Searching for Evidence for the Doctrine of Eternal Hell Fire.
If Hell demanded a verdict based on evidence for its existence, it would be...NONEXISTENT!
The reason it is accepted as a major doctrine in Christendom, is the fact that people accept the torture chamber of hell fire as a given...water is wet, snow is white, grace is green, people die, and hell is real...without doing research of evidence for or against the hellish doctrine.
It is accepted as truth on the premise..."the bible says it...I believe it...that settles it...evidence mentality. I am reminded of one individual using this evidence mentality saying, "if the bible said that the moon was made of green cheese, I would believe it". Of course based on reality, even if the bible said it, it would not be truth.
If a man stood before a judge to be sentenced based on as much evidence as can be found for the existence of hell, the judge would declare the man NOT GUILTY as he banged his gavel.
Ohhh...I know that the word "hell" is in most used versions of the Bible...but...should it be, and is there any concrete contextual evidence to support the teaching that it is a torture chamber of eternal damnation and suffering?
We have been told (and rightly so) that when interpreting the Bible that proper context and the meaning of the original word in the original manuscripts is of utmost importance, if the Bible is to be interpreted correctly.
With that in mind let's begin our search for any evidence to support the doctrine of an eternal hell that is taught as a major doctrine of the Gospel Message of God's Grace.
Where should we begin contextually...I trust you have no problem in believing that Genesis should be the ideal starting point.
Would you agree it is logical to assume that a loving God would want people to be aware of the ramifications regarding damnation and the eternal destiny that the vast majority of mankind will pay for their "sinning". If such a place exists, evidence of it should be told to the people God created in the beginning. But was it?
Let's begin with the Garden of Eden story. The LORD God commanded the man, saying, “From any tree of the garden you may eat freely; but from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat from it you will surely die” (Gen. 2:16–17).
What is lacking here? Evidence to support they will go to a place of eternal suffering when they die. It just says they will die. Obviously, Adam and Eve didn’t die the same day they ate. Why? The Hebrew text offers more of a progressive sense of entering into the death process. Young’s Literal renders the translation, “dying thou dost die,” and the Greek Septuagint renders the translation, “to death you shall die.”
What did the apostle Paul refer to this first act of disobedience as, and what was the ensuing implications for ALL people. “Therefore, just as through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin, and so death spread to ALL people, because ALL sinned” (Rom. 5:12). So we see that through Adam, ALL people inherited sin and sin’s consequence...dying. ALL people from the day they are are born are dying. After their second breath, they are closer to death than when they took their first breath, and I am confident that up to this point anyway...ALL people eventually die!
Let's continue our search for evidence to support the doctrine of eternal hell by looking at the flood story of Genesis's 6, 7, and 8.
All Christians who have been "in the way" for a long time are aware of this story because it is a Sunday school classic. We are told that preacher Noah preached for 120 years of a coming impending disaster that would have drastic consequences for ALL people in the whole world, except the people who preacher Noah could convert to believing his message and enter the arc of safety. Noah being worn out from building the arc and preaching for 120 years was successful in convincing only 7 people and they were all members of His immediate family that the message of gloom and doom was true, so we have a total of 8 people when we include the preacher himself who were saved from death by taking refuge in the arc...plus the animals of course! This resulted in the vast majority of God's, then created people, dying in a colossal flood.
Now if hell was such a dominate factor in the afterlife, should God not have instructed Noah to preach at least one sermon warning people of spending eternity suffering and agony in its flames? Isn't the absence of warnings of spending eternity in hell fire and brimstone infinitely irresponsible, unfair and cruel on the part of God? Maybe be if the warning was given many more would have been saved. If there was such a place why would God choose to keep it a secret? Did He secretly want people to go there?
Let me briefly mention a few other places where people should have been warned about suffering in hell's eternity but weren't.
Sodom and Gomorah story found in Genises 19.
Abraham’s war to rescue Lot...Gen 14:17-19
Dinah’s brethren slew all the males...Gen 34:1-31
A seven year worldwide famine..Gen 41:25-54
The plagues of Egypt...Ex 7 to 12
The deat of the Amalekites...Ex 17:13
Aaron’s golden calf...Ex 32:35
Ten scouts are die for their honest report...Num 14:35-45
The massacre of the Aradies...Num 21:1-2
The Midianite massacre...Num 31:1-35
Og and all the men women, and children killed...Dut 3:6
The list would get much larger if we continued our Old Testament search but the end result would be the same...no warning to people of eternal suffering in hell fire. Could it be because such a fate for God's created children never did exist.
The idea of an eternal hell is missing from the OT as the eternal abode for most of humanity, unless you read the KJV or other translations that have mistranslated the word that they translate as hell.
I am not an Hebrew scholar not am I the son of one, so I thank the people who have made readily available the following:
"The Hebrew word that the translators translated as hell; it is the Hebrew word Sheol. Sheol is more accurately translated as grave, place of the dead, or the unseen, (similar to the NT Greek counterpart, Hades). Throughout the OT, both good and bad people end up in Sheol at death. Sheol is the concept people devised in ancient times to imagine and describe the afterlife experience that they had no knowledge about. In ancient cultures, such as Babylonian, Egyptian, and Greek, you see numerous mythologies and imaginations about this afterlife, each culture influencing and building upon later thought. So the word translated as “hell” by KJV is Sheol."
From the following verses:...
Psalm 9:17 (KJV): “The wicked shall be turned into hell (Sheol), and all the nations that forget God.”
Psalm 55:15 (KJV): “Let death seize upon them, and let [the wicked] go down quick into hell (Sheol).”
Psalm 89:48 (KJV): “What man is he that liveth, and shall not see death? Shall he deliver his soul from the hand of the grave (Sheol)?”
Job 14:13 (KJV): “O that thou wouldest hide me in the grave (Sheol), That thou wouldest keep me secret, until thy wrath be past”
...it is evident that the KJV translates Sheol as hell whenever they want to convey it as the particular destination of the wicked. However, when portraying the fate of the righteous, they translate it grave. Obviously, the translators would have had a major problem if they had consistently translated Sheol as hell in all these verses. The Job refference would convey that every person would go to hell, and the fourth that Job asked to go to hell! Deplorable, don't you think?
This elicits an unsettling comparison between Hitler and God.
Hitler dispatched Jews to the concentration camps and gas chambers for no reason other than their ethnic identity. This was a temporal punishment; it lasted only until the people subjected to his torture died.
But many Christian people believe that our Loving, Merciful, Compassionate Father God, on the other hand, is prepared to send the vast majority of the people whom he created out of love to suffer untold agony in hell fire for eternity, a concept for which no evidence or warning of exists in the whole of the Old Testament.
Is this not classifying God to be a worst monster than Hitler, to make billions and billions of people suffer agonizing torture of ever and ever.
What do you think?
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