A doctrine that has no basis in properly translated scripture
– Gehenna, Valley of Hinnom (Israel)
Religion says that God loves you unconditionally…based on the condition that you love Him back. If not, then He will torture you in fire for all eternity. The Christian religion says that Jesus died for sin and yet that very sin will keep you separate from God for all eternity. Is this true?
Spoiler alert: eternal hell is an impossibility according to properly translated SCRIPTURE!
We must realize that ‘hell’ is an English word never spoken by Jesus nor anybody else in the bible. The words used to falsely translate ‘hell’ are the following:
1 Sheol – grave, pit, abode of the dead
2 Hades – unseen
3 Gehenna – actually a physical place in Jesus’s time. It is a valley south of Jerusalem.
When was eternal hell created?
In the beginning Elohim created the heavens and the earth…(Genesis 1:1)
No Hell yet.
Okay, God will surly introduce ‘hell’ to Adam and Eve after they sinned. God did pronounce some judgements on the first couple but the worst was this…
For soil you are, and to soil you shall return (Genesis 3:19).
No mention of eternal hell yet. Okay, well the first MURDER will certainly come with the threat of eternal hellfire. Well, we know the story of Cain murdering his brother, Abel. Because of this, God pronounced on Cain that the ground would not produce for him and he shall become a wanderer on the earth.
Cain replied to Yahweh: Too great is my depravity to bear (Genesis 4:13).
In verse 14, Cain continues to explain how this judgement of God is too much for him to bear. If not producing fruit and wandering the earth was too much for Cain, I wonder what he must think of being burned and tortured in fire for all eternity? But, God never mentions hell at all.
If ‘hell’ was the eternal destiny for many and the punishment of sin, wouldn’t God introduce this place to warn His creation right from the start? The truth is that God doesn’t mention it all because it doesn’t exist. The destiny of humans in the Old Testament is ‘death.’
In ‘death,’ the dead do not know eternal torture. In ‘death,’ the dead are not alive somewhere else. In ‘death’ in fact, the dead know nothing at all.
…But the dead know nothing whatsoever (Ecclesiastes 9:5)
Death is related to sleep, unconsciousness, time after time in scripture. Adam would return to the state he was before God breathed into him, which was a state of ‘no conscious existence,’ not eternal hell.
This is not just for Adam. According to Ecclesiastes 3:20, all of us return to the soil. We return to where we came from and we did not come from hell. We came from soil.
In fact, the wicked, according to Psalm 9:17 RETURN to Sheol. If Sheol means hell then the wicked would’ve been in hell before they were born in order to return there. Not so…
The wicked shall return to the unseen (Sheol). –Psalm 9:17
So why is the word ‘hell’ found in the Old Testament and what does it mean? First, we must understand that the word ‘hell’ is an English word and English was not spoken in OT times. So, we need to find the word that ‘hell’ was translated from to determine true meaning.
That word is ‘Sheol.’ It means pit, grave, abode of the dead. It is where people go when then die, the unseen.
One must pay very close attention to the scripture below:
Yahweh Elohim formed the human out of soil from the ground, and He blew into his nostrils the breath of life; and the human BECAME a living soul. –Genesis 2:7
We do not have a soul, we are souls. At death, the breath of life (spirit) goes back to God, unconscious. The body goes back to the soil. Our existence is a combination of body and spirit together and that is why Adam BECAME a living soul when God breathed into his nostrils.
At death, the spirit goes back to God (unconscious) and the body back to the soil. The soul ceases to exist and goes to the unseen or Sheol. Death is the enemy, not hell. This is why God said that Adam and Eve would surely die and why Paul says the wages of sin is death (Romans 6:23).
Sheol as translated ‘hell’ does not mean a place of eternal conscious torment. Hades is the Greek equivalent of Sheol and means the same, the unseen. Death.
– Sheol is not a place of eternal conscious torment. It is the ‘unseen’ where the dead go. It is unseen because the soul ceases to exist. The spirit goes to God (unconscious) and the body returns to soil. At resurrection, God puts the spirit into a new body in order to, once again, become a living soul.
Now, Jesus Christ…
Jesus spoke about hell more than He did about heaven. I’ve heard numerous Christians tell me this throughout my church life.
Well, the fact is that Jesus never once in His entire recorded life on earth used the word ‘hell.’ Hell is an English word and the terrestrial Jesus did not speak English. Therefore, we must deduce that the word ‘hell’ used by Christ in English bibles came from a different word in which He actually spoke. Let’s examine this word to prove that hell does not exist. The Greek word that Jesus spoke was ‘Gehenna’ and this is derived from the Hebrew ‘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.
-another picture of the hell (gehenna) that Jesus spoke of.
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So, the word that Jesus actually used was Gehenna not hell. Gehenna was 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 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.
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 mistranslated verses 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.
Now, there are objectors who would say that Jesus taught that many would be excluded from the kingdom and will partake in the fires of Gehenna. Remember, everyone in Christ’s day would have known what Gehenna was. It was were bodies of dead criminals were thrown. Gehenna will be active again during Christ’s 1000 year kingdom. Christ warned that people would be killed during the millennium kingdom and their dead bodies thrown into Gehenna, but never threatened them with eternal torture.
It is true that many will be outside ‘weeping and gnashing their teeth’ and excluded from Christ’s 1000 year kingdom. However, this is not eternity!
One of the greatest flaws of Christianity is thinking that when Jesus talked about Gehenna and people being outside the kingdom…that He was referring to eternity. Not so, He was talking about the coming age…His Millennial (1000 year) reign on earth.
The fact is that those thrown into Gehenna are dead and will be raised at the great white throne judgement, some if not many, will be cast into the lake of fire or ‘the second death.’ But, what happens after the ‘second death—the lake of fire?’
Well, 1 Corinthians 15:27 says that Christ abolishes death, all death. So what happens to those is the second death when all death is abolished? They are made immortal through Christ’s work so that God can now fill them with all that He is in order to become All in all (1 Corinthians 15: 28).
This is the only way these scriptures can and will be fulfilled in Romans 5:18-19, 1 Corinthians 15: 21-22 and 1 Corinthians 15:28.
So, those excluded or killed and thrown into Gehenna (hell) are there for a period of time, not eternity. Same with the lake of fire.
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.
Remember, all properly translated scripture CANNOT contradict.
How can eternal hell be true if God is the Savior of all mankind? –1 Timothy 4:10
How can eternal hell be true if God reconciles all creation (including wicked celestials)? –Colossians 1: 15-20
How can eternal hell be true if Christ saves sinners? –Matthew 1:21, 1 Timothy 1:15-16, John 1:29-30
How can eternal hell be true if Christ justifies and vivifies the exact same all that die in Adam? –Romans 5: 18-19, 1 Corinthians 15: 22
How can Jesus destroy the works of the devil if hell exists for eternity? –1 John 3: 8-9
How can eternal hell exist if Jesus is the propitiation for not only the sins of believers, but with the whole world also? –1 John 2:2
How can God will all men to be saved and work all according to His will, yet eternal hell still exist? –1 Timothy 2:4, Ephesians 1:11
How can God be All in all (the same all that die in Adam) if eternal hell exists? –1 Corinthians 15:28
How about this one…no one is able to say “Lord is Jesus” except by holy spirit (1 Corinthians 12:3) and in Philippians 2: 9-11 every knee celestial, terrestrial, and subterranean…that’s everyone… will say “Lord is Jesus” for the glory of God. Just so you know, a forced confession would not give glory to God…so…
How can eternal hell exist if all creation confesses Jesus is Lord by the power of the holy spirit? Is the holy spirit in hell? Not possible.
In my next article on hell, I will review how people are tricked into this myth by improper translations…with examples.
Grace and peace to all!
Saved ignoble 
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