The Simple Answers… To Life’s Most Important Questions.
Bible Study Course Lesson 1 – 13
God’s highest law is “do unto others”. This law is so central to His nature it is impossible for Him to violate it – He literally cannot sin, which is our own goal one day (1 John 3:19). So let me ask you a question. Would any sane person – much less one who lives by the Golden Rule – desire to have their enemies screaming in pain, as the flesh is scorched from their bones? Yet God raises the stakes to an unimaginable level – He inflicts this upon His enemies FOREVER, without even the hope of death! Does calling it “hell” change the fact that Hannibal Lecter was a loving Christian compared to anyone who does that?
Can you accept that? Can you see the same Being who wrote the Golden Rule doing that to people for nothing more than the crime of not believing He existed?? I cannot. Nor, if you understand the Golden Rule at all, should you. This cannot be true. Somehow, some way, this is absolutely and completely impossible.
Did Jesus Christ pay the penalty for your sins? Yes, you say? He paid for your sins so you don’t have to – He completely and utterly removed the penalty for your sins, and HE took the payment Himself, bearing the punishment in YOUR place, right? Yes? Then is Jesus Christ in hell right now, suffering and writhing in agony? Why not? Why isn’t Jesus Christ in hell at this very moment? That’s a rather shocking question… but I’m serious! If what everyone believes is true, He MUST be!
Because if YOUR penalty for being an unsaved sinner is to burn in hell for all eternity, and if Christ TOOK that penalty upon Himself and paid it IN FULL IN YOUR PLACE, then HE MUST BE IN HELL RIGHT NOW! Well? I want you to REALLY think about that, because it is the only logical conclusion! He couldn’t suffer in hell for only a few hours and bear your penalty; He would have to be there FOREVER, because your penalty was that you would LIVE FOREVER with NO HOPE in a flaming torture! To pay that penalty for you, He would have to STILL BE THERE TODAY!
It just doesn’t make sense – Christ can’t be in hell! But what other explanation is there? The only way out of this confusion is to go back to the SOURCE of this knowledge, to skip over the massive accumulation of opinions and speculations by men of various disagreeing denominations and see what the BIBLE ITSELF says about this question! To start with, your Bible does say that Jesus Christ was in hell! Did you know that? Read it for yourself in Acts 2:31-33! Jesus’ soul WAS in hell. But now He has been raised up and sits at the right hand of God in heaven!
How can that be! If He was to pay the eternal penalty for your sins, He can’t have gotten a reprieve after a few days – otherwise, He isn’t paying your penalty anymore and you don’t have a Savior! Again, this proves that hell cannot be true. You already know that the unsaved in this life will have a chance at salvation; but if they fail the judgment in that life, and God simply can’t get them to see that His way leads to happiness, Revelation 20:15 says they will be cast into a “lake of fire”, which most people interpret as an ever-burning hell.
But is it really? The Bible says “the wages of sin is death” (Romans 6:23, Ezekiel 18:4). It doesn’t say sinners earn eternal suffering; it says sinners earn death. Simple, clean death. Not fiery torture, or pushing a rock uphill for eternity. Just death. Being cast into the mouth of a volcano would accomplish that! The soul that sins earns DEATH. It does NOT earn eternal punishment in hell, IT EARNS DEATH!
This explains why Christ was able to pay the penalty for your sins in your place – He DIED, once, for all of mankind. He paid your penalty, because death WAS the penalty! SO THEN, WHAT IS HELL? When the King James Bible was translated, it was common for people to put their potatoes in “hell” for the winter. The word hell means simply “a concealed place” in old English. It is a hole in the ground, such as a grave or a basement, where things, such as potatoes or dead people, are stored. The word “hell” is almost always interchangeable with “the grave” – as an example, let’s compare two translations:
Acts 2:31 (KJV) …His soul was not left in hell, neither his flesh did see corruption.
Acts 2:31 (Murdoch) …that he was not left in the grave, neither did his body see corruption.
Doesn’t that make better sense? We KNOW Christ was in the grave for three days and three nights, as He said in Matthew 12:40, and we know God did not LEAVE Him in the grave, and His body did not begin to decay, because God RESURRECTED IT! But at no time was He in a lake of fire in an ever-burning hell! Doesn’t that make it CLEAR, and simple? Jesus paid your penalty by going to hell for awhile because going to hell – in KJV English –simply meant going to the grave! Which is exactly the penalty the law levied on us – death! The English word hell simply means grave. But the Bible wasn’t written in English; it was translated from the original Hebrew and Greek languages. Unfortunately, because they already believed in hell, and because the Bible doesn’t teach hell, most translators chose to translate three different Greek words as “hell” in order to support their doctrine!
Imagine someone in the distant future translating this sentence: “Fire is hot, and consumes things. The dead are buried in the grave”. If they WANTED to prove I believed hell, they could translate both “fire” and “grave” into their language as HELL and “prove” that’s what I taught! Then the sentence would read, in their language “hell is hot and consume things; the dead are buried in hell”. But that is unethical! I used different words that meant VERY different things! They are twisting my words by doing that! (2 Peter 3:16). And so does anyone who translates tartarus, hades, and gehenna as hell! Each Greek word has a different meaning, which is why God used several different words in the original languages, instead of just one!
TARTARUS
2 Peter 2:4 For if God spared not the angels that sinned, but cast them down to hell [Tartarus], and delivered them into chains of darkness, to be reserved unto judgment; This word appears only once in the entire Bible. The word is used strictly in context with fallen angels, and not fallen men, so we’ll talk about it in a later lesson. But for now, based on how it is used here, it means a place of confinement to wait for judgment. It’s not a FIERY hell, because they were clearly in “chains of DARKNESS”!
HADES
Next is the word hades, used 11 times. And every single time it should have been translated as “the grave”. Even the King James authors translated it this way in one case. 1 Corinthians 15:55 O death, where is thy sting? Oh grave [hades], where is thy victory? The word hades in Greek literally means “the unseen”. For this reason it was used to apply to graves because bodies were placed in a dark “unseen” place – a grave, or a crypt. In Greek mythology this grew into an “unseen” underworld complete with guards and boatmen and a god of the underworld named Hades, who determined who should go to the blissful Elysian fields, and who deserved the fires of eternal suffering.
It should be noted this mythology was written many centuries before Jesus, strikingly similar though it is to modern “Christian” ideas of purgatory, heaven, and hell. It is, in fact, one of the main sources of the teachings of modern Christianity on the afterlife.
Online Etymology Dictionary says “The English word [hell] may be in part from [the] Old Norse Hel… in Norse mythology [the name of] Loki’s daughter, who rules over the evil dead in Niflheim, the lowest of all worlds… Transfer of a pagan concept and word to a Christian idiom, used in the KJV…” Notice carefully! The word “hell” was used by pagans to refer to THEIR idea of the afterlife of the wicked dead long before they became Christians! And that word and concept was TRANSFERRED into Christianity’s Bible!
SHEOL
There was only one word translated “hell” in the Old Testament, the Hebrew word sheol. Like hades, this simply means “grave”, usually literally and occasionally symbolically. 1 Samuel 2:6 (BBE) The Lord killeth and maketh alive, he bringeth down to hell [sheol], and bringeth back again. IF hell was an ever-burning punishment from which there was no hope of escape – as the vast majority of Christianity believes – then there is no HOPE that God could “bring back again” from “hell”! Yet other scriptures also testify that God CAN save “from hell” – Psalms 49:15 (see KJV margin), Psalms 86:13, Jonah 2:2. But if hell is a place of eternal punishing without hope, why does God “bring back again” from hell?
The answer is simple: if it were a place of eternal punishing, He wouldn’t. God can “bring back again” from hell simply because “hell” means “the grave”. This verse is speaking of the second resurrection, when the rest of the dead “live again”. These scriptures all say the Lord kills (sends to the grave) and He makes alive (calls back from the grave). Just as Jesus Himself died, went to “hell” (the grave) and was “made alive” (resurrected) and called back “from hell”. The KJV here correctly translates sheol as simply “the grave”: 1 Samuel 2:6 (KJV) The LORD killeth, and maketh alive: he bringeth down to the grave [sheol], and bringeth up.
The vast majority of verses translated “hell” in the Bible come from sheol (OT) or hades (NT). When you see the word “hell” in these verses you should mentally replace it with the word “grave”, which is a far more accurate translation.
GEHENNA
This leaves us with one more Greek word translated “hell”: gehenna. It was used 11 times in the Gospels, and once in James. This is the word that supports the idea of a burning hell, and all fiery-hell scriptures are translated from this Greek word which should never have been translated as “hell” – or translated at all! “‘Hell’ is the place of the future punishment called ‘Gehenna’ or ‘Gehenna of fire’. This was originally the valley of Hinnom, south of Jerusalem, where the filth and dead animals of the city were cast out and burned; a fit symbol of the wicked and THEIR FUTURE DESTRUCTION.” (Online Bible Greek Lexicon, “Gehenna”)
Gehenna is the proper name for a place – just like Jerusalem, Rome, or New York. Jesus chose this place as a physical example to make His point – not because Gehenna referred to some special region of the underworld, but because it described the conditions in that “lake of fire” which awaits the incorrigibly wicked dead. Read Mark 9:47-48. The word gehenna is mistranslated “hell” in this verse and the others like it. Gehenna was a convenient site for a landfill, and in time it became the city dump where all the refuse of Jerusalem and the leftover carcasses of animal sacrifices were dumped and then burned. Naturally, as in any landfill, flies and other insects thronged the animal carcasses. The flies laid eggs in the carcasses, which soon hatched into larval maggots. Which the Bible calls “worms”.
But when most people read this verse, they imagine a fire which burns forever, always paining but never consuming its victims, who are all the while being eaten by fireproof, immortal worms. But remember we must get ALL the scriptures which bear on this subject before we draw our conclusion! Matthew 10:28 And fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear him which is able to DESTROY both soul and body in hell [Gehenna].
What does that say? Fear Him who is able to TORTURE for ETERNITY in hell? No! It says fear Him who is able to DESTROY the soul and body! Most people, after reading this scripture, draw the conclusion that the wicked are cast into this Gehenna-like hellfire alive and then continue to live, writhing in agony forever! But that isn’t what the scripture said! It said they would be DESTROYED in that hell fire – not kept alive in pain! Furthermore, just pursue the metaphor Jesus gave us; LIVE animals were NEVER cast into Gehenna fire by the Jews! They were not tortured alive for years in that pit, only the dead bodies were cast into the pit of fire!
In addition, the carcasses were cast into the pit and they were consumed! They disappeared, burned to ashes by the flames! They didn’t stay intact in an ever-increasing pile – they were CONSUMED by the flames! People assume the fire burns people forever simply because it says the fire is not quenched. But what does quenching mean? Webster says “to put out the light or fire of… i.e., quench glowing coals with water” – no one will be able to PUT OUT this fire! No man can quench a fire God starts!
Can you quench a grease fire with water? Any cook knows that a grease fire cannot be quenched with water! And yet when the fuel is consumed, the fire goes out by itself! Never being quenched, but having consumed all there is to consume, it simply starves itself! God speaks of another unquenchable fire in Isaiah 1:30-31; can anyone quench that fire? Of course not! But will that oak tree BURN to ashes, or remain perpetually ablaze throughout eternity? No one will quench it – but if it continues to burn, it will be CONSUMED and utterly DESTROYED! And after it is, the fire will automatically go out!
What will the wicked be turned into? Malachi 4:3. Will they be burned UP, or will some part of them be left? Malachi 4:1. When God uses fire to DEVOUR something, is it destroyed, or left alive? Ezekiel 28:18-19. And that’s the bottom line answer on hell. When God uses fire on the wicked, it devours them and “never shall they be any more”.
EVERLASTING PUNISHMENT
But if the wicked are simply killed by God, does it mean there is no everlasting punishment? On the contrary! The Bible speaks clearly of everlasting punishment! Did Jesus teach everlasting punishment? Matthew 25:46. But does He speak of everlasting punishing? (Same verse). There is a tremendous difference between everlasting punishment and everlasting punishing. Everlasting punishing is what most Christians believe hell is; burning forever, always conscious, always suffering, always being punished over and over, again and again throughout ageless eternity. But everlasting punishment is completely different – it is simply a single punishment that lasts forever. If you are dead FOREVER, that is an everlasting punishment. The punishment of the incorrigibly wicked will last FOREVER – it will never be repealed. But that punishment is eternal DEATH – not eternal life in hellfire!
Regardless of what you call it, in the popular conception of hell, you are still alive. You are alive forever – you have ETERNAL life—not death! You are immortal! But God said that He was the ONLY One who had immortality! (1 Timothy 6:16). Some would argue that “hell is a fate far WORSE than death” – well, why would God give anyone a fate WORSE than what He Himself says they deserve? (Romans 6:23). He says they deserve DEATH, why would He give them ETERNAL TORTURE instead?
More potential Christians are driven away from God by the doctrine of hell than any other; it doesn’t make sense. Any level-headed person who tries to rationalize a “loving God” with someone who tortures Chinese babies in hell walks away believing – correctly – that the God who was just preached to him is a monster. The scriptures are full of “the meekness and gentleness of Christ” (2 Corinthians 10:1). The exact phrase, “His mercy endures forever” is used 41 times in the Old Testament alone. Would a merciful God give them a punishment He Himself said they don’t deserve? A punishment so cruel and vicious it would make all the Inquisitors pale in comparison? And would this merciful God who claims to be the embodiment of love then design heaven in such a way that saved mothers get to watch their unsaved children writhe in agony in flames for all eternity – while they rest blissfully in paradise, saying “praise God” and “holy, holy, holy” for forty forevers as their lost children shriek in the background?
Does that sound like heaven to you? Watching unsaved loved ones enduring unspeakable torment in hell, begging for death – FOREVER – never having their pleas answered? What sort of monster thought up this idea, anyway? Satan the Devil – for this is how HE would torture people who don’t believe in HIM if he could!
Long before Christianity existed, back in the days of the Greeks and Egyptians and Babylonians, churches learned that hell is a useful tool for frightening people. After all, a simple peaceful death isn’t nearly as terrifying as the thought of your immortal soul burning in flames throughout eternity! And frightened people pay better tithes! So naturally, the doctrine of hell has prospered for thousands of years, even though it is not only directly contrary to the many clear scriptures in your Bible, but directly contrary to the Golden Rule and even common sense!
Because the doctrine of hell is so useful to religion, those same preachers have crafted objections to plain scriptures like Romans 6:23; some from scripture, some they just made up. So now we’ll discuss the objections to those clear scriptures, and see how the Bible answers each of them.
WHAT IS DEATH?
If you’ve noticed, there is a recurring theme through all these verses “the wages of sin is DEATH” – “the soul that sins, it shall DIE” – “that whosoever believes on Him might not PERISH” – “able to DESTROY the soul” – “be as though they had NEVER BEEN” – None of these verses speak of hell as the punishment. Death is the punishment. Theologians are well aware of this, and rather than accepting it, they spend great effort trying to reconcile “death” with their ideas of heaven and hell. So they have redefined death, not as the Bible defines it, but as “eternal separation from the presence of God”. To prove this, they quote this verse: 2 Thessalonians 1:9 (BBE) Whose reward will be eternal destruction from the face of the Lord and from the glory of his strength, “Obviously”, they reason, “since we have an immortal soul which cannot be destroyed [assumption], ‘everlasting destruction’ must mean destruction from GOD’S presence! For what could be worse”, they continue, “than to be eternally separated from God!”
And that sounds reasonable enough – if you don’t stop and examine the scripture they brought to the table as proof! Read the scripture carefully; it says “everlasting destruction FROM the presence of the Lord”. Isn’t that an odd phrase? If it said “everlasting REMOVAL from the presence”, “everlasting BANISHMENT”, those would make sense; but who would say something is “DESTROYED from your presence” when they meant simply exiled?
But there is a completely different way to understand that verse! One that makes perfect sense! It isn’t that the destruction sends you AWAY from the presence of God… the destruction comes FROM the presence of God! Check how similar expressions were used elsewhere in the Bible to see what God meant: Does God command Moab to hide His people FROM THE FACE of someone intent on destroying them? Isaiah 16:4. When Egypt was losing, what did they wish to flee from? Exodus 14:25. What does God threaten as punishment for serving other gods? Leviticus 20:3-6. What part of God’s body will be “against them”? (Same verse). Now where does destruction come FROM? Isaiah 13:6. And in that “day of the Lord”, what do men fear and wish to be hidden from? Revelation 6:16. And what part of God’s face actually DOES the destruction? Revelation 19:15, 21.
So now you see this destruction comes FROM the Almighty! From before His FACE! And it doesn’t in some incomprehensible way “destroy them from His presence” – but the POWER that comes FROM His presence literally DESTROYS them! This harmonizes perfectly with the other scriptures which say the reward of the wicked is death, destruction, non-existence, permanent perishing! When you just let the Bible explain itself, all these verses agree! Their reward is “eternal destruction”, which comes from “the face of the Lord”. You cannot take one awkwardly phrased scripture like this one, and use that one scripture to nullify the obvious meanings of dozens of clear scriptures. Well, you can – millions do – but you shouldn’t, and you CAN’T if you want to truly understand God and His word!
THE IMMORTAL SOUL
Many will ask, “but how can God destroy an immortal soul?” And to answer, I need only ask a simple question: “Can you show me a verse where it says you have an immortal soul?” Every religion on earth believes in the immortality of the soul. Plato taught it; Buddha built his religion around it. Catholicism teaches it, and even the American Indian believed in the happy hunting ground. With all this weight of opinion, it’s natural you grew up believing this – but did you ever look in the Bible and see if IT teaches that your soul is immortal?
Many of the doctrines you were taught are the result of preachers starting from the assumption of an immortal soul and forcing the Bible to fit their assumption. What they should have done is to humbly approach the word of God seeking to understand what it does say… and gladly rejecting anything not found written there. The fact is, the words “immortal soul” are not in the Bible. This alone should make you suspicious of this doctrine. The word “immortal” is there only once, where it speaks of God being immortal in 1 Timothy 1:17. The word “immortality” is there only five times, two of them in the same passage; see for yourself if any of them speak of an immortal soul:
Do you have immortality? 1 Timothy 6:16. Must you, at the first resurrection, PUT ON immortality – meaning you don’t already have it? 1 Corinthians 15:53-54. Did Jesus bring immortality TO LIGHT – that is, make it possible to attain it? And HOW did Jesus make it possible for us to attain immortality? 2 Timothy 1:10. Do we already HAVE immortality – or must we patiently SEEK for it, with WELL DOING? Romans 2:7. That is EVERY verse on immortality in the Bible. Do ANY of them even HINT that everyone’s soul is ALREADY immortal? If your soul is immortal, then why didn’t God say so? What exactly did He say?
What will happen to your soul if you sin? Ezekiel 18:4. Who gave man a soul? Genesis 2:7. Can God make anything He can’t destroy? Can God make a rock so big He can’t move it? (Logic alone answers those questions). So with those answers in mind… can God make a soul He can’t destroy? Matthew 10:28. God plainly says He CAN destroy the soul – not torture it or banish it to oblivion, but DESTROY it! What did God say to Adam and Eve in the Garden, the very first command He gave? Genesis 2:16. And what was the penalty for disobedience to that command? Verse 17. And what was the very first lie the devil told them? Genesis 3:4.
The devil said “You won’t die!” – directly contradicting God’s previous statement (verse 3). So you see, the immortal soul was the very first lie the devil told to mankind! Which is why to this day, ALL pagan religions around the world teach it! I would spend more time talking about this immortal soul concept, but there just isn’t anything to talk about! There aren’t any other verses that speak of immortality, so there is nothing to explain; you inherited this belief from your parents and preachers, and they got it from the seminaries who got it from Protestant commentaries who learned it from the Catholic Church who borrowed it from PAGAN PHILOSOPHERS! And at NO POINT along this path did ANYONE stop to think “Does the Bible teach this??”
What they DID ask was, “Can I make the Bible FIT this doctrine?” and “Are there scriptures in the Bible that could be used to SUPPORT this?” They discovered yes, they can and yes, there are. But they didn’t ask “Does the Bible teach it”! The Bible is a complete recipe for salvation! It doesn’t need any extra help from men – no commentaries or opinions or traditions are required to save you! If a doctrine isn’t taught there, and taught clearly, you don’t need it – and it almost certainly isn’t true! And that is the mistake so many have made! They took what they already believed and used the Bible as a mere SECONDARY source – while using their superstitions, preconceptions, and traditions as the primary source. To nearly every Christian religion in history, the Bible was a place to look for support for conclusions they already held, not the place to find ALL true doctrine!
It’s time for YOU to stop listening to men and dig the truth out of your Bible for yourself and BELIEVE IT, believe the ONLY primary source of truth and stop basing your hopes for eternity on the traditions of men! Ironically, the most famous scripture in the Bible, if really believed, REQUIRES you to reject the false notion of the immortal soul! So many millions recite this scripture every day and never realize it teaches against the immortality of the soul! John 3:16 For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him SHOULD NOT PERISH, but have everlasting life.
Open your ears to hear! Millions read that verse and hear it saying… “that whosoever believeth in him SHOULD NOT GO TO HELL, but will go to heaven” – that’s what nearly all of modern Christianity hears, because that is what it believes He meant, but it simply isn’t what it says! It said God sent His Son to this Earth to GIVE men an immortal soul… but only if they believed on Him! BBE version says “so that whoever has faith in him may not come to destruction but have eternal life.” He did this so those men who believed on Him would not PERISH!
This means if God had NOT sent His son, all men – righteous and wicked alike – would have been DESTROYED! Jesus came so they might have another option, the OPTION of eternal life, IF they had faith in Him! If they’d already POSSESSED eternal life, inherent within them, why would Jesus have bothered to come? It says Jesus came so they COULD have eternal life, meaning they did NOT already possess it! What is the gift of God? Romans 6:23. If eternal life is the GIFT of God, then how can those who have not yet received that gift have eternal life?!
Why did God put Adam out of the Garden of Eden? Genesis 3:22-23. Does God say that there was a RISK that they MIGHT get eternal life? And doesn’t that mean they didn’t have it already? (Same verse). Why was the angel placed at the gate of the Garden? Verse 24. Most believe murderers will go to hell; to experience eternal life in hell fire. Does this scripture agree? 1 John 3:15. Does ANY murderer – or even someone who hates his brother – have an immortal soul? (Same verse). When God speaks of the destruction of the wicked, how does He describe it? Obadiah 1:15-16. BBE renders the last part of the last verse “they will be as if they had never been.” This is what will happen to the wicked: a simple and complete nonexistence. Just as they didn’t exist before they were conceived, so after their death they become “as if they had never existed”.
SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION
The last lesson showed that the saved dead are to be resurrected at the beginning of the Millennium; the rest of the dead after 1,000 years have passed. And now we know that the ULTIMATE end of the incorrigibly wicked, those who cannot be saved in that life, will be death – not torture, nor eternal suffering, but simply death. Non-existence; identical to their state before they were first conceived. This extreme step will not be taken until after every opportunity has been given to mankind to find and obey God. God will not possess them and force them to obey Him, but He will make every conceivable effort to save anyone who will listen.
And if they won’t, He will quickly and mercifully kill them, as you would kill a rabid dog. For the good of those around him whom he might infect, yes, but also for his own good; life as a rabid dog, driven insane by a disease you can’t understand, is not a life worth living. Death is preferable, and the Golden Rule requires us to kill him, as we would want to be treated that way in that situation. In the same way, those who have been infected by the devil’s rabid lies will be given every possible treatment – but if they cannot be saved, they will be quickly destroyed.
They will be destroyed to prevent them from infecting others, yes, but also as an act of compassion, to deliver them from a fate worse than death: being trapped in a mind that is incapable of comprehending the Golden Rule. Any mind that cannot understand that “do unto others” leads to happiness for everyone, after all the effort God is planning to expend to convince it, is literally insane. And life as a selfish, rabid, insane, vengeful being is not a life worth living. I wouldn’t want to live that way – I’d rather be dead. Wouldn’t you?Therefore, the Golden Rule means there is no hell; there is only merciful, eternal death.
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