Is Hellfire A Bible Teaching?

The teaching of hellfire is commonplace in Christendom and non-Christian religions. This teaching defames the Creator and portrays him as a sadist who tortures people in flames of fire for all eternity—as punishment for wrongdoing committed during the relatively brief human lifespan. The hellfire dogma was brought into Christianity by the Roman Catholics who copied it from pagan religions. (Pagans are those who do not worship the God of the Judeo-Christian Bible.)

The Bible makes it clear as to how God views the ritual burning of people. Jehovah ended up rejecting the ancient Israelites after they got involved with pagan worship, which included burning their children to death.

"And they [the Israelites/sons of Judah] have built the high places of Topheth, which is in the valley of the son of Hinnom, in order to burn their sons and their daughters in the fire, a thing that I had not commanded and that HAD NOT COME UP INTO MY HEART." (Jeremiah 7:31)


"{58} And they kept offending him with their high places, and with their graven images they kept inciting him to jealousy. {59} God heard and got to be furious, and he condemned Israel very much. {60} And he finally forsook the tabernacle of Shiloh, the tent in which he resided among earthling men." (Psalms 78:58-60)


The scriptures indicate that hell is nothing more than mankind’s common grave. Proof of this is provided by a verse of scripture in the Bible, which no hellfire-believing Christian can explain away. I’m referring to the scripture that says Jesus Christ--the epitome of a perfect, sinless, and obedient man--died and went to hell.

"{21} In fact, to this course you were called, because even Christ suffered for you, leaving you a model for you to follow his steps closely. {22} He committed no sin, nor was deception found in his mouth." (1 Peter 2:21-22)


"He seeing this before spake of the resurrection of Christ, that HIS SOUL WAS NOT LEFT IN HELL, neither his flesh did see corruption." (Acts 2:31--King James Version)


NOTE #1: The Bible uses the word "fire" symbolically to indicate permanent death or permanent destruction.

NOTE #2: the words "Hell" and "Hades" and "Pit" are synonyms that mean THE GRAVE (of mankind).

NOTE #3: "High Places" as used in the scriptures that I quote in this thread refer to the worship of the false gods.


DEBATE QUESTIONS:
1. According to Jeremiah 7:31, did Jehovah command the ancient Israelites to burn anyone in the fire?

2. According to Jeremiah 7:31, did the burning of people come to God's heart?

3. According to Jeremiah 7:31 and Psalms 78:58-59, did the ancient Israelites offend God by getting involved with false worship in their "HIGH PLACES", which included burning people to death?

4. According to those who teach hellfire torment, hell is a place for people who are wicked and sinful. If Hellfire is for wicked people, why did Jesus spend three days in hell--considering that it says at 1 Peter 2:22 that he did not commit any sin?

5. Jesus obeyed Jehovah and died a slow and torturous death for mankind. Hadn't he suffered enough? He'd suffered terribly--because of being obedient to his Heavenly Father. So why was he being punished again with burning hellfire? What's the logic for punishing him all over again?

6. Recall that after Jesus' resurrection, he appeared and spoke to several of his faithful apostles on different occasions before he returned to heaven. Why is it that Jesus made no mention to any of his apostles--after his resurrection--that he went to hell where he burned for three days?

7. When people are being tortured in hellfire, wouldn't they have to KNOW or be conscious/aware of the fact that they are being burned? I mean to say, what's the point of punishing people in hell if they aren't even aware?

8. Those who believe in eternal torment say that the person's soul is being burned forever. What is the soul? Is it something separate from the person's body? Are animals souls also or is this only for humans?

Hi Alter Ego. Well I must say, you really nailed your thesis to the wall!
I'm not sure that I really want to debate anything but I thought I might just add my 2pence worth.
I have a problem with the concept of Eternal Hell because it does not make sense. I mean, what could we possibly do in this lifetime of 80 odd years to deserve thousands, millions or trillions of years in burning torment? The numbers just don't add up.
What happened to the principle of justice? Is that just a human concept? What I mean is doesn't it make sense to hand down a punishment that befits the crime? But all we hear from religious zealots is "Eternal Damnation" for any crime (even if you just stole a pencil at work or lied to your teacher at school). How could a just and loving God condemn someone to hundreds of thousands, or even millions of years of torture for such a small crime? It's just not plausible, that a loving, rational, intelligent being could even consider such a travesty of justice.
No, I think something is missing in the traditional understanding of Hell.

I think and important and logical question to ask is, what is the purpose of the punishment? Wouldn't it be for the purposes of Rehabilitation? If that is the case, then how could punishment without end ever rehabilitate anyone? For punishment to have any rehabilitative effect it must, of necessity have an end, otherwise it is just meaningless suffering, without any hope.
That is why I feel that the concept of eternal torture does not make sense. Why would God go to so much effort to create such a beautiful universe and human beings with free will, just so that he can torture their soul forever once their body dies? There is so much insight, compassion and intelligence in Creation I cannot believe that the Creator would have such a character change in the after life.
Having said that though, I do think the Creator has the right to expect something of his/her creations and to set targets of spiritual growth for us. I think that "punishment" in the afterlife is not unreasonable either, but just that it would be a temporary thing
that the Creator would do to get us back on the right spiritual path.

This about sums it up for me:

In a sense, the concept of hell gives meaning to our lives. It tells us that the moral choices we make day by day have eternal significance, that our behavior has consequences lasting to eternity, that God Himself takes our choices seriously.
The doctrine of hell is not just some dusty theological holdover from the Middle Ages. It has significant social consequences. Without a conviction of ultimate justice, people's sense of moral obligation dissolves, and social bonds are broke.

Of course, these considerations are not the most important reason to believe in hell. Jesus repeatedly issued warnings that if we turn away from God in this life, we will be alienated from God eternally.

And yet, although "the wages of sin is death," Paul also says that "the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord" (Romans 6:23). While breath remains, it is never too late to turn to God in repentance, and when we ask for forgiveness, God eagerly grants it.
—excerpted from Answers to Your Kids' Questions, by Chuck Colson, 2000 Prison Fellowship Ministries

[theophilus]

Originally Posted by Alter2Ego

The teaching of hellfire is commonplace in Christendom and non-Christian religions. This teaching defames the Creator and portrays him as a sadist who tortures people in flames of fire for all eternity—as punishment for wrongdoing committed during the relatively brief human lifespan.

This teaching shows how serious our sins really are. Any sin is a rebellion against the eternal God and so deserves eternal punishment. If we saw sin as God does we would agree that whatever punishment he imposes is just.

The scriptures indicate that hell is nothing more than mankind’s common grave. Proof of this is provided by a verse of scripture in the Bible, which no hellfire-believing Christian can explain away. I’m referring to the scripture that says Jesus Christ--the epitome of a perfect, sinless, and obedient man--died and went to hell.

"{21} In fact, to this course you were called, because even Christ suffered for you, leaving you a model for you to follow his steps closely. {22} He committed no sin, nor was deception found in his mouth." (1 Peter 2:21-22)


"He seeing this before spake of the resurrection of Christ, that HIS SOUL WAS NOT LEFT IN HELL, neither his flesh did see corruption." (Acts 2:31--King James Version)

You are quoting from the King James Bible. This translation can be misleading when discussing this subject because the translators used the word "hell" to translate more than one different word in the original languages. Here is how the English Standard Version translates Acts 2:31.

He foresaw and spoke about the resurrection of the Christ, that he was not abandoned to Hades, nor did his flesh see corruption.

The Old Testament speaks of a place called Sheol where all people went after they died. In the New Testament this place is called Hades. If you read the story of Lazarus and the rich man in Luke 16 you will find that both good and evil people were there but were in separate parts.

Since the death and resurrection of Christ all the righteous people go to a place called Paradise when they die. When Jesus was being crucified he promised the criminal who repented that he would be with him in Paradise that same day.

After Jesus died his body was buried in the tomb and remained there for three days and nights. During this time his soul descended into Hades to take out the souls of the righteous who were there and take them to Paradise.

Therefore it says,
“When he ascended on high he led a host of captives, and he gave gifts to men.”
(In saying, “He ascended,” what does it mean but that he had also descended into the lower regions, the earth? He who descended is the one who also ascended far above all the heavens, that he might fill all things.)
(Ephesians 4:8-10 ESV)

Originally Posted by theophilus

This teaching shows how serious our sins really are. Any sin is a rebellion against the eternal God and so deserves eternal punishment. If we saw sin as God does we would agree that whatever punishment he imposes is just.

I use to think the same way, theo, until reading "The book of Tony."

Originally Posted by hasbean

I mean, what could we possibly do in this lifetime of 80 odd years to deserve thousands, millions or trillions of years in burning torment? The numbers just don't add up.
What happened to the principle of justice? Is that just a human concept? What I mean is doesn't it make sense to hand down a punishment that befits the crime? But all we hear from religious zealots is "Eternal Damnation" for any crime (even if you just stole a pencil at work or lied to your teacher at school). How could a just and loving God condemn someone to hundreds of thousands, or even millions of years of torture for such a small crime? It's just not plausible, that a loving, rational, intelligent being could even consider such a travesty of justice.
No, I think something is missing in the traditional understanding of Hell.

ALTER2EGO:
You raised excellent points. And you're right, it would be unjust to torment people in literal hellfire for eternity for the sins they committed in their brief, human lifespan. Concerning Jehovah, the Bible says of him:

"The Rock, perfect is his activity, for ALL HIS WAYS ARE JUSTICE. A God of faithfulness, with whom there is no injustice; righteous and upright is he." (Deuteronomy 32:4)


The hellfire dogma, as I pointed out in my OP, was copied by the Roman Catholics from false/pagan religions and brought into the Roman Catholics' polluted version of Christianity. When the Protestants broke away from the Catholics during the Religion Reformation, they brought along many false Roman Catholic teachings with them (including the false Trinity dogma, the false hellfire dogma, and the false immortal soul dogma). In turn, the Protestants split up over the centuries into some 33,000 different religions—all of which have retained various versions of the aforementioned false teachings. None of these teachings can be found in the Judeo-Christian Bible.

Originally Posted by hasbean

Why would God go to so much effort to create such a beautiful universe and human beings with free will, just so that he can torture their soul forever once their body dies? There is so much insight, compassion and intelligence in Creation I cannot believe that the Creator would have such a character change in the after life.

ALTER2EGO:
How would you describe the "soul"? What's the understanding that you have of it? That's the crux of the matter, and that's Question #8 in my opening post.

Originally Posted by hasbean

Having said that though, I do think the Creator has the right to expect something of his/her creations and to set targets of spiritual growth for us. I think that "punishment" in the afterlife is not unreasonable either, but just that it would be a temporary thing
that the Creator would do to get us back on the right spiritual path.

ALTER2EGO:
The issue is not whether God, as Creator, has a right to exact punishment against wrongdoers but whether he would resort to sadism by burning people for all eternity. That's the issue of the opening post, and that's why I used those specific scriptures in my OP to help people use their God-given logic to see why Jehovah would not resort to such behavior—given that he forbade the ancient Israelites from ritually burning their children. The Bible gave one single type of punishment for sins: DEATH. It didn't say anything about burning people for all eternity in literal hellfire.

"For the wages sin pays is death, but the gift God gives is everlasting life by Christ Jesus our Lord." (Romans 6:23)


I encourage you to answer the debate questions. Doing so will help resolve your issues with the unscriptural teaching of eternal hellfire. As stated in my opening post, this teaching is of pagan origin. "Pagans" are people who do not worship the God of the Judeo-Christian Bible. So do answer the questions to the quiz—using the scriptures that I included in my Opening Post as your guideline.


I will watch for your answers to the 8 debate questions.

Originally Posted by Dilchannan

This about sums it up for me:

ALTER2EGO -to- DILCHANNAN:

Your summarization amounts to your acceptance of someone elses opinion. Everybody has an opinion, and opinions are changeable. Therefore, opinions are not reliable. Unless you can present scriptures from the Judeo-Christian Bible where Jehovah or his son Jesus Christ said people will roast in literal eternal hellfire, your opinion and your source's opinion is just that--opinion.

Originally Posted by Alter2Ego

ALTER2EGO -to- DILCHANNAN:

Your summarization amounts to your acceptance of someone elses opinion. Everybody has an opinion, and opinions are changeable. Therefore, opinions are not reliable. Unless you can present scriptures from the Judeo-Christian Bible where Jehovah or his son Jesus Christ said people will roast in literal eternal hellfire, your opinion and your source's opinion is just that--opinion.

So you want me to pull up scripture, okay then...

Matthew 5

22 But I say to you that whoever is angry with his brother without a cause shall be in danger of the judgment. And whoever says to his brother, ‘Raca!’ shall be in danger of the council. But whoever says, ‘You fool!’ shall be in danger of hell fire.

Matthew 10

28 And do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. But rather fear Him who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell.

James 3

6 And the tongue is a fire, a world of iniquity. The tongue is so set among our members that it defiles the whole body, and sets on fire the course of nature; and it is set on fire by hell.

I gave you a summary of what closely fits my belief. Hell is a real true place, a place so far from God's love and light, there will be gnashing of teeth, and wailing for ever. A place I will not go, thanks be forever and ever to our Lord and Savior who died for our sins.

Now if you do not believe that Jesus did this for us, that is your choice, but if you say you believe in Jesus Christ, but that He did not die to save our very souls, than you believe in a false idea of God...For you believe Jesus Christ died for nothing, and that is a shame.

Luke 13
28 There will be weeping and gnashing of teeth, when you see Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and all the prophets in the kingdom of God, and yourselves thrust out.

Peace

The soul is who your are eternally, spirit is the place where God resides in you...

We are not made as animals were made. We are made in the image of God, and we are Re-Born in Christ. Animals are not.

Peace

[Reverend Keith]

This is a repose of something I put on my site a long time ago.

While the infinite tortures of hell have been a popular motivational device for centuries, the time has come when this doctrine is far more of a liability than a help – if it ever was a help. It is a liability because modern people, unlike their ancestors, don’t shirk at the audacity of evaluating and judging the God of the Bible, and by any reasonable evaluation, a God who subjects anyone to infinite punishment is infinitely unjust.

Justice demands equality of crime and punishment. “An eye for an eye”. “Let the punishment fit the crime”. A finite human, by very nature, cannot commit an infinite offense, therefore, infinite punishment is unjust. Let’s take an example. Imagine the worst person who ever lived. Nominations vary, but Hitler is always a popular choice, so let’s use him as an example. Because of Hitler’s evil, millions of innocent people suffered horribly and died. So, let’s suppose that after death, Hitler is thrown into a hell of unimaginable suffering and torment. Let’s leave him there a while.

We check back on Hitler after 20 million years. For 20 million years, he has been in unimaginable agony, screaming in incoherent torment day and night. Doing some calculation, we find that he has suffered more than the combined total suffering of all the people who suffered because of him. Adding up the suffering of everyone who was tortured, everyone who starved, everyone who was gassed, everyone who was shot – or everyone who died in the war… Hitler’s agony has now exceeded them. Justice is presumably satisfied. But let’s be thorough. Let’s also add up the suffering of everyone who was effected peripherally. We’ll calculate the suffering of all the people who lost loved ones. We’ll add in all the people who suffered grief, anxiety – heck, even annoyance. We come up with another suffering quotient – and we send Hitler back to the flames.

200 million years later, we come back. Once again, for all this time – for a time longer than recorded human history, Hitler has been screaming in agony. He has now suffered all the sufferings of everyone remotely affected by his evil and then some. But we want to be very sure about this. After all, it’s Hitler, and early parole will be frowned upon. So we send him back to hell, and this time we take a really long vacation.

We come back in a billion, trillion years. Hitler, all this time, has been in excruciating agony – worse than any pain anyone can imagine. He has suffered more than the combined pain of everyone who ever lived – not only on earth, but (if there is life on other worlds) every inhabitable planet. His life on earth, during which his misdeeds occurred, is less than a microscopic dot in the long, long tale of his unimaginable suffering. The whole history of human suffering is insignificant compared to the suffering of this one man.

Can ANYONE presume that at this point – justice has not been satisfied – even for Hitler? He has paid completely out of proportion to his crimes. He has suffered so horribly that all other human suffering is a drop in the bucket. And yet, the doctrine of an infinite hell suggests that at this point, his suffering hasn’t even begun. He will continue to scream in guttural anguish – on into eternity, until there is nothing to remember of his entire existence but an infinity of suffering. Is this justice? No, it is infinite injustice. I venture that there isn’t a normal human being who would not have pulled even Hitler out of this kind of torment aeons before this point. Are we more merciful than God?

The idea of infinite suffering is infinitely unjust. The God of the Bible, if he insisted on such a thing, would sink below the most bloodthirsty God of the Aztecs in his cruelty. He would be so cruel and malicious that it would be a mark of the highest possible virtue to oppose him.



Just as a pre-emptive rebuttal – it has been suggested that we ARE guilty of infinite sin, because our sins are against an infinite God. Just as I receive a worse punishment for spitting at a judge in a courtroom than for spitting at a passerby on the street (because of the more exalted status of the judge) it is said by some that ANY sin against God is an infinite sin, because God is infinite.

But the analogy leaves out an important detail. We can only commit sin to the limit of our own capacity to understand sin. A monkey wouldn’t be found in contempt of court for making faces at a judge. Neither would a small child. They don’t sufficiently understand their offense (although a child might understand enough to be at least scolded). To commit a great offense requires greater understanding. To commit an INFINITE offense requires INFINITE understanding, and no human being is capable of infinite understanding. No human being can even comprehend the nature of an infinite offense, far less commit it.