‘But I would not have you to be ignorant, brethren, concerning them which are asleep, that ye sorrow not, even as others which have no hope. For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so them also which sleep in Jesus will God bring with Him. For this we say unto you by the word of the Lord, that we which are alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord shall not prevent them which are asleep. For the Lord Himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first: Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord. Wherefore comfort one another with these words.’
– 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18 (emphasis added)
In much the same way that Easter weekend from Good Friday to an early Sunday Son rise service didn’t sit well with me relative to Jesus prophesying that He’d be in the earth for three days and three nights (a foreshadow of a blog to come), I couldn’t fully wrap my mind around the above scripture when I first read it. The reason why it didn’t make sense to me is because it contrasted my Christianized belief that we who are saved through the confession of our faith in Jesus as our Lord and Savior go straight to heaven upon our death.
The sections of this scripture which are bolded seem to fly in the face of heavenly convention, though; because if we die and go to heaven, why is it that those who are “in heaven” aren’t descending with Christ? Rather, why are those who have passed away said to “rise first” (implying that they are in a lower position) – shouldn’t they, by our normal convention, already be somewhere “up there” already?
Well, in typical “young-minded Christian” fashion, I counted it all a mystery and tucked it away as something my carnal mind couldn’t understand but would be revealed to me on that great day by the “big orientation video screen in the sky.” You know – the one that will answer all of the unanswerable questions of the universe like how dinosaurs fit into the Genesis story and what earthly good was the platypus made for?!!
But God’s Word can come alive for those that are actively seeking answers and rightly dividing It in truth. Once nourished by this Word, the Holy Spirit can recall things to mind and reveal truths by way of Its own fruit: the words of knowledge and wisdom. We just have to be open to letting go of the traditions of man: words and theatrical themes that we’ve created in our exaggerated conception of what we’ve gleaned from the Bible.
Several years ago, I found myself in a small Bible study where such revelatory truths were finally being seen as the veils of ignorance, unbelief and tradition were removed from my own eyes. Seeing scriptures afresh from new eyes, I felt confident enough to ask two questions within this group of believers: what’s the deal with heaven and hell and how is that the time between Good Friday and Easter Sunday doesn’t add up to the three days and three nights that Christ spoke of? For the sake of brevity, I will speak on the former for today’s entry.
The best and worst thing about this Bible study is that the main teacher would not simply give us answers. He would point us to the Word and much like the parables that Jesus told to His disciples, allow the truths within them to unravel before our own eyes – paced at our own rate of (un)learning the Word we thought we knew. It was a frustrating process though because the unraveling often took days and weeks to come to fruition since he refused to interject – no matter how long it took us to find even the most obvious of answers.
A further frustration came when he began to challenge us by bouncing our questions back to us: “If you want to know about heaven and hell…” he’d say, “then lead Bible study on the topic.” I initially thought he was just making a rather smug joke but eventually came to the understanding that he was serious. Everything ultimately boiled down to his simply stated, far from rhetorical question: “What does the WORD say?!!”
So I set out to study this Bible and what it says about hell for the purpose of leading a group study on the subject. The following are my findings:
So first things first. When we who believe in Christ die, we actually do go to “hell.” Many words that are translated in the Bible have multiply interchangeable meanings when we dumb them down into King James English. “Hell” is just such a word. There are three different words that exist in Hebrew (Old Testament – OT) and Greek (New Testament – NT)
DEFINITIONS/DISTINCTIONS of “hell”:
Sheol: (Old Testament) – the world of the dead. Sheol is the abode of the dead. It is the ultimate resting place for all mankind and is not understood as punishment (see Psalm 89:48) *
Gehenna: (New Testament) – everlasting punishment. In Hebrew culture, there was a place akin to a landfill where all the trash (including carcasses of criminals) was sent. Only they didn’t bury it, they burned it. The ever smoldering trash heap came to represent the hellfire that is used to depict what traditional Christians associate all of hell to (see Mark 9:43)
Hades: (New Testament) – the place of departed souls. The place of the unseen (see Acts 2:27) *
Tartarus: (New Testament) – deepest abyss of Hades. Tartarus is reserved for the fallen angels to be incarcerated in eternal torment (see 2 Peter 2:4)
* equivalent in the Hebrew and Greek cultures
Don’t take my word for it? Not completely sold on the Word yet? Perhaps wikipedia.org can appease your logical mind as defined and approved by your own peers:
‘In both Rabbinical Jewish and Early Christian writing, Gehenna was a destination of the wicked. This is different from the more neutral Sheol/Hades, the abode of the dead, though the King James version of the Bible traditionally translates both with the Anglo-Saxon word Hell.’
Having made these distinctions, it clear that hell as we know it has a bad rap. The hellfire which we associate to all of “hell” is Gehenna but this is only a section of the spiritual realm’s way station: where all departed souls are destined to reside. Don’t believe me? Well then, let’s go to the Word of the Word made flesh Himself.
In Luke 16:19-31, Jesus gives an account (not a parable which is a metaphorical and fictitious allegory) about two men carrying on a conversation in hell: largely recognized as the story of the rich man and Lazarus.
The contrasting lifestyles of these men led to conjoined but unequally relegated places in hell. Both men are there but Lazarus is in good company with, of all people, the person whom is accounted as the father of our faith: Abraham! So in this story that Jesus narrates, Abraham is in hell.
But Abraham is in a “better place” than the rich man; so much so that Lazarus, who fared worse than the rich man in life but better than him in the afterlife, is said to be in Abraham’s bosom. The rich man, tormented by the flames of Gehenna, sees Lazarus (whom he conveniently didn’t see enough of to care for while they both were living) and asks Abraham to have Lazarus dip his finger in the water to cool his tongue.
Now this account says that there was a “great gulf fixed” between the two which could not be passed (verse 26) – yet in their spiritual states, they are able to communicate. Abraham and Lazarus weren’t in heaven (the abode of God and His heavenly host of angels) and the rich man in hell by traditional measures, they were in a similar setting – together but separate: Abraham and Lazarus in Hades and the rich man in Gehenna. The usage of these words, though muted in the translations of the Bible and dually represented by the word “hell,” are differentiated by these words when you use a Strong’s Concordance to look up the literal words that were used in Greek.
Not buying it? Were these characters (with the exception of Abraham) too anonymous to hit home for you? What if someone more notable lamented his hellish condition? Say… King David? Stay tuned to read his account in PART II of What In the Hell…?!!: Turning Your Spiritual World Upside Down.
~
As the Spiritual World Turns Upside Down
Soap opera drama
May drop like hot lava when
Hell is upended.
The Living Water’s River Phoenix
As the Word turns and
Converts, the world as we know
It burns and reforms.
(this and other similar blogs can be found in Reggie’s latest book release entitled: On My Post: Recollections of a Social Media Maverick VOL. III!) #AsSeenOnAmazon
