According to the bible, are heaven and hell literal or metaphorical?

Question

The reason I ask is because it seems heaven is living with God, and hell is being without God. Now since God is everywhere, we are always living with God, so this means it's really just our choice. A few of you have pointed out that the fire and brimstone are really just metaphors for an eternity away from God. So this would make heaven just a metaphor too. I mean doesn't Jesus say no one has entered the kingdom of God except him and God (also him).

John 3:13
No one has ever gone into heaven except the one who came from heaven—the Son of Man.

So maybe no one is in "heaven" or "hell" but really it refers to life on earth. But of course there's the fact that many people live great lives apart from God, and many have bad lives with God.

So really I don't know, which is why I'm asking, hope you can wade through the ramblings and give me some insight.

Answer 1

It looks from here like the most confused people I hear from take it literally.

The least confused sounding people usually take it as metaphor.

Love and blessings Don

Answer 2

Hell is not a literal place. How can an all loving God create a place of eternal punishment? You do not exist after death. The idea of the immortal soul came from the pagans. They bible even states that Jesus went to hell. The bible never mentions that all righteous people go to heaven. Some will have to wait in death for the resurrection. After the resurrection, man will live on a paradise earth, not heaven. The word Sheol means 'the grave' not a place of punishment. Rev. 20:13,14 KJ: "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. And death and hell were cast into the lake of fire." (So the dead will be deliverd from hell. Notice also that hell is not the same as the lake of fire but will be cast into the lake of fire.) This scripture proves that hell is not a place of eternal punishment because it says that hell is going to be destroyed.

Answer 3

Maybe you are on to something when you say "God is everywhere, we are always living with God, so this means its really just our choice." You can have a church full of two kinds of people--one kind came to church because they were expecting God to show up like he does every week to speak through the preacher and the other believers in the congregation. And the other kind comes to church because....maybe it's Easter and they got new hats they want to show off. God is everywhere, and the people who are tuned in to him can hear him, can feel him there. And then there are people in the same room who are "dead" to the presence of God.

I wonder if Heaven and Hell might be like that church. The Bible comes right out and says that there are no words we'd understand that can communicate exactly what heaven is like "eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither hath it entered into the heart of man what God hath prepared for them that love him."
The faculties for perceiving environments will be completely different when we are in heaven and hell: Try explaining color to a person who has been blind since birth.

The one metaphor that DOES seem to be used for both hell (we're all familiar with those) and the Love of God, or the Presence of God, or heaven is...FIRE. "Our God is a consuming fire," "God IS Love," "the cloven tongues like as of fire" that appeared upon the apostle's heads when they were filled with the Holy Spirit, the fact that in heavenly city there will be no need oof the sun, for the glory of God did lighten it, and the Lamb is the light thereof."

I wonder if the difference between Heaven and Hell is in the differences in the way people perceive the fire of the love of God. Is the love of God a wonderful thing that one lets oneself get wrapped up in, absorbed into so that all all impurities are burned away? Or is it something that repels us, whose touch is torment? The way we reacted to God on earth will be how we react to Him in Heaven or Hell--and it is our reaction that defines our location.

Answer 4

No, it says no one shall enter Heaven except through Him...(not exact quote, my Bible is not here with me) But it means that no one will enter into Heaven without excepting Jesus Christ as their savior. Yes Heaven is real and so is Hell. They are both described in the Bible. Heaven will be wonderful and Hell will be Hell, wailing and nashing of teeth. Fire and brimstone is real!

Remember when reading these answers that there are alot of people in this forum that do not believe in God so their answers will be different than those of us who do.

Answer 5

Heaven is the term for the dwelling place of God and his angels, thus a real place. The term Hell, has been misinterpreted as a place of burning, torture in eternity for the damned. If you properly read the Bible, Hell is really just the common grave of mankind, were the dead lie, with no memories, no feelings, no concept of the passage of time, until they're resurrected. So given this, Hell, is literal.

Answer 6

The dwelling place of God and of faithful spirit creatures; a realm invisible to human eyes. The Bible also uses the term “heaven(s)” in a variety of other senses; for example: to represent God himself, his organization of faithful spirit creatures, a position of divine favor, the physical universe apart from the earth, the expanse surrounding planet Earth, human governments under Satan’s domination, and the righteous new heavenly government in which Jesus Christ with his joint heirs are empowered by God to rule.

The word “hell” is found in many Bible translations. In the same verses other translations read “the grave,” “the world of the dead,” and so forth. Other Bibles simply transliterate the original-language words that are sometimes rendered “hell”; that is, they express them with the letters of our alphabet but leave the words untranslated. What are those words? The Hebrew she’ohl′ and its Greek equivalent hai′des, which refer, not to an individual burial place, but to the common grave of dead mankind; also the Greek ge′en·na, which is used as a symbol of eternal destruction. However, both in Christendom and in many non-Christian religions it is taught that hell is a place inhabited by demons and where the wicked, after death, are punished (and some believe that this is with torment).

Answer 7

Now this is an intelligent question.

I believe that Heaven is literal - at some point in the future, Jesus will return and take His followers to Heaven. At that point, God will no longer be present on the Earth, which will make the Earth Hell.

Answer 8

I believe the descriptions of heaven and hell are probably metaphorical/parables.

Parable of Drawing in the Net - (Matthew chapter 13) From Wikipedia -

In his parables Jesus spoke of hell and judgment almost as much as the kingdom of heaven. This is no rare exception, but one of many other parables in which he deals with the eventual "sorting out" of souls at the end of days.

From Matthew 13:47–53 (NIV):

"Once again, the kingdom of heaven is like a net that was let down into the lake and caught all kinds of fish. When it was full, the fishermen pulled it up on the shore. Then they sat down and collected the good fish in baskets, but threw the bad away. This is how it will be at the end of the age. The angels will come and separate the wicked from the righteous and throw them into the fiery furnace, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth."

The above parables makes it sound like God will separate the wicked from the just in the end of days. Who wants to be left with all the wicked/evil spirits? The fiery furnace probably just means the place where all the evil spirits reside. The term "Fiery Furnace" probably has nothing to do with fire at all.

Another version of the above parable From Matthew 13:47–53 (NIV) appears in the Gospel of Thomas (Patterson-Meyer translation):

And he said, "The person is like a wise fisherman who cast his net into the sea and drew it up from the sea full of little fish. Among them the wise fisherman discovered a fine large fish. He threw all the little fish back into the sea, and easily chose the large fish. Anyone here with two good ears had better listen!"

Answer 9

Depends. The Old Testament conception of hell was metaphorical. It was actually a garbage dump outside of Jerusalem.

The New Testament conception of hell sounds literal.

Some Gnostics believed this was hell. The spirit imprisoned in an earthly body, yearning to return home to God, but put into ignorance of it's true identity by the ego of the body.

Answer 10

Your perception is nearly perfect, I believe. The dimension(s) that heaven and hell exist in are so different from space-time, that we can only visualize them through metaphor.

There is no doubt that Jesus is returning to earth to pick up the kids.

At the ascension in Acts 1 :6-11
When the apostles were with Jesus, they kept asking him, "Lord, are you going to free Israel now and restore our kingdom?"
"The Father sets those dates," he replied, "and they are not for you to know. But when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, you will receive power and will tell people about me everywhere-in Jerusalem, throughout Judea, in Samaria, and to the ends of the earth."
It was not long after he said this that he was taken up into the sky while they were watching, and he disappeared into a cloud. As they were straining their eyes to see him, two white-robed men suddenly stood there among them. They said, "Men of Galilee, why are you standing here staring at the sky? Jesus has been taken away from you into heaven. And someday, just as you saw him go, he will return!"

We hope in a physical resurrection 1st Corinthians 15:12-20
But tell me this-since we preach that Christ rose from the dead, why are some of you saying there will be no resurrection of the dead? For if there is no resurrection of the dead, then Christ has not been raised either. And if Christ was not raised, then all our preaching is useless, and your trust in God is useless. And we apostles would all be lying about God, for we have said that God raised Christ from the grave, but that can't be true if there is no resurrection of the dead. If there is no resurrection of the dead, then Christ has not been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, then your faith is useless, and you are still under condemnation for your sins. In that case, all who have died believing in Christ have perished! And if we have hope in Christ only for this life, we are the most miserable people in the world.
But the fact is that Christ has been raised from the dead. He has become the first of a great harvest of those who will be raised to life again.

What we are resurrected to, only God knows, but we know it is so great, words cannot express it to humans.

Answer 11

Literal. Earth is Earth, Heaven & Hell Likewise. They're another dimesion that the soul travels to when the earthly body has expired.

Oh and where you go ends up in whether you believe in Jesus or not!

And if you're in doubt, you can't doubt the many patients that pass through that tunnel in the ER operating theatres...look up NEAR DEATH EXPERIENCES in search and it'd return many stories of peoples experiences!