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10 Biblical Reasons Why Hell Might Not Exist; and One Why It Does
ACCORDING TO THE AUTHOR OF THIS ARTICLE, THERE ARE BIBLICAL REASONS WHY AN ACTUAL HELL DOES NOT EXIST.
DON’T TELL THAT TO RUSSIAN SCIENTIST DR. AZZACOVE WHO HEARD AND RECORDED THE SCREAMS!
THEY WERE LATER PLAYED ON COAST TO COAST WITH ART BELL IN 2009.
THE AUDIO OF THE HORRID SCREAMS IS AT THE CONCLUSION OF THE LIST…
The Story goes as follows:
In 1999, the Russian government organized a team of experienced geologists to investigate plate tectonics in Siberia. The team was led by Dr. Azzacove.
After reaching 4.4km into the Earth’s crust, they discovered a problem…
“The drill began to rotate wildly, indicating that we had reached a large pocket or cavern. Temperature sensors showed a dramatic increase in heat to 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit. We lowered a microphone, designed to detect and record the sounds of the plate movements.
BUT… instead of plate movements… we heard a human voice screaming in pain!”
“At first we thought the sound was going from out equipment. But when we made adjustments our worst suspicions were confirmed. The screens weren’t’t of a single human, they were the screams of millions of humans!”
A newspaper immediately began covering the story but within hours, the Russian government seized all photos and recordings…
Some personal recordings survived.
In 2009, a recording was emailed to a radio station in America (Coast to Coast)
“As a Communist I don’t believe in Heaven or the Bible, but as a scientist I now believe in Hell. We were shocked to make such a discovery.
We know what we saw, and we know what we heard, and we are absolutely convinced that we drilled through the gates of Hell” - Dr. Azzacove
THE AUDIO OF THE HORRID SCREAMS IS AT THE CONCLUSION OF THE LIST…
WARNING! THE SCREAMS ARE VERY DISTURBING!
Today, many Christians believe in a place of eternal torment where sinners are sent after death, commonly referred to as “Hell” in English. This belief is extremely mainstream and forms part of the basic perception of the religion in popular culture. Which is strange, because some say the evidence for eternal punishment as an integral part of the Christian religion is virtually nonexistent. See what you think!
#10 The Bible Barely Mentions It
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Most Christian believers in the idea of Hell will tell you that it’s a place of punishment for sinners and evildoers. But does that idea have a scriptural basis? According to Romans 6:7, “he that is dead is freed from sin.” So if a person’s sins are cleared with his or her death, then what’s with the additional punishment of Hell? Well, Romans 6:23 goes on to state that “the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Note that there is no mention of sinners being condemned to everlasting torture, they simply don’t get the reward for living a righteous life. Similarly, 2 Thessalonians 1:9 says that the punishment for those deemed wicked is not fiery torture, but destruction, “shut out from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might.”
John 3:36 strikes roughly the same note, declaring that sinners “will not see [eternal] life.” Meanwhile, Jude 1:7 does mention “eternal fire,” but only in the context of Sodom and Gomorrah, which are literally destroyed by the eternal fire of God’s wrath. That leaves brief mentions in the Book of Revelation and two of Christ’s parables as the Biblical basis for the fiery Hell of popular imagination (more on those verses later). But if a place of eternal torment was truly intended as an integral component of Christianity, surely it’s strange that the Bible never seems to pay much attention to it?
#9 Endless Punishment Doesn’t Make Biblical Sense Anyway
From a Christian perspective, the idea of Hell is not only cruel and unusual, but totally excessive. Would a God described in the Bible as “a God of truth and without iniquity, just and right” decide that infinite punishment is just and fair? 1 John 4:8 states that God is the very concept of love. Would a loving father eternally torture his child as punishment, even if the child did something seriously wrong? Deuteronomy 19:21 famously states “an eye for an eye,” a principal of equal punishment that seems rather out of sync with the idea of literally endless torment as retribution for the sins of a short mortal life.
In fact, the fiery Hell of popular imagination seems even harsher after considering God’s words in Jeremiah 7:31: “They have built the high places of Topheth in the Valley of Ben Hinnom to burn their sons and daughters in the fire—something I did not command, nor did it enter my mind.” If the idea of humans being burned in fire is so unappealing to God that it never even came into His thoughts, then what’s His deal with Hell?
#8 Many References To Hell Were Mistranslations
When it comes to misconceptions about Hell, the popular 17th-century King James Version (KJV) of the Bible has a lot to answer for. For example, in the KJV, the prophet Jonah was in the “belly of Hell,” while David bafflingly insists that God would be with him even in Hell. Even Jesus pops down to Hell after his death on the cross.
This obviously makes no sense. The Bible repeatedly states that Hell, whatever else it is, involves separation from God. So why is Jesus swinging by for a visit and why is David so sure that God would be with him there? In fact, if God is with David, why would he be in Hell in the first place? The answer is that the KJV lumps a whole bunch of different Greek and Hebrew words together under the English term “Hell.” The words in question are Hades, Sheol, Tartarus, and Gehenna, and they can have very different meanings in their original context.
That’s particularly important to Hades and Sheol, which are roughly equivalent words in Greek and Hebrew. Neither can reasonably be translated as “place of torment,” which is what the word “Hell” now generally implies. A better translation might be “the grave” or “the afterlife.” Neither term carries a value judgment in the way that “Hell” does—only the wicked go to Hell, but all souls are in Sheol after death. So David’s weird KJV claim that God would be with him in “Hell” is better translated as “the afterlife” or even “the depths.” While the KJV references Jesus being in Hell after his death on the cross, the New International Version makes a much less dramatic reference to him being in his “grave.” In fact, the New International Version only refers to Hell 15 times, compared to a whopping 54 mentions in the KJV.
Other modern Bibles try to avoid such problems altogether by simply leaving “Sheol” and “Hades” untranslated, although this hasn’t quite undone the influence of the KJV. As the Encyclopedia Americana of 1942 put it: “Much confusion and misunderstanding has been caused through the early translators of the Bible persistently rendering the Hebrew Sheol and the Greek Hades and Gehenna by the word ‘Hell.’ The simple transliteration of these words by the translators of the revised editions of the Bible has not sufficed to appreciably clear up this confusion and misconception.”
#7 ‘Gehenna’ Is Controversial, Too
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So if “Hades” and “Sheol” don’t match the modern perception of Hell, that leaves “Gehenna.” (“Tartarus” is also sometimes translated as “Hell,” but the term only appears once in the Bible, and not in relation to humans, so it has limited relevance here.) “Gehenna” is certainly the Biblical term most often rendered “Hell” in English. For example, the New International Version of Matthew 5:30 states: “If your right hand causes you to stumble, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to go into Hell.” Scary, right?
It all comes down to the controversy over the exact meaning of “Gehenna.” The word itself is a Greek rendering of the Hebrew terms ge-hinnom and ge-ben-hinnom, which mean “valley of the sons of Hinnom” and refer to an actual valley just outside ancient Jerusalem. The valley first appears in the Old Testament as the location of fiery pagan child sacrifices, which continue at least until 2 Kings 23:10, which describes how Josiah ravaged the site so “that no man might make his son or his daughter to pass through the fire to Moloch.” By the time of Jesus, the term was apparently used metaphorically to refer to a place of fiery destruction, and Jesus uses it 11 times in this context. It’s interesting to note that Hebrew had no word for such a concept and Jesus apparently felt no need to introduce one, preferring to make historical allusions instead.
Or maybe not. According to some scholars, the valley of Gehenna had essentially become Jerusalem’s incinerator by the time of Christ. It featured constantly burning fires, which consumed the city’s garbage and the bodies of criminals and the disgraced. This tradition is quite old, but not supported by any real evidence or ancient accounts, although it is strange that Jesus refers to bodies being destroyed in Gehenna as well as souls.
In any case, none of Christ’s references to Gehenna suggest any kind of eternal torment. Certainly, the fires of Gehenna are described as eternal, but Jesus specifically warns that they will be used to “destroy both soul and body.” Removing unrighteous people from existence, as that verse suggests, doesn’t sound particularly like torturing them forever. The second meaning can only be inferred by readers who already have that concept of Hell.
#6 Jesus Didn’t Invent His Parable About Hell
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So is the idea of a fiery Hell completely alien to the Bible? Not at all. It’s right there in the Parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus, as recorded in Luke 16:19-31. In the story, a wealthy man lives it up while ignoring a beggar named Lazarus. But the pair experience a dramatic role reversal after their deaths, when Lazarus is carried off by angels to a blissful existence in the bosom of Abraham, while the rich man finds himself tormented in a blazing fire. The rich man begs Lazarus to take pity on him and bring him some water, but Abraham points out that the rich man had a great life and never took pity on Lazarus. Abraham also refuses to resurrect Lazarus to warn the rich man’s family to change their ways, arguing that they can choose to follow the prophets or not, but witnessing a miracle won’t suddenly make them good people.
This is probably the closest the Bible gets to the modern conception of Hell. However, it’s important to note that the Bible doesn’t present it as a true story or a straightforward warning about the afterlife. Christ’s parables are clearly fictional stories designed to convey a message. As Warren Prestidge points out, the Rich Man and Lazarus is immediately preceded by the Parable of the Unjust Steward, where a servant defrauds his master and gets rewarded for it. If you ignored the deeper meaning of the parables, you’d conclude that Jesus thought stealing from your boss was great.
In fact, Jesus didn’t even come up with the story in the first place. Scholars have long identified the general outline (a beggar is rewarded after death, while a rich man is punished) as an Egyptian folktale that became popular with Jewish religious teachers like the Pharisees, to the point that early Jewish literature contains at least seven versions of it. In Luke’s account, Jesus only brings the story up after the Pharisees mock his original Parable of the Unjust Steward, thus using one of their own favorite stories to demonstrate their hypocrisy. With this context, it’s hard to see the parable as a serious account of the Christian afterlife.
#5 The Other Verses Aren’t Conclusive Either
The Bible also contains a reference to eternal fiery torture in Revelation 20:10-15, which refers to a “lake of burning sulfur” where entities are “tormented day and night for ever and ever.” Of course, the entities involved apparently include “death” and “Hades,” which are not actual people able to experience actual suffering. In other words, this is symbolism. Just as these aren’t literal people, neither is the location they are assigned to.
That leaves the Parable of the Sheep and the Goats, as found in the Book of Matthew. In the story, which hovers somewhere between a parable and a straightforward sermon, Jesus appears to speak of the Last Judgment, when sinners will be banished “into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.” This section of the sermon/parable is fairly direct and clearly not part of a fictional story like the Rich Man and Lazarus. The parable ends with an apparent reference to unending torment: “Then [the unrighteous] will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life.” For these reasons, the Sheep and the Goats is generally considered the key Bible passage behind the popular conception of Hell.
However, many theologians argue that this interpretation of the Sheep and the Goats contradicts a number of other Bible verses, which explain the fate of the unrighteous at the Last Judgment as fiery destruction via “the second death.” If the unrighteous are destroyed, they can’t be tormented forever. Some Biblical scholars argue that, while the fire of punishment is described as eternal, that doesn’t mean the wicked will be punished there for all eternity. Rather, the punishment is total destruction in the holy fire, which has always existed. In other words, the eternal punishment (“aionios kolasis“) has lasted forever, but the punishment itself is simply immediate destruction.
Jehovah’s Witnesses and other groups who not believe in Hell go even further, arguing that the word kolasis shouldn’t be translated as “punishment” at all. Citing its derivation from a Greek term for pruning trees, they suggest that it would better be rendered “cutting off,” “destruction,” or even “death.” The last interpretation would turn “aionios kolasis” into “eternal death,” making a nice contrast with the “eternal life” promised the righteous. The “pruning trees” meaning also invokes John 15:6: “If you do not remain in me, you are like a branch that is thrown away and withers; such branches are picked up, thrown into the fire and burned.” Kolasis only appears twice in the New Testament, but the Old Testament in Greek uses it to refer to punishment in general and to death as a form of punishment, suggesting that “eternal punishment” and “eternal death” are both valid translations.
#4 Even The Church Fathers Couldn’t Agree On Hell
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Since many hold the early church fathers as the authority on matters of faith and doctrine, many would find it surprising that even they couldn’t agree if Hell existed and, if so, what it actually was. Justin Martyr, Clement of Alexandria, Tertullian, and Cyprian were among those that held that Hell was a literal place of fiery torment. Origen and Gregory of Nyssa disagreed, countering that Hell was simply separation from God. While the idea of eternal fiery damnation can be found as early as the apocryphal second-century Apocalypse of Peter, it doesn’t seem to have become dominant in Christian thinking until around the fifth century AD.
Ironically, this view was heavily inspired by a non-Christian, the Greek philosopher and mathematician Plato, whom the French historian Georges Minois credited with “the greatest influence on traditional views of Hell” of all the early philosophers. Plato’s Story of Er features an afterlife in which sinners are punished or rewarded in proportion to their misdeeds in life. Whatever your views on Hell’s existence, Plato’s sin-specific punishments definitely have no Biblical support, but the philosopher’s ideas can still be detected in many popular versions of the Christian afterlife, most notably Dante’s Inferno.
In modern times, many Christian denominations have moved away from Saint Augustine’s conception of Hell as a physical place beneath the Earth. Even the venerable Catholic Church has apparently decided to go with the flow, with the Catechism of the Catholic Church, approved by Pope John Paul II in 1992, declaring that Hell is simply a state of “definitive self-exclusion from communion with God and the blessed.”
#3 Some Aspects Of Hell Seem Distinctly Non-Christian
Plato might have had the greatest role, but non-Abrahamic influences on Hell date back a long way before the Greeks pioneered philosophy. The Ancient Egyptian religion, for example, featured a cavern containing a “lake of fire” where the souls of the wicked were punished for their transgressions. The early Mesopotamians also believed that the underworld lay underground, although it was more dim and miserable than a place of eternal punishment.
A particularly interesting comparison can be made between the popular idea of Hell and Zoroastrianism, an ancient religion originating in what is now Iran. In the earliest Zoroastrian texts, the souls of the sinful are judged after death and condemned to eternal punishment in the underworld, which the Book Of Arda Viraf describes as a pit full of fire, “smoke, stench and demons.” The souls are tortured according to the severity of their sins in life and the whole thing is presided over by Angra Mainyu, the great evil spirit, “who ever ridiculed and mocked the wicked in hell” for following him instead of their creator god.
That sounds remarkably like the Hell of modern pop culture. And what’s just as remarkable is how many of those details have no basis in the Bible. Zoroastrian hell is staffed by demons and ruled by a devil figure, whereas the Christian Devil and his followers have no role in the afterlife and are the one group clearly stated to be destined for punishment in “Tartarus.” There’s certainly no reason to believe that a Christian hell would make the punishment fit the crime, whereas the demons of Zoroastrianism seem to delight in devising inventive tortures for each particular sin. In fact, the Book Of Arda Viraf is distinctly reminiscent of Dante’s Inferno.
SEE THE TOP 2 REASONS, THEN HEAR THE SCREAMS YOURSELF!
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check this out:
http://www.divinerevelations.info/mary_k_baxter_a_divine_revelation_of_hell.htm
Christ settled the question of sin forever and He paid the prize, at a grand scale involving the entire world. It includes every person who ever lived on earth! So why do we need to be punished again? Once a penalty is paid, it’s settled. Whoever opted for Satan will perish to die to never live again. All thoughts of them will vanish forever. The unspoiled new creation will be no dumping ground for them. I just want to stress that the works of unbelief will be punished. The people who were exposed to the Gospel of Christ, and shunned His message, will have no excuse. Their scepticism cannot be pardoned by Christ’s work on the cross. The Word of God can be seen as a two-edged sword, inviting an immediate response whether they are for or against Christ. Heb. 4:12 The only unpardonable sin, is the sin of unbelief! They will be punished, but afterwards there will be NO remembrance of them. They will DIE the second death, not to roast for all eternity. For a reason the true believers will be a living proof of His righteousness. Eph.2:7 We are not eternal; it’s a bluff sold by Satan to Eve in Eden.
Jan Beute;
It is the people who do not do the entire, and I mean ENTIRE will of God who will be punished with the second death. The problem is that no one cares to find out what that will of God is, much less take the time to do it each and every day. That means that almost all of the 7.2 billion people on Earth will die, except probably less than ten million. They are that will be alive after the final battle, which is very very close at hand. Each and every sign we were given indicating it’s arrival has come about, except one.
Diabolical human experiment exposed, leaves man in hell!
More here……
/alternative/2015/10/terrifying-experiment-turns-man-into-monkey-3224504.html
Seeing as there is no afterlife in Judaism, there is no afterlife in Islam or Christianity either. The concept of a heaven populated by the honorable dead (those who are thought of as hero’s, who have died with sword in hand fighting) and a hell populated by the dishonorable (thought of badly after death, cowards, backstabbers etc) is 100% pagan in origin.
Add: The afterlife concept is what we think of people after they’ve died. Some live on for thousands of years for their deeds, both good and bad. It’s modern terminology equivalent is fame and infamy.
John 3:16. “For God love us that he sent his only begotten Son, that whosoever would believe in him would not perish, but have eternal life.”
Yes, he sent to the sinful world to save it from destruction. God loves us so much that he sent his son to the Earth and all we had to do to be saved was/is to believe that he sent his Son to die on the cross for all of our sin. For the wages of sin is death and no one can work their way out of sin in to forgiveness.. WE HAVE TO SHED BLOOD FOR THE REMISSION OF SIN… JESUS LOVED US SO MUCH THAT HE LAID DOWN HIS OWN LIFE FOR US DYING ON THE CROSS AND SHEDDING HIS OWN BLOOD FOR US…. FOR YOU!!! And all you have to do is BELIEVE and ACCEPT that he did as a FREE GIFT from God. Then repent of your sinful life.. God will send the Holy Spirit to dwell in you and comfort you. DO THIS and KNOW that you are saved from Hell.
Ya, well, NDE’rs would say it does exist. There are many eye witnesses to hell, and the interesting thing is they describe it much the same way as Enoch did thousands of years ago. It does exist, and it’s as horrific as you’ve heard! Another interesting tidbit is that these NDE’rs are from different parts of the world and different religions, and they always convert to Christianity, because it’s Jesus showing them, and telling them.
Why? I have no comprehension of it, but I know I do not want to end up there!
The wage of sin is death. Not burning in some imaginary place invented by the RCC to guilt people into submission.
Claiming hell is real because the sound of plate tectonics resembles that of screaming animals, is on a par with claiming unicorns exist because your brain thinks it can see one within a texture.
It is an interesting point to ponder, but I don’t rule it out completely. From a purely physics argument, an eternal “hell” would require energy from God, and monitoring of some type… like a manager or overseer. But, as God can do whatever He deems best, there is no need for us to limit His capabilities.
Scripturally, Jude 1:7 refers to the “eternal fire”. The only souls who are promised eternal life, and eternal inheritance, and eternal reward, eternal salvation, and eternal redemption are those who are in Christ, have obeyed Christ, and are covered by His blood through baptism. All those who do not believe will not be obey, and will not be baptized into Christ, and will not have remission of sins, and will be damned. Those are not promised eternal life. They are promised the second death in the lake of fire.
Matt. 25:41, “Then shall he say also unto them on the left hand, Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels:”
Matt. 25:46, “And these shall go away into everlasting punishment: but the righteous into life eternal.”
The fire is everlasting. This is the Lake of Fire of Rev. 20. Fire burns the offal and the chaff, the evil and the wicked in the second death. The everlasting punishment of Matt. 25:46 is certainly everlasting when the soul is destroyed in the second death. But, we are not told specifically what will happen to those except destruction. I believe at this time that means the soul of the wicked is destroyed.
Rev. 21:8, “But the fearful, and unbelieving, and the abominable, and murderers, and whoremongers, and sorcerers, and idolaters, and all liars, shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone: which is the second death.”
Notice which ones are the first on this list…. the fearful… as they will not believe and will not obey.
Realize that in the scriptures, the REAL scriptures, meaning the original texts and scrolls, and some other historical writings of the period, hell has always meant “the common grave of mankind”. It is called by other names such as Hades in Koine, and Sheol in ancient Hebrew. So, according to the scriptures no hell of torment and fire does NOT exist. Second thing to realize is that according to many scriptures, we do NOT have an immortal soul, we ARE a living soul. One of those scriptures says “the soul that sinneth, it itself shall DIE”. How can something immortal die? It cannot. The immortal soul belief, and the belief of a fiery underworld come straight out of the pagan religions of Babylon. Those beliefs ARE PAGAN, not Christian.
This realm is’ Hell, actually an quite literally.
Why you in hell, questions~ it.
Alan;
Hell means “common grave of man”. It means a hole in the ground with a dead body in it. Hades, sheol, and gehenna mean much the same thing. “Realm”? What is that supposed to mean? We have no part of us that survives death, or that exists without our body.