How would YOU react if you found out that someone whom you had entrusted all your time, energy, hopes, beliefs & resources to had been deceiving you all along and had no intentions of correcting their actions? Would you continue entrusting your time, hopes, beliefs, energy & resources in this person regardless? Let us consider what many have been taught to believe about HELL. Q. What Hebrew & Greek words from the original Holy Scriptures became translated as HELL? A. Sheol, Hades, Gehenna & Tartarus Q. What does Sheol, Hades, Gehenna & Tartarus actually mean? A. Gehenna - A valley located in Jerusalem called the valley of Hinnom. During Jesus’s time on earth, this valley was used as the city dump. A fire was constantly kept alight there to burn up and consume all of the city’s unwanted rubbish. A. Sheol - the grave (the place of the dead) or the pit. A. Hades - the direct equivalent of the Hebrew word sheol; meaning the grave or the pit. A. Tartarus - a prisonlike condition to which only spirit creatures—not humans—are consigned. Q. So How is it that HELL has become a place regarded in various religions as a spiritual realm of evil and suffering, often traditionally depicted as a place of perpetual fire beneath the earth where the wicked are punished after death? A. The concept of a soul within us that cannot die first became a ‘Christian’ doctrine at the end of the second century AD. Hell had been taught in Greek philosophy long before the time of Jesus, with Plato (427-347 BC) as the important leader in this thinking. The teaching of an everlasting place of punishment for the wicked is the natural consequence of a belief in an immortal soul. By the year AD 187, it was understood that life, once we have it, is compulsory; there is no end to it, either now or in a world to come. We have no choice as to its continuance, even if we were to commit suicide to end it. At the end of the 2nd century Christianity had begun to blend Greek philosophy —human speculative reasoning, with the teachings of God’s Word. Such words and phrases as ‘continuance of being’, ‘perpetual existence’, ‘incapable of dissolution’ and ‘incorruptible’ began to appear in so-called Christian writings. These had come straight from Plato, the Greek philosopher, all those years before Jesus. Other phrases used were ‘the soul to remain by itself immortal’, and ‘an immortal nature’. It was taught that this is how God made us. But this idea derives from philosophy, not divine inspiration. There are no such words in the Bible. It was Athenagorus, a Christian, but whose teachings, according to the Encyclopaedia Britannica, were strongly tinged with Platonism, who had introduced the teaching of an immortal soul into Christianity. In this way, he paved the way for the logical introduction of eternal torment for immortal, but sinful, souls. This was a hundred years and more after the time of the apostles, and came straight from popular philosophy. The apostles had consistently taught that death is a sleep, to be followed by resurrection. The early church leaders – Clement, Ignatius, Hermas, Polycarp, and others who also believed that death is a sleep, taught that the wicked are destroyed forever by fire – their punishment was to be annihilation. These leaders did not teach of an immortal soul to be tortured by fire in hell for eternity. About AD 240 Tertullian of Carthage took up the teaching of an immortal soul. It was he who added the further, but logical dimension. He taught the endless torment of the immortal soul of the wicked was parallel to the eternal blessedness of the saved, with no sleep of death after this life. This came at a time when many Christians were being burned for their faith and it was natural for them to accept that their persecutors would at death be consigned to an ever-burning hell for the persecution they had inflicted on others while they went straight to eternal bliss. From the third century the darkness of the infiltration of man-made beliefs into Christianity deepened until the Dark Ages had smothered almost all the light of God’s Word. At the beginning of this time, the first attempts were made to create a systematic set of beliefs. It is not surprising that an ever-burning hell and the immortality of the soul were prominently included. It is at this time that such beliefs, held by most Christians today, had their origin. An ever-burning hell has remained a commonly taught doctrine of the Christian religion to this day. It was not based on the Bible but on philosophy. Bible verses were later sought to uphold the ancient philosophies of the Greeks, and added to the teaching. Eventually under the influence of Augustine, AD 430, the concept of endless conscious torment was brought into general acceptance by the Catholic Church in the Western world. He taught that all souls were deathless and consequently the lost would experience endless fires of punishment, immediately upon the end of this life.
Posted on: Sun, 23 Mar 2014 11:19:49 +0000
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