Recently a controversy emerged on a book that is not yet published – and that very few have read. Rob Bell, a young evangelical pastor, is publishing a book called “Love Wins: A Book About Heaven, Hell and the Fate of Every Person Whoever Lived”. Some have already begun to claim that he refutes the idea of hell. To be perfectly honest, hell hasn’t concerned me too much after my conversion, since before it I never feared it much anyway. In America today, hell is a lot like a credit card payment – you can live for today as long as the bill is far away from now. Hell as a concept has lost its teeth. So why do we talk about it? I’ve never given a sermon on hell until this coming Sunday. If you’re curious about what the Bible says (really says!), then by all means join us at 10:30 for service. That said, I’ve formed a few thoughts I’m going to expound upon in my sermon that I record here.
1. Belief: Why would you believe in hell if you don’t believe in Jesus? Jesus warned about hell, but if you don’t believe the messenger, why would you believe the message? Trying to convert someone to Christianity by scaring them with hell is akin to choosing a domestic car over an import before they know what driving is. Negative reinforcement doesn’t work for the most part.
2. Terminology: There is one word in English: hell. But in the original languages the Bible was written in, there are four: Sheol, Hades, Tartarus and Gehenna. Sheol is the concept of where we go when we die in Hebrew thought – what the Jews (and Jesus) believed. Sheol simply means covered or unseen – when you die, no one sees you anymore. You go into the unseen. Sheol was never especially bad as the righteous went there as well. Sheol was a netherworld about which the Jews didn’t have much information.
Hades is the greek word used to approximate hell, because of Greek legends. Tartarus also comes from here, as in Hades (the afterlife in Greek mythology) you had Elysium (Heaven-like) and Tartarus (Hell-like). The problem is when we use those words to give people an idea of what it is like, we invoke false ideas – if we don’t believe in Jupiter or Zeus, why would we believe in Tartarus or Elysium? Clearly the authors of the Bible were getting at something else.
3. Gehenna: Gehenna is what Jesus spoke of, and only one other person used this term. When Jesus says “hell” you are reading “Gehenna” – which was a forever burning trash dump that was unclean. The Jewish people would throw criminal’s bodies in there, with unclean animals, trash, whatever they needed to get rid of. The burning was to keep decay and disease from afflicting the air and the land.When Jesus spoke of being in danger of Gehenna, he meant there was a danger that the nation of Israel would be judged and thrown into the fire of refuse, consigned to the garbage heap. Notice that eternal torment doesn’t enter into this idea? So what then, truly is the idea behind hell? Doesn’t Jesus say there is a Last Judgment? At some point when we make our choice, we will choose how we will be judged.
We will find our answers to what truly happens to us when we die in Revelation. If you want to hear the rest, come visit us this weekend. I’d love to talk with you about what we find in the Bible together, speaking as equals, not as one trying to convert another, but as peers respecting one another.
SCRAPBOOK THIS WEEKEND!: Our scrapbooking get together is March 5th, THIS SATURDAY, from 11 am to 5 pm. Bring $5 for pizza and pop if you like.
- J. Cole Weston is Lead Pastor at Okmulgee First Church of the Nazarene at 711 N. Okmulgee. You can contact him via email at okmulgeenazarene@gmail.com or 918-213-0359. Services are held Sunday at 10:30, with Sunday School at 9:30, with our bible study on Romans concluding this week at 6 pm.
