jewish people, I would like to explore how the ideas and images of judgment, fire and hell are combined and reflected in the thinking. The theme of judgment on Jerusalem and the burning and destruction of the First Temple and Jerusalem. How this played into 1st century thought. And then when the Second Temple was destroyed, how these ideas would have been expanded more.
Let us know what you discover
I will. Nehemiah Gordon has a good discussion on YouTube titled “To Hell and Back”. Also Dr. Roy Blizzard has an informative discussion of Lucifer on his website.
I posted Roy’s article last year.
SO SO SO GOOD! I will have this on steady rotation for sound as the teachings are so interesting and your delivery is whole and authentic and funny and honest and on and on….. THIS was such a great message for me… Thank you so much – much needed and really strengthened me….
While listening to a Skip lecture is always profitable, I am confused and disagree with some of his conclusions. If I can paraphrase parts of this 3-hour lecture accurately, he says that we should expect that Hebrew thought would be affected by the Egyptian culture they came out of. He says that the ideas of, a watery chaos, a firmament, the earth with water above and below, are all Egyptian cosmological concepts that the Hebrews borrowed and modified for their own use, and that even Paul borrowed the idea of there being three heavens from previous cultures. And yet, at the same time, the Hebrews sharply rejected any notion of the afterlife being an almost carbon copy of this life, – which is how the Egyptians understood it. In contrast, the Hebrews believed Sheol to be a place of nothingness, undefined, and an ambiguous state much different than this life. The Egyptians esteemed the dead and believed they must appease them so they will not adversely affect the living, but the Hebrews ignored the dead and believed they should never attempt any contact with them, and, that there was no activity nor consciousness in Sheol.
My issue being, if the Hebrews were so heavily influenced by the Egyptians in many areas, e.g. creation and the Flood, why were they so utterly divergent on this major issue regarding the state of the dead?
My answer is that none of the Hebrew concepts, as written in Scripture, were influenced by the pagan cultures (this of course excepts the much later Rabbinical teachings).
So how do I explain the many similarities found in the ancient pagan cultures and the stories in Genesis? Simple, the pagan stories are later corruptions of the original patriarchal records that we find in Genesis. But you may ask, wasn’t Genesis written by Moses long after the pagan beliefs were established? No. Moses didn’t write Genesis. He may have been its compiler and editor but otherwise he had nothing to do with it. There is not a single statement in Scripture that says that he did (whereas there are plenty of statements claiming he is the author of Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. No argument there, but Genesis was either, 1. A completely human fabrication, 2. Completely dictated by God to some unknown scribe, or, 3. The actual records of the people personally or closely involved with the events retold (excepting the creation account). I believe the latter.
This belief reconciles the problem stated above. 1. Moses did not incorporate pagan beliefs into Genesis and 2. Moses (and others) were inspired by God as to the true state of the dead.
I am with you, Daniel. We call it a fall for a reason, even though spiritualism’s main assertion is that it was a fall “upwards” (Blavatsky).
C.S. Lewis observed that you can explain the crooked by means of the straight, but you cannot explain the straight by starting from the crooked.
Why would God not have revealed everything to our first parents? We have clearly lost, not gained. Humanism must believe in evolution (genetic creation of new life), as well as a steady ‘discovery’ of truth, but perhaps if we could stop trying to justify evolution (and humanism) and start believing all the evidence for devolution instead, our common sense might get some more room to operate. ‘Discovery’ of truth? How? Guess and check? Does the Bible ever support this way of learning truth? I don’t see it in there.
Have you considered the paradigm-dependent nature of your evidence and conclusions?
Of course, but the same could be said for the conclusion that the Hebrews were dependent upon the Egyptians for their cosmology. What if the Egyptians got theirs from the patriarchs, too? Egyptians did not exactly spring forth in a vacuum from the head of Zeus (or would that be Osiris?), right?
We know that all truth is revelational. Since when did Egyptians get revealed truth God’s people were dependent upon? That is the bone that gets stuck in my craw.
I am fine with the similarities between Egyptian and Hebrew cosmology. I can find no reason in scripture, however, for surmising that that corrolation equals causation. That defies logic, not to mention the revelational nature of truth. If corrolation equals causation, then it is just as likely to surmise that the Egyptians got their cosmology from the same patriarchs the Hebrews did; they just had worse memory due to sin.
Here’s the issue. HISTORY. The Egyptian kingdoms are far older than any Hebrew writing. The Egyptian religious worldview is far older than any Hebrew writing. Moses uses a derivative of the Phoenician alphabet for Paleo-Hebrew and the Phoenicians are far older than any Hebrew writing. So, doesn’t it make sense to suggest the Hebrew thought was influenced by the PRIOR Egyptian and Phoenician cultures? There is no archeological evidence that Hebrew thinking pre-dates Egyptian. The only reason one would suggest such a thing is based on the claim that the earliest chapters of Genesis are HISTORICAL, and that is a paradigm assumption.
Back to you.
What history do you subscribe to? Egyptian?
Seth knew Methusalah for the first century of his life, and Methusalah talked with the grandchildren of Adam. Seth taught everybody. Did Abraham pay tithes to Melchisedec (much less communicate with heavenly agencies directly) because he was following the more ‘ancient’ Egyptian worldview? Historically speaking, what makes more sense?
The Table of Nations (Gen. 10) has been shown to be the most error-free document, as established by independent sources, of the ancient world. (See Bill Cooper, After The Flood) Exactly where is the break point between fiction and reality in Genesis? Egyptian writing, on the other hand, does not enjoy this veracity. They changed stuff all the time to aggrandize themselves. How are we to say their worldview is ‘older’ when we know they rewrote their own history?
There is no doubt I have a paradigm. I believe the only way we can correctly know anything about our afterlife is by God directly revealing it to one His prophets. Everything else, and through anyone else, is purely speculative and probably wrong. Yes, this is a faith-based paradigm, but for me, it is based on decades of study that has given me great confidence that what the (original autographed) Bible manuscripts state, is accurate.
Skip states, “The Egyptian kingdoms are far older than any Hebrew writing.”
Of course, we all know Moses came long after the height of Egyptian power and culture, but we have NO good reason to believe Moses wrote Genesis and so, even if we consider all of Genesis to be “Hebrew” thinking, it could have originated anywhere from Adam to the sons of Jacob.
I can’t “prove” Adam, Noah, Shem, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Joseph wrote (or dictated) their own personal histories as recorded in Genesis, but thousands of tablets still exist with writing that goes back up to 5,000 years ago. “Hebrew” writing did not originate with Paleo-Hebrew.
Why do we think that Adam, God’s perfect creation who lived almost a thousand years, never figured out how to write and record his story for his posterity? Noah built an incredible ark and Abraham was very rich in cattle, gold, and silver; – but were they too stupid to write their own stories? Granted, we do not have the “archeological evidence that Hebrew thinking pre-dates Egyptian” but we have the Biblical literary evidence which has proved incredibly resilient to all attempts to find it untrustworthy.
And so, IF we grant Genesis that reliability, even while understanding it is written in every mode from poetic to scientific, internally its states that it was recorded by all of the above-mentioned Patriarchs. P.J. Wiseman in his book, Ancient Records and the Structure of Genesis: A Case for Literary Unity, 1936, argues that the 11 time repetitive phrase, (KJV) “These are the generations of . . .” is a common ancient phrase used as a “signature” at the END of one’s personal story (and NOT at the start of one’s story as is commonly misunderstood in our Bibles). And if so, (and of course this is denied by modern Biblical Hypothesis), then it is the Genesis record, signed off by these Patriarchs, that is the original, and it is the Egyptian record which is the corrupted copy.
We know that major Egyptian ‘rewriting’ of their own history occurred after the Exodus, too. Wonder why? And why does no one take into account that ancient minds had prodigious memories? We suspect that Homer’s tales may have only been committed to writing as much as a thousand (oral) years after Homer, too. They may not have written because they didn’t have to write: at least until they couldn’t “remember” any more.
We mustn’t forget that Adam named every single creature–livestock, birds, and beasts of the field.
Dan, Is the Matthew birth story literally true or is it myth? Paul, the earliest writer says nothing. Mark the earliest Gospel says nothing. Matthew who used Mark goes on at length. Luke copies Matthew. John says nothing. What do you take from all that? Not very much it would seem. So how do we take Matthews lengthy story? Spong says it was meant to be a parallel to the Hebrew liturgical year starting with the Passover, a new nation being born in Egypt. Matthew’s birth narrative does exactly the same thing including Genesis genealogy all the way back to Abraham. These stories would have been told in the synagogues every Sabbath in parallel when the relevant Hebrew stories were told. Jews of course would have understood Matthew correctly but Gentiles in their days would not, could not and we still don’t.
For some 50 years or so, Paul and the apostles would have been giving their oral presentation of the Jesus stories in the synagogues during this time. The written gospels were products of the synagogue oral presentations. They were written by Jewish writers for Jewish people who lived their lives inside a Jewish perspective. A synagogue Sabbath could go on for many hours and any interpretation was given. Any messianic point of view was heard just as it was in the days to come of Bar Kokhba in 132CE but that led to 3 way civil war and total diaspora.
(This seems unrelated to hell but) . . . yes, I believe Matthew’s nativity narrative is true.
The different narratives have different purposes. Mark did not record the nativity because with his “Servant of Man” theme, a servant’s birth and genealogy are inconsequential.
John, the last Gospel, ignores his human genealogy because 1. it had already been covered by Matthew and Luke and 2. John is more concerned with his “Son of God” genealogy going back to the Word. Neither was Paul’s evangel, to the nations, concerned with the circumstances of Jesus’ birth.
Luke’s focus is on His “Son of Man” genealogy, so his goes right back to Adam, the first man.
Matthew’s focus is on His Messiahship and Jesus being the “Son of David”, so he goes back to Judah and Abraham to prove His legitimate and royal genealogy.
You seem very sure of your chronologies, but I find that the scholars are all over the map with dating some of the N.T. books. I’m not convinced Paul’s first letter, from about A.D. 50, is the earliest writing as that is 17 to 22 years after Christ’s crucifixion. I think that’s quite a vacuum for anyone not to write anything about the “Greatest Story Ever Told”. That’s just my thought but Clement says that the Gospels containing the genealogies were written first and it also seems that Paul at 1 Cor. 11:23–25 could well be using Luke 22:19–20 as his source when he writes about details of the Last Supper.
Luke wrote that there were many (gospels) written but he went to the trouble to interview eye-witnesses to record the events accurately and in order. (Luke 1:1-4). Wikipedia says Luke was most probably composed A.D. 80 to 110 but I don’t think he waited 50 to 80 years to get these first-hand interviews.
What the Hell? December 23, 2018
I haven’t listened to the lecture but it is a subject I have changed my mind on or rather what I have been taught or heard most of my life is not what I believe is the truth. I believe ‘destroyed’ is it in a nutshell. I was very surprised when I heard a man in Arizona (Jewish) say that. I don’t remember his name or the name of the congregation he was leading. He said he didn’t believe a loving God would do that.
I honestly feel embarrassed at ever saying or thinking that people would suffer forever. It is not the only idea I feel embarrassed about believing were true or just plain falling for (so many that are either in or from the Christian world) like a hell, the snake in Genesis being Satan, the tribulation. I was so fearful at one time about future events on earth which is why I really tried to understand the Book of Revelation. I came across good teaching on the subject which is no longer online but basically said what is in this article: ‘Don’t Worry, The ‘’Great Tribulation’’ Was in the Past. (Patheos.com) The man who wrote about it was the type to analyze everything. He was also the person who I learned the truth about Satan from (not part of the creation story).
In ‘The Hell Debate—Annihilationism’ the author says: Eternal punishment’ doesn’t necessarily have to describe the eternal conscious tormenting of a person who lives forever. Annihilation is an eternal punishment. There are 2 parts. The author believes in Jesus’ deity. Other than that, I thought what he said was good.
Jerusalem Perspective has 2 articles on the subject. One is titled ‘Engaged: Eternally Dwelling in Hell? by Brian Becker, Nov. 27, 2012. Also ‘Salted with Fire’ by Westin Field.
Discussion on hell and all these other topics makes me want to listen or read what Ellul said about brainwashing! No one (overall) will listen but they will listen to false teachers! (Beth Moore is one I recently had a brief discussion about with someone who has great articles on misogyny). Being brainwashed is part of the problem and when it’s combined with behavior modification caused by damage to the brain we have a terrible situation that is almost impossible to change (if at all).
I would encourage you to listen to the lecture. Skip does a great job outline how these beliefs developed over the centuries.
I would like to! Curious as to why you said that! In a nutshell, what is Skip’s belief? Destroyed or eternal suffering? I have read all the comments but it’s not clear to me. Maybe I should read them again.
He leaves that up to you. He examines the scriptures comparing OT and NT and explains the origins of where the beliefs started. Greek beliefs on afterlife ( especially how Hellanism affected Judaism) , Babylonian,Egyptian and Persian beliefs about the dead and how these paradigms affect how we understand the scriptures. It was extremely eye opening and helped explained why we have so many different beliefs across cultures and religions about it! Even the need for us to have a definite answer on it is a result of our Greek Western paradigm to have the Right answers. If you can set aside the time to listen to it, please do! It’s 3 hours broken up in 2 parts with pdf slides
I actually have an opinion on it! Just wanted to know his. What’s yours?
I went to YouTube and came across Skip’s name on Dusty Feet’s posts. Maybe the same information? Part. 1,2,3 on heaven and hell. I think I know where he stands. Listened to all 3 but Part 3 in particular got my interest because of comments Skip made about pork, violating the Sabbath and Hitler.
One comment Skip made was about Hitler and his alleged suicide when talking about the concept of justice. Skip said it was a convenient suicide and stated it as fact. I am using the word alleged because there are documentaries on Hitler’s escape to Argentina. No justice there. I have bought one book on the subject. There is an Israeli man who also produced a documentary on his escape besides others before that one. There are a few books and I saw just part of a newspaper article from 1955 that was in one of the programs.
I have more questions about comments he made.
I NEVER post anything on Facebook and I don’t allow my material to be posted there, so I am not aware of any of my work on Facebook. That doesn’t mean other people don’t post things, sometimes videos or audios from my lectures, but there is NOTHING authorized or official there from me.
That said, perhaps to understand the comment about Hitler (which I do not recall at the moment), it would be good to listen to the whole of the lecture on the origin of Hell.
I think it could be the same lecture. It was very long in the man’s post because he made comments along the way. 5 or 6 hours total I think. It was not Facebook but YouTube.
I was surprised by your comments about pork in part 3 of Dusty Feet’s post. You don’t eat pork, do you?
As I mentioned before, I don’t recall much about this lecture, and I don’t eat pork.
I will say one big take away I have after listening to the lecture was when Skip showed that there is not much if any focus on the afterlife in the OT. The focus is on Torah obedience and how we live here on earth now, today. How we live now in obedience to God is what really counts and the OT seems to infer that whatever happens after we die it’s up to God. After centuries of Greek influences in beliefs in the after life, a belief in the need for justice after an evil person dies (that there has to be some form of eternal punishment or something) the Church starts to put more focus on the afterlife, making sure we go to heaven when we die. Doesn’t matter what happens with life now, just focus on salvation giving your life to Christ, etc. Skip said a quote from Abraham Heschel where he said, ” Judaism is on how to live right, ” Christianity is on how to die right”. That resonated with me. We have so many concerns about where we end up when we leave here: Will it be heaven or hell? Now I’m wondering should that even be our focus? Concentrate on living for God, being obedient to His word, living out His purposes on earth and If I truly put trust in how He is God of justice, mercy, compassion what happens after I die is up to Him because I trust Him!