So where in the WORLD is Hell?
The “believer’s” short answer, of course, would be simple. It doesn’t matter, he’s not headed there. The Bible tells him so—or at least tradition does.
And tradition isn’t afraid of levity either.
Any spirited request from one to another to go there is often met with the confidence that there’d be more than a snowball’s chance of many friends awaiting him—perhaps having even arrived there in hand baskets as well.
Oh how we love to have fun with Hell.
But it seems to me that the man who claims to be a faithful follower of Christ would also want to accurately establish in his mind any “place” he must avoid as he otherwise strives to enter through the narrow gate toward what Jesus also urged His disciples to seek first. [see: Matt. 7:13-14; 6:33]
More importantly though, he could enhance that effort by learning to read for himself rather than accept without question the things tradition claims this place to be. And sometimes I wonder if anyone really notices what the man, Jesus Christ, was actually talking about when He spoke of Hell?
Because, if I realize that, then I can determine where and what it really is.
Since much of tradition claims to base its “doctrine of Hell” on the written Word of God recorded in the Old and New Testaments of the Bible, that seems like a good place to start—that is, of course, if I’m willing to recognize that every text has a context. But there’s something critical to consider first about His judgement.
More than any apostolic author in the New Testament, Jesus Himself talked about a place that comes across in our English translations as “Hell.” And those passages are the ones to remember, because He wasn’t describing a place of conscious suffering, but rather a condition of utter separation from what was living and breathing.
So, for the record, when you see the word “Hell” in your translations, it’s describing only one of four things:
- שְׁאוֹל or שְׁאֹל: [shē-ōl] which meant the underworld [or tomb, or grave] in Hebrew. It’s always translated as Hades in the Greek Septuagint. It’s always translated in English as “Sheol” in the Masoretic [Hebrew] texts of the Old Testament.
- γέεννα: [gê’-ên-âh] was actually a valley West and South of Jerusalem, It’s also used as a symbolic name for a final place of punishment described as the Lake of Fire in the Book of the Revelation. It’s always translated in English as “Hell” or “Gehenna” in the Greek New Testament.
- ᾅδης: [hâ’-dāys], meaning the grave, the place of the dead or the underworld. It’s always translated in English as “Hell” or “Hades” in the Greek New Testament.
- ταρταρόω: [târ-tâ-rôh’-ōh] is a verbal derivative of the Greek noun Tartarus, which was considered a place of torture and torment lower than ᾅδης in (pagan) Greek and Jewish apocalyptic literature. The Aorist Active Participle form is translated in English only once in the New Testament as “Hell” by the apostle Peter.” The cognate noun is not found in any manuscripts of either the Old or New Testaments.
And, most of the time, it was Jesus using the word γέεννα—speaking to His faithful disciples.
But He wasn’t talking about a fiery hothouse tucked away somewhere miles below the earth’s crust. Every Jew in Jesus’ day knew what Gehenna was. It was literally “the place of the dead”—an actual deep ditch outside of Jerusalem where animal carcasses, organic waste, and the corpses of criminals and transients and other debris were deposited.
It was a place which successfully portrayed the full impact of what they surely wanted to avoid.
But, more importantly, it was a location which symbolized the absence of life rather than some kind of perpetual torment.
The notion of universal justice seems to resonate clearly in even the most calloused heart.
So it’s easy to see then how, over the centuries since Jesus walked on the earth, men have taken the documented words of God and the Person of Jesus Christ and twisted them to accommodate whatever misguided understanding they might have about the Scriptures. [see: 2Tim. 4:1-4]
Actually, “Hell” isn’t a funny subject at all.
It’s just that men have made it one.
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I truly believe the ROMAN CATHOLIC church invented the place of eternal torment with hell. You figure the millions and millions of dollars they stole from people , frightening them into believe they could pay to get their loved out of purgatory. Have you ever studied into all there manipulative ways to get people to pay for their sins…oh my.