The Other Side of Hell

OUR PREVIOUS BLOG: “TO HELL AND BACK … A TRUE RECORD”, focused on the Authorised Version’s use of the word “hell”, indicating that hell is the great leveller of humanity.

Small and great, rich and poor, royalty and rogue, criminal and saint—all are destined to go to hell. As indicated in the texts everybody goes to this hell–Hebrew sheol and Greek hades. This hell is, generally speaking, nothing more than the grave for the interment of the deceased.

As everybody is destined to go to this hell, so everybody must come back from this hell. This hell, the grave, is the temporary place of the dead. In this interim hell, there is no consciousness, no remembrance of anything, no suffering. Everybody is at rest. Everybody sleeps.

“YEHOVAH said to Moses, ‘Behold, you will sleep [Heb. shakab, lie down, rest] with your fathers…’” [Deut 31:16; 2 Sam 7:12 and 1 Kings 1:21]. Job indicated that upon death he shall “sleep in the dust” to “sleep the sleep of death” [Job 7:21, Psalm 13:3].

Job however understood that he will not be permanently confined to the grave in this temporal “sleep of the dead”. With confident hope he proclaimed that profound truth that has for centuries reverberated in cathedrals, sung at gravesides, and engraved equally upon the most elaborate tombstones and the most humble headstones, declaring:

“For I know that my redeemer [Christ, the saviour] lives, and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth [on the Mount of Olives]: And though after my skin worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh [resurrected body] shall I see God: Whom I shall see for myself, and mine eyes shall behold [him], and not another...” [Job 19:25-27].

Job knew that after death he will return to life. He will come back from hell -- back from the grave -- to live again and see his Redeemer, Christ, the Saviour of mankind. That is the other side of the true story of “To Hell and Back …” This earth-shuddering event of the graves of all humans yielding up live beings from the “dust of the earth” is a divine declaration of a future awaiting all the dead.

We’ve stated that all the dead will be raised from hell [the dark pit or the grave, sheol, hades], this is the first hell. But NOBODY will be raised from the second hell—the fiery ge’enna, the hell of Daniel’s “contempt”.

Daniel caps the concept of the return of the dead from sheol-hell-grave, out of the “dust of the earth” to return to life once again. This is the resurrection of the dead, so succinctly stated in Dan 12:2: “And many… [Note: Not all!] “…many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt [abhorrence].”

This is a mystery which is not understood by counterfeit Churchianity or Greco-Gnostic Judaism because they operate on the false philosophical assumption that man has an “immortal soul”—the demonic humanistic theological rationalism so pervasive in academia and the ecclesia. To understand this mystery and provide clearer understanding further on, we need to engage in a slight segue momentarily.

Scriptures teach three resurrections from sheol-hades grave:

· The first resurrection is of those who lived righteously during the period from creation to the second coming of Christ. They are resurrected unto everlasting life at Christ’s second coming. 1 Thess 4:13-17.

· The second resurrection follows the thousand-year rule of Christ on earth—not in heaven! This post-millennial judgement is designed to give all people who never had a chance unto salvation [that is, by a calling from the Father, John 6:44-45, 65] to be granted their FIRST opportunity unto salvation and immortality. This is a resurrection unto judgement, not condemnation. These people will be judged [tried, assessed] to determine their willingness to fully accept God’s way of life; that is, to accept Christ as saviour and subject themselves to the law of the Eternal, and prove their willingness to live righteously -- that is, to eternally live as law-abiding citizens of HIS eternal Kingdom. Rev 20:5a.

· The third resurrection occurs after the post-millennial judgment is over. This resurrection—out of sheol- graves—is for people who have had a full understanding of the truth but willfully and rebelliously decided to reject Yehovah’s eternal truths and way of righteous, law-keeping living. These willful rebels and antinomianists—law despisers, mockers of God and His holy word—shall then be consigned to and consumed in ge’enna. This is the second death in the eternal ge’enna hellfire from which there is no return. This is everlasting damnation—the second and eternal death. This is the “everlasting contempt” which Daniel referred to. There is no continuing writhing agony, painful and perpetual shrieks of suffering torment. One Rabbi opined, if skin has been burnt off new skin will be provided, constantly! An ironic Hitlerism. God is not creating an enduring cosmic furnace for His macabre entertainment! Rev 20:11-15.

Christ, being the creator of man—body, soul, and spirit—also affirmed the interim state of the dead as being asleep in the dust of the earth, eventually being raised back to life in the resurrection. At John 11:14 Christ plainly said to his disciples, “Lazarus is dead.” Yet he said earlier [verse 11], “Our friend Lazarus sleeps; but I go, that I may awake him out of sleep.” That is, to resurrect him from the dead. To bring him back from hell [sheol] – to deliver him from death and the grave.

Paul also understood and taught that the state of the dead is akin to “sleep”. He declares: “For this cause many are weak and sickly among you, and many sleep” [are dead, 1Cor 11:30]. Later he asserts: “Behold, I shew you a mystery; we [true Christians] shall not all sleep [die], but we shall all be changed” [at the resurrection when Christ returns, 1Cor 15:51].

But isn’t there a soul that lives on after death and goes to heaven, or purgatory? What does scripture–not the churches!–teach about the soul?

“Behold, all souls are mine...the soul that sins, it shall die.” To drive the point home God repeats, “The soul that sins, it shall die” [Ezek 18:4, 20].

The SOUL that sins it–that soul–shall die! All have sinned, thus all die, and all go to hell—the grave. All go to sleep to sleep the sleep of death.

A soul is simply a living breathing organism like a whale, a dog, a horse, or a man. SOULS die. SOULS are not immortal! Souls are mortal and destructible [Josh 10:35, 37, 39; 11:11]. Souls are mere temporal earth beings that can be bought and sold like cattle, beasts, wood, gold, silver, brass, jewellery and garments!

This truth, recorded in Revelation 18:11-13, prophetically anticipated the end-time slave trade and human trafficking which today is a multi-billion-dollar criminal activity. The Babylonian trade cartels trade in material goods and real live human beings. Who would trade human souls if souls were mere air that leaves the body after death? Who would trade mere human breath, ruach (Heb) or psuche (Gr)? [The issue of soul, spirit, breath, and topics related to the conscious inner being of man, is treated elsewhere in the Christian Commentator.]

When God made the sentient creatures, He made them as “moving creatures” imbued with “life” [Hebrew, nephesh] which is also translated “soul”. ALL animals are nephesh, or souls, or living creatures [Gen1:20, 30]. With the flood, Yehovah destroyed every living soul on the earth--except for those souls [living physical people and animals] in the ark. All souls, all nephesh, all fleshly, air-breathing “living souls” [Gen 6:17] were annihilated.

This is not mere outdated OLD TESTAMENT dogma. At the close of the bible, we are informed that all sea creatures are souls and those souls were killed. “And every living soul died in the sea” [Rev 16:3]. From this text, we learn two things: Firstly, fish are “living souls”. Secondly, these living souls died. Thus, there’s no immortality in a soul!

We have previously alluded to Christ’s statement that the soul can be destroyed – totally – in hell. But this is a different kind of hell [Mt 10:28]. This hell is ge’enna, that fierce fire that reduces everything to everlasting extinction – eternal extermination. And, because the soul of man is mortal it can be destroyed—eternally—in that ge’enna hell fire!

Though the Eternal has not created man with inherent immortality, man, nonetheless, CAN become immortal! But there is a God-designed process.

Immortality is something we must seek.

“To them who by patient continuance in well doing seek for glory and honour and immortality [incorruptibility], eternal [everlasting] life” [Romans 2:7].

If you seek something it means you do not have it. Immortality is imparted at the resurrection to those who live an obedient life in Christ, subjecting themselves to the laws of God, diligently striving [seeking] after immortality.

At this time only God has immortality [1Tim6:16]. But Christ “brought life and immortality to light [for man] through the gospel” [2 Tim 1:10]. Thus only since Christ’s sacrificial offering and personal resurrection to immortality has humanity been enabled, by grace [Eph 2:8], to obtain the resurrection GIFT of immortality.

Through the means of the gospel man must seek—pursue—immortality. That is, man has to seek it in accordance with the rules as set out in the gospel, inter alia, by accepting the sacrifice of Christ for the remission of sin and become begotten of the Holy Spirit and submitting to the law of God. This is the only way to avoid the hell which is a universal inferno and that will totally annihilate every person who has not complied with the salvific process as outlined in the gospel.

Ge’enna is that everlasting hell fire which people and churches [in many cases deliberately for personal, pastoral and priestly gain, control, and ecclesiastical economic exploitation!] have confused and conflated with the temporary hell, the sheol-grave, the interim place of the dead.

From this temporal, dark, subterranean abode there is a return. From ge’enna –the fiery cosmic inferno—there is no return. It eternally annihilates everything and every person consigned to it.

Ge’enna hell is everlasting PUNISHMENT, NOT everlasting PUNISHING. Those consigned there are burned to ashes. No consciousness remains. Ash has no remembrance of anything. Mal 4:3 “And you [the righteous] shall tread down the wicked; for they shall be ashes under the soles of your feet ...”

All people are destined for sheol-hades hell. From that hell, there is a return, for all. All, thus, go to hell and come back through a resurrection. But, there is the ge’enna hellfire from which there is no return. And the One who consigns the wilfully wicked sinners there for eternal annihilation is the One we should fear and whose laws we should obey!

"But I will show you whom you should fear: Fear him who, after your body has been killed, has authority to throw you into hell [ge'enna]. Yes, I tell you, fear him" [Luke 12:5].