HELL HOUSE:

Halloween's Ultimate in Evangelical Perversity

Every Halloween there is out there in Churchianity a little something I like to call the ultimate in evangelical perversity: Hell Houses. A Hell House (also called Judgment House or Doom House) is a take-off on the old haunted house or house of horrors, but Hell House is sponsored by a church and often held at the sponsoring church facility. The idea is to scare the hell out of you, literally. They show you how to get to hell and what it will be like in order to pressure you into "getting saved" so you can be counted on the pastor's tally sheet.

In each successive room of Hell House, visitors are “treated” to a series of brief skits. Typical dramas are a bloody high school shooting at point blank range, a bloody suicide, a bloody abortion performed on a screaming teenager, a bloody satanic ritual killing, and other scenes that might involve bloody drunk drivers, dopers, adulterers, or witchcraft aficionados. (Hell House instruction manuals—yes, there are instruction manuals!—specifically advise you to whip up a large fresh batch of fake blood every day.) As if that isn’t objectionable enough, bloody September 11, 2001 ground zero scenes have become popular too.

At the end of your Hell House experience, there are typically two exits. Visitors are asked to accept salvation by repenting of their sins and accepting Jesus. If they want to do that, they should go through the “good” exit (that they say leads to Jesus and heaven).  If not, they have to exit through the “bad” door (Satan and hell). No one asks anything of you if you leave through the bad door; you just get ignored. But if you exit through the good door, they have you sign stuff having to do with a tally of “souls won” for upcoming religious activities.

I received a letter once from the pastor of a church that sponsored a Hell House. It listed members of the church I served who “received salvation” by departing the good door at their recent annual House of Holy Horrors. The names on the list were mostly teenagers in our youth group, and they reported to me that the pressure put on them was overwhelming.

Do you think that any Hell House visitors have ever been impacted with the love of God? Or did the visitors claim to have “made a decision for Christ” because it was the least anxiety-producing way to escape the intense psychological pressure being applied?

This I know: People attending Hell Houses never hear the gospel, the real gospel of the Bible. Moreover, I never read in Scripture that Jesus ever used fear, gore, intimidation, and psychological pressure to introduce people to his heavenly Father. I will never condone this sick spiritual terrorism. (When a friend of mine read aloud this last sentence in a Bible study class I led, instead of “sick spiritual terrorism” he read “slick spiritual terrorism!” What a terrific Freudian slip!)

What do you think Jesus’ opinion is about the terrorizing procedures of Hell Houses?

I’m clear that the Jesus of scripture cannot condone such scare tactics. I’m clear that he never used such tactics himself. I’m clear that fear cannot bring anyone to God ever.

There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear; for fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not reached perfection in love. (1 John 4:18)

Even though it’s clearly not scriptural, churches continue to use fear to motivate and control Christians. So, how do churches sustain these misguided evangelical scare tactics?

1. They’ve learned that fear works to make you attend and give money.
2. So they plant seeds of doubt about your salvation frequently, perhaps weekly. They can’t allow you to have assurance, much less certainty. Why? Because if they allow salvation certainty or assurance, then fear won’t work anymore to keep you coming and giving money.
3. Then they have to shut down your questions. They say that questions are evidence of faithlessness. They explain that faithlessness brings your salvation into question. And if your salvation is uncertain, fear is more likely to keep you attending and giving money.
4. They discourage independent thinking about Scripture and theology. Your independent attitude will be viewed as an attack on corporate stability and body-count momentum. Only company yes-men need apply. If you won’t knuckle under, you can expect to be barely tolerated, ignored, ostracized, or run off.

Hell Houses are just an extreme of modern evangelicalism's standard operating procedure. You could be enjoying a cool October evening at the State Fair when a young man, a complete stranger to you, approaches acting friendly. Smiling. Interrupting. “You enjoying the fair, sir?” he asks you, but not really interested in your reply. “Man, that pretzel looks good,” he continues without waiting for you to respond. Then he springs his little rat trap. “Sir, are you saved? Do you know Jesus Christ as your personal Lord and Savior? If you died today, are you certain that you will go to heaven?” He pushes a tract into your hands. He doesn’t ask your name. He expresses no interest in where you live, how many kids you’ve got, what you do for a living, or where you may or may not attend church. He doesn’t even apologize for the interruption. He’s at the fair on a single-minded yet misguided mission:

Stop strangers from going to hell.

More than mere rudeness, his actions are coldly impersonal. He’s not there to meet you or get to know you or to have a relationship of any kind with you, much less to walk with you through your struggles in life. He’s engaging you in a non-relational exchange—really more of a bombardment. The true, biblical Gospel is at its core relational. Yet this young man’s approach is decisional.

Earlier, on a garishly painted church bus, he was given instructions by his pastor on what to say and do, so the young man is not entirely to blame. He wasn’t instructed to relate to you. The pastor likened all the “unsaved” (There’s a completely unbiblical word!) at the fair to people in a burning building. He stressed urgency. The idea is to get “bodies” out of the burning building, i.e. to “save them,” meaning save them from hell, or more specifically, save them from God sending them to hell when they die or on judgment day, whenever it is that God supposedly does the judging, condemning, and sending to hell stuff. Amen.

I don’t know how far back the burning building analogy goes, but thanks to the internet I found it in an excerpt from a book by Mississippi evangelist T.T. Martin from 1923:

“Isn't saving a soul from spending eternity in hell ten million times more important than saving a human body from a burning building?”

So there’s our young missionary’s rationale. He has been influenced by his pastor to believe that the end justifies the means. It’s OK to be rude and non-relational to people at the fair because it’s in an effort to save them from God’s sending them to eternal torture. Apparently even dishonest conversational ploys are justifiable given their perceived urgency of the situation. Our young man is doing his job and following his pastor’s instructions, and he likely believes he’s doing what Jesus wants him to do too. So when the pastor asks him at the end of the evening how many he “witnessed” to, he can give him as large a “body count” as possible. He’s punched his ticket with x number of rude interruptions at the fair, x number of "decisions for Christ," x number of bodies saved from burning. His pastor punched his ticket with the recruitment of x number of teens making x number of rude hell-fire-tract-interruptions at the fair resulting in x "decisions."

I can hardly believe that the burning-building crowd can maintain this utter contradiction. Their face on the world is that they have salvation, and you don’t. They have to make you into their image by acting assured of salvation. Yet at the very same time, the key to the message within the walls of many a church is planting seeds of doubt about everyone’s salvation! Only fear will continue to feed the guilt-driven, decisional mechanics of confrontational evangelization. Do you see it? Fear attracts bodies. The church feeds them fear. Fear attracts bodies. The church feeds them fear. Round and round goes the hamster wheel of religion.

Why are the church’s tactics not blackmail and black magic? Isn’t using intimidation and threat to extort money and membership blackmail by definition? Isn’t pressuring people into reciting a formula that’s supposed to presto-chango switch their afterlife destination sorcery by definition? Intimidation and incantation. Threats and spells. Aren’t these blackmail and black magic just in the dictionary sense? Isn’t it obvious? What else could threat and magic words be? But, ironically, the religious folks call it “good news” and “prayer!”

There’s a huge problem here. I am willing to bet that for most people “getting saved from hell when you die” has actually become “the gospel” as they know it. I’m dead serious. Stand at the door of any church following worship. Survey people as they are leaving. When asked what the good news is, won’t most people say this or, with variation, its equivalent: “You can get saved by Jesus so God won’t have to send you to hell when you die!”

There is no treating and a lot of tricking going on at your local Hell House this Halloween.

What if, in the Bible, being “saved” has little to do with reserving a spot in the afterlife and more to do with being set free to live now and forever? What if, rather than fear and threat, the message of Scripture—the good news—is that you can trust and rest and live in the grace of God in Jesus Christ given freely to the world?

For more evangelical bad behavior:
The Prosperity Gospel: God In a Box
Katrina: The Wrath of God?
The Christian Ambush: A True Story
Don't You Hate Christian Tracts?

For a definition of biblical salvation see my blogs:

You’re Saved (part one) and You’re Saved (part two) [You may order a complimentary hard copy of it in booklet form from Plain Truth Ministries on their pdf order form here.]

See also these blogs:

Are We Supposed To Be Afraid of God?

Hell Defined 1 (Sheol and Hades)

Hell Defined 2 (Gehenna and Tartarus)

Lake of Fire Defined

PTM published this blog as an E-Update Feature Article: "Hell House?"

Read more: http://www.myspace.com/bertgary/blog#ixzz11JXa3xQZ

A Country Fried Parable

(Or a Lynyrd Synyrd Parable of the Kingdom of Heaven)

Appendix D from "Heaven for Skeptics"

© 2008 by Bert Gary for FaithWalk Publishing

Perhaps I should just do as Jesus did and tell a parable. And since I'm from the South, perhaps a country fried parable is called for.

ACT ONE

Entering the kingdom of heaven is like this: You are incarcerated for life in a dark and crowded Birmingham maximum security prison when out of the blue a letter arrives containing your pardon and an invitation to a party. In the neighboring cells, all of your fellow jailbirds received the same.

Just then you hear a band from somewhere outside the prison launch into "Free Bird" by Lynyrd Skynyrd. And just then every prison door unlocks with a clang. The doors fly open. All of them.

You look around at the other prisoners. They're standing there rereading their pardons. They look at you and back at the papers. You read your pardon and your personalized party invitation again. Is this some kind of sick joke? Is it a test? Is it a trap?

You hold your breath and inch toward the open door. The others are watching you. You see your hand reaching for the opening like it's hot, like it's wired. But your hand goes through unharmed. Others inch toward their doors, suspicious eyes darting left and right, uncertain hands reaching out and quickly drawing back.

By now the chorus of "Freebird" is roaring in your ears, and something hopeful is growing in your heart. Without thinking, you bolt from your cell and run for your Life. Right behind you another prisoner runs for his. Then many run, tearing through the cellblock, all the doors wide open. Running and screaming like warriors charging into battle, you emerge from the prison into a green sunlit park.

You and your cellmates rush the stage where you see none other than Ronnie Van Zant himself smiling as he looks right at you. Then he grabs the mic and directs the crowd, an enormous chorus, millions and millions of pardoned cons singing,

"So won't you fly high free bird, yeah!"

Guitars roar. Apple wine is flowing. Lamb is served. And Life is good.

COMMENT ON ACT ONE

Pardon the interruption, but a couple of Bible verses come to mind. Jesus quoted Isaiah saying,

"He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives . . ." (Luke 4:18)

I quoted it before, but Paul's words may make better sense here:

For God has imprisoned all in disobedience so that he may be merciful to all. (bold italics mine) (Romans 11:32)

Oh, yeah. I forgot about hell. Hell is easy to forget at a party! My parable continues:

ACT TWO

In the back of the prison, in the last cell at the end of a long ward, a prisoner sits in the corner fuming. "It's not fair," he says. Then he says it again. Louder. Again. And again. Like a chant. A chant that the other prisoners in nearby cells join in. "It's - not - fair," they chant. More join them. They begin banging and raking their tin cups across the cell bars. It is loud. Very loud. A multitude of freed prisoners refuse to leave their unlocked cells in protest of the general pardon of all. "It's - not - fair! It's - not - fair! It's - not - fair! It's - not - fair! It's - not - fair!"

It was loud as hell.Yet at the free-bird party in the park, Lynyrd Skynyrd was just warming up! The sound of "It's - not - fair!" coming from the unlocked prison was being drowned out by Ronnie and the boys, who were now singing,

"Won't you give me three steps, gimme three steps mister, gimme three steps towards the door?"

Ironical, isn't it?

COMMENT ON ACT TWO

While a Skynyrd concert might not sound like heaven to you, to a good old Southern boy, it's not bad at all. If you like, set the parable in a Detroit prison for women and let Janis Joplin sing "Bobby Magee."

"Freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose."

"The doors of Hell are locked on the inside." CS Lewis


If you like this parable, try my others: Pews Stink (A Black and White Satire), What Color Is a Green Apple?, The Kingdom of Heaven is Like Gravity, and A Guitar Hero Parable (Or the Gospel According to Slash).


For Jesus' parables see The Absurd Parable of the Unforgiving Slave, The God Who Gambles, Parable of the Vine and Branches, The Crooked Manager, The Friend at Midnight, Heaven Is Like a Crazy Farmer, He Speaks Of . . ., Salted With Fire, Talking Sheep and Goats, Is Your Eye Evil?, Two Prodigals and Their Strange Father, The Lazarus Parable Is Not About the Afterlife,and Jesus Used Parables Like a Sieve.

Hell Defined 2

Gehenna

Gehenna—geenna {pronounced gheh'-en-nah}—occurs only a dozen times in the New Testament. The term is a Greek transliteration of the Hebrew words ge hinnom meaning the “Valley of Hinnom,” or ge bene hinnom meaning “the valley of the sons of Hinnom.” (ISBE) Yes, it’s a real valley. It’s downhill from the southern wall of the Old City of Jerusalem. I’ve been there many times. I’ve explored its length. The valley was notorious for two things:


First, children were sacrificed to Molech there. There is not consensus on this Ammonite cult, but the traditional view is this:


Molech – “an idol of the Ammonites, to whom they burned and sacrificed their children, . . . [it’s] face was like a calf: his hands were ever stretched out to receive gifts: his priests were called Chemarims, (2Ki 23:5, Ho 10:5, Zep1:4).” (Geneva Bible Notes)


Kings Ahaz and Manasseh of Israel, in accommodation to local pagan rituals, reintroduced “children passing through the fire to Molech,” probably child sacrifice (2 Kings 16:3; 2Chronicles 28:3, 33:6; Jeremiah 7:31; 19:2-6). The Valley of Himmom was called Topheth (2 Kgs 23:10; Jer. 7:31f; 19:6, 11ff) which means “place of fire.” King Josiah outlawed the idolatrous and barbaric practice, (2 Kings ..23:10..) though it was already outlawed in Israel’s legal code:

NET Leviticus 18:21 You must not give any of your children as an offering to Molech, so that you do not profane the name of your God. I am the LORD!

Second, the valley, so defiled so by idolatrous human sacrifices, became “a receptacle of carcasses and criminals' corpses” of the city of Jerusalem. The Hinnom Valley (Gehenna) became Jerusalem’s burning dump and sewer. For practical reasons (Waste in Jerusalem flowed from the city into the Hinnom Valley.) and because of its defiled past (It was a pagan worship center that practiced child sacrifice.), the Hebrews made the place their sewer, their dump, and their body disposal site. In Old and New Testament times, the fires of Gehenna reportedly never went out.

Hinnom in the Old Testament occurs only eleven times in eleven verses, none of them in reference to anything other than the literal Hinnom Valley of south Jerusalem. (Joshua 15:8; Joshua 18:16; 2 Kings 23:10; 2Chronicles 28:3; 2 Chronicles33:6; Nehemiah 11:30; Jeremiah 7:31, 32; Jeremiah 19:2, 6; Jeremiah 32:35) None of these eleven references to the valley of Bar (son of) Hinnom in the Old Testament has anything to do with the afterlife. The Valley of Hinnom is a literal valley and is not referred to metaphorically.

Now the stage is set for Jesus’ few references to Jerusalem’s Valley of Hinnom, or Gehenna.

NAB Matthew 5:21-22  "You have heard that it was said to your ancestors, 'You shall not kill; and whoever kills will be liable to judgment.' 22 But I say to you, whoever is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment, and whoever says to his brother, 'Raqa,'will be answerable to the Sanhedrin, and whoever says, 'You fool,' will be liable to fiery Gehenna. (bold and italics mine)

Jesus gives us three words to ponder. These three little words could mean your destruction. Your life can be a living hell if you allow these three words to enslave you.

1. Orge - The word for anger (orge) also means wrath. Jesus says that the consequences for wrathful anger and judgmental words are severe. The judgment is the same for anger as for murder! Murder in your heart, just like adultery in your heart, is the same as if you had done the deed, spiritually speaking. Jesus doesn’t allow his followers to hide behind their good behavior, like the Pharisees did. He forces them to look inside. Inside, everyone is guilty. Inside, everyone has done evil and failed God. How dare you judge someone else when you yourself are not innocent? That’s his point. Those who are wrathful/angry to someone are answerable to judgment (krisis) for murder. The sentence is death.

2. Raca - Raca is an Aramaic word meaning empty-headed. No brains. If you judge someone to be stupid and call them Raca, you are answerable to the Supreme Court for murder, says Jesus. Spiritually,such name-calling judgment on your part is a killing, and your sentence is already pronounced; by pronouncing sentence on the brains of someone else,you’re already brain-dead and don’t know it. (How could you? You have no brain!) Those who judge others as brainless are answerable for murder. The sentence is death.

3. Moros – Moros means fool. It literally means moron. If you judge someone and call them a moronic nitwit, you will be answerable to the burning fires of the city dump (Gehenna) for murder. The sentence is death.

Now, how literally are you prepared to take Jesus’ three proclamations? Look at the three rulings. 1. Liable to judgment. 2. Answerable to Sanhedrin. 3. Liable to fiery Gehenna. Look at the middle one: Answerable to the Sanhedrin, ....Israel....’s Supreme Court. Do you really think Jesus is saying that the Sanhedrin will put you to death for calling someone stupid? Since when is name-calling a capital offense? It’s a silly idea if taken literally. Now think about the other two: Liable to judgment for being judgmentally angry? Liable to the burning dump for calling someone a fool? Both also silly ideas if taken literally.

It’s kind of funny, isn’t it, that anger and name-calling gets you the death penalty? But there is Jesus’ sense of humor again, often missed, but much appreciated when discovered. Jesus says, Forget about murder. You don’t have to kill someone to get the death penalty. I tell you truthfully, the sentence is death for harboring anger (orge), for calling someone stupid (Raqa), and for calling someone a fool (Moros).
 
Ridiculously harsh, you say? How can Jesus judge,sentence, and condemn someone like that, and toss them in the burning dump,just for an emotion and an unfortunate choice of words? No, that’s missing the point. Jesus isn’t judging and sentencing or tossing anybody. A person’s harbored anger and his judgmental, cruel words are symptoms that he already stands judged, condemned, and dumped spiritually. He’s exhibiting Gehenna behavior. He’s already sentenced himself to death and doesn’t know it. Jesus isn’t judging him or executing him. Jesus is pronouncing him DOA—already dead on arrival. He’s spiritually dead. He’s walking worm food.

Welcome to the real hell, the Gehenna of Scripture, Jesus’ Gehenna, the valley of burning sewage and garbage and dead bodies. Death valley. This hell is all around us. We live in the stench of it every day. You need more proof of its presence? Look at these two quotes from Jesus:

NAB Matthew 23:15 "Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites. You traverse sea and land to make one convert, and when that happens you make him a child of Gehenna twice as much as yourselves.

NAB Matthew 23:33 “You serpents, you brood of vipers, how can you flee from the judgment of Gehenna?”

Notice Jesus says that the scribes and Pharisees are already children of Gehenna. Gehenna tragically defines whose they are and where they are from. They come from Gehenna, they are in Gehenna, and they belong to Gehenna. Why? Because they are hypocrites. Hypocrisy isn’t just the wrongdoing that earns you the death penalty in the burning dump. Hypocrisy is sewer born.Hypocrisy is a symptom that you are already dead in Gehenna. You are spiritually dead. Listen to another of Jesus’ pronouncements against these same leaders:

NAB Matthew 23:27-28 “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites. You are like whitewashed tombs,which appear beautiful on the outside, but inside are full of dead men's bones and every kind of filth. 28Even so, on the outside you appear righteous, but inside you are filled with hypocrisy and evildoing.”

Hypocrisy, born of Gehenna, is to live a lie. You put up the front of a devout and righteous person. Inside you’re filled with hate, anger, murder, adultery, idolatry.Gehenna is in you. You can’t hide what’s inside from God. That’s why Jesus says that they can’t “flee from the judgment of Gehenna.” Take a second look:

NAB Matthew 23:33 “You serpents, you brood of vipers, how can you flee from the judgment of Gehenna?”

They can’t flee it because Gehenna is inside of them. You can’t flee from yourself. Because wherever you go, there you are! That’s why the scribe and Pharisee snakes can’t flee Gehenna. They’re already in it, and it’s in them. They’re in death valley,and it’s in them. They’ve applied judgment to themselves by judging others. If they try to flee the judgment by running around showing off the appearance of cleanness, they only take Gehenna with them because it’s inside.

Allow me to ask you some questions. Is Jesus saying that the scribes and Pharisees are literally snakes? Is he saying that they’re literally whitewashed tombs? Is he saying that the literal penalty for calling someone a bad name is death? Obviously not. Then is Jesus saying that hypocrites and name-callers will be thrown into the literal burning dump in the Hinnom Valley (Gehenna)? Also, obviously not.

It’s not appreciated the extent to which Jesus used poetic pictures in his teaching. (See my blog He Speaks Of . . . .) Let me demonstrate by showing you Jesus’ best known quotes about Gehenna. They’re in Mark 9. Jesus salted his teaching with parabolic images, sounds, tastes, smells, and textures. For him, words that stir up your senses work better than abstract concepts. Mark 9:42-48, containing three mentions of Gehenna, is rife with such evocative words. (See also Matthew 5:29-30; 18:9; James 3:6) Here’s my outline of Jesus’ key teaching on Gehenna in Mark 9:42-48:

***

A. IF YOU CAUSE STUMBLING, . . . IT’S WORSE THAN DROWNING:
42 “Whoever causes one of these little ones who believe (in me) to sin, it would be better for him if a great millstone were put around his neck and he were thrown into the sea.”

B. IF A BODY PART CAUSES YOU TO STUMBLE, AMPUTATE . . .

1. IT’S EITHER YOUR HAND OR GEHENNA:

43 “If your hand causes you to sin, cut it off. It is better for you to enter into life maimed than with two hands to go into Gehenna, into the unquenchable fire.”

2. IT’S EITHER YOUR FOOT OR GEHENNA:

45 “And if your foot causes you to sin, cut it off. It is better for you to enter into life crippled than with two feet to be thrown into Gehenna.”

3. IT’S EITHER YOUR EYE OR GEHENNA:

47 “And if your eye causes you to sin, pluck it out. Better for you to enter into the kingdom of God with one eye than with two eyes to be thrown into Gehenna, 48 where 'their worm does not die,and the fire is not quenched.'” 

(Mark 9:42-48)

***

Let’s summarize. A. Jesus says that if you dissuade someone from believing in him (or in the Life that he brings), you’d be better off thrown overboard in cement shoes. (millstones excavated in Capernaum pictured) B. He says, you’d be better off maimed but alive than whole and dead in the dump.

What if Jesus wanted to warn those who might try to stop people from believing in him and in the Life that he embodies and brings? He could say, “It is wrong to dissuade people from entering Life by believing in me.” That sentence expresses his warning, but it’s not very evocative, is it? But Jesus says instead, and I’m paraphrasing, You’ll wish you’d drowned in cement shoes if you try to trip up those who are entering Life.


There’s humor again in this extreme penalty for a seemingly insignificant wrongdoing. To cause a little one to merely stumble is a drowning offense? Your hand, your foot, or your eye causing you to stumble is a burning offense? That’s what the man said.And boy does he bring vivid pictures to the mind!


In his evocative language in Mark 9, is Jesus threatening nonbelievers with literal afterlife punishment? Please allow me to answer that question with a question. How serious was Jesus about drowning someone by putting a millstone around his neck and throwing him into the sea? May I ask some more questions? How serious was he about amputating your hand? How serious was he about amputating your foot? How serious was he about plucking your eyeball? Are we talking about literally drowning someone, literally amputating hands and feet, and literally removing eyeballs? Obviously the answer to all these questions is No. He’s speaking figuratively about millstone drownings,hand and foot amputations, eyeball pluckings, and Hinnom Valley burnings—not literally.

Let’s take a commonsense approach. Look at each element in these verses and ask yourself: Is Jesus talking about a literal stumbling block? Are the “little ones” literally toddlers or children? Is a literal millstone hung literally around your literal neck? Is he talking about literally throwing you in the sea for putting a literal rock in front of literal children to literally make them trip and fall to the literal ground? No? Then I have two very serious questions for you:

1. If nothing else in this parabolic saying is literal, then why does Gehenna (the Hinnom Valley) have to be a literal afterlife place?

2. If we aren’t to take these things literally, then what is Jesus really saying?

To dwell in Gehenna is to become garbage, sewage, and filth. There was so much corruption and rot in that valley that the worms there, Jesus insists playfully, live forever!

NAB Mark 9:48 “. . . where 'their worm does not die, and the fire is not quenched.'”

Everyone who listened to Jesus knew the history of Gehenna (Jerusalem’s Hinnom Valley, meaning the Valley of Wailing). Everyone knew of the idolatrous cult involving burnt offerings of children to the god Molech. (2 Kings 23:10; 2 Chronicles 28:3, 33:6; Jeremiah 7:31, 32:35) Everyone knew that the place was called Topheth, meaning “a place of fire.” Everyone knew it was called Haragah, “a place of slaughter.” Everyone knew that people were slaughtered and burned there. For Jesus’ contemporary audiences, Gehenna was the perfect picture of a wasted life and a hellish existence. Who can live in Gehenna? The obvious answer to this rhetorical question is No one. Life is not possible in Jerusalem’s trash-burning ditch. But a hellish existence is, poetically speaking. Spiritual death is possible there. Gehenna—a place of pagan sacrifice, unclean corpses, raw sewage, burning entrails, and unmarked tombs—is Jesus’ perfect metaphor for people who reject Life.

So what’s Jesus getting at with these sayings? Why are your choices either Gehenna or amputation? Allow me, again, to answer a question with a question. Have you ever seen something take over a person’s life? More specifically, have you ever seen a person loose his family, his job, his life’s savings, his home, his car, his freedom, and even his life because of an obsession or addiction? Jesus’ insight is crystal clear about this kind of thing:

If your hand is addicted to something, it drags your whole self into slavery with it, resulting in enslavement in a living hell. If your foot is addicted to somewhere, it drags your whole self into slavery in that place, resulting in enslavement in a living hell. If your eye is addicted to an object, it leads your whole self into slavery to that object, resulting in enslavement in a living hell. Your hand, your foot, and your eye can enslave the rest of you in Gehenna. James wrote that your tongue can do the same:

NAB James 3:5-6 In the same way the tongue is a small member and yet has great pretensions. Consider how small a fire can set a huge forest ablaze. 6 The tongue is also a fire. It exists among our members as a world of malice, defiling the whole body and setting the entire course of our lives on fire, itself set on fire by Gehenna.

I’m inviting you to stop imposing a literal afterlife underground place of punishment on Jesus’ teaching and look at what he’s really saying. Dr. Jesus gives the diagnosis, warns what will happen without treatment, and recommends surgery. If your appetite,obsession, or addiction leaves you with nobody and nothing, your abode is Gehenna. He doesn’t say this to condemn anyone. Rather it’s his invitation to Life and freedom. It’s his prescription for beating Gehenna. And what he’s calling “Gehenna” is much more immediate, tragic, and deadly than some future afterlife underground punishment. It’s a living death here and now.

In his examples about amputating your hand or foot, or plucking out your eye, is Jesus telling you to literally remove these body parts? Obviously not, or sales of eye patches and prosthetic hands and feet would be booming! Then why literalize Gehenna? By Gehenna, Jesus means death by spiritual slavery here and now. And Jesus doesn’t sugarcoat it: You will either lose your life or a body part. You are either dead or maimed. The only way forward into Life is maimed.
 
You live maimed or not at all.

Let’s not turn what Jesus is saying back into a new legalism. He’s not saying, “Don’t stumble, or else!” “Don’t trip, or I’ll send you to hell forever.” To stumble isn’t to misbehave. Stumbling isn’t a black mark on your goody-two-shoes scorecard. In Christianity, to stumble is to be enslaved to something (or someone) that isn’t Jesus, he who scripturally is Life. All other enslavements are idolatry. All other enslavements are Gehenna.


Any recovering alcoholic will tell you that recovery begins with admitting you’ve got a problem with no free and easy way out. You don’t ever stop being an alcoholic; you’re alcoholic for life. You’re maimed. You’re forever scarred. Once an amputee, always an amputee. But you don’t have to be a slave to alcohol. Because you’re an alcoholic doesn’t mean you have to stay in a living Gehenna, thought that is a real possibility. The only option to death(spiritual or physical or both) is maiming. If your hand has to be holding a drink, then your hand has drug you with it into Gehenna. If your foot has to go to the racetrack, then it has drug the rest of you with it into Gehenna. If your eye is voyeuristic, then your eye has drug the rest of you with it into Gehenna. And the only option to Gehenna is maiming. It’s better to cut yourself off from the addiction and those things and relationships that support and enable that addiction, than to keep intact your current actions and relationships that steal your Life of freedom and peace. Jesus is saying that maimed is survivable; but a living death in the idolatrous burning dump is not.

We all have our battle scars. It’s no shame. But I hear Jesus asking, Wouldn’t you rather live scarred and free than unblemished and in chains? Wouldn’t you rather be a pain-free amputee than for your whole self to be tormented? Wouldn’t you rather see heaven with one eye than see Gehenna with two?

If you can manage to stop making the mistake of trying to take these verses literally, you can see what Jesus is really getting at about Gehenna:

Gehenna is our blind, desperate attachments that separate us from real Life and liberty.

Folks, the only two choices Jesus gives are Gehenna or body-part removal, and he says that body-part removal is infinitely and eternally better than Gehenna. Yes, hands and feet and eyes are literal body parts. Yes, Gehenna is a literal Jerusalem valley. But if Jesus isn’t talking about literal body-part removal, then he isn’t talking about literally being thrown into Jerusalem’s Hinnom Valley and its burning refuse and excrement either. They are “figures,” as he called his poetic parabolic images. (John 10:6, 16:25 & 29)



Tartarus


The term tartaroo {pronounced tar-tar-o'-o but often called tar-tar-oos} may be unfamiliar to you, first, because it occurs only once in the Bible, and, second, because it is usually translated incorrectly as “hell.” Look how our twenty-two English translations render Tartarus in 2 Peter 2:4.

hell 16 (ASV, BBE, ESV, GNV, KJV, NAS,NET, NIV, NKJ, NLT, NRS, PNT, RSV, RWB, TNT, WEB)
Tartarus 2 (NAB, YLT)
the lower hell 1 (DRA)
the deepest pit of gloom 1 (DBY)
the infernal regions 1 (MRD)
the underworld 1 (NJB) 

The sixteen who translate it “hell” have missed the boat. To call it “lower hell” is closer because in Greek mythology, Tartarus is lower Hades. But the best way to translate it is not to translate it at all. Like the biblical words Sheol, Hades, and Gehenna, Tartarus should be left alone. The term Tartarus is what 2 Peter intended. Note that the only appearance of the word Tartarus is in one of the longest sentences in the Bible.

NAB 2 Peter 2:4-10   For if God did not spare the angels when they sinned, but condemned them to the chains of Tartarus and handed them over to be kept for judgment; 5 and if he did not spare the ancient world, even though he preserved Noah, a herald of righteousness, together with seven others, when he brought a flood upon the godless world; 6 and if he condemned the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah (to destruction), reducing them to ashes, making them an example for the godless (people) of what is coming; 7 and if he rescued Lot, a righteous man oppressed by the licentious conduct of unprincipled people 8 (for day after day that righteous man living among them was tormented in his righteous soul at the lawless deeds that he saw and heard), 9 then the Lord knows how to rescue the devout from trial and to keep under punishment for the day of judgment, 10 and especially those who follow the flesh with its depraved desire and show contempt for lordship. (bold italics mine)

The writer gives three examples from Jewish literature showing that God has well in hand the rescuing of the tormented and the punishment of the tormentors. He saved Noah’s family, yet punished his generation. He saved Lot’s family, yet punished Sodom and Gomorrah. He didn’t even give angels special treatment when some of them sinned, but put the bad ones in a prison. Second Peter called the prison Tartarus. Why? Because he’s referencing an ancient document that you may not have read.
 


The story of imprisoned angels isn’t biblical. And yet an ancient story is referenced in 2 Peter 2:4 and Jude 1:6 as if it were at least on a par with Scripture in the mind of the authors.

Jude 1:6 And the angels who did not keep their own position, but left their proper dwelling, he has kept in eternal chains in deepest darkness for the judgment of the great Day.

The story comes from Jewish apocalyptic writings that we call apocryphal. Apparently the writers of 2 Peter and Jude were familiar with the intertestamental Book of Enoch. Also called 1 Enoch, this book tells of the imprisonment of angels. 1 Enoch 20:2 specifically states that some angels were imprisoned in Tartarus.

So, 2 Peter, because of 1 Enoch, borrowed a pagan Greek term for the prison basement of mythological Hades. Tartarus, or lower Hades, was the prison for the mythological Titans.The Titans were chained there by Zeus after his successful rebellion. Apparently the readers of 2 Peter were expected to be familiar with Tartarus found either in 1 Enoch or Greek mythology or both.

Pagan Greek Tartarus, or lower Hades, was certainly not a place of fire, nor even a place of punishment (as in torture), but it was a prison for defeated gods called Titans. It is only in later mythologies that a select few humans were sent to Tartarus because they had deeply offended the gods, and individual punishments were imposed on these few humans. For example:

Sisyphus is condemned to roll a rock uphill forever.
Ixion is eternally bound to a fiery wheel.
Tantalus hungers and thirsts forever, standing in a pool of water beneath a fruit tree, "tantalized" by the presence of food and water that retreats every time he tries to eat or drink.




Again, punishment/torture really wasn’t the point anywhere in classical Hades, including the basement prison for the Titans called Tartarus. It wasn’t torturous pain that made the Greeks loathe Hades. It was eternal, lifeless tedium.

Tartarus then, the prison for Titans in Greek mythology, is retooled by the Jewish author of the non-biblical book of 1 Enoch as an angel lockup. Why then did Tartarus end up in the Bible's 2 Peter? It must have been because the place for angels and the place for Titans were both prisons that caused the author of 1 Enoch to poetically use the term Tartarus. The devout Jewish author of 1 Enoch in no way could have meant to be describing a literal underground prison containing the Titans of Greek mythology. He only used Tartarus as a nickname for God’s slammer for bad angels. The author of 2 Peter, then, was just quoting what he considered to be prophetic literature, though 1 Enoch is not considered scripture by almost all of the Christian church today.

Even though 2 Peter and Jude reference the angel prison idea from 1 Enoch, the early church did not include 1 Enoch in its canon. Second Peter only meant to use God’s imprisonment of angels in Tartarus as one of three examples demonstrating how God handled retribution in the past (2:4). He’s saying to his embattled church, Surely God will aid you in your torment, and surely God will punish your tormentors. God did so in the past, imprisoning even angels, and he will do so again.

Here is the single mention of the Greek word Tartarus in 1 Enoch.

1 Enoch 20:1-2 And these are the names of the holy angels who watch. 2 Uriel, one of the holy angels, who is over the world and over Tartarus. (The Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament, R.H. Charles, Oxford: The Clarendon Press.)

Then there is the author’s vision of Tartarus, the angel prison:

1 Enoch 21:9-10 Then I said: “How fearful is the place and how terrible to look upon!” Then Uriel answered me, one of the holy angels who was with me, and said unto me: “Enoch,why hast thou such fear and affright?” 10 And I answered: “Because of this fearful place, and because of the spectacle of the pain.” And he said unto me: “This place is a prison of the angels, and here they will be imprisoned for ever.”

The author of the Book of Enoch paints a picture of the afterlife that for perhaps the first time in history begins to resemble our modern English hell. Enoch is among the first Jewish writers to import pagan Greek concepts into Hebrew apocalyptic thought. It was the beginning of a slippery slope for both Jews and Christians. Plato’s nose was in the tent. The Christian canon today is contaminated, not within its own pages, but in the minds of we Christians who unwittingly wear Plato’s reading glasses when we read the Bible. Enoch helped start the contamination. So I’ve taken the opportunity to expose him in this appendix.

What’s my take on 1 Enoch? The writer of the Book of Enochis a syncretist,* compromising Hebrew views in merging them with pagan Greek views. His work still deserves no place in Scripture, and the pagan afterlife elements he brought in have no place in Christian afterlife belief. He (and his“friends”) successfully poisoned the well of Jewish and Christian thought for millennia. The well is still a mess today. That Christians today believe in both the resurrection of the dead and the immortality of the soul is direct evidence of Enoch’s tragic success.

*A syncretist is one who attempts “reconciliation or union of different or opposing principles, practices, or parties, as in philosophy or religion.” (Dictionary.com Unabridged)

I’ve committed more ink to Tartarus than is merited by its single mention in the New Testament. But in this appendix it requires definition and explanation no less than Sheol, Hades, and Gehenna.

Concerns and summary

I have two concerns about hell as taught widely in the church today:

1. I hear church people (pastors and lay people) claiming that hell is mentioned more than heaven in the New Testament. Why would they say that? They’re dead wrong. Heaven (ouranos) is mentioned 77 times in Matthew alone, more than 250 times in the New Testament. Gehenna occurs only a dozen times. Hades only ten. Tartarus just once. If you tally these you only get twenty-three. Heaven is mentioned more than ten times (10x) that. Even if you add 65 mentions of the word Sheol in the Old Testament, you still don’t top heaven’s 250-plus mentions in the New Testament alone. Why would modern evangelicalism want hell to top heaven? If there is a reason, it probably has something to do with my second concern:

2. Today, hell is number one in the playbook for much of modern evangelism. Do two dozen mentions merit top billing? And don’t forget, as I’ve made clear, the words Sheol, Hades, Gehenna, and Tartarus have been but should not have been translated into English as “hell” in the first place. No biblical mention of Sheol, Hades, Gehenna, or Tartarus is in reference to the afterlife.

For the sake of clarity, here is a summary of our four biblical words often wrongly translated into English as hell:

Sheol in the Old Testament means the grave.

Hades in the New Testament is a synonym for Sheol meaning the grave.

Gehenna in the New Testament is a literal valley south of Jerusalem used by Jesus as a poetic metaphor for how we end up due to our blind, desperate, idolatrous attachments that separate us from real Life and liberty.

Tartarus in the New Testament is a nickname borrowed from pagan Greece for an angel prison in an old, non-biblical Jewish document (Book of Enoch).


Go back and read about Sheol and Hades in Hell Defined 1.

Hell Defined 1

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© 2009 by Bert Gary adapted from Appendix B in “Heaven forSkeptics” due out this year


What is meant by Sheol, Hades, Gehenna, and Tartarus, four biblical words sometimes translated as “hell” in the Bible? Answering this question is the aim of this blog.


But that question raises another. Is our English word “hell”congruent with these biblical terms? Let me show that the answer to that question is a resounding No.

Hell is Indo-European with Teutonic roots. It was helan in Saxon, and shortened to hel. It meant to hide, cover, or conceal, or as a noun it meant the invisible place. (Encarta World English Dictionary, ISBE Bible Dictionary, and Easton’s Bible Dictionary) It originally referred to the world of the dead generally, but today it’s used almost exclusively to refer to an afterlife place of torment. In our culture and throughout much of the world, hell is where the lost, evildoers, unrepentant, or “unsaved” go after death to be punished forever. It’s usually viewed as an underground place of fiery torture.

There are four biblical words that are sometimes translated into English as hell: Sheol, Hades, Gehenna, and Tartarus (or Tartaroo). But our present-day English definition of hell has little in common with biblical Sheol, Hades, Gehenna, and Tartarus. Yes, a few English versions of the Bible translate these four biblical terms as “hell,” but that doesn’t make it right. Let me put it like this: You can call a sheep a cow, but that’s not going to make it moo. Likewise, you can call Sheol, Hades, Gehenna, and Tartarus “hell,” but that doesn’t make them afterlife places of punishment. I’m giving you the conclusion up front. Translating any of these as “hell” makes no sense.

Sheol

Strange, but the word for the grave—sheol—seems to have originally meant to make hollow, then evolved to mean something like forever hollow (which can mean forever hungry), then took the meaning of to demand, and finally came to mean insatiable.

Sheol is a Hebrew word found only in the Old Testament. [שְׁאוֹל she'owl or שְׁאל sheol {pronounced sheh-ole'}] Here is a great example of biblical Sheol:


NET Proverbs 30:15-16 There are three things that are never satisfied, four that never say,"Enough" -- 16the grave (sheol), the barren womb, land that is not satisfied with water, and fire that never says, "Enough!"


See how the word has evolved again? Sheol, that which is hollow, hungry, demanding, and insatiable, became a biblical nickname for the grave. The poetic genius who wrote Proverbs 30:16 endowed the grave with poetic qualities. The grave (Sheol) is like the utter poverty of a barren womb.It’s like the starkness and sterility of a land without water. It’s like afire forever insatiable for fuel. Obviously Sheol, the Old Testament grave, is not literally a barren womb, or a waterless land, or an insatiable fire. Yet, neither is it a literal afterlife place. To the Hebrew poet, to die meant to be buried, Amen. And he pictured the grave (Sheol) as being like these things: a barren womb, a desolate land, and a ravenous flame. He’s conveying how the grave feels to his inspired imagination.


What do you see in your mind’s eye when you read that the earth/ground eats and never gets full? Insatiable.A word that originally had nothing to do with death and the grave—sheol—became at some point in the history of the Hebrew people a synonym for death and the insatiable grave. The tomb is the earth’s mouth, and the grave is the earth’s stomach, eating and swallowing men generation after generation yet never ceasing to be hungry.


To translate Sheol as hell,therefore, is more than misleading; it’s flat wrong. Our English word hell is defined as an afterlife place of punishment. Old Testament Sheol is no such thing. Biblical Sheol never meant the afterlife place of punishment. Any verse in which Sheol is translated as hell does not sound right. But if you translate Sheol as the grave, it always sounds right. For example:


Job 21:13 They spend their days in prosperity, and in peace they go down to Sheol.


 Substitute hell for Sheol and this reads “. . . and in peace they go down to hell.” How can you go to hell in peace? It doesn’t make sense. Now translate Sheol as the grave. “. . . and in peace they go down to the grave.” Now it makes sense. And it works that way every time.


I examined every instance of the word Sheol in the Old Testament, just to see for myself. I found no references to Sheol as an afterlife place in the Bible. None. They do not exist. I found that, in every case, Sheol is a poetic nickname for the grave (or sometimes death).

(Biblical verses that contain Sheol: Gen. 37:35; 42:38; 44:29, 31; Num.16:30, 33; Deut. 32:22; 1 Sam. 2:6; 2 Sam. 22:6; 1 Kgs 2:6, 9; Job 7:9; 11:8;14:13; 17:13, 16; 21:13; 24:19; 26:6; Psa. 6:5; 9:17; 16:10; 18:5; 30:3; 31:17;49:14f; 55:15; 86:13; 88:3; 89:48; 116:3; 139:8; 141:7; Prov. 1:12; 5:5; 7:27;9:18; 15:11, 24; 23:14; 27:20; 30:16; Eccl. 9:10; Song 8:6; Isa. 5:14; 14:9,11, 15; 28:15, 18; 38:10, 18; 57:9; Ezek. 31:15ff; 32:21, 27; Hos. 13:14; Amos9:2; Jonah 2:2; Hab. 2:5)


The Hebrew word Sheol occurs sixty-five times in the Bible. All occurrences are in the Old Testament. The Psalms employ the word more than other books of the Bible with fifteen occurrences, followed by Isaiah (ten), Proverbs (nine), and Job (eight). There’s no space here to cover them all, yet covering them all is unnecessary since all references to Sheol mean death or the grave. Nevertheless, here’s one more example.


The patriarch Jacob uses the word Sheol a few times to express his worry that he will go to his grave (Sheol - the ever-hungry earth) mourning the loss of another son. He survived the loss of Joseph (though Joseph wasn’t really dead). But he doesn’t think he can survive the loss of Benjamin too. He’s saying that he will die brokenhearted:


Genesis 42:38  But he (Jacob) said, "My son (Benjamin) shall not go down with you (to Egypt), for his brother (Joseph) is dead, and he alone is left. If harm should come to him on the journey that you are to make, you would bring down my gray hairs with sorrow to Sheol.”


Can you translate Sheol as hell here? Bizarrely the DRA does (Douay-Rheims American Edition). But how can Sheol be hell? Is Sheol an afterlife place of eternal punishment of wicked souls? If so, then the soul of the biblical hero and patriarch Jacob is in hell’s eternal torments. This doesn’t make sense. Look at the context of his words, always a good idea.

To bring down Jacob’s “gray hairs with sorrow to Sheol” means, Even if I die advanced in years,you will bury me grieving for Benjamin. He’s saying the death of Benjamin will result in his grieving for the rest of his life. Moreover, Jacob may be implying that he believes he will die of grief if he loses Benjamin. He may even be saying to his sons that by taking Benjamin with them to Egypt,they risk killing their father with grief. Therefore, I see no justification for reading into Jacob’s use of the word Sheol anything other than what he meant: his grave.

Hades

No discussion of Hades would be complete without a look at the ancient Greek’s use of the term. After all, that’s where the word comes from.

Hades was the god of the dead in the mythology of ancient Greece. He was Zeus’ brother, and he was the son of Kronus and Rhea. Hades was given the helmet of invisibility (Hades means “the invisible.”) for aid in a great war with the Titans; the brothers Zeus, Poseidon, and Hades were victorious. Hades’ afterlife realm is named after him, making the god Hades the lord of Hades.

Hades (the underworld) wasn’t a place of fiery torture in Greek mythology.“Punishment for wrongdoing in the old Greek stories . . . was not generally an after-death affair.” (Turner, 28) Hades was just insufferably drab.

What about biblical Hades? As Sheol is strictly an Old Testament word, Hades belongs exclusively to the New Testament. Unlike the word Sheol, however, which appears sixty-five times in the Bible, the term Hades {pronounced hah'-dace} is quite rare. It occurs only ten times.

Most English translations simply keep the word as Hades. For example, look at how our twenty-two English versions of the Bible handle Hades in Revelation 20:14:

NAS Revelation 20:14  And death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. This is the second death, the lake of fire. (bold italics mine)

Hades 12 (ASV, DBY, ESV, NAB, NAS, NET, NIV, NJB, NKJ, NRS,RSV, YLT)
hell 8 (BBE, DRA, GNV, KJV, PNT, RWB, TNT, WEB)
the grave 2 (MRD, NLT)

Hades is the correct rendering. The grave works too. In the New Testament, Hades equals the grave. It’s the New Testament’s equivalent of Sheol. But, translating it hell doesn’t work—though eight English versions think so—because the English word hell has afterlife connotation. You can see why it doesn’t work in the verse we just examined. Let’s look at it.

In 20:14 above, John envisions Death and Hades being thrown into the lake of fire. (See my blog, The Lake of Fired Defined.) So Hades definitely doesn’t equal the lake of fire. Why? Because Hades is thrown with Death into the lake. If Hades equals the lake, how can you throw something into itself? Likewise, if Hades and the lake of fire equal our modern concept of hell, how can hell be thrown into hell? Therefore Hades can mean nothing more here than the grave.

That’s what John saw in his vision: Death and the Grave being annihilated. John the Revelator is a master of Old Testament images. He knows that Death and the Grave are paired throughout Hebrew Scripture. Following suit, John pairs Thanatos (Death) and Hades (The Grave) repeatedly. (Revelation 1:18, 6:8, 20:13, 20:14) By rising from the dead, Jesus defeated Death and the Grave, says John. But John doesn’t say it straight out like that. He says it visually. The slain yet standing Lamb of God defeated the dragon and his beasts, and the Lamb’s resurrection defeated Thanatos and Hades (Death and the Grave).

In six of the ten occurrences of Hades, the New Testament writers obviously mean nothing more than “the grave,” the equivalent of Sheol in the Old Testament: Acts 2:27, 2:31; Revelation 1:18, 6:8, 20:13,20:14. Substitute “The Grave” for Hades all six verses and they make perfect sense. The other four aren’t quite as easy, yet they’re fun:

1. and 2. In these parallel verses from Matthew (11:23) and Luke (10:15), Jesus is talking about the people in the town of Capernaum.

NAS Matthew 11:23 "And you, Capernaum, will not be exalted to heaven, will you? You shall descend to Hades; for if the miracles had occurred in Sodom which occurred in you, it would have remained to this day.” (bold italics mine)

NAS Luke 10:15 "And you, Capernaum, will not be exalted to heaven, will you? You will be brought down to Hades! (bold italics mine)

Contrary to popular opinion, Jesus is not sending all the inhabitants of Capernaum to hell—an underground afterlife place where you get tortured forever. Yes, Jesus mentions heaven and Hades in these verses. But try reading without wearing your afterlife glasses. The phrase “exalted to heaven” means that Capernaum will not be remembered with high praises to the sky, will not be remembered with fame and applause. The phrase “you shall descend to Hades” or“you will be brought down to Hades” means Capernaum will be debased, laid as low as in Sheol or Hades, symbolizing the gravest possible dishonor. Jesus is not damning the town or the people in the town.They’ve damned themselves. He’s diagnosing them, and the prognosis is grim. The town will die and become a ruin. Jesus is saying that Capernaum will not be celebrated for Jesus living there (Did you remember that Jesus lived in Capernaum? See Matthew 4:13 and 9:1, and Mark 2:1.), but will be remembered for their failure to respond to his ministry, though he did more works of power there than elsewhere. (Luke 4:23) Capernaum’s failure was so grave, Jesus says, that the evil town of Sodom (Genesis 18 and 19) would have responded better than they did.

3. In Matthew 16:18, Jesus is merely saying that death or the grave will have no power over his followers.

NAS Matthew 16:18  "And I also say to you that you are Peter,and upon this rock I will build My church; and the gates of Hades shall not overpower it.” (bold italics mine)

 He speaks of the “gates of Hades” (death’s door) while standing before a cave in Caesarea Philippi that was known by the pagans there as the “Gates of Hades.” This is another example of Jesus using everyday sights around him, of his love of parabolic meaning,and of his poetic genius. He’s saying that the subjects in his kingdom will never die.

(For more on the “gates of Hades” in the New Testament see my blog, Five Coincidence?)

4. In Luke 16:19-31, Jesus tells a parable about the failure to love your neighbor. In it he introduces a playful contradiction: torment in Hades.

NAS Luke 16:23  "And in Hades he (the rich man) lifted up his eyes, being in torment, and saw Abraham far away, and Lazarus in his bosom.“(bold italics mine)

 (See my blog, The Lazarus Parable Is Not About the Afterlife.)

Here Jesus means Hades as both the grave and the Greek pagan afterlife. As mentioned previously, the dead in mythological Hades are not unhappy because they’re in torment; they’re unhappy because they’re dead! In Greek mythology, life is infinitely better than the afterlife. The twist in Jesus’ parable is that Jesus puts tormenting flames in Greek Hades. (He always used the word Gehenna when he means fire or torment, except in this lively parable.) And the rich man in the parable, though whining about being in torment, isn’t so uncomfortable that he can’t carry on a lucid yet somewhat silly conversation with Abraham who is on the other side of a canyon. But remember, this is a parable. It’s not to betaken literally. It’s a made-up story illustrating the effects of greed here and now. It’s a call instead to love here and now.

The Greek authors of the New Testament didn’t pick the term Hades because it was a mythological afterlife place from ancient Greece. Look at the languages involved. Forget English and the word hell for a moment. If you were translating the Hebrew word Sheol into the Greek language for use in the New Testament, what Greek word would you pick? (Remember sheol means death or the grave.) The New Testament personalities picked the term Hades (a mere ten times) not because of its pagan afterlife connotation, but in spite of it. Why? They had little choice. There wasn’t another word than Hades that had Sheol’s connotations of death, burial, hollow or hidden place, place of the dead, death, or the grave.

We impose our inherited, unbiblical English word “hell”on the unsuspecting Hebrew and Greek words in the Bible. Our definition of hell today cannot rightly be forced on the terms Sheol and Hades, yet that is precisely what is being done.

A discussion of Gehenna and Tartaroo are next in Hell Defined 2.