Let’s review the last episode: Debunking Hell; Part I, Jewish Culture; Sheol and Hades, but no fiery tormenting hell before or after Torah. Greco-Roman Culture brought the concept of hell to the Jews. Renaissance Culture, Dante’s “Inferno,” and Milton’s “Paradise Lost” gave us our images of hell. Reformation Culture: the King James Bible gave us our definitions of hell by way of the misinterpretation of “Hades” and “Sheol” as “Hell.” So hell was burned into the psyche of mankind.
Now, we’ll look at a New Testament word translated as hell, also misinterpreted and misused in the church: Gehenna. From Matthew 5:21-22 when Jesus used gehenna, he didn’t describe it. He didn’t say anything about eternal torment. Who is Jesus speaking to? To Jews and the Jewish nation. He’s telling them the kingdom of God is near. To them, this meant the Messiah was coming, and he’d free Judea from Roman occupation. But they were wrong. God’s kingdom, as Jesus said, isn’t of this world. What’s happening? Jesus, the Messiah, has come to establish God’s kingdom. But the Jews don’t recognize their Messiah or his kingdom. Why? Because they aren’t following the covenant and don’t understand God’s righteousness in the law. Jesus points this out in this passage. But, to establish God’s kingdom, the judgments of the old covenant must be fulfilled. Thus, the reference to the Gehenna fire.
John the Baptist spoke of the fire of national judgment in Matthew 3:11-12.
The prophet Isaiah also spoke of the fire of judgment that would consume the nation of Israel in Isaiah 4:2-4.
Jesus and John tell the nation that judgment is coming, consuming their disobedience against the covenant and God’s law. Only those who accept and believe in God’s Messiah will be freed from the judgment coming on Judea.
The New Testament word Gehenna comes from a reference in the Old Testament to a valley outside Jerusalem initially owned by a man named Hinnom. Gehenna is a transliteration of the “Valley of the Sons of Hinnom.” It was in the Valley of the Sons of Hinnom that Jews would sacrifice their children to idols. There, King Ahaz burnt his children to Molech (2 Chronicles 28:1-3).
Jeremiah also prophesied calamity against the Jews for these practices and called the place “the valley of slaughter” (Jeremiah 19:3-6).
We can see from the Jewish history and the Old Testament how the New Testament concept of Gehenna came to represent a place of unquenchable burning and fiery judgment. In the Valley of the Sons of Hinnom, Gehenna, just southwest of the walls of Jerusalem, all sorts of trash and bodies of animals and unburied criminals were disposed of. This fire was constantly burning. It never went out. Therefore, it was the perfect illustration for Jesus and the Prophets to use to represent the judgment of God that would come upon Judea and Jerusalem for their apostasy and rejection of God’s kingdom.
During the Great Awakening of 1700s America, a small-town preacher, Jonathan Edwards, delivered the most famous sermon ever given in America: Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God. His images of sinners dangling over the pit of hellfire were so disturbing that the congregation begged him to stop preaching. When he returned to finish the sermon in the evening, people lined up because they were so scared. During the sermon, people were crying and shouting out in fear. Here is one sentence from that sermon; “The God that holds you over the pit of hell, much as one holds a spider, or some loathsome insect over a fire, abhors you, and is dreadfully provoked; his wrath towards you burns like fire; he looks upon you as worthy of nothing else, but to be cast into the fire.”
I hope this episode has given you some clarity about how and why Jesus spoke of hellfire. He was talking to a specific audience and a precise time to warn them of an impending judgment. That was 70 AD, with the destruction of Jerusalem, the fulfillment by Christ of Torah, and the initiation of the kingdom of God and the New Covenant. In the next episode of Debunking Hell, we’ll look at what Jesus and the disciples taught about a fiery judgment and whether the Book of Revelation predicts eternal hellfire for those who deny God and his Son Jesus Christ.
