How many Christians are out there that don't believe in Hell?

Answer 1

Ok...first I have to assume you're talking about the idea of a burning place where a sinner are cast to endure eternal damnation. I'm a Christian and I'm here to tell you that that is NOT a Scriptural teaching. There is no short way to explain this, but it's fairly straight forward, so I'll give it a go.

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.

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.”—The Encyclopedia Americana (1942), Vol. XIV, p. 81.

So when the Bible speaks of hell, it is NOT talking about some place of torment where bad people go after death. The Bible bears this out.

Eccl. 9:5, 10: “The living are conscious that they will die; but as for the dead, they are conscious of nothing at all . . . All that your hand finds to do, do with your very power, for there is no work nor devising nor knowledge nor wisdom in Sheol,* the place to which you are going.” (If they are conscious of nothing, they obviously feel no pain.) (*“Sheol,” AS, RS, NE, JB; “the grave,” KJ, Kx; “hell,” Dy; “the world of the dead,” TEV.)

Ps. 146:4: “His spirit goes out, he goes back to his ground; in that day his thoughts* do perish.” (*“Thoughts,” KJ, 145:4 in Dy; “schemes,” JB; “plans,” RS, TEV.)

What is the ‘fiery Gehenna’ to which Jesus referred?

Reference to Gehenna appears 12 times in the Christian Greek Scriptures. Five times it is directly associated with fire. Translators have rendered the Greek expression ge´en·nan tou py·ros´ as “hell fire” (KJ, Dy), “fires of hell” (NE), “fiery pit” (AT), and “fires of Gehenna” (NAB).

Historical background: The Valley of Hinnom (Gehenna) was outside the walls of Jerusalem. For a time it was the site of idolatrous worship, including child sacrifice. In the first century Gehenna was being used as the incinerator for the filth of Jerusalem. Bodies of dead animals were thrown into the valley to be consumed in the fires, to which sulfur, or brimstone, was added to assist the burning. Also bodies of executed criminals, who were considered undeserving of burial in a memorial tomb, were thrown into Gehenna. Thus, at Matthew 5:29, 30, Jesus spoke of the casting of one’s “whole body” into Gehenna. If the body fell into the constantly burning fire it was consumed, but if it landed on a ledge of the deep ravine its putrefying flesh became infested with the ever-present worms, or maggots. (Mark 9:47, 48) Living humans were not pitched into Gehenna; so it was not a place of conscious torment.

Finally, lets ask a few questions, lets reason a bit.
What does the Bible say the penalty for sin is?

Rom. 6:23: “The wages sin pays is death.”

After one’s death, is he still subject to further punishment for his sins?

Rom. 6:7: “He who has died has been acquitted from his sin.”

Is eternal torment of the wicked compatible with God’s personality?

Jer. 7:31: “They [apostate Judeans] have built the high places of Topheth, which is in the valley of the son of Hinnom, in order to burn their sons and their daughters in the fire, a thing that I had not commanded and that had not come up into my heart.” (If it never came into God’s heart, surely he does not have and use such a thing on a larger scale.)

Illustration: What would you think of a parent who held his child’s hand over a fire to punish the child for wrongdoing? (1 John 4:8) “God is love.” It would be good for all concerned to keep that in mind. Even with Adam and Eve, God told them the punishment for their disobedience would be death, only that. He did not say anything about eternal torment.

The plain and simple truth.

Answer 2

The word from which we get "Hell" is Hades in Greek and Sheol in Hebrew. It's the place where all dead people went before the cross because until the Lord's blood was shed no one could get into Heaven. Hell is also referred to as paradise, where the thief on the cross went, where Jesus went for 3 days and preached to those in paradise and retrieved the keys.. Many Christians confuse this place with the place of eternal torment to which unbelievers will be sent. Eternal torment will be the lake of fire, not hell

Answer 3

the prevalent concept of Hell, a place of hearth, brimstone, and eternal torture, is entirely a synthetic invention as a fashion to scare the lots of folk into faith. one in each of those place does not exist. The observe, Hell, comes from an previous Germanic observe, Hoelle, meaning the undemanding grave of mankind. in case you examine the Bible heavily, you will discover that those that have died "comprehend no longer something in any respect." dying is entirely a deep sleep, in that there are no thoughts, no emotions, no concept of time. You basically do no longer exist anymore. the only desire the lifeless have is the resurrection at some destiny date. If God recollects them, then they're going to come decrease back to existence, with new bodies. Their purely thoughts would be that 2nd acceptable earlier dying, then their awakening interior the resurrection, which might sense like a chop up 2nd. As for the hearth and brimstone concept, there's a passage in Revelations that speaks of God throwing dying and Hades into the Lake of hearth. How do you throw dying and Hades away? This passage shows that God is going to permamently do away with death and the want for graves. The Lake of hearth is symbolic for complete destruction. In different words, the top of death for each man or woman at that destiny date. human beings will stay continuously like they have been meant to be, earlier Adam and Eve blew it.

Answer 4

Hard to be a Christian and not believe in Hell

Answer 5

I couldn't improve on the answer given by Hinds feet. It is such a logical answer, I wish I'd thought of it first. It's simple - if you're a Christian, it means you believe the Bible and if you believe the Bible then you believe everything it says, including the reality of hell.

Answer 6

I do believe in a hell but not the burning kind of eternal torture.

Many people just take what ever is told them as religious leaders have the habit of merely reading rather than truely teaching scriptures to their congregations.

A fiery hell is not a biblical truth, but an apostate teaching. It mismaligns God and a hell of torture is not a found theme from the Bible.

What is hell?
Hell is the physical grave, you are dead as in no more. That is what the true hell is.


Revelation chapter 20 speaks of the lake of fire (symbolic for total annilation)

[Revelation 20:14,15
"And death and Hades were hurled into the lake of fire. This means the second death, the lake of fire. Furthermore, whoever was not found written in the book of life was hurled into the lake of fire."]

Death [no more death for the survivors] and Hades [the grave of the dead] were hurled into destruction. Whoever was not given the gift of life was destroyed. The second death is eternal annilation.

God has no need to torture souls his sense of perfect justice would not do such a thing. It is only religious leaders who are not happy unless they terrorize people with horrid descriptions of everlasting torment in a hell when God offers either eternal death or eternal life.

Romans chapter 6 compounds this:

[Romans 6:23

"For the wages sin pays is death, but the gift God gives is everlasting life by Christ Jesus our Lord."]

God gives the gift everlasting life by Jesus Christ yet just death to unrepentant sinners, not burning torture.

Oh and what about this scripture!

“God loved the world so much that he gave his only-begotten Son, in order that everyone exercising faith in him might not be destroyed but have everlasting life.”—John 3:16.

Note the "not be destroyed" part of the scripture.

The evidence is clearly out there for crushing the lie of the fiery hell from true scriptural teaching.

Answer 7

I know a few. Yeah, you can be a christian and believe in no hell. Although they take it as an insult to be called one.

Answer 8

I'm a Christian that doesn't believe in Heaven or Hell. In fact, I don't believe in God or Jesus, period! Wait, I'm not a Christian at all.... what am I saying? I'm an atheist!

Answer 9

they say that believe that lie but in they heart they don´t, because if they really believe that then they should spent the whole day crying because is that the majority of their families are going to be torture by Jesus in hell.

Answer 10

Well from what I understand if you deny Hell you deny God and therefore will be sent to Hell for breaking the false god commandment for not having faith in the true God.

This is why I think for myself.