Suppose that a man has just captured the rapist who is responsible for molesting and murdering his five-year-old daughter! Would that father be justified in killing the man who took his daughter from him? Most people would understand his actions if he were to do so. How justified would he be if he went further in his punishment of the evil man, torturing him for three or four days before killing him? Still, his actions may seem justified to some, though most people would feel that he had now gone too far. But, what if rather than killing the child molester, he intentionally kept him alive for the length of a normal life span in order to torture him endlessly? Very few people would condone such actions, yet worship a god who would do the same.
Child molestation is one of the most heinous of all acts. Even so, it is inconceivable to imagine punishing a child molester with endless torture; however, most Christian churches teach that God will torture endlessly all those who do not believe in Him, child molesters and sweet little grandmothers alike. The traditional view of Christianity is that all non-Christians will go to hell where they will be burned with everlasting fire for all eternity. Christian theology also teaches that God is love; therefore, that traditional view of hell is illogical and contradictory. It is very easy to understand why there are so many skeptics of Christianity, who by reason determine that a loving God could never carry out such a punishment. They then deny that He exists. Hell has made them unbelievers. The belief that Hell is a place of literal, conscious, eternal torment is a misconception based on Platonic error, improper translation from Greek and Hebrew to English biblical text and intentional deception.
Throughout the past two thousand years Christians have done great damage to the originally pure and divine doctrine which had once lead followers of Christ to give up their lives as they stood unswervingly for His truth. Over time those who believed in Christ allowed the doctrines and influences of pagans to taint their Christian faith. Under the leadership of Constantine the fourth century Christians modeled their churches after the Roman Pantheon, a temple to all gods. According to Wikipedia, Easter, which is named for the goddess of fertility, Eostre, became a Christian holiday celebrating the resurrection of Christ. Christ and his apostles began to be depicted with haloes over their heads, haloes which resembled the rays of sunlight which protruded from the head of Apollo, the Roman Sun god.
One doctrine which has had a terrible and lasting effect on Christianity is the doctrine of the innate immortality of the soul. In the fourth century B.C., Plato, a Greek philosopher, began to teach that the human soul was innately immortal, living on apart from the body after death. He taught that the soul could not die and that the body and soul became separate upon death.
The Jews of the Old Testament along with the early Christian leaders believed not in immortality of the soul but rather in the resurrection of the body and the soul. Many of the men who led the church during the first three centuries, such as Justin Martyr and Tatian openly opposed the idea of the immortality of the soul, believing that it was a challenge to the doctrine of the resurrection. In his book, The Fire that Consumes, Edward Fudge states that John Darby, the man who popularized the Christian doctrine of the rapture, was convicted that "the idea of the immortal soul was not in general a gospel topic; that it comes on the contrary from the Platonists; and that it was just when the coming of Christ was denied in the Church, or at least began to be lost sight of that the doctrine of the immortality of the soul came in to replace that of
the resurrection".
The error of the immortal soul has caused believers to rationalize that all people will live on after death, whether good or bad, and if the godly will receive eternal life in Heaven, then those who are ungodly will suffer for all eternity. If a person believes that the soul cannot die, then Heaven does not make sense without hell. But, the Bible does not teach that the soul is indestructible; in fact it teaches that our soul can become immortal but only as God chooses. The Bible teaches conditional immortality. The human soul can live forever but only if God has chosen to impute immortality into that soul. The condition for receiving immortality is faith in Christ. But, what will happen to those who do not meet that condition?
Within Christianity there has been much confusion about the state of dead. A large portion of that confusion is the result of mistranslation of Biblical text. In modern translations of the Bible, the Germanic word Hell is likely to be seen anytime the text confronts the afterlife. According to Strong's Greek and Hebrew Lexicon there are four different words which have been taken under the umbrella of that one word, which has led to the common misconception that all four words are synonymous. If all four words did indeed mean the same thing then any passage containing the word hell would apply to all four eschatological words. But, since all but two of the words have different meanings, the word hell has tainted the true meaning of Biblical apocalyptic scriptures.
The Old Testament was written in Hebrew. According to Strong's Hebrew Lexicon there is one word used in the original Hebrew manuscripts which describes the state of the dead. It is a place called, Sheol. Sheol has three meanings; "the grave", "the pit" or "the hidden place." In its original form no other meaning can be found.
The New Testament was written in Greek. According to Strong's Greek Lexicon, the original Greek manuscripts contain three words which are used to explain the condition and location of the dead. The Greek counterpart for the Hebrew word, Sheol is Hades. Hades conveys the same meaning as Sheol. It can mean either "the grave", "the pit" or the "hidden place". Hades in no way implies fire or Punishment.
Tarturus is a place only spoken of twice in the Bible. Jude 7 in the New Testament speaks of a group of angels who left their assigned positions in the heavenly realm, descending to this realm in order to have intercourse with human women. Those angels are kept in Tartarus, bound in unbreakable chains, awaiting the Final Judgement.
Gehenna is a place which coincides with the Hebrew, Valley of Hinnom. The Valley of Hinnom was a massive garbage heap outside of Jerusalem where all of the impure things were burned in order to keep the holy city pure. Gehenna is a the eschatological equivalent of the Valley of Hinnom, where the impure things are burned in order to keep the holy city, the new Jerusalem, pure.
The four words paint three separate pictures of three distinctly different places. The word hell however is an umbrella, causing the four words to their individual identities. Along with the masking of the originals meanings of the judgement words, there is a problem with the words, forever and eternity. There is no Greek word for eternity. The word which is used in the original manuscripts is Aion, which actually means an age or ages. If a person reads Aion as forever and Hades as Gehenna, it is easy to imagine a place of eternal, conscious torment. However, that image would be wrought out of mistranslation of Greek manuscripts. The question becomes, why do the modern English translations of the Bible contain these errors in translation? Has there been intentional deception when it comes to the Final Judgement of mankind?
According to Strong's Hebrew Lexicon, in the original Hebrew Old Testament text, the Word Sheol is used sixty-five times. Three times the word Sheol is translated to say the pit; thirty-one times, "the grave"; and thirty-one times, "Hell". How did those who translated the Old Testament text decide when to translate Sheol as the grave and when to translate it as Hell? They only translated Sheol as Hell when the person being spoken of was an evil or Godless person. It would have done unimaginable damage to the Catholic doctrine of the immortality of the soul, if the translators had properly translated that the Righteous and the Unrighteous had gone to the same place, the grave.
Another occurrence of intentional mistranslation occurs in Luke 23:43. This is the passage in which Jesus supposedly declares to the thief on the cross, "I tell you the truth, today you will be with me in Paradise." According to the conditionalist website Truth or Tradition, The problem with that translation is that there was no punctuation in Greek. Therefore, the translators could in no way be certain where to place that comma. The actual intended translation could have just of easily been "I tell you the truth today, you will be with me in Paradise." In which case the meaning is completely different. If the comma came before today, then Jesus was telling the thief that in that very day he would be with Him in Paradise, an interesting notion since second Peter tells us that Jesus descended into Hades for three days, so as not to go directly to paradise that very day. If the comma had been placed after today, then what Jesus told the thief would have fallen in line with His normal form of speech, whereby Jesus Proclaimed His deity by giving credence to his own message prior to giving it. Over and over again in the gospels Jesus uses phrases like, "truly, truly I tell you" and "today I tell you the truth." The second scenario is far more likely considering that it fits His usual lingo.
Also, another phrase which occurs in the New Testament when "Hell" is addressed is, "Forever and ever," but once again there is no Greek word for forever, let alone any justification for exaggerating that which has falsely been called eternal, adding more time to it by complementing it with "and ever." The word which actually is used is aion, which can mean either age or ages. Presuming that it means forever when teamed with the concept of punishment is not only in error, it is also convenient when someone wants to believe that "Hell" is eternal. But why would anyone want to believe in an eternal place of torment?
On Sundays at lunch, restaurants fill up with churchgoers, having dressed themselves up for that morning's service. I remember that as I grew up, if for some reason I missed church I felt subordinate to those who dined in suit and tie. Churches today have become temples of status, as gold and pearls adorn the necks of elders' wives.
Attire is not the only solace they seek as they hope to attain superiority through the piety of their own spiritual works, delighting in the sins of others. They don't see an eternity spent with the One they profess as being reward enough for following Him. Instead, they must also see that those who did not choose "their" path are "properly" punished. Hell is a great divider of persons. It serves as a way of creating an eternal separation between the pious and the unrighteous.
As evangelists pour into the streets, tracts are circulated and fire and brimstone are preached. The Great I Am is spoken of as the Executioner who, wearing His black mask, gladly tortures the seed of Adam. Fear and not love is the great motivator for seeking His face. How sad He must feel to be blasphemed and slandered in such a way. Yahweh, the Loving Father, has become known as a sadist. The hearts of His children have been hardened by the deceptive grip of Hell. His own words have been twisted and turned against him, changing his whole character.
Due to platonic error, improper biblical translation and intentional deception, God has been portrayed as a monster who endlessly tortures unfaithful subjects. If this description of our Loving Father is correct, then He violates even the finite ideals of our consciences, possessing no greater virtue than the father who keeps alive for torture his daughter's perverted murderer. Is God really the type of creator who fills His basement with prisoners to torture? Does He breathe the breath of life into the unrighteous, buying from them an eternity by which to char their undying flesh? Or, is He what He claims to be, Abba, translated "Daddy?"