"All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness."
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HADES OR HELL
Part 1
Is Hell Eternal Damnation And Suffering?
Heaven and hell are thought of as opposites, but when it comes to studying hell:- hades, hell, sheol and gehenna, are all words used by most people today to describe the place of the dead where sinners are condemned to eternal punishment of suffering by fire and brimstone or toasted in the lake of fire. Some people even tell us that living today is like hell on earth. But is any of this the truth? This question will be answered in this study.
Back in 1988 I began studying the "no devil" doctrine and it took me until 1995 to complete that study and put the results in the form of a book we call "The Satan Among Us." One of the problems in completing that book was the amount of words that had to be considered. For example I had to look at the words Lucifer, demons, evil spirits, devils, serpents, adversaries, dragons, as well as the bottomless pit, and I had to examine each word in the Old as well as the New Testament. If any of you have not read that book I strongly encourage you to do so as it will provide you with many insights which can be applied to modern times.
This brings me to a new subject, the subject of hell, and, of course, doctrines abound on this subject. But this subject does not require the vast number of words to look at as did our study of the "no devil" doctrine. In fact, any doctrine on hell is very limited as we only have to deal with 4 words. In the Old Testament, the only Hebrew word we really have to spend any time on is the word Sheol, but we will have to spend some time looking at the valley of Hinnom (Hin'uhm).
In the New Testament we will have to look at three Greek words, the first being "geenna" (Gheh'en-nah). Secondly, Hades has to be studied, and thirdly, we will also have to look at the single appearance of the Greek word "Tartaroo" which comes from the word "tartaros." And folks, that's it -- 3 words in the NT and 1 word in the OT, but again we will have to look at the valley of Hinnom, and that being the case, one would think that this hell doctrine cannot be that difficult to understand, as in all, there are only a total of about 90 usages of the words translated as "Hell" to look at.
As I said, in the OT, we have to examine the Hebrew word Sheol. First of all, this word was used 64 times in all, and was translated as hell 31 times, grave 30 times, and pit 3 times.
In the NT the Greek word "geenna" was used 12 times and was always translated as hell. The Greek word "Hades" was used 11 times and translated as hell 10 times and one time as grave (you are going to find the verse where the word was translated as grave very interesting). And finally, we only have the one appearance of the Greek word "Tartaroo," which was also translated as hell.
HELL
With the statistics out of the way it is time to go to work, and since the word hell is the predominant word that appears in the English, I guess we should begin with an understanding of that word. The first thing we need to know is that the English word hell has no equivalent in either the Greek or the Hebrew. Actually the word is a Saxon word, hell or helle. We also find a similar word in the German, Dutch, Danish, and Swedish languages. I always like to have a definition of any word we study, and so turning to my trusty Webster's dictionary of 1828, I found the following among the definitions of hell:
"The place of the dead, or of souls after death; the lower regions, or the grave; called in the Hebrew Sheol, and by the Greek, Hades. Psalm 16. Jon 2."
And that my friends, seems to be the standard definition of the word. Notice that in the definition while we see that hell is a place of the dead, it also says it is a place for "souls after death." So, on one hand, we have the dead residing in hell, but in saying souls reside there, we have the implication of the doctrine of the immortal soul.
My Webster's college edition sheds a lot more light on the subject of hell saying that hell is the: "name of the underworld goddess; see Hel." Now, isn't that interesting, as we now get the idea that Hel is a goddess. Let me ask you, have any of you ever heard of the goddess of Hel? By the way, if you attempt to look this up, her name is spelled with only one L. But just who is this goddess, Hel, and where did she come from? Well, for one thing, we find the goddess of Hel in Norse mythology and my Webster's says she was:
"1. Loki's daughter, goddess of death, and the underworld. 2. the underworld to which the dead not killed in battle were sent."
Well, we can't stop there can we? No sir, we need to find out more about this goddess of Hel, and so I next looked at my copy of "The American peoples Encyclopedia," and there it says of this goddess of hel:
"Hel, in the mythology of the ancient Germanic and Scandinavian races, the goddess of the lower world and of death. She was the daughter of Loki, the personification of malice, and was hurled by the all-father into the depths of Niflhelm, where she ruled over those human beings who died of disease or old age. In the middle ages she became confounded with the kingdom she ruled over, and eventually the double conception was held to be synonymous with hell."
I don't know where our current theology on hell came from, but I can see from reading this, that no matter when it started, this mythology pertaining to the goddess of hel, advanced it to new heights, and it is from these roots in the English language that hell grew into its present meaning. As a matter of interest, a man named Horne Tooke wrote that hell, heel, hill, hole, whole, hall, hull, halt and hold are all from the same root, and he went on to say, and I will quote him:
"Hell, any place, or some place covered over. Heel, that part of the foot which is covered by the leg. Hill, any heap of earth, or stone, etc., by which the plain or level surface of the earth is covered. Hale, i.e., healed or whole. Whole, the same as hale, i.e., covered. It was formerly written whole, without the w, as a wound or sore is healed, or whole, that is, covered over by the skin, which manner of expression will not seem extraordinary if we consider our use of the word recover. Hall, a covered building, where persons assemble, or where goods are protected from the weather. Hull, of a nut, etc. That by which a nut is covered. Hole, some place covered over. 'You shall seek for holes to hide your heads in.' Holt, holed, hol'd holt. A rising ground or knoll covered with trees. Hold, as the hold of a ship, in which things are covered, or the covered part of a ship."
And so, Horne gives us an excellent definition of the actual meaning of the word hell, and like words, telling us that basically it can be anything that is covered. I don't know if it is true or not, but a long time ago someone told me that the Irish used to say that their potatoes were planted in hell. Meaning they were covered in the ground.
A man by the name of Hanse added to that the following:
"The word was first applied to the grave by our German and English ancestors, and as superstition came to regard the grave as an entrance to a world of torment, Hell at length became the word used to denote an imaginary realm of fiery woe."
Dr. Adam Clarke, in his commentary, says:
"The word Hell, used in the common translation, conveys now an improper meaning of the original word; because Hell is only used to signify the place of the damned. But as the word Hell comes from the Anglo-Saxon helan, to cover, or hide, hence the tiling or slating of a house is called, in some parts of England (particularly Cornwall), heling, to this day, and the covers of books (in Lancashire), by the same name, so the literal import of the original word Hades was formerly well expressed by it."---Com. in loc.
You might notice Clarke's theology is that only the damned go to hell, but later we will see that even the righteous go to hell and Job even prayed to go to hell. But anyhow, generally, but not always, we can determine the meaning of a word based upon the first few usages of it in the Bible, and in this case that first usage of the word "hell" in located in Deuteronomy 32:22, but we will read verses 21-25 to get the overall context in which the word is used:
21 They have moved me to jealousy with that which is not God; they have provoked me to anger with their vanities: and I will move them to jealousy with those which are not a people; I will provoke them to anger with a foolish nation.
22 For a fire is kindled in mine anger, and shall burn unto the lowest hell, and shall consume the earth with her increase, and set on fire the foundations of the mountains.
23 I will heap mischiefs upon them; I will spend mine arrows upon them.
24 They shall be burnt with hunger, and devoured with burning heat, and with bitter destruction: I will also send the teeth of beasts upon them, with the poison of serpents of the dust.
25 The sword without, and terror within, shall destroy both the young man and the virgin, the suckling also with the man of gray hairs.
These verses comes to us from the song of Moses and what is said in the entire song begins with God's call for Israel to hear and moves through Israel's entire history and ends with a call to rejoice. In verse 21, God declares his aggravation with Israel, and in reference to time, this has been placed by Bullinger as in the period beginning with Acts to include modern times. Then in verses 22-25 we read of God threatening judgments on Israel in the tribulation. But if you want to place what is said here to events that have already happened, it does not change the meaning of what is said here in Deuteronomy.
In verses 22-25 fire is judgment, and all that is said describes the completeness or the thoroughness of that judgment, and so, we are talking about judgments on a living people -- not upon those who are literally in the grave. In verse 22, we see that this judgment reaches from the lowest hell, to the earth with her increase (which refers to the fertile planted areas or the valleys), and the other extreme is that His judgment even reaches to the tops of the mountains. Thus the idea expressed here in verse 22, is that this would be the deepest of judgments and that no one will escape the judgment of God because his judgement will reach from peasant to king.
This, of course, means that the words "the lowest hell," or Sheol is being used as a figure of speech to describe the depths to which this judgment will reach. In fact, all that is said in verse 22 are forms of figures of speech, as this judgment is brought upon the people of Israel -- not upon the lowest hell, the earth, or the foundations of the mountains.
There is nothing wrong with coming to this conclusion, as we have already seen that the fire mentioned here is not literal, but that it refers to judgement. In verse 23 we also see "arrows" being referred to and this is another figure of speech, which usually refers to a judgment in the form of pestilence or disease.
Some people will be quick to point out to you that because this verse says "the lowest hell," or Sheol, that there are various levels of hell or Sheol. But actually the word translated as "lowest," actually means "lowermost" and also "the depths," and figuratively it is used in the sense of "a pit." But again what is expressed here has to do with the location of this judgment between two extremes, one described as being the depth of the grave and the other to the summits of the mountains.
But nevertheless, what I am saying, is that the word hell, or Sheol, as used here, does not refer to a literal hel, and it does not even apply to those who are in their graves, but to the living. and the use of the word "Sheol" and mountains only shows the completeness of this judgment. My point here is this: this passage, which is the first time we find the appearance of the word "hell," does not support the position that there is a place where people jump from hot brick to hot brick.
Actually, Deuteronomy is not the first use of the Hebrew word "Sheol", only the first appearance of the English word "hell." The actual first appearance of the Hebrew word "Sheol" is located in Genesis 37. As a little background, at this time Joseph's brothers had gotten Joseph out of the way and returned to their father and reported to him that "an evil beast had devoured him." And as we all know, this was very disturbing to Jacob. So disturbed was Jacob that in verse 37 we read that:
35 "... all his sons and all his daughters rose up to comfort him; but he refused to be comforted; and he said, For I will go down into the grave unto my son mourning. Thus his father wept for him.
I mentioned earlier that the Hebrew word was translated as hell 31 times, as grave 30 times, and as pit 3 times, and that all these words must be used to express the same idea, and even if we translated the word "grave" every time, even that word does not fully represent the idea, because there were those who were buried at sea or drowned, and they are certainly not in what we would call a grave. But we can say that they are in an "unseen" state. Or we might say they are no longer in circulation.
But I am getting ahead of myself, and so let's move on. In the first usage, we see that Sheol was translated as "grave" not hell." Interesting isn't it? And why so. Well can you imagine that a man like Jacob expected to descend into the depths of hell and there be tormented for ever and ever? I don't think so, and neither did the translators (I hope). And so since Jacob was a righteous man, the translators could not have Jacob saying: "I will go down into hell," and so they translated "Sheol" as grave. And this is not the only time they did so, as we shall see.
But anyhow for those of you who want to know exactly where hell is, I am now going to tell you. Are you ready for this? Well, here goes: Hell is in the belly of a fish. That's right, hell is in the belly of a fish, and how do I know that? Do you remember a man called Jonah? According to Jonah, he spent some time in hell. Sounds strange, doesn't it, but let's read Jonah 2:1-2:
1 Then Jonah prayed unto the LORD his God out of the fish's belly,
2 And said, I cried by reason of mine affliction unto the LORD, and he heard me; out of the belly of hell cried I, and thou heardest my voice.
Now where was Jonah, and what did Jonah do? Well, he cried out to the Lord and he did so from the "belly of hell." And so this ends all arguments, as, in the Book of Jonah, we have been told where hell is, and it is in the belly of a fish. Somehow I don't think you believe me. But look at it this way, isn't this as justifiable as the Dante's inferno type hell Christians so often think about?
But anyhow, Jonah spoke of himself as being in hell when he was in the belly of a fish, and he did so because he was out of sight, he was hidden, or unseen to anyone, and from his perspective, he was in a place that would have been his grave, had he not been ejected from it, and so, Jonah's "belly of hell" shows that the word Sheol is appropriately used to express the idea of the place of all the dead, whether they are really buried in the grave, or drowned, burned, or eaten by beasts, or in the belly of a fish.
The best English synonym for these words is the literal meaning of the Greek word "Hades," which is the "unseen" and you can get that out of your Strong's Concordance. Therefore, I would suggest that because of the traditional error attaching to the word "hell" it is a lot better to use the word "Hades" or "the unseen" rather than hell or the grave, and I want you to keep this in mind for later, that Jonah was simply among the unseen.
Actually the best solution would have been to not translate the word "Sheol" at all, and let it appear in all usages as "Sheol." In fact, do any of you have an "American Revised version" of the Bible? Well, if you do, it avoids all the confusion of translation and the traditional errors attaching to the word "hell," and it did so by not translating "Sheol" and "Hades" at all, but by simply bringing these Hebrew and Greek words over into the English, so that in this version we simply read "Sheol" in all 65 places in the OT, and "Hades" in all its 11 occurrences in the NT. I also noticed that my English Revised Version of the Bible also uses the word "Hades" in the NT, and with a few exceptions, it uses the word Sheol in the OT..
While we are at it, let's read Psalm 16:10 and see what it has to say.
10 For thou wilt not leave my soul in hell; neither wilt thou suffer thine Holy One to see corruption.
This Psalm is attributed to David and this verse seems to be applied to two different beings: David and the Messiah. If so, we know that the body of Christ did not see corruption, and as for David, what he looked forward to was the resurrection, and that is what is referred to here. But are we to assume that David believed that upon death, that he would descend into the depths of a Dante's inferno type of hell, and there be tormented for ever and ever? I don't think so, and neither did the translators. But here they used the word "hell" because they applied the entire verse to Christ, and to them He descended into hell and preach to the saints there, and so they translated the word "Sheol" as hell here in the Psalms.
But even if that were the case, that is, even if we assume that the entire verse pertains to Christ, are we to assume that he descended into the depths of a Dante's hell where millions of persons were being tormented day and night, and preached to them? I don't think so.
I haven't yet given you Strong's definition of the Hebrew word Sheol and so here goes:
"Hades or the world of the dead (as if a subterranean retreat)"
And you might notice that we do not see the word hell in the definition. Of course, after defining the word, Strong's does list the words into which it was translated, and among those words is the word hell. Please notice that Strong's definition begins with the word "Hades," But this word also has no place in the Hebrew language. That being the case he should have stayed with the definition, "a place of the dead," and we would all have been better off. But, where does the word "Hades" come from? We have already seen that it comes to us from the Greek language.
What happened was that some 300 years before the Christian era, The Hebrew was translated into the Greek language into what we call the Septuagint, and in making this translation, as I mentioned before, the translators were not comfortable with leaving well enough alone and leave the Hebrew word Sheol un-translated. No, they had to translate Sheol into the Greek word "Hades." And of the sixty-four instances where Sheol occurs in the Hebrew, it is rendered as Hades in the Greek Septuagint sixty times. The effect of that was, from that time forth, the words became equivalent to one another, and so Sheol became Hades and Hades became Sheol.
But what an injustice to the word of God. If the translators had just left well enough alone, then today, we would only read the word "Sheol," in our Old Testaments, and people would not get Dante's inferno type visions when they see the word Sheol. But, alas we are stuck with the problem, and no amount of teaching on the part of people such as myself is ever going to rectify the situation.
Now, in every instance in the Old Testament, the word "grave" can be substituted for the word hell, and understood either in a literal or figurative sense. But actually the Hebrew word is a proper noun and as such, it should have always been left untranslated as Sheol, and had the word "Sheol" been carried into the Greek Septuagint, and then into the English as Sheol, a world of misconception would have been avoided.
Because when the word appears as Hades all the materialism of the heathen mythology is suggested to the mind, and when rendered as Hell, the medieval monstrosities of a Christianity corrupted by heathen adulteration is suggested. But had the word been left alone and untranslated, it would have been very difficult to give to it the meaning which is now so often applied to it.
As for the Hebrew word Sheol, it primarily and literally refers to the grave, or a place of the dead, or the unseen, and secondly and figuratively it refers to the political, social, moral or spiritual consequences of wickedness in the present world. This should be the precise understanding of the word, wherever it is found.
Once again, according to the usages in the Old Testament the word Sheol, as well as the Greek word Hades, primarily signifies only the place, or state of the dead. The character of those who went there was not the determining factor in their being there as they were there simply because they died. In other words "Sheol" is simply used to denote a place of the dead whether they were righteous or unrighteous. Doctor George Campbell, who in his day was a celebrated critic of the hell doctrine, said that:
"Sheol signifies the state of the dead in general, without regard to the goodness or badness of the persons, their happiness or misery."
We have seen a couple of examples in the OT that bear this out. But we could look at others, and I invite you to do so to satisfy your own minds as to the validity of this concept. The next subject I want to look at is the longevity of the grave, and to do so we will go to Hosea 13:14, where we read:
14 I will ransom them from the power of the grave; I will redeem them from death: O death, I will be thy plagues; O grave, I will be thy destruction:.....
Now the Hebrew word used here for grave is "Sheol" and I again remind you that we have only one Hebrew word used in the OT and that word was translated as hell, grave and pit, and so, to be consistent, let's use the word "hell," and see how this reads: "O death, I will be thy plagues; O hell, I will be thy destruction:....." You see the problem here? While we don't mind the translators destroying the grave we simply cannot have them destroying our sacred cow -- our sacrosanct hell that is.
We have already seen that Sheol is a reference to the place of the dead, be they righteous or unrighteous, but here we read that something destroys the power of the grave and redeems them from death. Now I ask you, how can you be redeemed from death? Ah yes, the resurrection. And so the resurrection destroys what? It destroys death, does it not? I would hope so, and if it destroys death, then it follows that it also destroys "Sheol" "hell," or the grave.
With that, let us now turn to Revelation 20:13-14, and see what these verses have to say:
13 And the sea gave up the dead which were in it; and death and hell delivered up the dead which were in them: and they were judged every man according to their works.
14 And death and hell were cast into the lake of fire. This is the second death.
Now if the sea gives up the dead, if death and hell deliver up their dead, what is the status of hell? If we believe that all have been resurrected and thus are alive, then hell has been emptied, has it not? But some will say that this will be a partial resurrection. Now let's think about that for a minute.
At this time, we might do well to remember that our Lord's brief stay in hell was terminated by his resurrection. We might ask ourselves, did the first or partial resurrection end hell? No it did not. That being the case, would any partial resurrection destroy hell? No it would not, and so, as long as there is one person in the grave or hell, then hell cannot be destroyed. The question is, do we believe the word of God on this issue, or do we listen to and believe what man wants us to believe?
But anyhow, since those delivered out of death and hell are next judged, and since it is also said that "death and hell" are cast into the lake of fire, what are we to conclude? Are we to conclude that the lake of fire is a symbolic expression for judgment? I would think so. And why? Well, because we are dealing with intangible conditions here -- those conditions being death and Hades, and I would ask, how can you cast intangibles into a literal lake, be it a lake of fire or a lake of water? If that be the case, then casting death and hell into the lake of fire would symbolize their destruction since they have been emptied of their last inhabitant. In other words, casting death and hell into the lake of fire is their judgment.
Now if this not be the case, then we have a new problem. If this lake of fire is to be literal, and if people are judged and thrown into it, then the lake of fire becomes hell, and that cannot be because we have just read that death and hell have been destroyed, and if destroyed, then they no longer exist, and if they no longer exist, then people cannot be in them.
Paul confirms this for us in 1 Corinthians 15:26 when he says:
"The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death."
And with that we will close for today.
FURTHER INFORMATION ON “Hades or Hell”
What you have read is only the first message of 8 messages on this subject. The entire study on “Hades or Hell” is only available on audio tapes. It consists of eight 45 minute messages recorded on four 90-minute audio tapes and is packaged in a convenient and attractive cassette album.
To obtain the series “Hades or Hell,” enter Tape Album A018 on the order form.
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