Many teachings abound on the doctrine of hell, but the most important thing is what the Scripture is saying about it. In this little volume, I have tried to present this issue from the biblical point of view.
Excerpt
The doctrine of Hell is as controversial as the doctrine of Godhead [Trinity]. There has been much argument on the real or true meaning of the original word translated Hell. As a matter of fact, not everybody who claims to be a Christian believes in Hell. Even among those who believe, there are different views.
Some believe in Hell without a burning fire, while some believe in a burning Hell but maintain that the fire will burn once and for all and not forever. I have read different works where the fire of Hell was explained as a fire that will burn once and for all.
They argued that just as our fire destroys completely, so also the fire of Hell will destroy completely, once and for all and never eternally. They maintained that a compassionate and merciful God could not have been so wicked as to make people burn forever in Hell .
Many of us wrongly believe that it is only the Jehovah’s Witnesses that spread this heresy; but surprisingly, some religious organizations that we take to be churches of Christ are actually caught in the web.
These religious organizations have interpreted the Scripture to support what they believe should be the truth and not what the truth actually is.
If we are not going to be economical with the truth, we have to own up and admit to the fact that the word Hell was indiscriminately used in the different versions of the Bible. This does not make these versions faulty, but rather goes to reveal the sincerity of the translators. Four different words are translated Hell in the King James Version of the Bible: Sheol, Hades, Tartarus and Gehenna. Beyond the issue of translation is also the problem of timing. Among those who believe Hell to be a place of eternal torment, there seems to be no consensus as to when lost souls will go to Hell.
While some maintain that lost souls will go to Hell immediately after death based on Heb. 9:27, “And as it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment...,” while others have consistently maintained that Hell, or better still the lake of fire, will only accommodate lost souls after the final judgment based on Rev. 20:12 –15 [NIV], “And I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne, and books were opened. Another book was opened, which is the book of life. The dead were judged according to what they had done as recorded in the books. The sea gave up the dead that were in it, and death and Hades gave up the dead that were in them, and each person was judged according to what he had done. Then death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. The lake of fire is the second death. If anyone’s name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire.”
The term, “second death”, alludes to the fact that there had first been a state of death before the second death or else the word “second death” would not have been used. Obviously, having a better understanding of death will aid our understanding of Hell and to understand death better, we must understand what man is. This becomes necessary because death and Hell that we are considering are directly related to man.
Finally! Understand and learn from the New Testament Books of Matthew, Mark,Luke, and John.
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