Tuesday, June 13, 2023

Sheol And Hades (Part One)

The Old Testament uses the word Sheol to describe the condition of all the human dead.  The New Testament gospels use the word Hades, but both refer to the same general destination of the grave that awaits humanity in general.  David says that God would not abandon him to the grave, or Sheol, in Psalm 16:10 (the word Hades is used when this very verse is referenced by Peter in Acts 2:27).  The rebellious Korah perishes after God brings him to Sheol alive in Numbers 16:28-33.  Here, it says that the grave claimed Korah and his belongings while he was still living, and then he perished.  Nowhere does it say that he went to some holding place of torment before actually being placed in hell, the lake of fire that is itself where wicked people will perish again in the second death (Ezekiel 18:4, 2 Peter 2:6, Matthew 10:28).  There is quite a bit about the Christian afterlife that is merely assumed by irrationalistic people or that is entirely contrary to the actual doctrines of the Bible.

Since Revelation 20:13-14 says that death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire, Sheol/Hades cannot be the Gehenna, the hell or lake of fire, which Jesus and John the apostle directly speak of.  The inhabitants of hell cannot be thrown into hell!  However, not only is the state of death in between life and the resurrection described repeatedly as an unconscious sleep or nonexistence (Ecclesiastes 9:5-10, Job 3:1-19, Mark 5:35-40), but this would also mean that the whole of unsaved/unrighteous humanity could either way not already be in hell according to the text of Revelation 20:13-14, which says that the sea and Hades give up the dead in them before they are cast into the lake of fire.

Even in these two verses of Revelation, though, there is already some evidence for what the rest of the Bible teaches: that there is no proto-hell that God's human enemies immediately go to for now when they die.  Why would the sea need to be mentioned as giving up the dead within it alongside a temporary, hellish dimension meant for conscious suffering?  If Hades, as a substitute word for the Hebrew term Sheol, only means the grave as in the collective burial sites of Earth, then it would be very natural to contrast the sea and the ground as they both surrender the dead for resurrection.  Not even the subset of fallen angels in Tartarus referenced in 2 Peter 2:4 are said to be suffering any kind of divine torture before being judged.  No, they are only described as being confined by chains in some sort of cosmic dungeon as they await their judgment and entrance into the lake of fire, which was designed for their kind instead of humans (Matthew 25:41).

There is also the issue of how various sinners would be punished disproportionately if they all joined other deceased wicked people in a short-term hell of sorts, coming to this dimension where others are already suffering as soon as they die as is commonly put forth by evangelicals.  If someone was to immediately enter a realm of punitive agony prior to hell, as they wait for their ultimate destination, then someone who committed the most trivial of sins (no sin is trivial compared to moral perfection, but not all sins are equally severe) but died thousands and thousands of years ago would have been tormented in every moment since then, whereas someone who committed the greatest sins of irrationality, cruelty, and selfishness would be tormented less if only they lived and died at a later point in history.  This is not justice in the sense of punishing people in accordance with their deeds.

In contrast, at the great judgment of Revelation 20, all the wicked and unsaved dead are resurrected together to receive their sentence of eternal punishment--that is, of potential torment that culminates in them no longer existing, a penalty that eternally locks them away from the goodness of God and the pleasures of experiencing bliss.  They are not thrown into hell years or centuries or millennia apart; they are judged and then collectively brought to an end in hell (John 3:16, as well as verses listed in the first paragraph clarify this explicitly), and the degree of their sins would determine the severity or length of any suffering prior to the permanent death of their souls.  The final fate of the wicked is indeed far more clear in Biblical teachings than soul sleep or the other factors relevant to the state between death and resurrection, but the Bible does not teach that people go to hell upon dying right now except in the sense of immediately having their consciousness revived before God at the great white throne after ceasing to have conscious experiences until that time.

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