What exactly IS Hell?
score:17
This is what we know of "Hell".
It's a place of darkness
They are wild waves of the sea, foaming up their shame; wandering stars, for whom blackest darkness has been reserved forever.
It's a place of torment
for I have five brothers. Let him warn them, so that they will not also come to this place of torment.’
It's a place of fire
Jesus says in Matthew 13:42 (NIV)
They will throw them into the blazing furnace, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.
It is eternal
where “‘the worms that eat them do not die, and the fire is not quenched.’
It is separation for God
“Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.
God does not want you to go to Hell
For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.
Those are the highlights. There are many other places that support each one of those facts. I just picked a nice representative of each verse.
Upvote:0
The ancients believed in Elysium for the good, the Asphodel Meadows for those neither good nor evil, and Tartarus for the wicked.
Throughout history it's been fairly common for Christian proselytizers to subvert ideas already in place and bend them over to a Christian interpretation, a good example being the winter solstice's rebranding to Christmas.
So the early Church came up with Heaven, Purgatory/Limbo and Hell to make conversion more palatable for the pagans. These became ingrained within our culture, but are really pagan ideas and have no basis in Christianity. Artistic depictions of Hell in the middle ages really strengthened this mistaken view of Hell as a physical, burning place of torment underground.
The New Testament speaks only of the resurrection, and when it refers to Heaven and Hell is in fact talking about inward states of mind. Hell is sometimes connected with fire in the New Testament because fire is used there as a symbol of bodily desire (e.g. greed - the more you feed your greed, the greedier you become, and the more you feed a fire, the stronger it burns).
So Hell is the state of mind where you are a slave to your bodily passions of lust, power, greed, revenge, and hatred, and so are separated from God and from peace.
Upvote:2
I'm not disputing that Hell exists, what I want to know is WHAT IS HELL? Hell is an Old English term translated from the Hebrew word for the grave "Sheol" and the Greek translation of Sheol "Hades". Hell means the "Grave" or a "Crematory".
In my opinion there are only two possible answers, but you might inform me of something else. Many people have argued that evil is the absence of God, hell must be evil, thus hell is the separation of us from God. As poetic as this sounds, I've never found the scripture to back this up. Maybe you have some that I haven't read yet. God is Life (John 14:6), the absence of Life is Death (Genesis 2:17). Evil separates life from the body (Isaiah 59:2).
The second option in my understanding is that hell is the wrath of God against the disobedient Yes, the wages of Sin is Death (Romans 6:23).
I have found one piece of scripture that debatable states that God is in Hell, Yes, Jesus was placed in a grave (John 19:42). (aka: went to Hell)
But not what He is doing down there. He was fulfilling his prophecy (Matt 12:38-40).
Can you set me straight with the scripture that I need to understand the lake of fire? First let us replace Hell with the correct usage as grave. "Then death and the grave were thrown into the lake of fire. The lake of fire is the second death."(Revelation 20:14). Think of the usage of the phrase "Sea of forgetfulness."
By understanding the First Death, we can understand the Second Death. If the First Death is Separation from God, we can assume that the Second Death also is a separation from God. Now if Death (a separation from God) is separated from God. That is a fancy way of saying that nothing else gets separated from God by use as a double negative.
Therefore using replacement ideology for Revelation 20:15 "Anyone whose name was not found written in the book of life was never thought of by God again."
Upvote:8
The conventional definition of Hell is that it is 'separation from God'. Both Pope John Paul II and Billy Graham have defined Hell in this way, so its is safe to say that this represents the mainstream view of Hell in Christianity.
However this definition does not give any details of what Hell is like. Few Christians would consider the ancient view, of a place with devils and pitchforks, to be anywhere near accurate. While some might agree that there is explicit punishment, for the most part it is considered that eternal separation from God is punishment enough. (An atheist would of course disagree).
Most Christians again agree that the Biblical descriptions of Hell are largely picture-language - that (for example) the fire, brimstone and darkness indicate the quantity and quality of suffering caused by separation from God, rather than actual physical pain; Biblical literalists would be the main dissenters from that view.
There are plenty of online references giving treatises about Hell. My own recommendation for a starter is C.S. Lewis The Great Divorce - though again I would caution that it is intended as allegory and not theology.
More post
- 📝 How do Pentecostals or other Charismatics respond to criticisms about 'speaking in tongues' by multiple people at once and without interpretation?
- 📝 Have Christians in communion with the Bishop of Rome been always in the majority since St. Peter?
- 📝 What is the Catholic understanding of Predestination and Freewill?
- 📝 "All" Scripture?
- 📝 Is Leviticus 14 describing a cure for leprosy?
- 📝 Did the Romans not breaking Jesus' legs fulfill a prophecy?
- 📝 What is the Protestant view with what happens to a Christian who resists the Devil but he doesn’t flee?
- 📝 Why is the number seven special?
- 📝 Does the Bible provide any passages that might help in understanding how Satan became sinful?
- 📝 How do Catholics reconcile these verses about giving publicly and yet privately?
- 📝 Where in the Catholic Church is red wine used for mass?
- 📝 In Eastern Orthodoxy, what is most important for the efficacy of the sacraments: the right Church or the right God?
- 📝 What status does the Roman Cathechism have nowadays?
- 📝 Origin of the (mis)translation "Ten Commandments"
- 📝 Which religions is this song inspired by and what do the metaphors/symbols mean?
- 📝 What is the biblical basis for a one world religion in the end times?
- 📝 Modern Book of Jasher - Genuine?
- 📝 Can a Jehovah's Witness say that they know they have eternal life?
- 📝 What is the view of Islam within the Catholic Church?
- 📝 What does the bible say about interracial marriages?
- 📝 Priestly hiring competitions in the Catholic Church
- 📝 According to LCMC Lutheranism, why is human imagination considered evil, when unsaved people do some amazingly good things?
- 📝 How do the vestments of the pontiff emeritus compare to those of a bishop emeritus?
- 📝 What caused people in Jerusalem to change so much from "Palm entrance" to crucifixion day?
- 📝 What is the symbolism of the Peac**k?
- 📝 How does one test the spirits and identify false preachers?
- 📝 How have Calvinist theologians dealt with statements about God repenting?
- 📝 How to ask a Catholic priest to bless something for someone else?
- 📝 How do Catholics and other Christians respond to the US Bishops' teaching that Matthew was not written by it supposed author?
- 📝 What is the reasoning given by Trinitarians for using 'He' instead of 'It' to refer to God, inclusive of 3 persons?
Source: stackoverflow.com
Search Posts
Related post
- 📝 What is the Biblical Basis for a Good person going to hell simply for not believing?
- 📝 What exactly does it mean that Jesus Christ is the son of God?
- 📝 What exactly is a "Hail Mary"?
- 📝 What exactly IS Hell?
- 📝 Wave offering; What exactly was the point?
- 📝 What exactly do we know about Heaven?
- 📝 What exactly did Jesus mean when He said "I am coming soon" and similar phrases?
- 📝 What is the Biblical support for Hell as a singular concept?
- 📝 What exactly was the purpose of the Council of Nicea?
- 📝 What exactly is the purpose of a Patron Saint?
- 📝 What is the biblical basis for the concept of being "slain in the spirit" and what exactly is it?
- 📝 What exactly did Pope Gregory the Great mean by "Universal Bishop?"
- 📝 What exactly is Peter's connection to Rome according to Catholic dogma?
- 📝 What scriptural arguments are there, if any, that there is hell but it is not eternal?
- 📝 What exactly is a liber ordinarius?
- 📝 If most of the Jehovah's Witnesses today are not a part of the 144,000, then what exactly are they?
- 📝 What exactly is hermeneutics and exegesis?
- 📝 What is the biblical basis for the belief that people do not go to heaven or hell immediately when they die?
- 📝 In Reformed theology, what exactly does the doctrine of "limited atonement" actually assert?
- 📝 What exactly is the meaning of the text of Doxology in the concluding part of Catholic Eucharistic prayer?
- 📝 What exactly are 'private vows'?
- 📝 What is the Biblical basis for the idea that the 'quality of life' in hell is not the same for everyone?
- 📝 What does "Altare privilegiatum" mean exactly today?
- 📝 What exactly did Yahshua/Jesus do during his 40 day fast after being baptized?
- 📝 What is the difference between Hell and Lake of Fire?
- 📝 What happens to Hell after Revelation 21:1?
- 📝 What exactly does the Catholic Church mean by the "Virginity" of Mary?
- 📝 What exactly was the earliest start time of a Catholic mass before 1957? - What means aurora?
- 📝 What exactly did Jesus rebuke while healing the mother-in-law of Simon?
- 📝 What exactly should an annihilationist fear in Matthew 10:28?