Should we believe in hell?

Question

"They 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." -- Jeremiah 7:31

Jehovah considered what the sons of Judah did a detestable thing. Then, why would he send us in a fiery hell?

"God is love..." -- 1 John 4:16

A loving God would not create a place where the dead suffer eternally.

The word “hell” is translated from the Hebrew word “Sheol” and the Greek word “Hades.” Hell is the common grave of the humankind. There is where all people go: wicked and upright.

"Wicked people will turn back to Sheol [hell],
Even all the nations forgetting God." -- Psalm 9:17

"O that in Sheol you would conceal me,
That you would keep me secret until your anger turns back,
That you would set a time limit for me and remember me!." -- Job 14:13 (Job's words)

Answer 1

Excellent investigation and support.

Besides the biblical reasons, there are other of logical nature.
A parent who mistreat a child is considered an... bad person. What could be considered a person that punishes his child with pain and suffering? What if this person uses fire?

Another reason is, God is justice, the almighty judge... could be considered fair that an human being... with all the imperfection inherited, only because a fail during his short period of life (about 80 years) be punished by an entire eternity? and I mean punished with really cruelty, using torture instruments, fire and sulfur... (check "The Divine Comedy" of Dante).

In conclusion, there is not logic, measurable and biblical reason to believe in the eternal punishment of hell.

A.

Answer 2

If you understand the true meaning of Hell, then you will know that everyone that death takes, goes to Hell.

Definition: 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).

Is eternal torment of the wicked compatible with God’s personality? What would you think of a parent who held his child’s hand over a fire to punish the child for wrongdoing? “God is love.” (1 John 4:8) Would he do what no right-minded human parent would do? Certainly not! Simply put, the word Hell is translated from the Hebrew word Sheol, which means the grave, where everyone goes when they die.

SINCE “HELL” MEANS THE “GRAVE”
English translators of the Authorized Version, or King James Version, translated Sheol 31 times as “hell,” 31 times as “grave,” and 3 times as “pit.” The Catholic Douay Version translated Sheol 64 times as “hell.” In the Christian Greek Scriptures “New Testament”, the King James Version translated Hades as “hell” each of the 10 times it occurs..

The question is: What kind of place is Sheol, or Hades? The fact that the King James Version translates the one Hebrew word Sheol three different ways shows that hell, grave and pit mean one and the same thing. And if hell means the common grave of mankind, it could not at the same time mean a place of fiery torture. Well, then, do Sheol and Hades mean the grave, or do they mean a place of torture?

Acts 2:31 uses Hades. Notice, too, that Jesus Christ was in Hades, or hell. Are we to believe that God tormented Christ in a hell of fire? Of course not! Jesus was simply in his grave.

In all the places where Sheol occurs in the Bible it is never associated with life, activity or torment. Rather, it is often linked with death and inactivity.

So the answer becomes very clear. Sheol and Hades refer not to a place of torment but to the common grave of mankind. (Psalm 139:8) Good people as well as bad people go to the Bible.

Can people get out of hell? What did Jonah mean by “out of the belly of hell”? Well, that fish’s belly was surely not a place of fiery torment. But it could have become Jonah’s grave.

Answer 3

Because if you believe that Paul was inspired by God, you have to accept his version of Hell.

There are several different versions of Hell in the Bible, all with different meanings. Its not surprising that denominations argue over the nature of hell, because the bible contradicts itself through the different ages.

The Hebrew OT doesn't really have a concept of an eternal fiery hell, but NT has several concepts, including the Pagan version, which includes lakes of fire.

Why is there a dramatic change in God's inspired word, by the time we get to the Greek?

It actually shows that pagan influence was happening pretty early on in Christianity, and that the bible isn't inspired.

Answer 4

Depends on what you mean by "hell".

I agree with your description of the Biblical meaning of hell.... it is simply the common grave... where there are no feelings or consciousness.

On the other hand, most of the world has the false thought of "hell fire" from many pagan sources. This idea has nothing to do with the Bible.... even though some false "christian" religions still teach this false doctrine of God torturing people in hell fire.

So... we are in agreement on this and have the correct Biblical view of "hell". Now we just have to straighten out the rest of the world!

Answer 5

Try not to dwell on hell. If you're a true Christian you never have to worry about it anyway. I don't know whether it's a real place or a concept. I really think it is a concept and not a real place because Rev. chapter 20 refers to it as the Lake of Fire and it says that the Lake of Fire is the second "death". So how can it be a place or eternal torture if it is death?

Answer 6

We most certainly should believe in hell. Although it is a common misunderstanding that it is a a hot fiery furnace where satan himself resides. This is not true, hell is an existance of suffering and torment whereas Heaven is a place where christians will meet face to face with Jesus and (if the second coming has not occurred) a place where we will wait for Jesus to return to Earth and reign again. God did not create Hell satan did when his pride made him fall from Heaven because he believed he was more important than God himself. Satan is an underhand liar and deciever, he is nothing compared to our awesome, ever faithful, gracious, merciful God. Im a christian that kicks satans butt and my place in heaven is booked, it was paid for 2000yrs ago with the blood Jesus shed on the cross.

Answer 7

Good points Alex, keep up the good work.

No we should not believe in hell.

Here is something from the WT Library about the subject of hell.


The Truth About Hell

OBVIOUSLY, the underlying doctrine behind belief in punishment after death is the belief that the real man does not actually die when the fleshly body dies but that something—often called a soul—survives the death of the body. This belief, as we saw in the preceding article, goes back to the early Sumerians and Babylonians in Mesopotamia. Later, it was adopted by the Greeks, whose philosophers, such as Plato, polished the theory. Their refined dualistic belief in “body and soul” became a part of apostate Jewish belief.

When did professed Christians adopt the belief in such an afterlife? Certainly not during the time of Jesus and his apostles. The French Encyclopædia Universalis states: “The [apocryphal] Apocalypse of Peter (2nd century C.E.) was the first Christian work to describe the punishment and tortures of sinners in hell.”

In fact, it appears that among the early church fathers, there was much disagreement over hell. Justin Martyr, Clement of Alexandria, Tertullian, and Cyprian were for a fiery hell. Origen tried to give hell a remedial twist, claiming that sinners in hell would eventually be saved. He was followed to a greater or lesser degree by Gregory of Nazianzus and Gregory of Nyssa. But Augustine put an end to such soft views of hell. In his book Early Christian Doctrines, Oxford professor J. N. D. Kelly writes: “By the fifth century the stern doctrine that sinners will have no second chance after this life and that the fire which will devour them will never be extinguished was everywhere paramount.”

As to purgatory, the book Orpheus—A General History of Religions states: “St. Augustine had held that there was an intermediate state of probation between future felicity and damnation, that of the purification of souls by fire. This is the Orphic [pagan Greek] and Virgilian [pagan Roman] doctrine of Purgatory: there is not a word about it in the Gospels. . . . The doctrine of Purgatory . . . was formulated in the sixth century, and proclaimed a dogma of the Church by the Council of Florence (1439).” The New Catholic Encyclopedia admits: “The Catholic doctrine on purgatory is based on tradition, not Sacred Scripture.” With regard to Limbo, Rome’s Cardinal Ratzinger admits that it is “only a theological hypothesis.”

No Punishment After Death

What, though, about the Bible? Does it say that the soul survives the body at death and can therefore be punished in a fiery hell or purgatory? The New Catholic Encyclopedia states: “The notion of the soul surviving after death is not readily discernible in the Bible. . . . The soul in the O[ld] T[estament] means not a part of man, but the whole man—man as a living being. Similarly, in the N[ew] T[estament] it signifies human life: the life of an individual.”

So the underlying premise for punishment after death falls flat. The Bible states: “The soul that sins shall die.” (Ezekiel 18:4, Revised Standard Version, Catholic Edition) It also declares: “The wages of sin is death.” (Romans 6:23, RSV) Therefore, when the Bible speaks of impenitent wicked people ending up in “Gehenna,” “everlasting fire,” or “the lake of fire,” it is merely using symbolic language to speak of their undergoing permanent death, “the second death.”—Matthew 23:33; 25:41, 46; Revelation 20:14; 21:8; compare 2 Thessalonians 1:7-9.

Hell Emptied by the Resurrection

Is hell hot, then? Not according to the Bible. Indeed, the Hebrew and Greek words translated in some Bibles as “hell” merely designate the common grave of dead humans. It is not a hot place of torment. It is, rather, a place of rest, from which the dead will come forth in the resurrection. (Ecclesiastes 9:10; Acts 24:15) Oscar Cullmann, professor at the Theological Faculty of the University of Basel, Switzerland, and of the Sorbonne, in Paris, speaks of the “radical difference between the Christian expectation of the resurrection of the dead and the Greek belief in the immortality of the soul.” Correctly, he says that “the fact that later Christianity effected a link between the two beliefs . . . is not in fact a link at all but renunciation of one [the Bible doctrine of the resurrection] in favour of the other [the pagan belief in the immortality of the human soul].”—Italics ours.

Jehovah’s Witnesses have not renounced their faith in the resurrection in favor of the idea of the immortality of the soul. They will be delighted to share with you their happy hope and prove to you from the Bible that, of a truth, hell is not hot.

Answer 8

If you are christain then you should believe in Christ. Christ desribed hell as a place where there will be wailing and gnashing of teeth.

everyone seems to know John 3:16
but have you read what follows it? John 3:17-20?

17For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved.

18He that believeth on him is not condemned: but he that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.

19And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil.

20For every one that doeth evil hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved.

Answer 9

I think that people created the concept of hell because they want a place that is scarier than not existing anymore. Or maybe hell is a comfort instead of not existing anymore.

Answer 10

A loving God wouldn't not forgive a person and damn them to Hell.