Skittles are my son’s favorite candy. I decided to test him one day on his love for me by using the small candies as bait. He was ten years old at the time and I left him in the house alone as I snuck out back. Before I left, I told him that he can eat any food in the house except for the package of Skittles that I left in the middle of the house on the kitchen table. If he ate of the Skittles left on the table, then he would be punished. I peered through the kitchen window as my son walking up to the package of skittles on multiple occasions. Each time though, he refused the urge to eat the forbidden candy. Then, I saw my son’s best friend sitting outside and asked him to come over. I paid the friend ten dollars to go in the house and test my son by convincing him to eat the skittles. He gladly accepted and was given entrance into the house after knocking on the front door.
“Wow! Look at those skittles,” the friend exclaimed excitedly. Let’s eat them he shouted. My son calmly explained that they could eat anything in the house except for the bag of skittles. Otherwise, he would be punished by his dad. The friend said, “Is that really what your dad said, will you really be punished?” The friend continued to chip away at my son’s defenses and the urge to eat his favorite candy combined with his neighbors encouragement, became too much. My son ripped open the bag of skittles and ate. He gave some to his friend as well. As soon as I saw him eat, I jumped through the back door and said, “Why have you eaten of the skittles that I told you not to eat?” I angrily sent his friend home and banished my son to his bedroom where he would stay for the rest of his life. He died an eighty year old man, never once leaving his room.
Of course, the only truth to this story is that my son does like skittles. The rest is fictitious and completely ridiculous. But, I have a story that is even more ridiculous and even more untrue. It is the story that is told in religion today. It is a story of a loving God that would torture His children in flesh burning fire for all eternity because Adam and Eve ate a delicious piece of fruit. However, the reason why this story is such a believable lie is that, as religion skillfully always does, it contains some truth. For instance, God did put Adam and Eve in a situation in which they would fail. Also, this failure or sin did spread to all of creation though it was a part of God’s plan from the very beginning. This will be discussed later in the book. Unfortunately, the true parts of the story lead to one of the greatest lies of all: The unscriptural lie that anyone, let alone most of creation will spend an eternity burning in hell.
Did you think punishing my son for the rest of his life for eating skittles was a ludicrous punishment? Well, how about Adam and Eve eating of the fruit? This was a sin committed by a finite human being that has eternal consequences? How about the people that were born after Adam? What about us today? We will sin because we inherited this sin and death from Adam. Therefore, all humanity is heading to eternal hell as a default at birth. This story is infinitely worse than me punishing my son and separating him from my presence for the rest of his life for eating skittles.
The truth, the full truth, is that God intended for Adam and Eve to sin and consequently bring sin and death to all humans. Then, through using sin and death, God will shape all humanity into His perfect creation. We will look into this more later. For now, it is important to not add words to scripture. The eternal hell as we know it does not exist anywhere in scripture. The consequence for man’s sin was always and will always be death. For the wages of sin is death…(Romans 6:23). The wages of sin is not eternal torture, but death. We would remain dead if it were not for Jesus providing the way out through His suffering, death and resurrection. Jesus saves us from death because He experienced death for us. He did not experience eternal hell because it is not what He is saving us from.
So to play devil’s advocate, I ask the question: When was hell created? In the beginning Elohim created the heavens and the earth…(Genesis 1:1). There is no mention of creating hell at any point throughout the scripture. The bible says that Jesus was slain since the foundation of the world in Revelations 13:8, so sin was already part of God’s plan. Yet, God did not mention the eternal place of torcher. Then God created Adam and Eve and told them not to eat from the tree in the midst of the garden or they would go to ETERNAL HELL! This was perfect timing to threaten Adam and Eve with this awful fate so maybe they will listen to God. Wait a minute; this is not what God said. He said that if they ate from the tree then they would die. Adam and Eve touched the tree and ate from the tree. This is it, the first sin of mankind! What a great time for God to introduce the concept of eternal hell for sinners. However, eternal hell was not discussed, but like God said, Adam and Eve would die or begin to die when they ate of the fruit. DEATH, not eternal hell, is the destiny of all mankind because of the actions of Adam.
Okay, now I got it. God would certainly introduce the eternal hell concept after the first murder ever recorded. Cain and Abel were the offspring of Adam and Eve. Cain was angry that God accepted his brothers sacrifice over his, so he lured Abel to the field and proceeded to kill him. Cain took the life of his brother in a hot rage of jealousy. Now, God will speak to Cain about his future destiny in eternal hell. Indeed, God did speak to Cain: Now you are cursed, away from the ground which has opened wide its mouth to take your brother’s blood from your hand. When you serve the ground, it shall not continue to give its vigor to you. A rover and a wanderer shall you become on earth (Genesis 4: 11-12).
In Genesis 4:13, Cain said to the Lord, “My punishment is too great for me to bear. This was Cain’s response to God punishing him. How did God punish him? God punished Cain by not allowing the ground to yield crops for him anymore and making him a wanderer on the earth. If this was too much for Cain to bear then how is he going to respond to the knowledge that eternal hell awaits him? Well, the truth is that God never mentioned eternal hell because it does not exist and has never entered His mind. Eternal hell, if it were real, would have been introduced right from the start, don’t you think? God never threatens anyone with this torment. Death is the enemy and the end result of man’s mortality and sin, not hell. There is no passage of time or sensations in death and we would remain this way forever if it weren’t for the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Jesus will one day destroy death for every last human being.
Follow the rest of the Old Testament and you will find no mention of the eternal hell that is taught in popular religion. Did you know that the apostle Paul, in his thirteen letters, never mentions hell at all, not even once! The book of Revelation mentions the Lake of Fire, but this is not hell and does not serve the purpose of the eternal hell taught by religion. The Old Testament uses the word ‘Sheol’ which simply means the ‘grave or abode of the dead.’ People go to the grave and are unseen when they die. This word ‘Sheol’ is translated in the bible to mean ‘hell’ but this simply is not the eternal hell of popular belief. They do not go to eternal hell but simply go to the grave. That’s fine that the Old Testament does not threaten humanity with the eternal flames of hell or that the Apostle Paul doesn’t mention it in the New Testament. It doesn’t matter one might say, Jesus spoke on hell so it must be real. Well yes, the word hell is found in the four gospel accounts of the New Testament but that word does not mean what you think it does.
Jesus Christ did not speak English while He was on Earth. Therefore, His words have been translated in any given English bible. The word ‘Hell’ that is attributed to coming from the mouth of Christ has been translated from a Hebrew word ‘Hinnom.’ This is a location of a valley near Jerusalem. The word ‘Gehenna’ is the Greek word used in the gospel accounts and was derived from this Valley of Hinnom. Samuel G. Dawson sums up the origin of ‘Gehenna’ in his article Jesus’ Teaching on Hell:
Gehenna, the name of a valley on the south and east of Jerusalem…which was so called from the cries of the little children who were thrown into the fiery arms of Moloch, i.e., of an idol having the form of a bull. The Jews so abhorred the place after these horrible sacrifices had been abolished by King Josiah(2 Kings 23:10), that they cast into it not only all manner of refuse, but even the dead bodies of animals and unburied criminals who had been executed. And since fires were always needed to consume the dead bodies, that the air might not become tainted by the putrefaction, it came to pass that the place was called Gehenna.
So, the word that Jesus actually used was Gehenna not hell. Gehenna was actually a physical place near Jerusalem where trash and the bodies of dead criminals were thrown. It has nothing to do with an eternal place of punishment. The people that Jesus spoke to would have known this because this place was used to sacrifice little children to idols such as Molech. Jesus was speaking of earthly punishments and death, just like the entire Old Testament punishments. Jesus was talking about a garbage dump in each of the twelve passages that he preaches on hell. This hell, rather Gehenna, is on the earth and physical. It is not under the earth or eternal. Jesus warned the Jewish people of this physical valley located near them. He never warned them of a place of eternal fire and torture.
God’s destiny for humanity is to create sons and daughters? What about all those who will be in hell? Yes, the word “hell” exists in the bible but that is a gross mistranslation and it is simply not found in the original Hebrew and Greek scriptures. I encourage anyone to do a concordant, or any, word study on the word “hell” each time it is used in the bible. The most common words used for hell are “Sheol” in the Old Testament, “Gehenna” and “Hades” in the New Testament. The meanings for these words are as follows:
Sheol – Grave, pit or abode of the dead.
Hades – unseen
Gehenna – actually a physical location in Jesus’ time. It is actually a valley south of Jerusalem.
These words have nothing to do with life after death and certainly do not refer to a place of eternal torment. The eternal torment deception entered the church through mistranslation and corrupt leadership. It is a lie that deceives millions and keeps perhaps even more at an arms distance from God. I would have to write page after page to fully explain how the word ‘hell’ crept and slithered its way into the bible. The mixture and influence of Greek Mythology and Ancient Egyptian folklore is where corrupt, religious leaders learned of hell. Then, they used the fear and deceit of hell on people so that they could control the masses. This has been passed down from generation to generation in nearly every religion. However, nothing, no teaching at all could be further from the truth of God and Jesus Christ than the teaching of eternal hell. This teaching of hell tarnishes the true love of God and makes him a sick, “love me or a will torture you forever,” lunatic.
This false teaching of eternal hell, I believe, is the number one reason people run from religion. After all, how can humans fully trust a God that would torture most of his creation? The answer is: they cannot. But, the glorious truth is that God will not torture anyone in hell forever but will save each and every human being. The scriptures that support this truth are too numerous to count.
George Carlin, the late comedian, and a man I admired for speaking out against the corrupt elite who run our governments and world, once did a bit on how ridiculous religion is. He stood up in front of his audience and said that religion has actually convinced us of the most absurd thing in the world. I can’t quote him word for word, but he told the audience that there is some creator high in the sky who wrote down a bunch of rules on stone tablets and commanded people to follow them. However, the comedian goes on the say, if we break these rules he will send us to a place where we will be tortured, humiliated, burned and we will be experiencing unimaginable pain and suffering, and we will be in this place for all eternity. But…..God loves us! When Mr. Carlin said these words the audience burst into laughter and applause.
Most Christians would condemn this comedian; however he and many like him see the absurdity of an all-loving, all-powerful god sending people to such a place as the eternal hell described. Many people do not believe in God because they cannot justify how He is portrayed as love and then creates the most terrifying place imaginable and then sends most of His creation there. Or, they look around the world and see starving children, murder and death that can make the world such a terrible place. This is the opposite of love unless, one day, God sets every wrong right, and makes the best possible everlasting good out of every evil, for each and every human being. He will!
Back to George Carlin, I respected this man very much because he looked, like many today, beyond the phoniness of today’s world and exposed the elite agenda of corruption within our governments, corporations and media outlets of the world. I just wish he, and others, would be able to look past the curtain of phoniness and lies of religion to see the truth. George Carlin takes the god of religion for what he is, an absolute joke, but never bothered it seems, to find out the truth about God. There is little truth in religion, about as much truth as in our governments and television programs.
How can Christians and people of various faiths love a god that loves so conditionally? If you toe the line, the Christian god will love you and be there for you. But, if you don’t believe the right way or do the right thing, this god will torture you forever. I trust God because I know He will bring me home and I don’t need to perform for Him to stay on His good side. It may be a brutal process, but I know when it is all said and done, I will be a Son of God. This will happen because of God, not because of me.
Eternal Hell is the sickest of all lies; I don’t know what else to say. God will judge, but His judgements are for the good of the person being judged, like a loving father disciplining his child. Judgements, though fierce, are a part of His love. Translated properly, not one person in scripture, including Jesus, even uttered the word hell. I encourage you to look up the Greek and Hebrew words that are improperly translated to mean hell and eternity in the bible. However, you have to want to believe the truth and shun the lies of religion that only seek to control you with fear of a lunatic god; the very reason hell was invented.
At any rate, do you have it in your heart to send people to an eternal hell? Does your pastor condemn people to eternal hell because they are not smart enough to believe as he does? Is your loved one in this God awful place? Is it possible that you will go there some day? Well, let me save the suspense. You can go there right now. The following is a picture of the hell that Jesus was talking about:
This is the valley of Gehenna that Jesus warned about. It is purely physical and you can go there today if you want to take a trip to Israel. Hell has nothing to do with yours or anyone else’s eternal destiny! Jesus Christ saves us all and there is no such thing as eternal hell and there never was. Every part of God’s creation will be with Him for all eternity because of Christ Jesus.
Saved ignoble 
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